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Microsoft Offers OneNote to Students, Teachers
Microsoft last week announced it will let students and educators buy the full, packaged Academic Edition of its Office OneNote 2003 product at campus bookstores for $49 when it is released next month.
Microsoft is making the software available to teachers, schools and students worldwide through volume licensing incentives.
Institutions that have active Campus and School Agreements with Microsoft between Sept. 1 and Dec. 31 will have the opportunity to try the new OneNote software at no cost until their contracts expire.
Through the end of this year, 500,000 OneNote beta trial CDs will be distributed to students and educators interested in starting the school year with a digital solution for taking notes.
Academic institutions such as Northeastern University have embraced OneNote, and starting with the 2003-2004 academic year, the school will recommend that all incoming business school freshmen install and use OneNote.
D-Link Rolls Out Gateway for SMBs
D-Link systems is shipping a line of gateway products for small and medium-size businesses.
The D-Link Airspot Gateway DSA-3100 combines a firewall, a router and an SMTP server and is designed for small businesses. “The hot-spot area is booming,” said spokeswoman Anna-Marie Claassen, of D-Link, whose U.S. offices are in Irvine, Calif.
Each DSA-3100, which sells for $699, can monitor up to 50 concurrent accounts and store records for up to 150 users. The gateway supports POP3, RADIUS and LDAP external authentication for larger-scale Airspot networks. The gateway contains three 10/100M-bps Ethernet ports.
Although its being touted as a wired/unwired gateway, the DSA-3100 lacks a built-in wireless access point but can be connected to other D-Link products to enable wireless functionality. Future products will contain the wireless capability.
MSN 9 Beta Set to Debut
Microsoft plans to kick off next week the beta test of its MSN 9 Internet service, now officially known as MSN Premium.
The final version of the service wont be out until this winter. Windows enthusiast sites reported that Microsoft has told beta tester candidates that the beta period is slated to run through January, making a first- or second-quarter release date likely.
In the interim, Microsoft is planning to release a stripped-down version of its MSN service, dubbed MSN Plus, to testers by the end of the year, said company officials, in Redmond, Wash.
Microsoft is planning to charge $9.95 a month for Premium, and a lesser, as-yet-unannounced fee for Plus. This amount will be on top of what users will pay their communications providers for Internet access.—Microsoft Watch
Amazon Escalates Anti-Spam Battle
Amazon.com ratcheted up its fight against spammers last week, filing federal lawsuits against 11 online marketers it says are fraudulently sending e-mail that appears to come from the online retailer.
Amazon.com, in Seattle, is seeking to restrain the marketers from sending further forged e-mail and to deter copycats by seeking millions of dollars in punitive damages.
The practice of concealing the true sender of an e-mail by making the message appear to come from a different sender is called spoofing.
“Spoofing is forgery, and were going after spoofers to the full extent of the law,” said David Zapolsky, Amazon.com vice president and associate general counsel, in a statement.