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Lenovo doesn't seem to have it on sale. I have just spent 20 minutes looking for a laptop that has Linux pre-installed. It's not even on the Thinkpad models presentation page http://www.pc.ibm.com/ca/brand/thinkpad_brand.html
If Dell had their linux systems that visible, no wonder the sales didn't pick up.

So Lenovo is just making a PR stunt waiting for requests and then maybe products will appear on their website ?

Maybe this IBM Millipede thing would float your boat. It uses nanotechnology to push indentations into a plastic card.

I think they're working on the translucent green part now.

For years, the holy grail of the Linux desktop has been to get a major computer vendor to commit to preloading a Linux desktop. It's finally happened!

2647-L1U. It was done a long time ago.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/quickPa th.do?quickPathEntry=2647-l1u

go here http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/notebooks/thinkpad/t-seri es/index.html then click customize. So far it still only has XP home and pro as options

If you really must know about the technology, you can be fairly sure that since it's IBM, it's going to be some sort of an on demand configuration. And look at that! Right on IBM's on-demand homepage, a piece on "The Future of Government"!

• Teleo:
  http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/aug0 5/09-30MSNTeleoPR.mspx
  

  
  "Aug. 30, 2005 -- Microsoft Corp. today announced it has acquired Teleo Inc., a provider of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) software
  and services..."
  

  
  http://www.makingthings.com/downloads/README_Teleo AppSDK_v_1_0_1
  "README Teleo Application SDK version 1.0.1 Zaurus (Linux arm) built with arm-linux-gcc version 2.95.2 Linux x86 b uilt with gcc 3.2"
  

  
  

• FrontBridge (Jul 20 2005)
  

  
  http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/jul0 5/07-20FrontBridgePR.mspx
  "July 20, 2005 --Microsoft Corp. today announced that it will acquire FrontBridge Technologies Inc., a leading provider of managed services that address corporate e-mail security, compliance and availability requirements. ... better protect their messaging infrastructure while complying with mandatory
  regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and regulations that affect
  financial services companies such as SEC 17A and NASD 3010 and 3011."
  

  
  http://www-306.ibm.com/software/success/cssdb.nsf/ CS/BEMY-5UJNYU?OpenDocument&Site=default
  " FrontBridge counters spam attacks with IBM and Linux hosted
  solution. On the software side, FrontBridge is running a customized Linux
  distribution. "After going through the available combinations we had no
  doubt that IBM IBM eServer xSeries servers running Linux was the best
  possible solution for us," explains Jillings."
  
  

• Groove (Mar 10 2005)
  
  [I think this was more of a exec-recruiting move to
  replace Alchin]
  
  
• Sybari Software (Feb 8 2005)
  
  http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/feb0 5/02-08SybariPR.mspx
  
  "Microsoft to Acquire Enterprise Anti-Virus Security Provider Sybari Software"
  

  
  http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1830182,00.as p
  "On the day the software giant completed its purchase of Sybari Software Inc., a deal first announced in February, Microsoft Corp. announced it
  would immediately discontinue new sales of Sybari's flagship Antigen
  suite for the Unix and Linux platforms."
  Jun 10 2003 GeCAD
  

BTW, it's called the "Z-series" and it's all the IBM mainframes (except AS400s) from small to HUGE.

If you really want to debate semantics, I could point out that the AS/400 became the iSeries, which is of course now the System i, which runs on power5.

IBM already has bladecenters with opterons... why is this news? How is this a defeat for Intel? IBM is basically announcing a refresh of their current lineup... you can bet your ass they'll be doing the same thing when intel rolls out the new Xeon in full force as well.

Remember kids, just because you like to pull for the underdog, doesn't mean it's OK to make false statements about the king.

