IBM Offers System i Blade Deal, Nixes i5 550 in Upgrade Deal
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The fourth quarter is now well under way, and if there is one thing that is surprising right now, it is the dearth of special deals from IBM to help bolster sales of the System i. IBM likes to close the year on a high note, and the fourth quarter has often been a very good one for the AS/400, iSeries, and System i family of machines. In no small measure thanks to wheeling and dealing by IBM and its reseller channel, which pushes the vast majority of System i machinery. READ MORE >

IBM Tweaks BladeCenter S for the Office, Preps Power6 Blades
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Back in June, IBM previewed a blade server chassis aimed at moving blades from the data centers of the world's largest organizations, who have been trying to cram as much computing power as they can in as small a space as possible, to small and medium businesses, who want integrated systems that fit in a closet, in a corner, or under a desk. The BladeCenter S was IBM's initial foray, and now that Hewlett-Packard has announced its 'Shorty' BladeSystem c3000 chassis, IBM has rejiggered the BladeCenter S chassis to better compete in the SMB space. READ MORE >

Growing Businesses, Upgrades Drive IT Hiring in Q4
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Fears of recession subsided last week thanks to a mediocre jobs report from the U.S. Labor Department that said employers added 110,000 jobs in September and 89,000 jobs in August, despite a slowdown in the construction and manufacturing sectors and jitters in the stock and mortgage markets. People were cheered last week--particularly on Wall Street--because jobs grew even though the economy seems to be slowing down a bit. So far, if surveys by Robert Half Technology are any indication, IT managers are still optimistic about the hiring they planned to do in the remaining three months of 2007. READ MORE >

As I See It: Great Looking Genes
by Victor Rozek

Ever since we began to understand the pivotal role of biology in behavior, the nature-or-nurture debate has been raging between proponents of the 'hard' and 'soft' sciences. Why are some people pleasant and some not? Why are certain co-workers more helpful than others? Alternately, why do some people delight in punishing and behaving cruelly? Are such traits an outgrowth of character; or are they inherited? Is it chance, luck, parenting, the mysterious workings of a deity; or is it the output of the human operating system we call genetics. As science unravels the complexities of the genome, we're confirming what many already suspected--that the guy in the next cubicle just may be a hardwired jerk. READ MORE >