Ed Oswald

Microsoft made a statement on Thursday that is sure to rile its detractors: the Windows Server operating system is being chosen in greater numbers by corporations over UNIX and Linux for its reliability.

To support the claim, Microsoft said companies such as Altera, Rayovac, and CompUSA cited that fact in their decisions to choose the Windows platform.

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Popular online payment site PayPal is set to offer its customers methods to pay or receive money via text messages on their cell phones, the company confirmed Thursday. The service, called PayPal Mobile, would initially launch in the United States, Canada and Britain in the coming weeks.

Rumors of the new feature first began to circulate the Internet after bloggers discovered links to the service on Wednesday. No official press release has yet been issued, however pages describing the service have already appeared on the PayPal Web site.

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Fidelity Investments disclosed Wednesday that a laptop carrying personal information on 196,000 current and former employees of Hewlett Packard was stolen last week. The incident apparently occurred while Fidelity employees were working at an off-site location.

Information on the laptop included names, addresses, social security numbers, dates of birth, and employment information. PINs for the employees' Fidelity accounts were not part of this data. However, the amount of information lost is likely more than enough to pose a potential identity theft threat.

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Not even hours out of the gate, Sun's public Grid service has already been hit by a denial of service attack. According to the company, its text-to-speech service became the target of attackers that caused the application to crash.

To stop the attack, Sun moved the application to the standard protected portion of the grid. The company said that users of the regular Grid noticed no degradation in service quality as a result of Wednesday's incident.

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Dell confirmed on Wednesday what had been rumored on blogs for nearly a week: it has purchased trendy gaming PC manufacturer Alienware. The company said the buy was aimed at strengthening its position among computer enthusiasts.

Alienware fans should not fear that their favorite PCs will soon bear the Dell logo -- the company would be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dell, yet operate separately. The move is merely mainly aimed at bettering the company's supply chain, says Dell and Alienware.

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According to a BenQ executive Apple's plan for its own mobile phone with iPod functionality, being called the "iPhone," is no secret among manufacturers in Taiwan. The comments came as part of an interview with Australian technology publication Smart House magazine Tuesday.

"An iPod phone is definitely coming. BenQ will not be making it as we are in competition with Apple however several of our suppliers have been approached to manufacture parts," the executive was quoted as saying. "Among manufacturers in Taiwan it is common knowledge."

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Claria, best known for its Gator adware program, said Tuesday that it would exit the adware business in order to focus on personalized search. According to a statement announcing the move, Claria has a number of interested buyers.

There are conditions to a sale, however. Claria said it would only sell if the purchaser agrees to abide by industry standards set by TRUSTe and other groups to govern adware. A sale is expected by mid-year.

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Microsoft delivered some not-so-shocking news Tuesday: there will be no Vista until 2007. While many had expected this, the company had been steadfast in its assurance that the next generation operating system would ship this year, even up until days before the announcement.

Here's what pundits and bloggers alike had to say about Vista's seemingly neverending delays. What do you think?

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Mozilla late Tuesday began the push towards Firefox 2.0 with the release of Bon Echo Alpha 1, designed to give a preview of the company's upcoming revision to its popular alternative web browser. One of the most notable new features of Firefox 2 will be its improved bookmark functionality, called Places.

Changes have also been made to tabbed browsing, support for SVG, and numerous bug fixes. While the release is not recommended for daily use, Mozilla is asking users to download, test, and provide feedback on the build. "The BonEcho Alpha 1 milestone is the first of many developer milestones on the path to Firefox 2," Mike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering for Mozilla, said in a statement.

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Microsoft will offer free and unlimited technical support to its rivals who are interested in making their products work with the company's server products, it said Wednesday. The proposal is Microsoft's latest effort to comply with a European Union antitrust ruling.

Previously, the company was only offering 500 hours of support free of charge to rivals as part of a possible deal.

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Sources indicate that Microsoft is planning to shake up its Windows group by naming Microsoft Office head Steven Sinofsky as its new chief.

The move comes as an effort to inject more life in a company that has been plagued by slower growth in recent years, and to a division that has become increasingly inept in delivering updates to the market leading operating system.

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Apple broke a week of silence late Tuesday, attacking a proposed French law that would open up proprietary music services as equivalent to "state-sponsored piracy." However, the company stopped short of suggesting that it would pull out of the French market in order to avoid complying with the new legislation.

The bill passed the lower house of the French legislature on Tuesday by a two-to-one margin, and now heads for the Senate where debate and a vote are expected to occur in May.

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Yahoo shipped enhancements to its Messenger with Voice client on Wednesday, adding support for U.S. users to place and receive phone calls to and from traditional phones. Calls to U.S. or 30 international countries would cost less than two cents a minute, while the capability to receive calls would cost $2.99 USD per month or $29.90 USD annually.

Previously, the company had only introduced the feature to select users in seven countries back in December. Yahoo says it plans to bring the new features to its co-branded Internet access services in the coming months.

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UPDATED Microsoft revealed Tuesday afternoon what many had expected for months -- consumer availability of Windows Vista has been delayed until 2007.

While businesses would be able to get their hands on the finished product in November, consumers will not find the operating system on new machines until January. The delay also throws a wrench into the holiday marketing plans of many PC manufacturers this season.

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Sun will finally launch its much-hyped yet much-delayed public version of its Grid product later this week, its president said. Users in the United States would be able to purchase processing cycles at the rate of $1 USD per hour each on their choice of AMD Opteron or Sun UltraSPARC processors.

The company would initially be making 5,000 CPUs available for use, with plans to increase that number as necessary. Users would be able to access the grid from the Internet at Network.com. Payment for use would be accepted through PayPal.

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