Intel and IBM have agreed to open up IBM's BladeCenter switch technology for more server makers to use, part of an initiative to spur adoption of a specification for low-cost blade servers.

"We will be taking the BladeCenter switch specification and opening it up for access, royalty-free access, to any SSI adopter," said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of Intel's Server Platforms Group, during an interview at the Intel Developer Forum in Taipei.

[ Keep up with Windows Server and related developments in InfoWorld's Enterprise Windows blog. ]

SSI, or the Server System Infrastructure Forum, is an industry group that was established by Intel to define server standards.

Last year, SSI released a draft specification for low-cost blade servers that did not include all of the components required to build a blade server. "The piece, quite candidly, that was missing if you're going to build a whole blade system was the switch specification," Skaugen said.

"This will be the final puzzle piece to complete a full blade system," he said, adding that the final SSI specification for blade servers should be ready by the end of the year.

The SSI specification is aimed at smaller server makers and regional players, such as India's HCL Infosystems and Tyan in Taiwan. The SSI blade specification is designed to reduce manufacturing costs for these companies by setting standards for various components, such as power supplies and motherboards.

Ericsson has managed to achieve rates in excess of 100Mbps with next-generation mobile technology LTE (Long Term Evolution) during recent field trials.

LTE is pitched as a successor to the 3G (third generation) mobile services such as the European UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) and similar wide-band CDMA (W-CDMA) services.

[ For more on LTE and its struggle to become the dominant architecture for broadband wireless infrastructure , read "The looming battle over wireless broadband." And find out more about rival WiMax in InfoWorld's report "Does WiMax work in the real world?" ]

Ericsson's goal in the field trials was to show that LTE works all the way from the base station to the terminal. "It's always easy to say that you can get a certain speed in a lab environment, but here we have used real antennas and real distances to the terminals, and also in a moving vehicle," said Lars Tilly, head of research at Ericsson Mobile Platforms.

Using four transmit streams (the maximum number supported in the LTE standard), four receive antennas and bandwidth of 10MHz, the measured peak rates exceeded 130Mbps. This translates into approximately 260Mbps, given the maximum bandwidth of 20MHz, according to an article in Ericsson Review.

"Not everyone will be able to get 100Mbps. You need pretty good conditions for it to work, and you need to be relatively close to the base stations, a couple of hundred meters," said Tilly.

The company also evaluated application-level performance using two transmit and two receive antennas, and the TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) bit rate was more than 40Mbps at least 50 percent of the time and more than 100Mbps at least 10 percent of the time along a test route, which a majority of the time stayed within 1 kilometer from the test site.

The test also shows how important it is to use MIMO (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) to get the most out of LTE. Using four transmit and receive antennas increase performance by a factor of three compared to a basic setup. But at the same time Ericsson warns that MIMO-related gains are strongly dependent on radio conditions.

All the major telecommunications equipment vendors are currently working at full speed to get LTE out the door, according to Martin Gutberlet, analyst at Gartner.

He isn't worried about the base stations. Instead it's the lack of access to the necessary spectrum, which still hasn't been handed out in many European countries, including U.K., France, and Germany, that could lead to delays, according to Gutberlet.

Ericsson expects that the first commercial LTE network will go live in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to a spokeswoman.

Microsoft will rush out an emergency security patch for Windows users on Thursday.

The company offered few details on why it was releasing the software update, which is rated critical for users of Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. A critical flaw is worrisome, however, because it can be exploited by online attackers to seize control of the PC.

[ Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]

The update will be released at 10 a.m. PT, said Microsoft spokesman Christopher Budd in a blog posting published late Wednesday.

The flaw is considered to be a less serious risk for users of the Windows Vista and Server 2008 operating systems Microsoft said in an advisory on the issue.

For years, Microsoft has released its patches on a predetermined day -- the second Tuesday of every month -- but it has occasionally released patches ahead of schedule when bugs have been actively exploited by computer criminals.

The last such emergency patch issued by Microsoft was in April 2007, when the company fixed a bug in the way Windows processes .ani animated cursor files. That flaw was publicly known and being exploited in attack code hosted on hundreds of Web sites.

This latest vulnerability, however, appears to be unknown to the security community.

For Microsoft to rush out this type of emergency update, it must consider the bug to be very serious, said Dragos Ruiu, organizer of the CanSecWest hacking conference in an instant message interview.

Ruiu said that presenters at Microsoft's recent Blue Hat internal security conference told him that they'd discovered some serious Windows bugs using security testing tools and that the update could fix one of these issues. "It might have wide reaching impact, or might be used easily for significant malicious hijinks," he said.

Intel this week gave a quick preview of its next-generation laptop platform, which could shake up the chipmaker's mobile offerings.

The company gave analysts and users a glimpse of the new platform, codenamed Calpella, at its fall Intel Developer's Forum (IDF) in Taiwan this week. Mooly Eden, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel's Mobile Platforms group, said during his keynote address at the forum that the platform focuses largely on energy efficiency and longer battery life.

[ Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]

Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at research firm Insight 64, said that if he was a hardware vendor, he'd be eagerly awaiting the 2009 arrival of Calpella. "It's a very different platform than anything they've done to date," he said. "When Calpella shows up, everything inside that laptop will be brand-new."

The analyst explained that until now, Intel's laptop platforms have consisted of a CPU and a Northbridge chip, which holds the memory controller and the graphics chip. However, in Calpella, the memory controller has been moved onto the CPU itself. The graphics remain separate but will be packaged with the CPU, giving it better access to the memory controller and the CPU, he said.

"These are all good things," said Brookwood. "If I was a vendor, I'd be excited over this, but a little nervous because everything inside the platform is changing at the same time. With so many balls in the air, it's easy to drop one."

However, he added that since Intel is previewing the platform a year before it ships, most of his concerns are lessened.

The Calpella platform will be based on Intel's upcoming 45nm-based Nehalem architecture. The first Nehalem chips, which will be quad-core server chips, are expected to ship this fall. The rest of the Nehalem family -- desktop chips, dual-core, more quad-core and eight-core chips -- are slated to be released over the course of next year. Brookwood noted that the Nehalem chips for the laptop are scheduled to ship in the second half of 2009.

Intel execs showed off the first eight-core Nehalem chip at its Intel Developer Forum in August. A week before the forum, the chipmaker announced that it was naming the new family of chips Intel Core. The first Core chips to hit the market will get the added label of i7, making the full name Intel Core i7.

The Nehalem technology has a new modular architecture, which officials say will make it easier to scale from two to eight cores. The Core chips also are being designed to have two-way, simultaneous multithreading, use Intel's QuickPath interconnect, and have a three-level cache hierarchy.

Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

A handful of early voters in West Virginia have complained that electronic voting machines there switched their votes, but voting officials and the e-voting vendor discounted the problem.

Three voters in Putnam County and three voters in neighboring Jackson County told the Charleston Gazette that e-voting machines from Election Systems & Software (ES&S) had switched their votes from a Democratic to a Republican candidate during recent early voting. But county election officials said they've been unable to replicate the problems, and the voters were eventually able to vote for the candidates they wanted.

[ For more on how technology is reshaping the race for the U.S. presidency, see InfoWorld's special report. ]

In some cases, the voters told the newspaper that their attempts to vote for Democratic Senator Barack Obama for president was switched to Republican Senator John McCain. In other cases, votes for other Democratic candidates were switched, they told the newspaper.

All three people who complained were able to ultimately switch their votes to the candidates they wanted, said Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright, a Republican. The ES&S e-voting machines being used statewide include a paper printout of the recorded vote, plus two on-screen prompts that ask voters to confirm their picks before they cast their ballot, he said.

"There are three checks on it," Waybright said of the e-voting machines.

Waybright suggested those voters may have touched the edge of a Republican candidate's button on the screen when attempting to vote for a Democrat. The ES&S screens have the buttons of opposing candidates right next to each other.

"I don't know what happened," Waybright said. "I'm not going to say what the voters reported was inaccurate, but we haven't been able to re-create it."

Waybright's staff has been asking voters about the performance of the e-voting machines since the news reports came out last Friday. Since then, more than 800 voters in his county have cast early ballots, with no reported problems, he said.

Waybright's office recalibrated the machines after the news reports, and the clerk's office has supplying voters with eraser-topped pencils to use as styluses instead of their fingers.

Putnam County Clerk Brian Wood, also a Republican, has been surveying early voters about the e-voting machines' performance since a news report on Sunday of votes being switched from Obama to McCain in his county. Wood said he doesn't know what happened, but he's also recalibrated the machines and has had no problems reported since then.

