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This week Microsoft announced its intention to deliver Office 2004 and Virtual PC for users of Apple Mac computers during the first half of 2004, hoping to hold on to the small yet profitable Mac market. To entice Mac users, Microsoft is offering an upgrade to the new Office 2004 for free to users w...

PRODUCT REVIEW

ATI Radeon 9800 XT Graphics Card Reviewed

While the ATI Radeon 9800 XT produces frame rates comparable to the Nvidia GeForce FX 5950 chipset in many of today's most popular benchmarks, the Radeon delivers -- on average -- higher frame rates in many of the most popular 3D-intensive applications released in the past year. Stating this fact is...

Taking a stab at simplicity in the incompatible world of online music and portable players, RealNetworks has released a major update to its flagship media software, now called RealPlayer 10. The release is the company's first new player in two years that is capable of playing media in the formats so...

A European consumer group is suing major record labels Sony, EMI, BMG and Universal over a CD copy-protection technology that reportedly blocks playback of the labels' releases on some devices. Claiming it has received some 200 complaints from European users, Belgium's Test-Achats announced the suit...

Kicking off the new year by trying to leverage last year's biggest PC trend -- burgeoning sales of cheaper notebook computers -- Intel and AMD released new mobile processors for the value and 64-bit markets this week. Intel is aiming the Celeron M at the value market to compete with AMD in the value...

More than three-fourths of all Web users access applications such as instant messaging, media players and file-sharing applications -- not just browsers -- in connecting to the Internet, according to a new study by Internet researcher Nielsen//NetRatings. Out of a total audience of 106 million peopl...

By suing individual computer users, the Recording Industry Association of America has succeeded in curbing the online trading of unlicensed music files and herding peer-to-peer network users to licensed-music sites such as iTunes and Napster, according to a recent survey by the Pew Internet & Am...

As the market starts ramping up for what is likely to be a resurgence in IT spending and a mass attack on the consumer by every technology company on the planet, there will be a few key battles to watch this year. Some will go a long way toward defining the rest of the decade. For starters, the tech...

BEST OF ECT NEWS

Microsoft, Security and the Road Ahead

Microsoft officials are promising to provide more help in solving security threats that have plagued users of the company's best-known products. But Microsoft will rely on third-party vendors to provide at least some of the solutions. The software giant announced its new strategies for securing its ...

A new worm that quickly infects its victims via MSN Messenger is not terribly rampant and was mitigated by poor timing on the part of its author, but the Jitux.A worm does illustrate how use of new avenues of attack is likely to grow in the coming year. "There are really some new ways for viruses an...

While U.S. legislators and e-mail users are hoping a new national anti-spam law will stem the flow of unwanted electronic solicitations, companies engaged in legitimate marketing are concerned they will pay a higher price than spammers who skirt legislative requirements or conduct their business fro...

BEST OF ECT NEWS

The Future of P2P File-Sharing Networks

The debate about whether peer-to-peer applications, which were first made popular with the Napster file-sharing network, should be legitimate or illegitimate continues to rage. On one side are applications like Morpheus and Kazaa, whose makers claim their products have many uses. On the other side a...

Faced with a far more urgent need to support more Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, the Asian nations of Japan, South Korea and China are looking to lead the move to IPv6, considered by many to be the next-generation Internet. Unlike the United States -- which still has a bountiful supply of the Int...

Topping other popular culture icons including Harry Potter, American Idol and Britney Spears among Web searches by millions of Yahoo users worldwide, the Kazaa file-trading music tool was the number one search subject of 2003, Yahoo reported this week. Pew Internet and American Life Project senior r...


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