orangerobot writes "Commercial software companies have performed public beta tests of their products for quite some time but more recently Philips Electronics has started holding public betas of new consumer hardware gadgets. A few months ago it was the Streamium MC-i250, and now it's their iPod clone the HDD-100. Public hardware betas seem like a great way to do a bit of marketing and user testing at the same time maybe more companies will pick up the same idea." This seems like a great idea for a company wanting to collect usability data on their interfaces, so that the release version can be tweaked.

Dual Minds writes "LinuxHardware.org is at it again and this time they cover three of the finest boards on the market. This review covers three dual processor Xeon boards and they are the only site that ever does Linux reviews (at least on a regular basis). Here's a peak: "First thing is that all E7505-based boards are basically the same on the surface due to the basic features of the chipset. They all have dual processor support, support for dual channel DDR, and support for PCI-X up to 133MHz (to name a few). Once a manufacturer gets their hands on the board though, features can be added or it can simply be left as is." Very in depth and some sweet hardware."

Jon writes "Remember jokes about clueless newbies trying to fax documents by holding them up to the monitor? Perhaps they were just ahead of their time. Toshiba has developed a combined LCD/optical sensor, according to EETimes. It isn't monitor sized yet, but in a few years, perhaps?"

Subaiku asks: "Next semester my girlfriend will be traveling to Japan to continue with her studies. As a going away gift I plan on buying her a laptop of some sort. I've been thinking about going with a PowerBook, or maybe a Dell, but I really need advice as to which brand/configuration/platform would be best in terms of ease of use/connectivity in foreign places (namely Japan). Any suggestions?"

Saint Aardvark writes "According to this article, a honeypot was recently set up on two wireless LANs. 25% of the connections observed were deliberate, and 71% of those were to send spam. Even more reason to take care of your ether." These statistics should be taken with a salt lick...

codewizard asks: "Ours is a bank and we have a bunch of MS-Access databases(>50) which are being used by around 50 users around the globe on a daily basis. The set of databases are stored on a SAMBA share and each user accesses from the mapped drive. As expected, sharing conflicts arise and multiple users are unable to access at the same time. So, we proposed having multiple folders on SAMBA each of which would have all the databases and the users logon script would determine where their mapped drive points to. This led to synchronisation issues (when a change is required in one of the master databases, we need to manually synchronise all other folders) and increase in storage size in SAMBA. Anyone have any other ideas on how you would have gone about sharing these MS-Access databases?"

PktLoss asks: "I recently joined the wireless home networking craze, and bought two products, a wireless router and a wireless PCMCIA card. When I just connect normally, I have no problems. The connection is rock solid, decent transfer rates. Im very happy with the purchase. However, for obvious reasons, I would like to enable WEP with 128bit encryption. However, once i do that, the connection goes flaky, dropping after a few moments, or minutes, even when mere feet from the router. Are there problems with stability and WEP? Do certain applications have issues with WEP (I've been disconnected when running nothing but Windows)? Is there anything i can do to resolve this?"

olafo writes "Three recent Forbes articles: Chipping Away, Flexible Flyers and Super-Cheap Supercomputers cite attractive alternatives to traditional Von Neumann computers and microprocessors. One even mentions we're approaching the end of the Von Neumann age and the beginning of a new Reconfigurable computing age. Are we ready?"

_iris writes "I think the subject speaks for itself. Here is the link to the story on KernelTrap." In case you have a spare 32-processor machine munching grass in the back 40.

Fifster asks: "Has anyone noticed any trends in terms of printer quality nowadays? Perhaps it's just me being nostalgic, but I used to have an old HP Deskjet 500 maybe...ten years ago, and it worked for years. Sure, it wasn't colour, and it was noisy and somewhat slow, but it never died. After I decided to retire it and buy a fancy new colour printer with features I don't really need, I've gone through about a printer a year. I finally decided to get a Brother HL-1440 laser printer to avoid the cost of cartridges after my last HP died after I replaced an expensive cartridge. Has anyone else noticed this trend of poorer and poorer quality printers, at least in terms of life expectancy?"