Wood said he'd do nothing to jeopardize the trust that voters have given him. People should report problems with e-voting machines, but Wood said he's concerned that the news reports may cause voters to get "discouraged."

"I take my job seriously," he added. "I'm going to do everything I can to do the job for the people of Putnam County."

Wood also urged voters to check their ballots and pay attention to the screen prompts before they finalize their votes. "We want you to check all your work, just to be on the safe side," he said.

ES&S spokesman Ken Field also noted the review screen on the ES&S machines. "Voters have the opportunity to make changes at that point before they are able to cast their ballot," he said. "The information we have is the voters were not able to replicate the issue they indicated they were having for poll workers."

West Virginia Secretary of State Betty Ireland issued an advisory Tuesday, recommending that county clerks recalibrate their e-voting machines.

"The incidents reported ... are isolated, and, it should be noted, all voters were eventually able to cast their ballot with their desired selections," the advisory said. "As of the end of day on Monday, over 28,000 voters cast their ballot in West Virginia, and thus the reported difficulties were minimal. We continue to work with each county clerk, as well as the manufacturer of the machines, to help ensure that votes are cast and counted accurately."

The Android Market currently has about 50 applications, but that number should go up next week when Google opens the market to developers.

Starting on Monday, any developer will be able to register for $25 and upload their application to the market. The registration and fee will help make sure that "each developer is authenticated and responsible for their apps," Google's Eric Chu wrote in a blog post on Thursday.

[ Explore all the features of the the first smartphone to run Google's mobile OS in the slideshow: "T-Mobile G1: An InfoWorld tour of Google Android" ]

The first phone running Google's Android software, the G1, went on sale on Wednesday from T-Mobile in the United States. It costs $180 with a two-year contract.

Unlike Apple's iPhone App Store, Google's Android Market doesn't have any approval process for applications. Once developers register, they can begin offering their applications in the store without any further validation or approval, Chu said.

Some developers have criticized Apple's application submission process, which can take several months. In addition, once a developer spends the time creating an application, Apple serves as a gatekeeper and can decide not to include it in the store.

For now, applications can only be offered to Android users free. But starting in the first quarter next year, developers will be able to sell their applications. They'll get 70 percent of the revenue from each purchase. The rest goes to the carriers that offer the phones and to billing settlement fees, Chu said. Nothing goes to Google.

Also, iPhone application developers get 70 percent of the price of their application.

Applications already available in the Android Market store include those created by winners of a developer contest that Google sponsored.

A few new Android applications have begun appearing in the market over the past couple days, presumably made available through special arrangements Google negotiated with the developers. They include one from MySpace, a mobile banking application from Bank of America, and a T-Mobile Hotspot locator.

The Android Market includes a rating system where users can rate applications and comment on them. Google will highlight the applications with the best ratings and usage at the top of the market, although for now it has chosen which apps appear there.

Apple, which this week said it has already sold 10 million iPhones this year, reported that its App Store has supported 200 million downloads in around 100 days. Apple's store launched with 200 applications.

Apple pioneered the concept of offering phone users a store accessible on the phone for downloading new applications. Others are now following suit. In addition to the Android Market for users of phones running Google's software, BlackBerry users will also soon see a store on their phones where they can buy new applications. Historically, mobile users only rarely downloaded new applications, but that trend is changing mostly due to Apple's easy-to-use store.

The first day of sales for Google's Android phone hasn't quite echoed the frenzy surrounding initial iPhone sales, but a few hardy souls across the country got up early to buy the first devices available in stores.

The G1, an HTC phone offered by T-Mobile that is the first to run Google's Android operating system, went on sale on Wednesday at stores across the U.S. San Francisco residents had the very first opportunity to buy the phones in person, with one T-Mobile store there opening on Tuesday evening.

[ Take InfoWorld's slideshow tour of the T-Mobile G1 and then read Tom Yager's first look at the iPhone killer. ]

In addition, many people who pre-ordered the G1 started receiving their handsets in the mail on Tuesday.

On the East Coast, five people stood in line in drizzle and 40-degree temperatures to buy G1 phones at the Harvard Square T-Mobile location in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At 8 a.m., the store door opened, and the pre-orderers were quickly ushered inside to be served.

The small crowd was nothing compared with sales of the iPhone 3G in July in nearby downtown Boston, where hundreds of customers waited in line, some of them for several days.

But a T-Mobile manager said he was still pleased with the turnout, which remained fairly steady through the early morning hours. The gloomy skies and sudden colder, rainy weather might have dampered sales, several T-Mobile representatives at the store said.

Jonathan Blood, national director of business development for T-Mobile, said in an interview at the store that there were 200 G1 phones on sale at the Cambridge store, which stands across the street from Harvard University and a few blocks from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Blood said the biggest sales of the G1 apparently occurred at a downtown Boston T-Mobile-owned retail store that sold 20 in the first hour. There are 13 T-Mobile-owned stores in the Boston area, but about 50 retailers, including T-Mobile affiliate stores in the area, were carrying the phone, he said.

T-Mobile shop workers in other stores were more reluctant to talk to reporters. In downtown Manhattan, an employee named Ariel, who declined to give his last name, said there was a line of people waiting outside the store when it opened at 8 a.m., but he did not say how many G1 customers were in it. He noted that people were there not only for the G1, but also "for other things," adding that sometimes there is a line outside the store before opening even on a normal business day.

Ariel said there was a "steady stream" of customers coming into the store to purchase the G1, but declined to say how many the store had sold. At about 11:15 a.m., there were no customers in the store, and salespeople were lined up near the front of the store chatting with one another. T-Mobile already took a considerable amount of preorders for the G1 online, which could account for the lack of customers in the store, he said.

The manager of one T-Mobile store on Canal Street, which had no customers at about 11:30 a.m., said the store sold out of G1s in two hours, but was still accepting customers who wanted to order the phone. The store manager, who declined to give his name because he said T-Mobile's corporate office had instructed employees not to speak to the press, would not say how many G1s the store had stocked. He did acknowledge the location was one of the smaller T-Mobile stores in the city.

Customers who bought the G1 in the first two hours at the Cambridge location tended to be either high-end users with technical backgrounds or consumers who were familiar with the T-Mobile Sidekick, which they said was similar to the G1 because of the way that the keyboard flips out of the body of both devices.

The first person in line at Cambridge to buy a G1, Jacek Ambroziak, arrived at 6:30 a.m. and said he had been eager to use an actual G1 after spending about eight months with an online G1 emulator. Ambroziak, an independent software developer from Cambridge, said he is creating three G1 applications that are not yet available to download, but should be soon.

Several buyers at the Cambridge store said they were eager to see how well the initial G1 works, and many expected to encounter some bugs. "I don't know about G1's future, but Android should explode," Ambroziak said.

While several buyers at the Cambridge store worked at MIT or Harvard, some were purchasing the device as a gift. Roger Cummings, a Loeb fellow at Harvard originally from Minneapolis, said he would be giving the G1 to his sixth-grade son, who has been using the Sidekick and liked the idea of the G1 with its flip-out keyboard.

Nimo Hashi, who described herself as a social-services worker in the Cambridge area, said she would use the G1 mainly for texting. "I bought it because it looked good," she said before rushing off to work.

At the downtown San Francisco store where the G1 first went on sale Tuesday evening, there was no line before the doors opened Wednesday morning and just a handful of customers checking out the phone in the first hour of business.

Scott Simons, who lives in San Francisco and works in legal support services, was considering a G1 for his son, a high-school student. Simons is particularly interested in it for Google Apps, which he said students at his son's school use for composing, sharing and turning in assignments. Simons also was hoping for a good interface for Google Calendar, which his family uses to coordinate schedules.

Though he's a longtime Mac user who owns an iPhone, Simons has been dissatisfied with the iPhone's software. He complained that he can't use all the features of Google Calendar on the iPhone and that Apple's own mail application pales in comparison to Gmail. Simons thinks Android phones eventually will offer a better set of applications than does the iPhone.

Simons was also pleased with the G1's keyboard, compared with the iPhone's virtual keyboard, and said the phone seemed small and durable enough for his son to carry around. However, he said he didn't know how good T-Mobile's customer service would be and still had to investigate the monthly service plans.

