Acrobat 5 announced

Adobe has unveiled the latest version of Acrobat, its PDF creation package. Heralding the age of electronic "network publishing", Adobe has targeted the upgrade at business IT users as well as at the traditional printing and publishing markets. At the recent UK press launch, the company revealed that although around 80 per cent of business documents are forms, approximately 70 per cent of these remain paper based. ...more

BT boasts 10 million broadband barrier breakthrough

BT claims it has doubled its target for broadband connections, expecting to break through the 10 million connection mark this week. Its original figure of 5 million by the end of 2006 was set in 2002, when there were fewer than 150,000 DSL connections and availability was limited to a third of the UK population. The latest figures comprise connections sold by BT Wholsale, which supplies Internet services to a range of ISPs, including BT Retail, and BT Openreach, which offer unbundled services. ...more

Sony breaks DVD read-write speed frontier

Sony has unveiled a DVD drive boasting the fastest read-write speed yet, up to 18x for DVD+/-R discs. The drive is a product of Sony's optical drive partnership with NEC - announced in February - and incorporated new features designed to compensate for unbalanced discs and to minimise the effects of shock and vibration. As well as the 18x write speeds on ostensibly 16x single-layer discs, the AG170A also provides 12x DVD-RAM burning, 8x recording of both DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL double/dual layer discs and 8x DVD+RW and 6x DVD-RW recording. ...more

UK games chart: A Grand Theft Auto smash back

The battle of the giants sees Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas smash back to the top of this week's ELSPA UK games chart. Last week's number one, the Xbox big hitter Halo 2, slips down to number four with the long-awaited Half-Life 2 coming straight in at number three. But this week's highest new entry is actually EA's Need For Speed: Underground 2. ...more

Novell bids for public sector Linux business

Novell is bidding for public sector business with a raft of announcements centred on identity and software management systems at its BrainShare conference in Spain - easing the move to the cost-savings of Linux while promising enterprise-class security. 'Governments face challenges of security and scale that few other organizations face. They have more users and are privy to more sensitive information than any other type of organisation,' said John Goggin, senior vice president and director for government strategies at META Group, a leading provider of IT research, advisory services and strategic consulting. ...more