An anonymous reader writes "The 802.16a standard, approved in January of this year, is a wireless metropolitan area network technology that will connect 802.11 hot spots to the Internet and provide a wireless extension to cable and DSL for last mile broadband access. It provides up to 50-kilometers of range and allows users to get broadband connectivity without needing a direct line of sight with the base station. The wireless broadband technology also provides shared data rates up to 70-Mbit/s."

An anonymous reader writes "The "Post-PC" era may be near at hand, according to the findings of a recently completed market study conducted by eTForecasts. The study projects that Windows CE-based devices may outsell Windows-based PCs within 5 years. According to the report, Microsoft has made "tremendous progress" in positioning its Windows CE and derivative operating systems for use in a broad range of handheld and mobile devices such as PDAs and Smartphones, and only embedded Linux is poised to represent a major long-term across-the-board competitor to Microsoft." The Register has another story about the study.

Obnoxio The Clown writes "The Register has an article on breaking technology which will (theoretically) allow roaming between WLAN and GPRS (and presumably 3G when it gets here)." At long last, I'll be able to delete my spam from everywhere!

An anonymous reader writes "VIA has added a hardware random number generator to its Nehemiah C3 CPU. I found a recent review of its security. Interesting how it's done at the instruction level as opposed to the chipset level used by the i810 RNG (also reviewed there)."

Saqib Ali asks: "Nowadays, WebDAV (Web based Distributed Authoring and Version) is becoming very common in large corporations. We are also adopting WebDAV for file sharing. All the major operating systems support WebDAV, however I was wondering if there is any support for WebDAV on PDAs. I think lots of people will be interested in WebDAV support for PDAs. Does anyone know of a WebDAV client for PDAs? Especially for Pocket PCs, since they have Pocket Word and Excel? If not, I would be interested in starting a Open Source project for implementing this. Any good ideas on how/where to start?"

LosManos asks: "A call for help to the Everyday Heroes that are out there: I have just returned from a 4 months scientific expedition to some of the more remote parts of the South Pacific. As soon as people we met found out that I was a computer guy they asked me to help them and all to often I had to reply that I didn't have the tools.This got me thinking; what should a software toolbox consist of? OS, patches, digital books, compilers, sniffers, servers, harddisk restore apps...? Please remember that the computers I met where often old and slow. The answers to this could be interesting also when you are not several days away from nearest inhabited island. I mean, what is it that most often break? How is it usually fixed? Are more fancy solutions more error prone?" If you were to create a "first aid kit" consisting of CDs, disks, books and other technical utilities you have used to resurrect dead systems, what would you put in it?

adelayde writes "You're a wireless network engineer and you work on the run. You need a kit that gives you flexibily yet is light and portable. Style is also important to you. This article (mirrored here) describes just the kit you need, based on modifying the Apple AirPort base station with suggestions for a range of handy antenna attachments and includes component part numbers and prices as well as a complete set of range test results. Just the Jobs for the wireless engineer on the go." Update: 04/08 00:06 GMT by T : Here's another mirror, thanks to the story submitter ;)

simpl3x writes "Symbian is apparently going to open source their Basic-like development language used on the Psion platform. Here is a link via the Register. Interesting things seem to be happening in the mobile space, and although Psion had some very nice technology, they never seemed to get anywhere in the U.S. Any comments on developing for Psion, or Symbian for that matter? I am interested in the development environments people prefer."

PyTHON71 asks: "I've been asked the head of the Wichita State University Anthropology department to help fix his growing biological anthropology collection database. It's currently in Access (insert boo's and hisses), but he is willing to have it developed in a reliable open source format. Now, there are a lot of university departments out there that need to have specialized work done on a small budget. They can't rely on just any developer, because the developer has to know biological anthropology (in this case) as well as MySQL, etc. And since it's not in the Hacker Code to duplicate work that's already been done, I was wondering what specialized database projects are out there & available for general use (not the data, just the structure)."

JeffM2001 writes "InformationWeek is running a story by Fred Langa which gives an overview of the ways to create a true-Legacy-free computer. Finally we can have a PC not based on twenty year old technology." Update: 04/07 17:34 GMT by T : Pages past the first one of this article seem just to loop; here's the printable version, which has the whole article in one go.