There are many good resources on the web. The standard resource is The Linux Documentation Project, or http://www.tldp.org/. Another site, which is much better than it used to be, is http://www.linux.com/. http://www.linuxjournal.com/ has many great articles to guide you through a wide variety of small projects. A great newer site with helpful articles is http://www.howtoforge.com/. For help on the desktop side, http://www.desktoplinux.com/ has many articles you may find of use. Documentation and information about KDE is, of course, available at http://www.kde.org/ and it's affiliated sites (linked from their homepage). IBM is always putting up new articles at http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/ that can provide usefull information for development work under Linux. You may also find the articles on http://www.debian.org/, http://www.gentoo.org/, and http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ usefull even though the articles were written for other distros.

If you can't find what you're looking for there, you can always head over to irc.freenode.net. The #suse and #opensuse channels will be of particular interest to you. You may find #kde helpful for KDE applications. ##linux is basically a catch-all channel; we'll generally be able to field just about any question you throw at us there. If we can't, we will point you in the right direction.

Keeping up with the FOSS news can also teach you quite a bit. You already know about Slashdot. http://osnews.com/ is another very nice resource. http://www.kerneltrap.org/ is a less frequently updated site which can provide you with more advanced information. Keeping an eye on http://www.freshmeat.net/ can help you get a better feel for the various software available for Linux. And of course, with gmail you can setup alerts for Linux, KDE, etc.

If you really want to learn more about Linux, there's no better way than distro hopping. Go to http://www.vmware.com/ and download their free VMWare Server 1.0 to allow you to try out various distros without having to wipe your hard drive. This does, however, require you have a decent amount of RAM (I'd recommend at least 1 GB). Go to http://www.distrowatch.com/ for a fairly complete list of the available Linux distros, sorted by popularity.

If all these links really don't solve your problems, take yourself over to your best local bookstore and buy a book or two. The drawback of doing this, however, is that most of them will be pretty much out of date by the time they hit the shelves. On the other hand, they will give you a great foundation upon which you can build (update yourself) easily by utilizing the online resources.

Also, never forget about http://www.google.com/linux!

Point, they now can offer 3 types of CPU on their blade systems. They compare with HP and DELL, but seem to "accidentally" forget SUN who deliver some very nice AMD-based blades at the moment http://www.sun.com/servers/blades/8000/specificati ons.jsp

Anycase, IBM blades were x86 already before, this won't change too much on that.

IBM offers x86 and Power5 based solutions for years. The PowerPC used in IBM servers and Workstations is very different from the ones Apple shipped in their desktop computers.

Gaming territory is almost invaded by PowerPC RISC chips. Even XBox 360 uses sort of PowerPC and Cell processor in PS3 is also PowerPC.

The chips used in servers are from same standard (PowerPC) and shares some stuff but completely different. We are speaking about some monsters here.

Can check here for more info http://www-03.ibm.com/chips/power/index.html

Those things shows my Quad G5 as a toy :)

"Power" is sort of standard in fact, check http://www.power.org/ , it is very alive and well. In fact, it looks like taking over the World.

Oddly, Ubuntu was the first non-RPM-based distro that IBM's DB2 supported. Is Ubuntu already getting to that level of enterprise support?

Description of the international standard date and time notation (ISO 8601):
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html

Although I have been taught to use dd/mm/yyyy, I tend to use the standard yyyy-mm-dd whenever possible, especially in discussions with people coming from other countries because this standard date format is less ambiguous.

See also the List of date and time formats used in various countries. You will see that many countries use dd/mm/yyyy, while USA, Canada and parts of Asia use mm-dd-yyyy and several countries from Eastern Europe have adopted the ISO standard yyyy-mm-dd.

I'd enjoy it if readers would like to take a look at my coverage of the event for IBM developerWorks. I think I interviewed some interesting people, and generally report on a number of sessions Slashdotters might like. Look at:

http://www-03.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/da vidmertz

Not all OEMs are happy to see this kit. Lenovo, the company that took over IBM's PC manufacturing business, doesn't see how adhering to the design will help their company. "Our ability to differentiate ourselves comes from our industry-leading innovation," a Lenovo spokesperson told Businessweek. "And design is a big part of that."

