Handsprings towards a profit

It's that time of the quarter when the big players in IT start posting financial results. Handspring - the maker of Palm-based handhelds - takes its turn and heads towards it's first profit by the year end. While still making a loss, it seems the company had a good Christmas with strong sales and met the expectations of Wall Street. ...more

The PC Pro weekly news roundup

Two companies dominate the news this week: Microsoft and AMD. At the start of the week, Microsoft renewed its attack on open-source software. For the first time, the software giant put a precise figure on the alleged patent infringements - 235. ...more

Phone giants agree enhanced SMS standard

Four of the big mobile telecommunications companies in Europe announced yesterday that they would work together to implement EMS (Enhanced Messaging Service). Alcatel, Ericsson, Motorola and Siemens are the companies involved and they will work together to ensure interoperability between their products and guide the evolution of the EMS standard. EMS will allow users to add images, music and animations to their SMS messages. ...more

IBM applies itself to specialised servers

IBM has weighed into the server appliance market with five new offerings, including two for Web-hosting services. These products come branded under an "e-server appliances" tag. The two Web-hosting appliance servers are the xSeries 135 (for Linux) and the xSeries 130 (for Windows). ...more

HP's double-figure digicam

HP has introduced a digital camera for ?99, including VAT. The Photosmart 120 has a 1megapixel CCD and 4Mb of internal memory on which to store captured JPEG images (up to 12 at best quality of 1,152x864 resolution) or up to 35 seconds of MPEG video. Storage capacity can be increased through the CompactFlash card slot. ...more