Revamped Power Mac G4s support OS9

Amid all the excitement - if that's the right word - surrounding last week's unveiling of the new Power Mac G5, changes to the Power Mac G4 line-up have gone unnoticed. Apple has pared the range down from four to three machines and made all the machines capable of booting into both Mac OS 9 and X. It has also changed certain aspects of the spec, dropping both FireWire 800 and the SuperDrive options. ...more

EU regs force Apple to pull products

Apple will stop European sales of several products at the end of this week in order to comply with the EU's Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment (RoHS) directive, AppleInsider reports. The website says that the iSight, AirPort Base Station With Modem, AirPort Base Station Power Over Ethernet and Antenna, iPod shuffle External Battery Pack and the eMac will be discontinued. All are said to contain banned substances such as lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium and brominated flame retardants. ...more

Kenwood's Keg shrinks music collection to 79g

If you like your gadgets small, take note of the matchbox-sized Media Keg HD10GB7, which is claimed to be the world's smallest disk-drive-based MP3 player. Kenwood's 10GB hard drive, which is being sold for ?399, measures (h x w x d) 44 mm x 62 mm x 17 mm. (Compare and contrast with Apple's flash memory-based iPod shuffle, which measures 27mm x 41 x 10. ...more

Multivision: administrator appointed

Following the news last week that Multivision Computers had ceased trading, we can now confirm that the Birmingham High Court has appointed insolvency practitioner West Midlands-based Griffin and King as administrator. It's believed huge debts forced Multivision to close and as yet no third party has offered to bail the company out or buy its assets. It's still not clear what will happen to warranty holders or those awaiting new machines but customers are still being advised to write to Multivision's business address at 49-53 High Street, Halesowen, West Midlands B63 3BG. ...more

Spyware becomes pandemic in the US

Spyware - the software that surreptitiously monitors your computer and Internet activity - has become pandemic in the US, according to a survey by US ISP Earthlink and Webroot, with an average of 28 instances per PC on more than a million machines scanned. 'Over the past three months, EarthLink and Webroot found more than 29.5 million instances of spyware. ...more