In a neighborhood store in Seattle, Devon Jarrett-Nomides waited to clear up some issues with his bank account before getting approved to sign up for the phone. He said he was fifth in line when the store opened, with the first in line reporting that he'd been there all night. At around 8:30 a.m., with about seven customers in the store, the doors to the store remained locked for "crowd control" reasons, according to store employee Darren, who unlocked the door for people to come and go.

Tom Canty was also waiting for approval for a phone he was buying for his wife. He just happened to arrive on the first day of sales. He was driving by the store on the way to work and noticed the line out front. "I said, 'Oh right, the G1,'" he said. Canty, Jarrett-Nomides and others in the store said they were interested in the G1 over Apple's iPhone because of the keyboard.

Nokia has announced its Symbian mobile operating system will join the likes of Android and will become an open-source operating system. The announcement was made Tuesday at the Smartphone Show in London and is seen as a bid to maintain and possibly grow its developer base. This move comes at the same time Google makes its Android source code available to developers. The Nokia news contradicts previous reports on Nokia adopting Android OS.

[ Learn all about Google Android with InfoWorld's special report ]

Fantastic fourWith four major mobile platforms competing with each other now -- from Apple, Blackberry, Google, and Nokia -- the competition to gain our hearts and money in exchange for a mobile phone just got hotter. While Apple and Blackberry's platforms are proprietary, Google and Nokia's are left now to battle on the open source realm.

T-Mobile G1 , using Google's Android OS, goes on sale Wednesday. The next two contenders in the touchscreen smartphone challenge will be the Blackberry Storm (available later this year) and Nokia 5800 Music Express (available early next year).

Style countsThe actual hardware design of the smartphone may play a big part in driving sales. But the software inside is what actually makes all the difference on the long run. Can you imagine Apple's iPhone running a cumbersome OS with little innovation such as gesture support? That's why Google never built its own gPhone hardware and is focused on nurturing the Android OS. The Android OS will be used by various manufacturers such as Kyocera who will now be able to focus more on the hardware.

Up until now Nokia built its own hardware and develops its own software for its phones just as Apple and Blackberry do. That will change once the Symbian OS becomes an open source project welcoming many more developers to help build the OS. And certainly Nokia will not be the only one benefiting from open source community. Nokia shares its platform with Samsung and Sony Ericsson - both members of the Symbian Foundation.

Between Nokia's existing support for its Symbian OS and Google's growing support for Android are shaping up to be quite the mobile OS smackdown.

Only time will tell whether Nokia or Google will be the dominant open source smartphone OS. But placing a bet is quite hard to make taking in consideration Nokia's experience with mobile phones and Google's long term commitment to innovation.

Nokia has announced its Symbian mobile operating system will join the likes of Android and will become an open source operating system. The announcement was made Tuesday at the Smartphone Show in London and is seen as a bid to maintain and possibly grow its developer base. This move comes at the same time Google makes its Android source code available to developers. The Nokia news contradicts previous reports on Nokia adopting Android OS.

[ Learn all about Google Android with InfoWorld's special report ]

Fantastic fourWith four major mobile platforms competing with each other now -- from Apple, BlackBerry, Google, and Nokia -- the competition to gain our hearts and money in exchange for a mobile phone just got hotter. While Apple and BlackBerry's platforms are proprietary, Google and Nokia's are left now to battle on the open source realm.

T-Mobile G1, using Google's Android OS, goes on sale Wednesday. The next two contenders in the touchscreen smartphone challenge will be the BlackBerry Storm (available later this year) and Nokia 5800 Music Express (available early next year).

Style countsThe actual hardware design of the smartphone may play a big part in driving sales. But the software inside is what actually makes all the difference on the long run. Can you imagine Apple's iPhone running a cumbersome OS with little innovation such as gesture support? That's why Google never built its own gPhone hardware and is focused on nurturing the Android OS. The Android OS will be used by various manufacturers such as Kyocera who will now be able to focus more on the hardware.

Up until now, Nokia built its own hardware and developed its own software for its phones just as Apple and BlackBerry do. That will change once the Symbian OS becomes an open source project welcoming many more developers to help build the OS. And certainly Nokia will not be the only one benefiting from open source community. Nokia shares its platform with Samsung and Sony Ericsson -- both members of the Symbian Foundation.

Nokia's existing support for its Symbian OS and Google's growing support for Android are contributing to quite the mobile OS smackdown.

Only time will tell whether Nokia or Google will be the dominant open source smartphone OS. But placing a bet is quite hard to make taking in consideration Nokia's experience with mobile phones and Google's long-term commitment to innovation.

After a nearly two-month delay, Sun announced this week availability of Java Platform Standard Edition 6 Update 10, which offers an improved startup for applications and applets and drag-and-drop capabilities for applets.

A new Java plug-in in the upgrade allows consumers to drag and drop applets that are running in a browser onto their desktop. Also featured are Java Quick Starter, for an enhanced runtime experience for consumers, and Java Kernel, for getting Java software up and running faster.

The update had been set for release in early early September, but Sun postponed the release because of a last-minute issue that emerged during final testing. The release is downloadable here.

"With Java SE 6 Update 10, Sun is making Java technology easier to install, faster to start and more reliable than ever, resulting in a monumental improvement to the overall consumer experience," said Jeet Kaul, vice president of Java Client Engineering at Sun, in a statement released by the company.

Graphics performance for Java on Windows has been rewritten in the update to leverage Direct3D technology. The Nimbus look and feel in the platform offers enhanced user interface controls for developers, Sun said.

On-demand business software vendor NetSuite is trying to grab CRM (customer relationship management) customers from its rival Salesforce with an aggressive discount offer.

Under the deal, current users of Salesforce's stand-alone salesforce automation product that drop it in exchange for NetSuite's CRM+ offering will be charged 50 percent of the cost of their Salesforce implementation. The offer is valid through the end of this year.

NetSuite's move follows the prediction made by Salesforce Chief Financial Officer Graham Smith last week that a pricing war could soon erupt among SaaS (software-as-a-service) vendors amid a weakened global economy. Smith also said Salesforce is "able to match pricing."

[ Read related story "Economic woes may lower SaaS prices." ]

Salesforce spokesman Bruce Francis said the company would not comment on NetSuite's announcement.

NetSuite has pulled this tactical arrow from its quiver before, offering a similar deal in 2005.

The company began formulating the latest campaign only a couple of weeks ago, as the economic woes in the world's financial markets reached a crescendo, according to Mini Peiris, vice president of product marketing. "It seemed like a good opportunity to take advantage of what's top of mind for people."

Smith's comments were not "directly related, but helped reinforce our idea to offer this program," she added.

NetSuite's discount offer includes customer support and implementation, but "if a customer wants a lot of custom scripting and changes made, that would be extra," she said.

Even at a 50 percent discount, NetSuite will turn a profit on any deals it lands through the program, according to Peiris. "Our margins are very healthy."

The list price for CRM+ is $129 per user per month, compared to $125 for Salesforce's enterprise edition . NetSuite typically discounts off list by 20 percent to 30 percent and believes Salesforce does roughly the same, Peiris said.

One industry observer called NetSuite's move "refreshing" but questioned how many Salesforce customers will actually make the switch, given the potential headaches of moving to a new CRM system.

"There's going to be some internal effort by the customer to get over to the new service, but [NetSuite] may find some number of Salesforce customers that find the cost savings is worth the effort," said Denis Pombriant, managing principal of Beagle Research Group in Stoughton, Massachusetts.

A gambit like NetSuite's is also difficult to pull off because "the incumbent can always make a counter-offer, and the counter-offer doesn't have to be as sweet as the challenge," Pombriant added.

The stock market's a mess, your company's balance sheet looks like a sea of red ink and your budget for outfitting 50 employees with new notebooks has been slashed to the bone. What's a poor buyer to do?

You could try those new under-$400 ultrasmall notebooks, but that's not really the answer. In most cases, bargain-basement notebooks are meant to be adjuncts to another computer and don't offer enough speed, storage or substance to make it in the rough-and-tumble world of business.

[ Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]

The simple truth of the matter is that the notebooks that businesspeople carry with them need to be a cut above the rest. They need to be comfortable enough to use in a variety of places, have the power to churn through corporate databases, be effective Web surfboards and -- above all else -- be reliable and ready for work every day.

But while you may not be able to find a full-power notebook for $400, you can get a solid working system at a relatively low price. To test this idea, I put together a group of three business notebooks that cost $850 or less.

