Ed Oswald

Hoping to quell customer unease over its planned merger, both Sirius and XM issued open letters to their customers, assuring them that all radios will continue to work well after the merger, and that current customers will not see their monthly fee raised.

In the weeks following the proposed merger announcement, both analysts and customers of either company began to speculate that rates would increase and that newer radio models compatible with the merged company's programming will replace current ones.

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VMware has launched a beta of product that allows IT administrators to centrally manage and control virtual machines installed on PCs on their network.

Called VMware ACE, the application would allow the administrator to create a PC environment, package it into a virtual machine, and then deploy it to any managed or unmanaged endpoint.

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Microsoft plans to allow Xbox Live Arcade games to use more space, announcing it had increased the official size limit from 50 to 150 megabytes. In addition, the company also announced a larger memory card with a capacity of 512MB.

The unit will be priced at $49.99 USD, and comes preloaded with the Xbox Live Arcade game "Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved" for a limited time. The original 64MB version will drop in price to $29.99 USD.

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Sun said Thursday that it had released Java Enterprise System 5.0, a set of subscription-based services that complement enterprise operating systems like the company's own Solaris 10.

Java ES includes a set of services that are dependent on the number of employees in an organization. For example, a small company of 1,000 or less would gain the Java software, support, and eLearning.

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Microsoft is giving its users an opportunity to direct where its charitable efforts go to through the i'm Initiative, which sends a portion of Windows Live Messenger ad revenue to a selected charity.

In order for the effort to work, a user must add a special code to the end of their display name that would then be tracked. The more often a user sends instant messages, the more Microsoft donates to that charity.

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Lenovo is recalling approximately 205,000 lithium-ion batteries used worldwide in ThinkPad laptops, however this time Sony isn't the culprit.

The batteries in this recall were produced by Sanyo. Regardless, it is a black eye for the Chinese PC maker as it is the second such recall in less than six months. Last September, the company recalled 560,000 laptop batteries produced by Sony.

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Blockbuster is said to be talking to movie download service Movielink over a possible acquisition, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

If the transaction goes through, it will carry benefits for both companies. Blockbuster will gain a leg up on larger competitor Netflix, who it has been locked in a tight battle with in the online movie rental business.

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In the opening salvos of the patent infringement case between Vonage and Verizon, the telecommunications company claimed Vonage caused serious harm, while the VoIP provider said it had no knowledge of Verizon's patents.

Already in its fourth day, the trial is now centering on arguments over Verizon's claimed losses and whether or not Vonage did indeed willingly infringe on the telco giant's patents. If found guilty, Vonage could be liable for as much as $200 million, say experts called to testify.

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Those wishing to get their hands on Sony's PlayStation 3 should have no problem by May, as the company said it was on track to ship two million consoles by the end of next month, and be able to meet demand soon after.

Executives also seem to be disputing claims by some gaming sites that unsold PlayStation 3's are common across the country, pointing to locations that have been sold out since the console's launch in November.

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Book publishers are slowly warming up to the idea of putting their content online, with two companies announcing separate plans to offer web-based methods to search through their catalogs.

Random House said Tuesday that it planned to offer a service called "Insight" that would allow the consumer to browser through more than 5,000 titles from its archives. The company's authors include the popular Danielle Steele among others.

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A partnership between the NBA and YouTube will allow users of the popular site to view original content from the league, as well as post their own videos to share with others.

The most popular videos will then be featured on a weekly show on the NBA's cable network called "NBA Top 10 on YouTube. The feature was launched on Monday, the league said.

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Parallels shipped a major update to its virtualization software for Macintoshes using the Intel platform. Although the upgrade would be provided at no cost to current users, those wishing to purchase the software will need to pay $79.99 USD.

Among the new features is Coherence, which allows Windows applications to operate like native Mac applications by appearing in the dock.

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Symantec on Monday introduced Norton 360, its new standard security suite, replacing the aging Norton Internet Security product.

Formerly known as "Genesis," Norton 360 is intended to compete with offerings from McAfee and Microsoft. Like OneCare, the application contains a suite of products that traditionally had been sold separately by the antivirus makers.

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Both XM and Sirius reported their full fourth calendar quarter results this week, showing that while both companies were making progress at narrowing losses, true profitability is still a long ways away.

XM was first to report on Monday, and said that it had accumulated a loss of $256.7 million on revenues of $257.1 million, up 45 percent over last year. The company ended the year with just over 7.6 million subscribers, adding 442,679 subscribers in the fourth quarter.

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Corel made a play for a piece of the Web 2.0 pie on Tuesday, releasing WordPerfect Lightning in beta, a free, compact version of its standard word processing suite that combines both online and offline functionality.

The company is referring to the product as a Google Writely, Adobe Reader, and Microsoft OneNote competitor rolled into one. At 16MB, the entire program can be placed on a USB stick or burned to CD to allow for maximum portability.

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