Microsoft settles up with Minnesota

Microsoft has agreed a preliminary settlement to a class-action suit in Minnesota - one of the few outstanding states where Redmond still faces litigation over antitrust issues. The suit alleged the company overcharged consumers for its operating system and office software products and sought damages up to $425mn. The exact details behind the settlement are as yet undisclosed. ...more

Dell smartens up its notebook range

A new desktop replacement from Dell comes in the shape of the SmartPC 250N notebook. Aimed at the typical Internet surfing, email-managing, office software user, the 250N is described by Dell as an 'aggressively priced robust configuration'. The silver-coloured notebook features a (desktop) Pentium 4 processor clocking 2. ...more

MGM backs Blu-ray

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is the latest movie studio to back the Blu-ray consortium headed by Sony. The studio is behind the James Bond and Pink Panther franchises. It is also of course the copyright holder of some of the biggest movies and TV programmes of the last 100 years and its archive will give a huge boost to the number of titles available on the new format - many of which will be in high definition for the first time. ...more

Sun previews its 'Project Mad Hatter' open source system

Sun has been previewing its new forthcoming desktop environment at the LinuxWorld Conference in San Francisco. Based on open source software, it is described as a low-cost alternative to Solaris and Linux. Dubbed as Project Mad Hatter (do I detect a dig at Red Hat? - Ed), Sun describes it as 'a fully integrated open source-based desktop environment'. ...more

Quadriplegic reads email with mind chip

A 24-year-old quadriplegic man has had a chip implanted into his brain that enables him to control a computer, whether to check email or play a game. The BrainGate chip, developed by Massachusetts-based Cyberkinetics, is a sensor impanted on the motor cortex of the brain, with 100 electrodes tapping into the brain's neurons. In an able-bodied person these neurons send the signals out that control the actions of the body. ...more