Day: November 11, 2010

Will it be “the iPad for business?” Or, will users just say that they want iPads? We’ll see! Though, $500.00 is easier to get approved than $800.00.

RIM Climbs to Highest Since June on Plan for Tablet Under $500

“Research In Motion Ltd. climbed to the highest level since June after saying it will sell the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet computer for less than $500, suggesting it may try to undercut Apple Inc.’s iPad. ‘The product will be very competitively priced,’ co-Chief Executive Officer Jim Balsillie said in an interview in Seoul today, without being more specific than saying it will be ‘under’ $500. RIM, maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, will start selling the PlayBook in North America in the first quarter and expand into global markets in the second quarter, he said. The iPad starts at $499 for a model with 16 gigabytes of storage and Wi-Fi wireless technology. The price rises to $829 for a version with more storage that can connect directly to cellular-phone networks.”

So, another full version number jump! Not those small “dot” releases! The BIG one! Sounds good…. but I will wait a bit for good ol’ CentOS!

Red Hat announces Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

“Red Hat announced today, November 10th, that long anticipated release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.

The announcement itself was anti-climatic. Everyone in Linux circles knew that RHEL 6 was coming. What I did find interesting–as customer after customer and partner after partner said how wonderful RHEL was and Red Hat Red Hat EVP Paul Cormier showed how the server operating system market has become a battle between RHEL and Windows-was how utterly mainstream Linux has become.

Solaris is done. The other versions of Unix now live in niches. The other Linux distributions, such as Novell’s SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) and feisty newcomers such as Ubuntu are fighting it out for second place.

Linux is no longer a revolution. It is no longer the outsider wanting into the business market. Linux, in particular, RHEL, is at business’ heart. As Cormier said, “It’s no longer about who has the newest kernel, our customers are beyond that.”

Exactly. I see Red Hat’s announcement as a graduation ceremony. Yes, the technology is important, but what’s even more important now is Red Hat, the business, Red Hat, the brand.

As for RHEL 6 itself, yes there are many advances. What I see as the big change here is that Red Hat is pushing RHEL not just as the standalone server operating system we’ve known it as for years, but as the business operating system for both virtualization and the cloud.”

And… they claim it is MUCH faster than before… which is a good thing, because as much as I love Firefox, I haqve switched to Chrome because it is so light and fast! Hopefully Firefox will regain some of its mojo!

Mozilla releases beta 7 of Firefox 4, claims 3-5x performance boost

“Mozilla Wednesday released a significant update to the beta of its Firefox 4 browser. The update adds a new JavaScript JIT compiler, going by the name of JägerMonkey, and improves the browser’s support for hardware acceleration, OpenType fonts, and WebGL 3D graphics (the technology used to create an HTML5 version of Quake II back in April.) Additionally, the latest beta includes a stable add-ons API, so developers can finally update their add-ons to Firefox 4. Of course, the first thing Mozilla is touting about this version of the browser is the performance boost it gets from the new JägerMonkey JavaScript compiler.”