The systems were the $782 Dell Vostro 1510 , the $800 Toshiba Satellite Pro L300D EZ-1003X, and the $829 HP Compaq 6735b. All had 15.4-in. screens, midrange Intel or AMD processors, and wireless networking capability. They all weighed between 5 lbs. and 6 lbs. and offered a reasonable amount of memory and hard drive space.

What was left out? Some cut corners on graphics, and some weren't yet up to the latest 802.11n standard in Wi-Fi networking. None had Bluetooth , and only the Compaq 6735b came with a fingerprint scanner, which some businesses prefer as security tools. Each came with a one-year warranty -- with these lower-cost notebooks, the gold-standard three-year warranty is not standard.

To separate the wheat from the chaff, I next did what millions of employees do every day. With notebook in hand, I downloaded e-mail, did research on the Web and wrote and ran the numbers with spreadsheets. I even watched a few YouTube videos and listened to some Internet radio.

In this time of tight cash, one of these contenders could be your next, best business notebook. Let the battle begin, and may the best notebook win.

Vostro 1510The Vostro line from Dell is aimed at small businesses, but it's just as appropriate for bigger companies with mobile workers because the systems are well designed and offer more for less. A case in point is the Vostro 1510, which is surprisingly powerful, long lasting and thin for this class of systems. At $782, it's a steal that should make its competitors jealous.

With a footprint of 14.0 x 10.1 in., the Vostro 1510 is roughly the same size as the other business systems, but it's just 1.1-in. thick. At 5.7 lbs., it tied with the Satellite Pro L300D as the lightest of the four, but the Vostro 1510's AC adapter is significantly lighter, making for a svelte 6.6-lb. travel weight, the lightest of the bunch.

The jet-black angular case may not appeal to everyone, but the lid's sparkle finish and its latch-less lid design are refreshing touches that are lacking in the other plain-Jane notebooks.

Built around Intel's 2-GHz Core 2 Duo processor and a 160GB hard drive, the system is unique among the four systems reviewed in that it has a slot-loading DVD +-RW drive, a component that's usually reserved for much more expensive notebooks. Like the others, the Vostro 1510 has a 15.4-in. display, and it uses an Intel graphics accelerator that can use up to 358MB of the system's 2GB of RAM.

Above the display is a 1.3-megapixel webcam that can show five times more detail than the Satellite Pro 300D's camera. Below is a keyboard with 18.9mm keys that have a generous 2.2mm of travel for relaxed typing. I particularly liked the nice set of controls for music and movies that includes buttons for adjusting the volume and muting the sound.

Other than its lack of Bluetooth and a fingerprint scanner, the Vostro 1510 is surprisingly well equipped, with four USB ports and connections for headphones, a microphone, an external monitor and FireWire; add to that an Express card slot and the ability to read SD and Memory Stick flash cards.

The Vostro is a worthy online machine as well. It may not have the modem that the Compaq 6735b and Satellite Pro L300D provide for online emergencies, but there's a Gigabit Ethernet plug and a Dell 802.11b/g Wi-Fi card.

Performance is where the Vostro 1510 sets itself apart from the crowd. It scored a 520.8 on the Passmark Performance test -- 50% better than the HP Compaq 6735b, and it ran on its battery for 3 hours and 10 minutes -- 50 minutes longer than the Satellite Pro 300D. Its ability to move 15.9Mbit/sec over its Wi-Fi link was middle-of-the-pack, but it stayed connected 120 feet from the router, the farthest in this group of business notebooks.

The system comes with Microsoft's Vista Business Basic, Works Plus and McAfee's Total Security application with a 15-month subscription. Dell backs the system with a one-year warranty; extending that to three years of coverage costs just $80, half the price of some of the others.

Overall, the Vostro 1510 has it all: an enviable profile, light weight, top performance and long battery life, all for $782, the lowest price of the group. It's not perfect, however, because of the absence of Bluetooth and a fingerprint scanner; but add those, and the system sells for $827, still a bargain price. It's as close to a perfect companion for mobile workers on a tight budget as I've seen.

HP Compaq 6735bHP's Compaq 6735b is a hard notebook to pigeonhole. While it doesn't deliver peak performance, battery life or Bluetooth, it can connect to the latest Wi-Fi networks, has a modem and an old-school serial port as well as the best graphics in the bunch.

Neither the heaviest nor the lightest, the Compaq 6735b is right in the middle of this group of business systems at 6 lbs. -- that rises to 7 lbs. with an AC adapter. The silver-and-black case measures 1.3 x 13.9 x 10.3 in., thicker than the Dell Vostro 1510 but much thinner than the Toshiba Satellite Pro 300D.

Like the Satellite Pro L300D, it's powered by an AMD Turion X2 processor, but the Compaq 6735b makes do with a slower 2-GHz unit -- and that shows in its performance potential.

The system is backed up with 2GB of system memory and a 120GB hard drive, 40GB less space for data than either the Dell Vostro 1510 or the Satellite Pro 300D. The drive is protected by HP's 3D DriveGuard technology, which firmly mounts the drive to the system's frame and has an accelerometer that senses if the system has been dropped to protect the fragile discs inside. There's also a DVD burner that can use HP's LightScribe technology to etch labels onto discs.

Graphics is where the Compaq 6735b sets the pace. Its ATI Radeon HD3200 accelerator has 320MB of dedicated video memory for high-end graphics, like CAD drawings or video editing on the go. Plus, it can boost that to nearly a gigabyte by borrowing system memory. The screen matches the others at 15.4 in. and 1280 x 800 resolution, but the unit is the only one of the four to lack a webcam; if you want one, it's a $25 option.

I really liked the slide volume control and mute button. The system has best keyboard of the bunch with 19mm keys that have 3mm of depth. It's also spill-resistant and the raised touchpad switches are finger-friendly. Security-conscious buyers will be attracted to the fingerprint scanner.

The available ports offer an odd mix of old and new. The system has four USB ports as well as headphone, microphone, external monitor, FireWire and S-Video Out. There's also an antiquated RS232 serial port for those with legacy serial hardware, like bar-code readers. The flash card reader on the right supports SD, Memory Stick and the petite xD cards, while on the left there's an Express card slot.

It's easy to stay online with Gigabit Ethernet and a Broadcom Wi-Fi card that handles 802.11 a/b/g/n networks. There's also a modem for when broadband abandons you on the road. Like the others, no Bluetooth.

The Compaq 6735b lagged behind the pack on performance, although it should be just fine for most mobile tasks. Its 347.8 on the Passmark Performance test put it in the cellar, and its battery life of 2 hours 35 minutes was middle-of-the-pack. It shone on Wi-Fi data transfers with a throughput of 24.5Mbit/sec., but its range was limited to 100 feet.

Even at $829, the Compaq 6735b is a lot of notebook for the money. It comes with a one-year warranty; upping that to three years of coverage costs $169. The machine comes with Vista Business as well as McAfee's optimistic-sounding Total Protection suite and HP utilities that encrypt a hard drive's data and wipe it clean when it's time to dispose of the notebook.

Overall, it's a competent machine that is built around an odd mix of hardware.

Satellite Pro L300D EZ-1003XIt may not be the least expensive or the most powerful, but Toshiba's Satellite Pro L300D is good for road warriors who like to travel light but stay within a budget. The price that you pay for this ease of travel is a small hard drive and lack of support for 802.11n wireless networks.

Housed in a nondescript gray-and-black case, the Satellite Pro L300D weighs in at 5.7 lbs., equal to the Vostro 1510. With its AC adapter, the system has a reasonable travel weight of 6.8 lbs. Its 14.3 x 10.5-in. footprint roughly matches the other three notebooks in this group, but the Satellite Pro L300D is 1.5-in. thick, quite a bit thicker than the Vostro 1510.

The Satellite Pro L300D uses AMD's 2.1-GHz Turion X2 processor with 2GB of system memory and a 160GB hard drive. The system's ATI Radeon X1250 graphics can use up to 700MB of the unit's complement of RAM; the 15.4-in. display has a maximum resolution of 1280 x 800. The system is rounded out with a DVD Super Multi optical drive that works with just about every disc short of a Blu-ray movie.

The competent keyboard has 18.9mm keys with 2mm of depth, but it flexes too much under intense work. Above is a webcam that has a resolution of 310,000 pixels, well short of the 1.3 megapixel resolution that some of the others can handle. On the other hand, the Satellite Pro L300D has some nice hardware details, such as a mechanical volume thumbwheel and a Wi-Fi on/off switch (making it easy to save battery life by quickly switching off Wi-Fi).

