Real halves price of music downloads and launches Freedom of Choice campaign

Real Networks has halved the price of downloads from its online store in an attempt to grab some of Apple's dominant market share. For a limited period, Real's US-only store will charge 49 cents per song and $4.99 for most albums. ...more

Microsoft opens the Vista upgrade path

Ahead of the consumer launch of Vista, on 30 January, Microsoft is trying three new ways to encourage people down the upgrade path. As well as making Windows Vista and the 2007 Office release available for direct download, there will be the chance to automatically upgrade editions, for example from Vista Home Premium to Vista Ultimate. Finally, there is also a time-limited offer - aimed at multi-PC households - enabling cheaper multiple purchases of Vista for those who buy a boxed retail copy. ...more

US tech companies bid to annul wireless patent

Some of the world's biggest technology companies have joined together defeat a key patent claimed by Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The companies include Microsoft, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Apple and Netgear. At issue is a patent issued in the US to CSIRO in 1996 that, the organisation claims, increases the speed of a wireless network up to five times. ...more

Novell launches a Linux desktop for enterprises

Novell had made its first foray into desktops for the enterprise. The news brings Novell in line with Sun and Red Hat. Sun, with its SUSE-based client, has already reached version two, while Red Hat entered the arena last May, following several months without a standalone product at all. ...more

SGI fires back response to SCO

SGI has made a public reply to SCO over the ongoing Linux controversy, with an open letter from its VP of Software, Rich Altmaier. In the communication, addressed to the 'Linux community', Altmaier states that the attitude of SCO is 'completely misplaced'. In particular, this is in reference to the handling of SGI's XFS journalling filesystem, which was made open source but which SCO alleges contains Unix System V code. ...more