Tech: News Roundup

US MySpace. Vista launch, Dell & AMD, Boot Camp update and more 02/11/06

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A smorgasbord of the latest hi-tech news...

Microsoft Vista finally is upon us
The long-awaited new OS will be launched in the US on November 30th, at an event held at the Nasdaq Stock Market in midtown Manhattan and the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, NYC. MS CEO Steve Ballmer will also be unveiling Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007.
Those lucky Canadians are blessed with an even earlier preview... MS will launch the trio in Edmonton on November 23, so if you really can't wait, best nip across the border for some early Vista action.

Apple updates Boot Camp
We can say, hand on heart - Boot Camp rocks! In the office here at Sonic Towers, we've been using mainly PCs for day-to-day work. We also use Sony Vegas for most of our video work, which runs only on Windows. Recently, we needed a small laptop for working on the road, so we went down to the local Apple Store and tried out a MacBook - running Boot Camp and Win XP it just smoked! And we get to have a choice of OS on a single machine - sweet! So we thought you might like to know there's an updated version 1.1.2 of the Boot Camp Beta just been released.
You can find it here .

MySpace to use 'Audio Fingerprinting'
MySpace have announced that they will be implementing technology from Gracenote using their MusicID audio fingerprinting and Global Media Database to help prevent unauthorized copyrighted music from being posted to MySpace users' pages.

New Windows Media Player
Also using audio fingerprinting technology, Microsoft have released Version 11 of it's media player, designed to give Apple and iTunes a run for their money. The user interface has been beefed up to work with MTV Networks' 'Urge' digital music catalogue. Urge songs won't play on an iPod - no surprise there, but a PITA nonetheless.
Some commentators have also raised concerns about the DRM aspect of the new player... we reckon it's worth taking a long hard look at the small print before installing.

Apple gives Creative US$100 million
In time for Xmas, Apple have shelled out the whopping sum to Singapore company Creative Technology in settlement of a patent dispute over media player navigation technology. It'll help boost the fortunes of Creative, who recorded a loss of US$21 million for the first finacial quarter, compared to a loss of $700,000 for the same period last year.

Dell Releases AMD powered laptop
Yep, quietly, and without any sort of fanfare, one of the last remaining Intel-Only bastions has fallen. After many years of total loyalty to the Intel brand, Dell announced in May that it would begin selling AMD-based servers, after the AMD Opteron chip had captured a significant chunk of Intels's market share. Then in September Dell released AMD-powered desktop machines. Now, any concerns Dell previously may have had regarding the ability of AMD to supply the demand for processors seem to have been alayed, and AMD processors have finally made it to market inside a Dell Inspiron 1501 notebook. The only manufacturers now not offering an AMD notebook are Lenovo, Sony and Toshiba... and Apple.