Japan orders Apple investigation of laptop fire

Japan's trade ministry has ordered Apple to investigate why one of the company's iBook laptops caught fire in April, giving its unfortunate user minor burns. The laptop is thought to be among those included in Apple's recent battery recall, initiated after problems were discovered in Sony cells that power three of its laptop models. Apple Japan spokeswoman Michiko Matsumoto confirmed that the company had received the trade ministry's request, but would not say how many of the faulty batteries had been shipped in Japan nor the number that had so far been replaced. ...more

Microsoft simplifies its virtualisation licences

Microsoft has announced a comprehensive overhaul of its virtual machine licensing as part of its push to get its customers moving towards a dynamic systems network model. Self-managing dynamic systems are becoming increasingly prevalent in the larger scale enterprises where resources are allocated dynamically through virtual machines. The deployment of dynamic systems not only saves on hardware costs as many virtual machines can run on a single physical box, it also cuts down the time spent by IT staff in maintaining the plethora of computers linked together in the network. ...more

Pessimistic outlook for online government

'Huge obstacles to overcome' before all services go online At The Internet Goes Public conference today in London, Steven Marsh, director of security at the Office of the e-Envoy, admitted that there were huge obstacles to overcome if the government is to meet its goal of getting all its services online by 2005. He said that above the risks of not meeting the 2005 target, there were worries that services would not be used and that there would be excessive cost in deploying them. Although 70 per cent of services are online today, he was concerned that only the easiest to implement had so far been tackled. ...more

UK games chart: Carbon keeps its footprint at number one

EA's street racing game Need For Speed: Carbon (DS, GBA, GC, PS2, PSP, Wii, Xb360, Xb, PC, PS3) holds its line at the top of this week's ELSPA UK games chart. Two new entries complete the top three. THQ's wrestling game WWE Smackdown! Vs. ...more

Iomega announces new 'key-sized' storage device

Iomega has announced the Mini USB Drive, a key-sized storage device for storing and moving data. The 64 or 128Mb Mini USB Drive plugs direct into a computer's USB port and automatically mounts as an external drive in Windows 2000 and later and Mac OS 9 and later. Drivers for earlier OS versions can be downloaded. ...more