The system's array of ports is a bit skimpy. The Satellite Pro L300D has three USB ports and connections for an external monitor, a microphone and headphones. There is an Express Card slot and a flash card reader that works with SD and Memory Stick modules.

On top of an Ethernet port, the system offers Atheros Wi-Fi 802.11b/g. Like the others, the Satellite Pro L300D lacks Bluetooth connectivity and does without a fingerprint scanner.

It all comes together in a system that was reliable over a month of use, but one that didn't impress on performance. The Satellite Pro scored a 412.4 on Passmark's Performance 6.1 test but lagged on the network performance tests. Its Wi-Fi card had a 100-foot range and was able to move 17.7Mbit/sec. of data. These metrics are all roughly 10% to 20% lower than the best of these notebooks. Its battery life of 2 hours 20 minutes was solidly middle-of-the-pack for these business notebooks.

Along with Windows XP Pro, the system comes with the expected array of software, like Norton 360 (with a 60-day subscription), and a two-month trial version of Microsoft Office. The notebook's Wi-Fi utility is among the best on the market. Rather than simply listing the nearest routers as most do, the program shows them graphically on a display that looks like a radar screen, and it lists the system's IP address among other details.

Toshiba provides a one-year warranty for the Satellite Pro L300D; a three-year warranty costs a reasonable $149. Light and reasonably thin, the Satellite Pro L300D sells for $800, leaving $50 left over to buy a few accessories such as Bluetooth.

(Note: Since I took at look at the system, Toshiba has replaced the model I reviewed -- the L300D EZ-1003X -- with a new variation -- the L300D EZ-1003V -- that sells for $799 but offers a larger 160GB hard drive and Windows Vista Business.)

How we testedBusiness notebooks don't have to be high-performance sprinters -- rather, they need to have the soul of a long-distance runner who never falters and is always there at the finish line. I measured, weighed and examined each notebook, then pushed each to the limit to gauge its performance potential.

I tested for the following:

Overall Performance: The Passmark Performance Test 6.1 , which exercises every major component and provides a single score that summarizes its ability to do a variety of work.

Battery life: While running an Internet radio station via Wi-Fi with the audio set to three quarters of full volume, I used Passmark's Battery Monitor software to chart the battery's capacity as each system was run down and to save the time at which it shut down.

Wi-Fi: Using a Linksys WRT54GS router and the Passmark Advanced Networking Test , I measured each notebook's wireless throughput with a Dell server via a Wi-Fi wireless link at 15 feet. The test ran for one minute, and the average data movement was recorded.

Next, I started up an Internet radio station and walked away from the Wi-Fi router with the notebook in hand. I measured the spot farthest from the router where it remained connected.

Corporate Work: Using a wireless link, I played an online PowerPoint presentation with video and opened a complicated 2.5MB Acrobat file. Finally, I collected and sent e-mail using Gmail and either Outlook or Windows Mail, depending on what came with the system.

ConclusionsAlthough the three notebooks offered different levels of performance, battery life, features and reliability, they all proved ready for the road. The Dell Vostro 1510 led in performance and battery life, and the Compaq 6735b had a fingerprint scanner as well as a modem. The Satellite Pro L300D tied with the Dell as the lightest system of the bunch and was otherwise a good middle-of-the-road system.

One of these notebooks stood out, however. The Dell Vostro 1510 provided what a traveling businessperson needs in a package that's smaller and lighter than the rest, yet it outperformed the pack on basic tasks and had excellent Wi-Fi range and battery life. I love a bargain, and the notebook's $782 allows a lot of room for adding Bluetooth, a fingerprint scanner and even a bag. To my way of thinking, the Vostro 1510 wins in the rough-and-tumble world of mobile business by offering a lot for a little.

Brian Nadel is a freelance writer based near New York and is the former editor in chief of Mobile Computing & Communications magazine.

Research In Motion will give developers tools to build Web applications that work offline, expanding beyond the Java platform that has been at the core of BlackBerry applications until now, the company said Tuesday.

Support for the Gears Web application framework and other tools will help to make Web applications into "first-class citizens" on the BlackBerry, said Alan Brenner, senior vice president of the BlackBerry Platform, at the company's first developer conference. Support for Gears, the Web development plug-in first developed by Google, is set to become available next year.

[ Stay ahead of advances in technology with InfoWorld's Ahead of the Curve blog and newsletter. ]

An audience of hundreds of developers applauded Brenner's announcement. Java has been the foundation of applications on the BlackBerry, but with the maturing of the mobile Web with faster networks and full Web browsers, it is becoming a major platform for smartphone software.

Also Tuesday, RIM said it will add support for SQL Lite for tying BlackBerry applications into relational databases, with the capability to keep using the applications offline with Java. Developers will also be able to use Web Signals to make their applications deliver live icons to the home screen of the device that give quick information updates and let the user click to get more details.

In another move that could open up new possibilities to BlackBerry developers, RIM will expose the APIs (application programming interfaces) for its push technology that has made the BlackBerry a hit with instantly available e-mail. This will let third-party developers create their own push applications for the platform, though the APIs will be rolled out only gradually over several quarters.

RIM would roll out its APIs more quickly but is concerned about security, said David Yach, CTO for software. The company is concerned that exposing APIs might expose potential holes, he said.

"All of us ... are in a world of hurt if there's some serious security problems on the BlackBerry," Yach said.

Also on Tuesday, RIM followed the lead of Apple's App Store with the BlackBerry Application Storefront, where developers can sell their applications directly to consumers. It is expected to become available in March. Through a partnership announced Tuesday with PayPal, buyers will be able to use the popular online payment service at the store.

RIM will make the terms for the Application Storefront as clear as possible, said Jeff McDowell, vice president of global alliances. The company wants to prevent developers from creating applications for the Storefront, only to find out at the last minute that they don't meet RIM's conditions.

"We're gonna make sure that never happens," he said, to scattered applause. Apple has come under fire for allegedly removing applications from the App Store based on policies that weren't clear.

The expanded development and delivery options come as RIM focuses on extending its powerful brand from the enterprise world to consumers.

"The consumer wireless data market is taking off, and that's the opportunity to all of you today," said Mike Lazaridis, president and co-CEO. Demonstrations at the event on Tuesday leaned heavily toward the consumer side, including the Gameday baseball news application from Major League Baseball's MLB.com and Dipdive, a social music and content-sharing application that was presented by Will.i.am of the pop group Black-Eyed Peas.

Other moves announced Tuesday that should make life easier for developers included a bug-tracking database and new beta-test versions of plug-ins for the Eclipse and Visual Studio development environments.

Several developers at the conference welcomed the ability to write BlackBerry applications with Eclipse, the open-source development platform. One attendee, a senior software engineer at a research institution in California, said the ability to write for the BlackBerry using Eclipse, Visual Studio or Java would give him more flexibility in assigning developers on his team to work on BlackBerry applications for internal use.

Another developer at the event was encouraged by the promise of the Application Storefront.

"Finally having an app store is going to be good for them," said Matthew Shannon, mobile technologist at Tanner Research, which makes the ClearSync calendar-sharing application. ClearSync is now available for PalmOS, but the company is looking at additional platforms, including BlackBerry and iPhone, for expansion.

The announcement of Gears support was a highlight for Arvind Goyal, chief technology officer and vice president of engineering at Vaultus, which sells financial applications for mobile phones and supplies mobile technology to vendors of other financial software. In addition to providing for both online and offline operation, Gears should help Vaultus write BlackBerry software that is less affected by latency when making calls to servers over the network, he said.

But Arvind said the biggest news for him was RIM's plan for a bug-tracking database. The database will allow developers to view bugs that others have reported to RIM and vote on the importance of each one. That should help to get bugs fixed quickly, Goyal said. Currently, when Goyal's team reports bugs to RIM, the fixes don't come in time to be useful, he said.

"Right now, it's a total black box," Goyal said. He also looks forward to finding out about bugs that other developers discovered before he runs into them.

Science and technology may not have been the focus of the recent debates between presidential hopefuls John McCain and Barack Obama, but both candidates have outlined some broad policy proposals and goals. That's a good thing, because, as some of the top technology thinkers in the United States today recently shared with Computerworld, the next president will have to tackle the country's ongoing decline in global technological competitiveness .

Obama says he'll "change the posture of our federal government from being one of the most anti-science administrations in American history to one that embraces science and technology." He has promised to double federal funding of basic research over 10 years, to appoint the nation's first chief technology officer, to make the R&D tax credit for corporations permanent and to "restore the basic principle that government decisions should be based on the best-available, scientifically valid evidence and not on the ideological predispositions of agency officials or political appointees."