I think you'll find the bioinformatics field to be broad enough to meet just about any interest that you may have - work ranges from programming pattern recognition/alignment software (for protein or DNA work) to mathematical modeling of protein networks. Don't worry if biology isn't your greatest strength as you'll be working as a programmer/mathematician solving a biological problem, not as a biologist working with computers (in fact, graduate level programs in bioinformatics tend to recruit computer science majors as the biology/biochem/etc majors don't have the required background).

Some links for further information:
International Society for Computational Biology
National Institute of Health
UCSD
Stanford
IBM

Try here: http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/notebooks/thinkpad/z-seri es/zseries_byo_z61m.html

And it's actually 15.4 inch WSXGA+ (1680x1050)... high enough res for ya'?

I tried to buy z61t from Lenovo page. But I don't see 1440x900 there! Where to get z61t with this resolution?

Heres a picture of the original production version:

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage /storage_PH0350A.html

I met Reynold Johnson about 15 years back, (he died a while back) he ran the first design program developing this thing.

Some did not believe in it's viability back then. Somebody posted a picture of a bologna slicer on the side of the engineering prototype. The only thing in common between the original and the current methods are spinning disks. Everything else has changed in its approach.

They have been predicting the demise of the disk drive for 20 years. However the cost per byte (or mega,giga,tera,peta-byte) of magnetic storage stays ahead of the cost curve, and thus perserveres.

For work, forget using anything from IBM, forget using the SAP client (SAP GUI) if your work requires it. Forget a *lot* of other essential corporate applications.

Bzzt. Thanks for playing. [PDF] You're right, though. Lots of IBM software is not available for Mac OS X. Like Lotus Notes and ViaVoice.

I'm not going to disagree with you about software availability. However, I think what you'll find is that you may have problems finding a "brand" that you're comfortable with. Everyone's favorite example: AutoCAD. Of course, there are plenty of CAD solutions on the Mac. However, if you must use AutoCAD for some reason, you're out of luck. This is true for games--a particular example of branding. If you're the sort of person who has to play the latest hottest game as soon as it comes out, you're out of luck on the Mac. For example, I got Star Wars: Battlefront for Mac OS X this past Christmas. It shipped in July 2005--about 10 months after the Windows release. So it certainly wasn't the hottest game by the time I got to play it. I still like playing it, though.

Now, how would I convince a consumer to switch to something which is more expensive while lacking both the breadth and width of software and hardware options they currently enjoy? When they ask about upgrades, how would I explain to them that Apple charges rediculous premiums for *any* kind of hardware upgrade? How would I convince my company to switch when just 10% of their essential software even has an equivalent on OSX?

Well, some of your concerns are just plain wrong.

Again, in the consumer realm on the software side, I think you're taking about games. Everything else is covered. In that realm, suggest they buy an Xbox 360 or Wii for the kids to play games with. Mom & Dad will be happier about not having to kick the kids off the computer anyway.

Hardware, I'm a bit lost on. What do you mean "breath of hardware upgrades" for consumers. Are you saying that you can't upgrade memory, hard disks, or video cards on a Mac? Sorry, Macs use industry-standard hard drives. If anything, the problem with Macs are that they tend to be ahead of the curve, so you might have to buy Serial-ATA drives instead of a cheapo ATA/66 hard drive and that will cost you more money. Same with memory--the iMac uses PC2-5300 memory which is more expensive than other types. For example, a 1GB upgrade is about $165. For a Dell XPS200, 1GB of PC2-4200 memory is $120.

From the business software side, I might agree. But, before I do, I'd point out that Macs are cheaper for a business to support than Windows. So, obviously, the more Macs you have, the cheaper it will be. So suppose we ask this question: What job positions require Windows PCs?

Receptionist? That job is mostly about e-mail, etc. All available on Mac. Sales? Again, e-mail, etc. Perhaps some database access for looking up inventory and such, which can be done via the web. Macs have web browsers, so that should be fine. So we could switch Sales. Marketing? Ooh...lots of graphics and such. Plenty of room for Macs in marketing. General Management? Show me a software category that is used by general management that is not available on the Mac.

