In an overture to knowledge workers with wanderlust, Hewlett-Packard and Cingular have launched what they are claiming is the world's first notebook with built-in global 3G capabilities.

The HP Compaq nc6400 boasts a built-in Cingular Wireless UMTS/HSDPA module -- in plain English, hardware that lets the notebook connect to Cingular's global high-speed data network in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, and much of Asia, with more than two dozen countries in all.

An innovative new memory technology that promises to replace flash in a wide range of products has been unveiled by IBM and two partners who claim their phase-change technology is 500 times faster than flash and draws roughly half the power.

WASHINGTON - The government issued an alert Thursday to U.S. stock market and banking Web sites about a possible Internet attack from a radical Muslim group, but said the threat was unconfirmed and seemed to pose no immediate danger.

The notice was issued after officials noticed a posting on a "Jihadist Web site" calling for an attack on American financial web sites in December, said  Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke.

NEW YORK - Microsoft Corp. launched its first new computer operating system in five years Thursday, saying that despite delays, the product's emergence is perfectly timed for PC users who increasingly need to coordinate information from a dizzying array of sources.

Opening an hourlong demonstration and press conference at the Nasdaq Stock Market, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer acknowledged that Windows Vista should have been out long ago.

NEW YORK - In a blink of mere months, the mobile "smart" phone has been transformed from pricey corporate gadget to an affordable alternative for ordinary folk.

In the last month alone, Cingular Wireless has unveiled three devices priced as low as $200 (after jumping through the assorted contractual hoops and rebates). That's well below the $300 to $500 that BlackBerries, Treos and Pocket PCs have generally fetched even with promotional savings.

SAN FRANCISCO - US Internet search giant Yahoo launched a video-sharing service in a move that could capitalize on a hot online trend made clear by the popular young YouTube website.

The unveiling of the enhanced Yahoo Video service came as the Sunnyvale, California, company continued to vie with online juggernaut Google for devotees by becoming a place where online communities can build social networks.

Desktop Chips

• Intel Core Duo - Now it gets a little tricky. The Core Duo was originally a laptop CPU, but it runs cool and quiet and so some vendors are using it on desktop PCs. See more on Core Duo in the laptop section below.
• Pentium 4 - Comes in a vareity of formats, from standard to "HT" to "Extreme Edition," each of which is more powerful than the previous one. The Pentium 4 is fundamentally the same as when it was originally released in late 2000, only smaller, faster, and hotter. Some high-end machines still feature P4s, and the CPU of choice (in the Intel universe) for gamers is still the P4 Extreme Edition. Very expensive.

According to Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters and other sources, Google removed a couple of anti-Islamic sites from Google News due to alleged hate speech.

The New Media Journal, one of the removed sources (others were MichNews.com and Jawa Report), in reaction created an “Anti-Google Search Engine Index” listing such sites as Gigablast, AltaVista, ASK, MSN or Yahoo “who do not manipulate content based on the ideology of political correctness” (I’m not sure they heard of Yahoo and MSN’s involvement in China).

More bad news for Vista. Just after Yahoo reported yesterday that people upgrading to Vista may not need their custom VPN tools because of Vista's solid integrated security tools, now comes this report that Vista's security system may be so complicated and unfriendly that people won't actually use it.

 

A comment on my Wi-Fi dropouts post requested help in configuring security on a wireless router. I'm happy to oblige. Here are my suggestions for securing your wireless network, from most important to least. I'd love to show you exactly how to make all these changes, but unfortunately every router is different, even routers made by the same company can have wildly different management schemes. Consult your user manual for detailed instructions.