[ Check out "Where the presidential candidates stand on tech issues." ]

McCain has not said directly what he might do about the level of federal spending on research, but he has said he favors technology-friendly policies aimed at the private sector through "broad pools of capital, low taxes and incentives for research in America...and streamlining burdensome regulations." He says he'd make the R&D tax credit permanent and set it equal to 10 percent of the wages a company pays its R&D workers, and he says he'd allow companies to write off the cost of new technology and equipment in the first year.

Both candidates have outlined educational reforms that they say will make the U.S. more competitive in science and technology.

Computerworld recently asked nine high-tech luminaries to offer their advice to the next U.S. president. Their answers appear below. They represent the views of the individuals and not necessarily those of their employers.

Henry ChesbroughAdjunct professor and executive director, Center for Open Innovation, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley

The economic situation is as bad as it has been in decades. Innovation must be at the forefront of economic policies in [the new] administration. Innovation is widely distributed around the world, not concentrated in a few large firms in the U.S. alone. So policies must promote the division of innovation labor. These include support for start-ups and small businesses. Universities and national labs must be allowed to engage with industry on translating research results into commercial products. Markets for the sale and resale of intellectual property must be supported. Open initiatives must be promoted, especially where government can help set industry standards.

The environment for innovation must also be enhanced. More money must be appropriated for basic research. Ph.D. graduates should receive green cards to allow them to stay in the U.S. H1-B visas should be expanded. The R&D tax credit should be made permanent. And a new initiative in alternative energy led by the government -- but involving universities, industry, venture capitalists, nonprofits and research labs -- should be started immediately.

Judy EstrinCEO, JLabs LLC; author of Closing the Innovation Gap

The future of our economy and our quality of life will depend on our ability to sustain a culture that supports and promotes the ability to innovate. The nation faces major challenges -- energy independence and climate change, national security and the need for affordable, quality health care -- that threaten our future. Each of these challenges also brings opportunities, if we give innovation the attention it deserves.

One of the most crucial roles of the next administration will be to foster the right environment for innovation through wise funding and smart policy. But it must also re-energize the nation by embracing these challenges, providing a vision to inspire and engage the country at large, and bring out the innovator in each of us.

Vinton CerfInternet pioneer; chief Internet evangelist, Google

We must take a global leadership role on energy and global warming. We should:

1. Focus our national R&D capacity on developing renewable energy at costs competitive with coal.

2. Continue work on clean coal and restart nuclear power development.

3. Begin a major campaign for reduction in fossil fuel consumption: 100 mpg hybrids and all-electric transportation.

4. Charge DARPA with development of new, lightweight, strong materials for automobile, air- and spacecraft bodies.

5. Initiate a crash program to analyze the effects of global warming on coastal regions, and prepare responses.

6. Increase funding for weather data collection, analysis and prediction to cope with effects of global warming

7. Develop a new K-12 educational program for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

8. Make permanent the R&D tax credit, and initiate credit for use of renewable energy.

9. Strengthen the SEC and revisit banking regulations to prevent a repeat of the subprime mortgage and derivative security disaster.

10. Analyze and prepare for the massive wave of retiring baby boomers in the decade ahead.

David FarberProfessor of computer science, Carnegie Mellon University; former chief technologist, FCC

We have let the ability of the government to obtain advice and direction from leaders in IT decline over the past eight years. I propose that a new president re-establish the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee. This, combined with a strong science/technology adviser to the president, would provide the White House with much needed help in technology policy.

There are agencies that regulate aspects of IT, such as the Federal Communications Commission. Re-establishing the position of chief technologist as a permanent position [and establishing] a bureau that would attract technologists to join the agency would bring to the policymaking activities technical input and understanding missing these past years.

The Congress years ago lost the [Office of Technology Assessment, closed in 1995] that supplied it with studies and unbiased access to knowledge in IT. The establishment of an organization that has the staff and charter to advise the Congress can be critical in the formulation of realistic laws that impact IT. Such capability is missing now and our laws show it.

Finally, it is essential to get our brightest young scientists and technologists to intern in Washington. That requires a change in the attitudes of all levels of government and academia to recognize and reward these people for their services to the nation. The benefits to the nation and to the young future leaders who will be enormous and long-lasting.

Robert KahnInternet pioneer and former DARPA program manager; CEO of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives

I want [the new president] to focus on the critical importance of continued forward-looking investment and growth in science and technology. Innovations in science and technology allow us to compete effectively in the world, fueled by a university system of research and education that is still the envy of the world. National security and economic growth are closely coupled, and our engine of economic growth depends on an educated workforce and advances in technology.

Many of the greatest challenges we face in our cities, and with our globally interconnected world, are increasingly dependent on engineering talent that knows how to apply science and technology to solving real problems. In difficult times, when multiple near-term priorities draw heavily on limited resources, it is all too easy to curtail research investments and associated technology development. This would likely shortchange our future generations. The next president should firmly resist that possibility.

Leonard KleinrockInternet pioneer; professor of computer science, University of California, Los Angeles

The U.S. is facing serious challenges in maintaining its global leadership in many areas. When it comes to science and technology, we still enjoy a leadership position. But we are in serious danger of losing that position due to the shortsighted view of some of our key government funding agencies .

What used to be their willingness to support long-term, high-risk, high-payoff, well-funded and visionary research has been replaced with a focus on short-term, low-risk, low-payoff, poorly funded and pragmatic objectives. Not only is this damaging our ability to win in today's competitive environment, but also it is channeling the next generation of faculty and senior researchers into small science, incremental thinking and short-term goals. In other words, we are creating an impact on the current generation of researchers and are also damaging future generations of our research community. Our pipeline of producing excellent new scientists is diminishing due to this lack of proper funding.

I urge the next president to return to the generous government funding of long-term advanced and innovative research projects for our universities and research centers.

Ed LazowskaProfessor of computer science and engineering, University of Washington, Seattle; former chairman of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee

1. Restore integrity to U.S. science policy. It is essential that federal policy benefit from the most complete, accurate and honest scientific and technological information available. The current administration has stacked scientific advisory boards, suppressed research that conflicts with its political agenda, prevented government scientists from speaking openly with the public and the media, failed to utilize the best available evidence to guide policy, and generally denigrated science, evidence and objectivity.

2. Double, over a 10-year period, the federal investment in fundamental research by key science agencies. Essentially every aspect of IT upon which we rely today traces its roots to federally sponsored research. The current administration has decreased federal support for fundamental research in all fields.

3. Make a national commitment to science education at all levels -- K-12, undergraduate, graduate and retraining. Nothing is more important than the education of the next generation. America is losing ground.

4. Make the R&D tax credit permanent.

5. Use technology to address these "grand challenges" of the 21st century: achieving energy independence; addressing climate change; feeding the people of America and the world; enhancing national security; further improving human health, life expectancy and quality of life; restoring and improving our urban infrastructure; protecting our environment. Each is critical; none is optional. Each requires major new advances in science and technology.

Rick RashidSenior vice president, Microsoft Research; former professor of computer science, Carnegie Mellon University

Over the past 10 to 15 years, there has been a retreat from the successful research investment strategies of the past -- strategies that created modern computing and the Internet. Increasing use of noncompetitive earmarked funding, short-term mission focused investment and insufficient funding for long-term and risk-taking research threaten America's economic future and position in the world.

My advice to a new administration is to work toward restoring a balanced system of support for long-term basic research in science and technology with a goal of ensuring the future competitiveness of the U.S.

Specifically, I would recommend to a new administration that it work with Congress to eliminate or limit earmark funding for science, restore the "long-term risk-taking" parts of DARPA to its 1970s/1980s form, and fund the American Competitiveness Initiative.

Victor ZueDirector of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; adviser to the U.S. Department of Defense and National Science Foundation

Advances in information technology and computer science (IT&CS) have fundamentally changed the way we live, work, learn and play, and have driven progress in many fields like weather prediction and computational genomics. More important, they are the primary force that powers our economy.

At a time of worldwide economic, geopolitical and social challenges, the next president must ensure our continuing preeminence in IT&CS. Historically, revolutionary achievements -- the Internet, mobile communication, parallel computing, graphical user interfaces -- typically originated from university research and often took more than a decade to realize a $1 billion market.

