Dispatches from the Reviews Editor
Charles has been in tech publishing since the late 1980s, starting with Reed's Practical Computing, then moving to Ziff-Davis to help launch the UK version of PC Magazine in 1992. ZDNet came looking for a Reviews Editor in 2000, and he's been here ever since.
We've just reviewed our second Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC), the R2H from ASUS. In case you'd forgotten, the UMPC caused something of a stir back in February/March when Microsoft ran a teaser campaign for Origami (Redmond's codename for what turned out to be the UMPC) — a small slate-style Tablet PC running Windows XP.
Today's the day when the tech media's guns point towards Redmond and fire a triple salvo at Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007. ZDNet UK, of course, is weighing in -- as I write this, the Office 2007 Special Report is live, and the Vista and Exchange ones are imminent.
Wireless networking kit based on the draft 802.11n specification has been available for a while, and we've now performed some throughput tests on a range of products built around different chipsets.
'Only the paranoid survive' is the title of a book by ex-Intel boss Andrew Grove, but it would also make an apt marketing slogan for network appliance maker Chronicle Solutions.The company develops what it calls 'content capturing solutions' for enterprises and government agenices that need to keep close tabs on what's happening on their networks.
As a one-time Production Editor in the olde worlde of print, I was pleased to see Kim Fletcher's article in today's Media Guardian, entitled 'In praise of the subeditor'. He deftly explains the ancient rivalry between free-ranging journalists and office-bound production staff (including the 'subs') who turn the former's often semi-literate and error-strewn efforts into polished, reader-friendly product.
So Microsoft's Vista desktop OS has finally been released to manufacturing (RTM). Thank goodness for that, many will say: although we've assiduously covered the many pre-release versions, there are probably only so many Vista previews one can take.
Perusing ZDNet's most excellent News section today, I couldn't help noticing the similarity between F-Secure's CEO Risto Siilasmaa and Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos.Are the Finnish internet security expert and the Glaswegian popular beat combo frontman by any chance related?
If you study the specifications of the recently released Core 2 Duo-based Apple MacBook Pro, you may be puzzled by the quoted RAM limit of 3GB. The notebook has a pair of DIMM slots that can accommodate 2GB modules, while the Intel 945PM chipset -- which this MacBook Pro model uses -- can handle 4GB of RAM.
The Reviews section of ZDNet UK is expanding. We've got a great new site, and we aim to fill it with even more great reviews content than you get already.
Now that something resembling normal service can be resumed, what's in the pipeline for the Reviews channel on the shiny new ZDNet?Look out for a group test on Draft-N wireless networking gear.