Engineering? Well, if you're developing Windows software, you need some Windows machines. There are also some great tools for other engineering disciplines which are not available on the Mac. Fair enough. Engineering keeps it Windows machines.

Accounting? There's accounting software for Macs, believe it or not, but I'll let them keep their Windows machines. There are some great accounting solutions for Windows.

For work, forget using anything from IBM, forget using the SAP client (SAP GUI) if your work requires it. Forget a *lot* of other essential corporate applications.

Bzzt. Thanks for playing. [PDF] You're right, though. Lots of IBM software is not available for Mac OS X. Like Lotus Notes and ViaVoice.

I'm not going to disagree with you about software availability. However, I think what you'll find is that you may have problems finding a "brand" that you're comfortable with. Everyone's favorite example: AutoCAD. Of course, there are plenty of CAD solutions on the Mac. However, if you must use AutoCAD for some reason, you're out of luck. This is true for games--a particular example of branding. If you're the sort of person who has to play the latest hottest game as soon as it comes out, you're out of luck on the Mac. For example, I got Star Wars: Battlefront for Mac OS X this past Christmas. It shipped in July 2005--about 10 months after the Windows release. So it certainly wasn't the hottest game by the time I got to play it. I still like playing it, though.

Now, how would I convince a consumer to switch to something which is more expensive while lacking both the breadth and width of software and hardware options they currently enjoy? When they ask about upgrades, how would I explain to them that Apple charges rediculous premiums for *any* kind of hardware upgrade? How would I convince my company to switch when just 10% of their essential software even has an equivalent on OSX?

Well, some of your concerns are just plain wrong.

Again, in the consumer realm on the software side, I think you're taking about games. Everything else is covered. In that realm, suggest they buy an Xbox 360 or Wii for the kids to play games with. Mom & Dad will be happier about not having to kick the kids off the computer anyway.

Hardware, I'm a bit lost on. What do you mean "breath of hardware upgrades" for consumers. Are you saying that you can't upgrade memory, hard disks, or video cards on a Mac? Sorry, Macs use industry-standard hard drives. If anything, the problem with Macs are that they tend to be ahead of the curve, so you might have to buy Serial-ATA drives instead of a cheapo ATA/66 hard drive and that will cost you more money. Same with memory--the iMac uses PC2-5300 memory which is more expensive than other types. For example, a 1GB upgrade is about $165. For a Dell XPS200, 1GB of PC2-4200 memory is $120.

From the business software side, I might agree. But, before I do, I'd point out that Macs are cheaper for a business to support than Windows. So, obviously, the more Macs you have, the cheaper it will be. So suppose we ask this question: What job positions require Windows PCs?

Receptionist? That job is mostly about e-mail, etc. All available on Mac. Sales? Again, e-mail, etc. Perhaps some database access for looking up inventory and such, which can be done via the web. Macs have web browsers, so that should be fine. So we could switch Sales. Marketing? Ooh...lots of graphics and such. Plenty of room for Macs in marketing. General Management? Show me a software category that is used by general management that is not available on the Mac.

Engineering? Well, if you're developing Windows software, you need some Windows machines. There are also some great tools for other engineering disciplines which are not available on the Mac. Fair enough. Engineering keeps it Windows machines.

Accounting? There's accounting software for Macs, believe it or not, but I'll let them keep their Windows machines. There are some great accounting solutions for Windows.

BASF Research
Batelle
BBC Research & Development
General Electric Global Research

Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
Motorola Labs
Microsoft Research
HP Labs
IBM Research
Intel Research
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Philips Research
Corporate Research
The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Toshiba Research Europa
Toyota Central R&D Labs
Viewpoints Research Institute

back again (virtual machines) and even some that have gone come back (centralized computing services). If punch cards come back, I'm retiring to my cave.

IBM has never been a patent troll. What crack are you smoking? Not to mention the amazing research IBM is involved with. Check http://www.research.ibm.com/ for more info dumb fuck

There's a few other JVMs for WM out there, i.e Mysaifu.