Therefore, the administration must significantly increase its budget for long-term, fundamental research, e.g., by doubling the NSF budget annually for the next four years. We must invest in educating the next generation of IT&CS professionals. This will require introducing courses in high school and ensuring that those who would like to enter the field can afford it.

Have your say

What do you think the next president should do first?

Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

Datacenter managers need to modernize their operations, or risk doubling their energy costs between 2005 and 2011, according to analyst firm Gartner.

Legacy datacenters made in the last decade are essentially obsolete in terms of environmentally sustainable IT, according to Gartner. New high-density, power-hungry equipment warrants more advanced power and cooling capabilities or costs will spiral, Rakesh Kumar, vice-president at Gartner warned.

[ Also check out "Four ways to cut datacenter costs," and for other ways to trim a look at Tom Sullivan's "Five outside-the-box ways to cut IT costs." ]

"If we assume that datacenter energy costs continue to double every five years, they will have increased 1,600 percent between 2005 and 2025," he said.

But power efficiency alone cannot be the only factor in creating green datacenters. Instead, firms must concentrate on factors such as waste management, asset management, technology architecture, capacity management, support services, energy sources, and operations.

In this way, datacenters. are evolving from being static into conceptual models of "living organisms", driven by power and cooling, where modelling and measuring tools will become major elements of its management, according to Kumar.

Kumar likened the data center to a human heart: "When you are running a marathon, the heart is pounding and needs to be working to 100 percent capacity, but it also needs time to slow down and relax," he said. "Similarly the data center needs to be working to full capacity at times, whilst it must respond to quieter periods too."

The advanced power and cooling facilities that are being installed in new high-density data centers. should reduce energy consumption and cost by using less power, and cooling when not fully required.

Modelling and measuring tools can help further reduce energy consumption, Kumar said.

"[Future data centers. will be dynamic and address a variety of technical, financial and environmental demands, responding quickly to the changing needs to the business."

"In addition, it will need to have some degree of flexibility, to run workloads where energy is cheapest and above all highly available, with 99.999 percent availability."

To build an efficient data center Kumar made six recommendations for managers: chose their location carefully; develop the site modularly; include chillers and high ventilation air conditioning units; introduce alternative energy sources; install monitoring tools; and investigate 'powering down' equipment.

The Symantec Green Data Center Report, released in November 2007, demonstrated that firms struggle to adopt strategic green data center initiatives, with only one in seven reporting success in this type of projects. Respondents to this survey noted that whilst a green data center is important, it must be balanced against business needs.

Kumar agreed with the findings, stating that while companies invest in green data centers. most do not commit themselves 100 percent financially and therefore do not reap the full benefits.

Computerworld UK is an InfoWorld affiliate.

Google has patched its Chrome browser to block a months-old bug that can be used to trick people into downloading and launching malicious code.

The fix has not been pushed out to most users, however.

[ For more on Google's Chrome browser, see  InfoWorld's special report. ]

The security researcher who reported the vulnerability, which involves a combination of the "carpet bomb" bug with another flaw disclosed in August, called the fix "enough for the time being," but said Google's patch wasn't the final word.

Google plugged the hole in a developer-only version of Chrome that has not yet been sent to all users via the browser's update mechanism. Chrome users, however, can reset the browser to receive all updates, including the developer editions, with the Channel Chooser plug-in .

According to a Google blog , Chrome 0.3.154.3, which was released last week, changes the browser's download behavior for executable files, such as .exe, .dll, and .bat files on Windows.

"These files are now downloaded to 'unconfirmed_*.download' files," said Mark Larson, Chrome program manager, in the blog post. "In the browser, you're asked if you want to accept the download. Only after you click Save is the 'unconfirmed_*.download' file converted to the real file name. Unconfirmed downloads are deleted when Google Chrome exits."

Last month, Israeli security researcher Aviv Raff demonstrated how hackers could create a new "blended threat" -- so-named because it relies on multiple vulnerabilities -- to attack Chrome . Raff's proof-of-concept code used an auto-download vulnerability (aka 'carpet bomb') along with a user interface design flaw and an issue with Java.

Chrome contributed to the vulnerability by making downloaded files appear as buttons at the bottom of the browser's frame, Raff said then.

Tuesday, after examining the 0.3.154.3 developer build, Raff proclaimed the fix sufficient for the short term, but nothing more. "The fix is not good enough. [But] it's enough for the time being, until other small issues might popup and be used to exploit the auto download problem," Raff said in an interview conducted via instant messaging. "The best solution was if they just won't download the files until the user approves, or download them to a random directory..., as it's done with other browsers, like Internet Explorer's Temporary Internet Files folder or Firefox 's random profile directory."

On the plus side, Raff said, Chrome shows the full filename -- the "unconfirmed_*.download" that Google's Larson described -- so that users can see if the file is, in fact, an executable and potentially dangerous.

But Chrome still has holes. "Even if [Google assigns executables] a random filename, it might still be possible to predict the downloaded filename," Raff said. "They delete the automatically downloaded files only after the user shuts down the browser. What happens if the browser crashes? The malicious files might still exist after the crash."

The best solution would be for Google to prevent any files from downloading through Chrome without user permission. "I think that downloading any file without user interaction to a predictable location, [for example] the default download directory, is still bad," Raff argued. "Even if the extension is not an executable, there might be other ways to execute those files. For example, through the Windows command line you can execute any file with a PE header, even if they have a different extension."

Chrome accounted for less than 1 percent of the browser market share during its first month of availability, according to data from Net Applications.

Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

The "user's choice" for application servers, according to more than 700 software developers, include two of the oldestone might say matureand one relative newcomer. Developers ranked IBM WebSphere, the open-source Apache Geronimo and Windows Server among their favorite options, according to a free report distributed by Evans Data (free registration required).

Enterprise software developers are, perhaps, all too familiar with application servers: server-based software that can be called by client applications. Web servers are a subset which exclusively handle HTTP requests; in contrast, application servers can use any number of protocols to serve business logic to programs.

Evans Data interviewed more than 700 developers, asking them to rate 21 characteristics of application servers that they had personally used. Among the features and capabilities rated were performance, security features, database connectivity, scalability, support, diagnostics, event logs, and value to cost ratio.

In this survey, Adobe ColdFusion, Red Hat JBoss and Sun Java System Application Server/GlassFish also earned high marks from their users. SAP NetWeaver was also evaluated for their niche uses. And then there's WebLogic....

IBM's WebSphere ranked at the top in 10 of the 21 categories, including those which were identifies as being the most important to developers: performance, scalability, support and diagnostics.

Microsoft's Windows Server is used both as an operating system and as an application server, with its native support for ASP.NET Web development and Web Services technologies such as XML, SOAP, UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration), and WSDSL (Web Services Description Language). In this survey, Windows Server garnered good marks across the board, but delivered the most satisfaction for its database connectivity, support and performance.

But Windows Server is beat out by a candidate from the open-source community: Geronimo, from the Apache Software Foundation. "As an open source program, Geronimo might have been burdened by the perception amongst users of a lack of support," says the report, because open-source software is often criticized by developers for its tech support qualities (or lack thereof). "However, this was not the case with Geronimo, and much of that has to do with IBM. IBM has provided resources and support in a variety of ways to Geronimo and the Apache Software Foundation, including technical support." As a result, Geronimo earned second place marks for quality of support, right behind IBM WebSphere. It also gets top marks from developers for performance and database connectivity.

Another open-source success, JBoss, was marked as delivering the best value to cost ratio, the best compatibility with other software and the best securityall of which matter particularly for enterprise software development.

Adobe ColdFusion has a long history. Originally introduced by Allaire, it was acquired by Macromedia, then became part of Adobe in yet another acquisition. ColdFusion version 8.0 was released in July 2007, featuring Microsoft .NET integration, integration with Adobe Acrobat forms, and enhanced performance. ColdFusion scored best with developers for its scalability, support and security.

Like ColdFusion, WebLogic is the child of many acquisitions. Originally founded in 1995, WebLogic, Inc. was acquired by BEA; BEA was acquired by Oracle in the spring of 2008. The latest iteration, version 10 R3, was announced in August. Says the report, "Over the ten years that BEA published WebLogic, it evolved from one of the first Java application servers into one of the most capable application servers designed with large enterprise SOA in mind." Developers value most Oracle WebLogic's scalability, performance and server infrastructure, according to the survey.

