IDF Fall 2006: Intel gives Microsoft the cold shoulder

Confirming that we live in interesting times, Intel President and CEO Paul Ottelini's opening IDF keynote speech featured an unusual guest. For the first time, a representative of Apple made an appearance at this, the most important event of the week. But representatives of Microsoft and its rival operating system were nowhere to be seen. ...more

The security conscious ThinkPad T23

IBM has added to its T Series of notebooks with security features for protecting corporate data and e-mail. The IBM sales line for the new ThinkPad T23 is that its Embedded Security Subsystem offers "Smart-Card-like features at a fraction of the cost". For more secure 802. ...more

BSkyB launches TV service for Vodafone customers

Digital TV giant BSkyB has struck a deal with Vodafone to launch the UK's first mobile TV service, the company announced today. From tomorrow Vodafone live! with 3G customers will be able to access the new service 'Sky Mobile TV' and can watch a choice of channels that offer sport, entertainment and documentary programmes, and 24-hour news. Vodafone customers with 3G handsets will be able to watch programmes free of charge until January. ...more

HP refutes merger windfall payment deal

Top executives to pocket millions of dollars on the back of the HP-Compaq deal? In what has become an increasingly undignified war of words, HP board dissident, Walter Hewlett, and HP top management have made accusation and counter-accusation over the proposed acquisition of Compaq. In the latest volley of exchanges Walter Hewlett has alleged that Carly Fiorina and Michael Capellas, the respective CEOs of HP and Compaq, could stand to receive payments totalling $115m as apart of executive compensation packages. In the wake of the Enron financial scandal and the fall-out of the dot-com collapse, such payments to top executives could not be a more sensitive issue. ...more

Spring IDF 2006: Boot times cut in half

Intel unveiled some new technologies at this spring's IDF that could dramatically cut PCs' boot and application load times in the future. First, it demonstrated a PC with 256MB of NAND flash memory. This persistent memory is used as an intelligent cache, so that parts of the operating system don't have to be loaded from disk. ...more