Nicholas Kolakowski

Google announced that it would offer 15 days of free service to paying subscribers who were inconvenienced by a Feb. 24 service outage. Google restored service, which cut out at 9:30 a.m. GMT, after a few hours. The timing meant that users in parts of Europe and Asia experienced the brunt of the outage, but […]

Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems are jointly bringing Sun’s Solaris operating systems to HP’s ProLiant line of rack-mount and blade server systems The two IT giants announced the ProLiant partnership Feb. 25. The agreement allows Sun’s Solaris 10 operating system to run on HP’s x86-based ProLiant servers. The move by Sun and HP comes at a […]

Google’s Gmail went down for two-and-a-half hours during the morning of Feb. 24, although Google reported that it restored full Gmail service in the United States and Europe. “We’re actively investigating the source of the issue and will share more information with our users as soon as we have it,” Andrew Kovacs, a Google spokesperson, […]

VMware is looking to bring new high-availability capabilities to its vCenter Server with a new product called Heartbeat, which is designed to protect the vCenter Server against unexpected downtime.The VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat was just one of many announcements the x86 virtualization company made at its VMworld Europe 2009 conference. In a much-publicized move, CEO […]

Apple has announced the public beta of Safari 4, saying the latest version of its Web browser includes new features and can run JavaScript faster than Safari 3. Apple Safari 4, officially released Feb. 24, leaps into pitched battle against Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera Software’s Opera browser and Mozilla Firefox, with the quest […]

VMware CEO and President Paul Maritz offered a road map for his company’s future in cloud computing on Feb. 24 at VMworld Europe. Maritz used the forum in Cannes, France, to set out what VMware sees as the components fundamental to building a private cloud. As he stated at the beginning of his presentation, IT […]

Citrix Systems is releasing a virtualization product called “Citrix Essentials” that integrates with its own XenServer hypervisor, as well as Microsoft’s Hyper-V, and is designed to further position the company as the main challenger to VMware. Citrix Essentials is crafted to make these hypervisors-the essential software that makes x86 virtualization possible-more manageable, scalable and flexible, […]

IBM, Microsoft, SAP and other companies might be pouring massive amounts of cash into marketing via social technologies, but according to a new study by Forrester, Web 2.0 techniques aren’t what compel a business buyer to purchase a particular solution. According to the study, some 77 percent of surveyed business decision makers use social media […]

Lenovo ThinkPad Goes Semirugged Against Panasonic, Dell by Nicholas Kolakowski No Title The Lenovo ThinkPad “semirugged” laptops’ brighter screens, 3G/4G connectivity and longer battery life are all designed to appeal to those engaging in frequent field work. No Title One of the tests included blowing dust at the laptop for an extended period of time. […]

Lenovo, in its quest to compete in the semirugged and rugged laptop market against competitors such as Panasonic and Dell, subjected eight of its ThinkPad laptops to a variety of tortures, including high heat, wild temperature fluctuations, exposure to massive amounts of dust and jostling. The ThinkPad X200, X301, X200s, X200 Tablet, T400, T500, R400 […]