But developers don't value those features with quite the same fervor as in the past. In the 2006 version of this report, BEA WebLogic earned the best application user scores, but today, virtually all of WebLogic's rankings are down compared to '06 results; it's second from the bottom, winning out only over NetWeaver. Evans Data judges this to be a result of Oracle acquisition of BEA (which happened during the time the survey was fielded), resulting in some uncertainty about the product's future. In the short term, that spells opportunity for the company's competitors, Evans Data concludes.

CIO.com is an InfoWorld affiliate.

This story was updated on October 22, 2008

IBM is targeting midsize business customers that use Linux with a new "baby" mainframe that costs just a fraction of the amount charged for the high-end mainframe IBM released in February . 

The System z10 Business Class (z10 BC), announced Tuesday and generally available now, follows in the tradition of IBM refreshing its primary mainframe product and then following up several months later with a stripped-down, cheaper version, says Forrester analyst Brad Day. But the so-called "baby mainframe" is a pretty strong machine on its own, and lets IBM compete more aggressively against various RISC and Itanium-based servers as well as high-end x86 and x64 machines, Day says. ( Compare server products )

[ Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]

"This is a Paul Bunyan version of the baby mainframe," he says. IBM is clearly making a move against vendors like HP, Sun, and Fujitsu who are targeting legacy customers with mainframe migration programs, Day says.

IBM has optimized the mainframe for Linux, working with Red Hat and Novell to fix bugs and ensure that all drivers run solidly with the Linux operating system, says System z marketing vice president Karl Freund. IBM executives also decided the mainframe simply wasn't cheap enough to convince customers to run new Linux workloads, he says. 

IBM lowered by 50 percent the cost of a specialty engine that lets the business-class mainframe run Linux, bringing the price of this add-on capability down to $47,500, according to Freund. Application servers, databases and Web servers will probably be the most common Linux applications to run on the new business-class machine, he says.

"We're continuing to make the mainframe more mainstream, more interesting to new customers, and more interesting to medium-sized businesses," he says.

IBM's mainframe has supported Linux for five years, and Big Blue is increasing its push on this front because Linux because is becoming a more sophisticated enterprise-class operating system, Freund says. The mainframe doesn't have a way to run Windows workloads but "It's something we're certainly interested in exploring," he adds.

The z10 BC is nearly 40 percent faster and has nearly four times the maximum memory of its predecessor, IBM says. The new business-class mainframe delivers capacity equal to 232 x86 servers, while the high-end mainframe is equal to nearly 1,500 x86 servers, IBM says.

With the exception of IBM, the mainframe market is pretty much dead, Day says. Customers that have never owned a mainframe are often wary of buying one, but IBM has tried to reinvent the system to operate new workloads, such as ones more commonly run on RISC and Itanium processors. Day says the effort has been successful, as much of IBM's mainframe growth over the last two years can be attributed to new workloads rather than upgrades to pre-existing machines.

The mainframe has always run data-intensive transaction processing applications such as those used in the financial and utility industries, Day notes. Now it's getting better at running compute-intensive workloads that demand high amounts of CPU and memory, he says.

The basic pricing of z10 BC starts at under $100,000, about the same as the previous business class mainframe. Typical deals will range from $250,000 to $500,000 Freund says. The top-of-the-line z10 mainframe announced in February starts at $1 million and the price increases dramatically depending on the configuration.

IBM argues that the new business-class mainframe can be more cost-effective than x86 servers because eight x86 machines can be consolidated onto a single mainframe processing core.

Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate

The first cell-phone based on Google's Android platform went on sale Tuesday evening in San Francisco ahead of the start of sales across the U.S. on Wednesday.

T-Mobile USA began offering the G1 , made by Taiwan's High-Tech Computer (HTC), at its outlet on the city's Market Street from 6p.m. The launch attracted a queue of about 150 people and was headed by Christopher Laddish, a student who had been waiting since 8a.m. to buy the phone.

 [ Take InfoWorld's slideshow tour of the T-Mobile G1 and then read Tom Yager's first look at the iPhone killer. ]

"I was sold on it without even having to pick it up," said Laddish, who was wearing a tee-shirt given to him by T-Mobile that read "I was the first to get it." He said his current plan with Verizon Wireless was up for renewal on Tuesday and after shopping around he settled on the G1 because he liked products from both Google and HTC.

After a brief countdown as the clock approached 6 p.m. customers were allowed into the store to buy the phone. A few minutes later Laddish, with a large smile on his face, was surrounded by photographers and TV cameras who were there to document the start of sales.

The G1 costs $180 with a two-year service agreement and mail-in rebate. The phone without a service plan costs $400.

It has a 3.2-inch touchscreen display that slides away from the main body of the phone to expose a QWERTY keyboard. That puts it into competition with other smartphones like the Blackberry and Apple's popular iPhone.

"I've been reading a lot about the phone for the last couple of weeks and I'm not really a big fan of the iPhone touch screen," said Chijioke Amah, who was also queuing up to buy the G1. "That's probably what made me not that interested in the iPhone. When I heard T-Mobile was going to have the Google phone with a keyboard, that's what got my attention."

Amah, who confessed to being a Mac user, said he isn't sold on the idea of typing on a touchscreen and so decided the G1 would be a better choice than the iPhone as he switches from his current Blackberry.

The G1 will go on sale outside of the U.S. later this year starting with T-Mobile in Europe.

Next year, Advanced Micro Devices plans to release the first of its Fusion chip family , which combines processor cores and a graphics engine on the same chip. But AMD isn't alone in its efforts: Intel also plans to combine graphics capabilities with its processors, including low-cost Atom chips for laptops and desktops.

Called Pineview, the new chip package will likely hit the market late next year and includes a processor that combines an Atom core and graphics on the same chip, a version of the Lincroft system-on-chip (SOC) that powers Intel's upcoming Moorestown platform for mobile Internet devices.

[ Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]

While the Atom processor core used in Pineview remains largely the same as current Atom chips, Intel has made refinements to the design that further lower its already miserly power consumption, said Belliappa Kuttanna, the principal architect of Intel's Atom architecture, in an interview.

The upcoming Atom processor also includes an integrated memory controller with direct links to main memory to improve system performance.

"Now that we're in an SOC environment, we have opportunities for more efficient power management of the subsystems within the SOC, like graphics, display, etc., that involve some CPU interaction, so we went ahead and added those types of mechanisms to Lincroft," he said.

The latest Intel disclosures increase the pressure on AMD, which plans to detail its own product roadmap for low-cost laptops at an analyst conference to be held on Nov. 13. AMD is planning to add graphics capabilities to a range of processors as part of its Fusion chip family starting in 2009, and such capabilities will likely be added to chips intended to compete with Atom.

Intel has also said it plans to integrate graphics capabilities with some models in its Nehalem processor family, with these chips expected to hit the market during late 2009 or early 2010. The first versions of Nehalem, a series of desktop chips due to arrive next month, will not include graphics capabilities.

Kuttanna didn't detail the graphics technology used with Pineview, saying only that it's not the same integrated graphics processor, the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X4500HD, used with the company's G45 Express chipset. Pineview will also include a hardware decoder for high-definition video, he said.

Graphics and video performance are two areas where the current Atom lineup is considered weak. But graphics is not Intel's strength, particularly when stacked against the cutting-edge technology of AMD's ATI division.

One detail of Pineview that Kuttanna declined to discuss is size. Current Atom processors are very small, allowing 2,500 of them to be manufactured using a single 300-millimeter wafer. The small size keeps down unit manufacturing costs and allows Intel to earn a healthy profit margin on each chip, even when they are sold at a low price.

Adding a memory controller and graphics processor to the chip will increase the size of the chips, which will be manufactured with the same 45-nanometer process used to make the current Atom chips. This likely means that fewer Pineview processors can be produced on a single wafer.

If unit production costs are higher for Pineview, this could eat into Intel's profit margins unless the chips are sold at a higher price. Ultimately, the impact on Intel's profit margins will also depend on the cost to produce the chipset that will be used with Pineview. If this cost is lower than the chipset now used with Atom, Intel can maintain or even improve its overall margins in this product segment.

Pineview isn't the only Atom variant in the works.

On Monday, Intel showed a video of the first Moorestown chips , said to be three days old at the time, running on a validation board in an Intel lab. Moorestown is currently scheduled to be released sometime in either 2009 or 2010.

Intel is working on two other variants of Atom. A version called Menlow XL for embedded applications will be released during the first quarter of 2009. A variant called Sodaville is also in the works for consumer electronics.

Oracle customers have been unable to di