It's been an ongoing story about 3Com and its PalmPilot division. The question, of course, has been what to do with it. Just a few months ago, we covered their original plan for spinning off the division, but now it looks like they are actually putting the plan in motion and we should see an IPO in about six months.

Doug Muth asks: "Does anyone have any suggestions for a specific brand of tape drive I should purchase to use under Linux? SCSI tape drives are expensive (plus they require you to get a SCSI adapeter), so I've been looking at some IDE TR-4 tape drives. However, according Red Hat's Hardware Compatibility List, while IDE tape drives are "compatible", Red Hat does not support them." Anyone willing to pass along some helpful suggestions and/or more informaiton on the Red Hat/TR-4 issue?

ghoti writes "IBM has developed a 200 ppi LCD. This is an interesting development, since you can put much more information into the same space - and keep it readable as well. And fonts would look a lot better, too ... So finally, those 32 MB graphics cards will become mainstream ..." Is 200 ppi worth it? It definitely would make anti-aliasing fonts under X less of a priority ;)

Willlie writes "www.gamersdepot.com has a story where they rip the Gigadrive up. This puppy is loaded, some of its features include: a 20GB Seagate Barracuda, a DHCP server, and a print server. The best thing is that it runs Red Hat! I know what I want for Christmas." Looks like it'd make a nice little server for a small non-gaming network, too.

Pete Brubaker writes "PCExtremist.com is running a story about some clever individuals that figured out how to layer data on a CDROM to achieve storage capacities 200 times over conventional CDROM's. Thats more than 30 times the capacity of a double sided, double layer DVD. "

James Green directs us to "a Sunday Age (Melborne) article which describes the discovery of a 52 year old computer found in a dusty warehouse weighing in at 2,000 kilograms. Attempts are underway to get the CSIRAC up and running as a museum piece next year." They say it uses 30 kilowatts per hour; I think they mean 30 kilowatt-hours per hour.

Anonymous Coward writes "Replacements for the rodent on your desktop are regularly being introduced. Here's yet another pointing device for you. A pen connected via radio to your PC. Movement is tracked by measuring the rolling of a small ball at the tip of the pen. This means it works on any surface. Take a look here. No Linux drivers yet, and I'll wait for the USB version. But I like the idea of a pen."

sp1n writes "Our mail server has hit a major disk bottleneck, and we're considering a RAID 5 solution. We're a local ISP with 13,000 users that's been around since 1993. The mail server is a Sun UltraSparc 2 w/ 768M ram, a 10000rpm 9 gig for mail storage, a 7200rpm 7 gig for spool, and another for system mountpoints, all on a u2w bus, and it's running exim. It reaches a load of 10 on a daily basis, and hits around 20 once a week. The spool and mail storage drives are cranking away constantly. Requirements are: external RAID controller, scaleability, speed, and a rackmount case for the controller & drives." Sound intriguing? If you've ever wanted to learn a bit about RAID, then hit the link below.

KrisJon writes "Redherring has some info on Transmeta's pending announcement of its product line." It comments about Torvald's keynote today (and it says he won't spill the beans, but that The Transmeta Website should update and actually contain content tonight). Update by RM: as of 9 p.m. EST there was new content on Transmeta's Web site. Not much, but more than it had before. Read the HTML for the secret message.

diane wrote to us about the latest joint press release: Sony and Palm are going to be teaming up, to make "Wireless Music, Video Devices." Palm will also start to use Sony's memory stick format as part of the deal, a response to the pressure from Handspring's devices. Diane also noted that this makes Sony one of the first Windows' licensees to go with the PalmOS over WinCE, another sign that WinCE is in some troubled waters.

tyen writes "I have accumulated a bevy of computers, and need to ditch all the monitors/room heaters on them save one. A KVM switch is the ideal way to do this, except every brand I have encountered working at a client site faced reliability problems. Anyone out there using a KVM switch they are pleased with? "

Hautis asks: "I read somewhere that it should be possible to use huge, old fixed-sync monitors with any (*vga) video card under Linux, once you tell XFree86 the exact sync ranges or whatever values it needs. I happen to have a couple of old VAXen, that is, VAXstations, lying around in my family's cellar. 19 inch mono and RGB tubes, fixed sync. What kind of cables would I need (I can solder well enough)? Would I be able to use text modes also, would a frame buffer beneeded for this? What about (S)VGAlib? Can I have two graphics adapters, one conn't to my crappy old 15-inch and one to the huge ancient particle accelerator? Or should I switch between the displays when I want to use X? Will I get a cancer for staying up nights surrounded by 80's display technology?"

Stickster asks: "What is the deal with Linux's ability to exchange information with the new Handspring Visor (Deluxe)? I realize that there is the USB/serial cradle hardware question which will affect people depending on their boxen, but right now Handspring says only WinPC/Mac can do things like HotSync. Isn't the PalmPilot connectivity solution set for Linux pretty well-developed at this point? And how does that bode for the Visor?"

TheDoc asks: "Does anyone know if drivers exist for Silitek's remote input devices? Specifically their SM-1000 IR remote (w/ pointing device), which is one of the best remotes I've used (under Windows). Silitek is listed as an IRDA member but I don't see anything in the kernel that I think would work. Suggestions anyone? "

thppt writes "PalmStation is reporting that a company called OSK Inc has ported Linux to the Palm hardware platform; they're dubbing it as a kind of "LinuxCE". They have some screenshots of bootup, running apps, telnetting to the Palm, connecting to the Palm's web server, and multitasking. " They've actually got a WindStone ROM Image for evaluation on their web site. I haven't tried to download it yet, but has anyone else tried this?

terrified writes "A Norwegian company called Screen Media is advertising a new product, called the Freepad, on their website. Apparently it is a Linux-based portable device with wireless technology, letting you roam about 300m from its "base station." This thing looks quite promising, but unfortunately there's next to nothing in the way of information on their website. " Its a tablet style machine does look pretty excellent, but its tough to make out much more.

BiLlCaT asks: "I am looking to buy a nice set of speakers for my PC in my new office. I want something that will sound excellent, yet maintain a small package. I am also looking to get the most "bang" for my buck. I have two scenerios to pose; one, where i have $250 to spend and the other, i have $500 to spend. Any ideas? "

gjt writes "Finally. The death of of the ISA slot is near. Red Herring is running a story on the Legacy Free PC. Plug all of your mice, keyboards, joysticks, modems, etc. into the Universal Serial Bus. Compaq is releasing a computer called the Vista which will do just that. Yes, Apple did that over a year ago with the iMac and PCI based G3 and G4. Of course, if you're like me, you'd want to build your own box. Asus makes legacy free "PC 99" compliant motherboards. I wonder if this means more IRQ numbers. And what's the state of USB and Firewire support in Linux?" Suddenly USB is everywhere. Will it take hold? A lot of PC manufacturers sure seem to think so.

Manuka asks: "Does anyone know of a good system that is reasonably rugged, about the same size and dimesions as a notebook, only with a touchscreen panel facing outwards, rather than inwards (keyboard optional)? The ability to run Linux would be ideal! I've had a helluva time finding anything like this, the closest I've come is the NemaLITE system from Laversab, which is beefy, 10 lbs, and more than twice what I'm willing to pay for something like this. It does not need to be excessively powerful, as it will be running a basic database application. "

A reader wrote to us with Sharky's review of the ATi Rage Fury MAXX. Besides simply being a mouthful of words to say whenever you want to refer to your video card, it's also being setup to go head-to-head with the nVidia GeForce 256. According to benchmarks in the review, it's a really good match.