Which is strange, because the mother of all CMSs, which also comes in a web-based form, has been around for so long. All they'd have to do is copy this.

Can someone explain how this differs from what IBM did in 1990?

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/vintage /vintage_4506VV1003.html

Here's another project that will model the neurons in the neocortex of a real human brain...

http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/pr.nsf/pages/rsc .bluegene_cognitive.html

Very cool, and certainly beyond what I thought we would be capable of. I'm not sure how fast it runs relative to realtime, but it doesn't look like we'll need a moon sized computer to simulate an entire human brain in the not too distant future.

Automated memory mgmt via garbage collection has been a feature of Lisp and many other languages since the early 1960s http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-jt p10283/

Who really cares about laptops in pro segment? Which laptop including creatures by Alienware was suitable for workstation class data manipulation?

G4 had a problem and Apple could not dare to order better models because people couldn't afford them.

CPU is there if you want:
http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overview. jsp?code=DRPPCDUALCORE

G5 (ppc970) is lower end model of Power5 processor arch. If we are speaking about workstations having huge power, there if you can afford:
http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/intellistation/power /285/index.html

Don't make fun of yourself comparing it to your precious "Dell Workstations". First learn what CATIA V5 is.

"What, and a seven-way processor isn't a gimmick?"

http://www.research.ibm.com/cell/

http://www-1.ibm.com/businesscenter/venturedevelop ment/us/en/featurearticle/gcl_xmlid/8649/nav_id/em erging

There are already over 250 companies building Cell based products.

Cell is being used in:

PS3
TV and other home media devices
IBM servers
Aerospace devices
Medical devices
Media/movie company content production

Go away fanboy.

"What, and a seven-way processor isn't a gimmick?"

http://www.research.ibm.com/cell/

http://www-1.ibm.com/businesscenter/venturedevelop ment/us/en/featurearticle/gcl_xmlid/8649/nav_id/em erging

There are already over 250 companies building Cell based products.

Cell is being used in:

PS3
TV and other home media devices
IBM servers
Aerospace devices
Medical devices
Media/movie company content production

Go away fanboy.

Hi,

Here's a big list of pointer device alternatives:
http://www.billbuxton.com/InputSources.html

You might want to consider using a glove - although they're not cheap. There are also some projects that work with a camera and a set of colorerd markers on your head (such as glasses) so that you move the pointer by moving your head, the so called Head-Pointers. Examples:

http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/headpointer

Cheers, - J

This is what they look like:
http://www5.pc.ibm.com/lk/products.nsf/$wwwpartnum lookup/_31P8950?OpenDocument&sourcesite=lenovo

and, here is a chart listing all the available part#'s; you are looking for the "marketing" part number for your product:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/documen t.do?lndocid=MIGR-45867

One thing to note is that IBM/Lenovo will not provide warranty on the product unless it is associated with a laptop or desktop computer (or server)... it really makes it a pain in the *** to deal with specially if you were the unlucky recipient of a keyboard that was DOA. I had my vendor fax in the invoice to IBM/Lenovo and they added it to my laptop's warranty and I was only then able to get a replacement :)

Otherwise, the keyboard is great; thin and light weight, full size keyboard with keypad. It has two pointing devices: a touch pad and a track point (the little pencil eraser like stuffed between the GHB keys...(no pun intended)... and two of each left and right mouse buttons... comes with a two port usb hub for your usb dongles and memory keys... the only thing this keyboard would be missing would be bluetooth and backlit keys.In the box you will find a useless driver cd and a set of rubber tips for the track point.

