Mobile carriers expect network strain on Inauguration Day

As American citizens countdown to President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration today at 12 p.m., wireless networks have made an unusual request for the estimated 2 million people that will descend on the National Mall to watch the historic event. They have asked that inauguration-goers limit their phone calls and delay sending photos.

Despite having spent millions of dollars to temporarily upgrade their networks in Washington, mobile phone carriers are worried that a spike in data transmission will overwhelm their towers. Radios have been added to towers already in place, and network-equipped trucks costing hundreds of thousands of dollars have been placed in Washington to ease the potential overload.

Sprint Nextel has been preparing its network since April to sustain 10 to 15 times the number of users it normally expects. AT&T Mobility is spending US$4 million on upgrades that have added 80 percent capacity to its 3G network and 69 percent capacity to its 2G network. [via New York Times]

Antivirus Firms Release Windows 7 Previews to Public

Microsoft's new AV program is the same price now as when it will be released -- free

Microsoft sent waves through the security community when it announced that it was going to be offering free antivirus software for Windows Vista and Windows 7 by the end of 2009.  Built around Microsoft's Live OneCare's internals, the new antivirus program essentially repackages this previous iteration, while trimming some luxury features like hard drive utilities and major network support.

However, the antivirus makers are not going down without a fight.  While it may be hard to beat free, that's exactly what the biggest names in the security software industry hope to do.

Three companies -- Kaspersky Lab, AVG Internet Security, and Symantec -- all have released versions of their upcoming Windows 7 software for public preview, in order to show the progress of their efforts and lure potential customers.  Symantec released a 3.0 beta of the upcoming Norton 360, AVG released a full basic version of its AVG Anti-virus built around Microsoft's OS beta, and Kaspersky is offering a technical preview of Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows 7.

Windows communications manager Brandon LeBlanc said that Microsoft has a healthy relationship with these firms stating, "Microsoft has been actively working with security partners to help them get their applications ready for Windows 7.  Three security developers have taken the build we released to developers in October and have developed solutions available today that work with Windows 7 Beta."

While Microsoft wants to make its own antivirus software the best in the business, it’s also very concerned with supporting third party software makers.  For one thing, Microsoft's upcoming free AV suite will be poorly suited for a large scale business environment, necessitating third parties.  Secondly, consumers want variety, particularly when many have their own strong opinions about security.

Microsoft wants to reverse what happened with Windows Vista's release.  When Vista was released, there was little antivirus software available, and what there was tended to be very poor.  This in turn gave the OS perhaps an unduly bad reputation on security, when in reality the base of Vista was much more secure than its predecessor Windows XP.  Some major AV companies like Symantec had no Vista product at launch, and Symantec for some time refused to use Vista.

Indeed, Microsoft does seem to be turning the corner on this issue, though, and convincing AV developers that Windows 7 is worthwhile.  And Microsoft is definitely in need of it.  While its expanded business base of the Xbox 360, internet offerings, Zune, peripherals, and more is relatively strong, its position of its core OS business is the weakest that it’s been in a long time.  In November Windows market share, for the first time in years, dipped beneath 90 percent, according to Net Applications.  Fortunately for Microsoft, the early buzz around Windows 7 seems enormous.

Source : http://www.dailytech.com/

Chip giant whips out low-power quad-core CPUs

Intel has rolled out some new CPUs and cut the prices of old ones.

The chip giant's desktop product list now includes the Core 2 Quad Q9550s, Q9400s and Q8200s. The suffix indicates they're all low-power version of existing quad-core chips, each sporting a reduced TDP of 65W, down from 95W.

Clocked at, respectively, 2.83GHz, 2.66GHz and 2.33GHz, the CPUs all sit on a 1333MHz frontside bus. They contain 12MB, 6MB and 4MB of L2 cache, and are priced at $369, $320 and $245 when ordered in batches of 1000.

The price cuts - of between 16 per cent and 40 per cent - take the 95W Core 2 Quads down to below those prices, leaving us in the unusual situation of a 3GHz Q9650 costing less than a slower, lower-model-number part, the Q9550s.

Intel also introduced the 2.93GHz Core 2 Duo E7500 - 3MB L2, 1066MHz FSB, $133 - and the 2.8GHz Pentium Dual Core E5400 - 2MB L2, 800MHz FSB, $84.

Both the Core 2 Duo and the Pentium Dual Core lines also experience downward price adjustments, of up to 15 per cent and 24 per cent, respectively. ®

Source : http://www.channelregister.co.uk/