pro

According to AppleInsider, the next version of MacBook Pro will be equipped with the same multitouch trackpad as the one on the MacBook Air.

Though this move is about as unexpected as the rising tide, it will be more interesting to see if their claims that the units will appear in a few weeks turns out to true. The new portables will also be based on Intel's latest Penryn processors.

(Source: Crave Asia)

As usual, there were many specific rumors about what Steve Jobs would be announcing at MacWorld Expo this week. Several were reasonably credible, but Apple runs a tight ship; there's really no way to be sure what will come out at any given show.

At the beginning of the year, based on the better rumors and some discounting of existing Mac products, I was pretty sure we'd see four things: new Mac Pro workstations, a refresh of the MacBook Pro line with Blu-ray optical drives and Intel 45nm processors, minor improvements for the iPhone, and a new subnotebook.… Read more

Correction 5:30 p.m. PST: This blog initially mischaracterized the nature of the unlimited client license for Mac OS X Server Leopard that comes with a new Apple Xserve. It allows purchasers to connect an unlimited number of clients to that server.

Apple got a little business out of the way before next week's Macworld extravaganza, announcing new versions of the Mac Pro and Xserve to go along with new Intel chips.

These systems are very high-end computers, designed for heavy work rather than organizing photos of your latest trip to St. Louis. Both the Mac Pro and … Read more

Internet Explorer 7 disappointed many of our users by offering far too few features much too late. After all, Firefox was way ahead with tabbed browsing, greater stability, and a seemingly bottomless pit of extensions. Then came IE7Pro, one extension with enough oomph to make IE7 worth using.

IE7's bump up to Version 2.0 doesn't actually add a whole lot more than a chance to remember what we liked about the app in the first place, but there is new support for 64-bit machines, and a hot-key combination (Control+M) that shrinks IE windows to a tray icon. In order to rustle up some revenue while keeping the program free to use, IE7Pro announced it runs search from a Google-powered toolbar, and presumably runs operations from the proceeds. Finally, Version 2 replaces the download manager with a MiniDM that's not actually so mini.

The big show, of course, is IE7Pro's major assist to Microsoft's market-dominating browser. There's a lot here--ad- and Flash-blocking, spell check (which requires installing an OpenOffice.org dictionary,) and tabbing features. Double clicking shuts down a tab, while typing a URL automatically opens it in a fresh tab. That shaves off time and steps in the course of a browsing day.… Read more

Sling Media has unveiled the Slingbox PRO-HD, the first version of its video place-shifting boxes designed to stream true high-definition video. The catch? Due to the massive bandwidth requirements, HD video can't be streamed over the Internet--just to other locations on a home network. Still, that means that PCs running the SlingPlayer software--or TVs attached to Sling's soon-to-be-reannounced SlingCatcher--should be able to view a high-def stream at up to 1080i resolution with 5.1 surround audio. (To date, some Slingbox models have been able to accept HD video, but the output stream was limited to DVD-level standard-definition resolution.) … Read more

Buried under the end-of-year industry buzz last week was a fairly significant announcement. Wi-Fi leader Aruba Networks and the HP ProCurve division joined the OpenSEA Alliance, a group dedicated to the development and adoption of a robust and reliable open-source 802.1X supplicant for secure access to network and other computing resources. Aruba and HP join existing members including technology vendors Extreme Networks, Identity Engines, Infoblox, Symantec, TippingPoint, and Trapeze Networks. The OpenSEA Alliance also includes Janet, the U.K.'s education and research network boasting 18 million users.

So what the heck is this all about? The 802.1X … Read more

Comodo Firewall Pro gets a major revision from its publisher, upgrading to version 3 with some significant changes. Most importantly, user complaints about resource hogging when version 2 came out have been all but eradicated with the new model.

… Read more