John Taschek

Im starting to feel sorry for the Itanium. Its as good an architecture as you can get in a processor, and it still gets a bum rap. Intel is finally getting IA-64 going with the Itanium 2, released last week, but the sputtering economy precludes its success. No ones going to spend extra money on […]

Most of us once judged notebook computers using a certain set of criteria in a fairly standard order: comfort, cost, power and battery life. Now that costs are within expectations and power is generally adequate across the board, my entire judging criteria has been blown to bits. I suspect that the manufacturers want it this […]

Tablets could be just the thing to energize the lethargic PC industry. But beware: The side effects of this technology could give some users bad headaches. Tablet PCs, subnotebooks running Microsoft Corp.s Windows XP Tablet Edition, are best defined by their pen interfaces. Users experiences with pens are what will determine the Tablet PCs success. […]

Tablet PCs have become the galvanizing notebook event of the year. People are either skeptical or love them. Theres no middle ground. Thats unfortunate because at this stage, thats exactly what they are. Tablet PCs, based on the Windows XP operating system, have tight links to the subnotebook world, and they show exactly how the […]

The PC industrys woes may be cured by taking two tablets and calling your local laptop vendor in the morning. Beware, however. The side effects of these tablets may still give some users bad headaches. Tablet PCs, subnotebooks running Microsoft Corp.s Windows XP Tablet Edition, are best defined by their pen interfaces. Users experiences with […]

A year ago, buildings began being shuttered, traffic began lightening and Wal-Marts began moving in. These are indeed gloomy times. There are thousands of unemployed IT workers nationwide, but Silicon Valley is surely suffering more. Here, everyone is in a frenzy seeking self-actualization. What were actualizing is that an employers market might make outsourcing projects […]

Fundamentally, the Liberty Alliance specification and .Net My Services have the same goal: manage Web-based identification and authentication. How each gets there will be the critical decision point for enterprises implementing their own identification management packages. As the Sun Microsystems Inc.-led Liberty Alliance specification and Microsoft Corp.s .Net My Services take shape, its becoming clear […]

The initial specification for the liberty alliance—perhaps the fastest-growing technology-driven identification control plan ever—is just weeks away. The first ID management applications based on Liberty will be out soon, and by years end, well see the first implementations, probably in consumer Web sites. ID management in the Internet age is as great as it is […]

Mail-filters.coms new SpamRepellent service reduces unwanted e-mail by 80 to 95 percent, depending on how proactive users are with the service. Users have two choices for ridding themselves of spam. They can create junk mail accounts, which eventually get polluted with hundreds of ads, or use filters, such as those found in Microsoft Outlooks or […]

Some call it the gang of four. Some call it an attack on Red Hat. I call UnitedLinux a practical move to thwart Red Hats domination and to enable proprietary intellectual property to be added to Linux distributions. Oh, and, yes, its an act surely rooted in desperation. For UnitedLinux to succeed, four requirements must […]

Salesforce.com, a hosted online package that has been ruthlessly promoted as defining the end of software, just went offline. With a browser-based offline version of its CRM and SFA solution, Salesforce.com Inc. has filled a gap in its bid to tackle the enterprise market—and does so without requiring additional software to be installed on each […]

Unless youre a gamer or loved heathkits as a kid, motherboards are about as interesting as a box of nails. That might even be too exciting for most IT administrators, who have been seeking platform stability since the inception of the PC. Intel, finally succumbing to demand, has released motherboards it guarantees will remain stable […]