This is what they look like:
http://www5.pc.ibm.com/lk/products.nsf/$wwwpartnum lookup/_31P8950?OpenDocument&sourcesite=lenovo

and, here is a chart listing all the available part#'s; you are looking for the "marketing" part number for your product:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/documen t.do?lndocid=MIGR-45867

One thing to note is that IBM/Lenovo will not provide warranty on the product unless it is associated with a laptop or desktop computer (or server)... it really makes it a pain in the *** to deal with specially if you were the unlucky recipient of a keyboard that was DOA. I had my vendor fax in the invoice to IBM/Lenovo and they added it to my laptop's warranty and I was only then able to get a replacement :)

Otherwise, the keyboard is great; thin and light weight, full size keyboard with keypad. It has two pointing devices: a touch pad and a track point (the little pencil eraser like stuffed between the GHB keys...(no pun intended)... and two of each left and right mouse buttons... comes with a two port usb hub for your usb dongles and memory keys... the only thing this keyboard would be missing would be bluetooth and backlit keys.In the box you will find a useless driver cd and a set of rubber tips for the track point.

You do realize that you can have other companies, such as IBM make the chip for you? Cyrix did that for years. http://www-03.ibm.com/chips/asics/

Yes, I switched mousing hands too, to deal with shoulder pain in my mousing arm -- I even blogged about it (that counts as modern because I'm over 30).

Man was it hard though -- it took about two weeks to feel reasonably comfortable. But it really worked.

Otherwise, how about one o' them ThinkPad keyboards with a little red nubby thing plus a trackpad?

Lowering prices below market value? That is _good_ for consumers because NO business can sell for a loss forever -- the minute that they raise their prices after they've wiped the competition clean, new competition will turn up the beat them down again.

Excellent! For those who (like me) can't decide which Python web framework to pick and learn, this is a two-part series on both Django and TurboGears from IBM, one can learn the basics of each one and decide.

--Rob

I think the bigger news is the sun blade system. They were miising it for so long and now they have something to compete with IBM and HP blade servers. And although sun's low end servers are something similar to blades ($1300 per unit duh!) they're not quite the same.

A basic structure of MRAM can be found at http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/news/2000120 7_mramimages.shtml, no transistor is needed to read or write, no refresh need, :-) The space need to seperate two domains should be in the scale of Angstrom.

Right, there are too many troubles around fabrication of MRAM, mostly in the deposition and etching of multiple magnetic metal layers. But at least it is selling commercially, so it is practical now.

There's a Greasemonkey script for that sort of thing: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/1418

Seems to be inspired by the really cool software tool from IBM: http://www.research.ibm.com/history/

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/swnews/swnews.nsf/ n/nhan6dbjwg

The points made in this post are quite valid. Lotus Notes is more stable than most appreciate. And like most things, the good 'ole 80/20 rule applies here in terms of who is using the majority of the features.

I'll also say this; the collective clamoring for a 'native' Notes client for Linux has finally risen to a loud enough point that this product release is imminent. I've been using Notes running on wine for about 2 years now, and this will blow that setup out of the water.

Also, I found an IBM PDF article about the 7.0.2 code release, if anyone is interested.

This is true. But the client is evolwing. See the next Notes version that allows you to have the preview pane to the right: http://www-142.ibm.com/software/sw-lotus/products/ product4.nsf/wdocs/hannover If its a general improvment to the notes environment, or only to the mail application remains to be seen.

...then Red Hat would ramp up its support staff pretty much overnight, or start subcontracting quickly to someone else. Someone like, oooh, IBM Global Services to take a not-so-random example.

Cheers,
Ian

What does this say about the largest and most successful Linux vendor out there?

It doesn't really say anything about it, why?

I must say, of all the suggestions that the were there, the one by far that appealed most to me was the threading visualization in ReMail. That thing was awesome! Especially if you are on a mailinglist or two that easily fills your mailbox with lots of threaded emails. While I like the tree structure of threads, this could be a great companion too it. What would be perfect would be for in the general inbox the it showed the messages threaded and then in every individual email it would show the connection to the others in an arc mode.

It was a shame you couldn't download the ReMail client, I would have switched from Thunderbird for that feature alone. Infact, I would pay someone to develop an extension for Thunderbird that implemented that thing correctly!

IBM ServeRAIDs -- I think these are dedicated controllers