Vista's Security Honeymoon Is Over
by Alex Woodie

After skipping the month of March and issuing an emergency out-of-band patch last week to address a spreading security threat that affected Windows Vista, things returned to normal yesterday when Microsoft issued six security fixes as part of its regular Patch Tuesday cycle. However, the news was not good for Windows Vista, which received another patch for a zero-day remote execution vulnerability--the second such patch in as many weeks, and a strong indication that Vista's security honeymoon is over. READ MORE >

'Longhorn' Nears the Gate
by Alex Woodie

Microsoft inched closer to releasing Windows Server "Longhorn" last week when it issued the April Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the new operating system. The April CTP, which introduces new features designed to streamline the set up and administration of the operating system, should be the final private build before Longhorn becomes available for public testing with Beta 3. READ MORE >

AMD Pushes Opteron Clocks to 3 GHz, Will Miss Q1 Revenue Targets
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

With Intel coming on pretty strong with its "Clovertown" Xeon 5300 processors and Advanced Micro Devices having to get to June or July before it gets its own quad-core "Barcelona" Opteron chips out the door, the company has to do something to make its Opterons appealing. To that end, AMD has pushed up the clock speeds on the dual-core Rev F Opterons to 3 GHz to compete better in the dual-core X64 chip space. READ MORE >

X4 Chipset from IBM Tuned for Tigerton Quad Core Xeon MPs
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Server maker IBM is prepping its fourth generation of chipsets for creating scalable SMP servers out of Intel's Xeon MP processors. The X4 chipset, which according to Jay Bretzmann, marketing manager for high-end System x servers at Big Blue, does not have a code name, has features that make it suitable for multicore processors with very large memories. READ MORE >