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IT News: Wireless LAN, Ethernet Hit Growth Spurts

Plus, new laptops for the road warrior, an Exchange hosting service and IT records retention products.

Someday, wired LANs will seem as old as dial-up Internet. A recent study by Infonetics Research predicts that by 2010, 85 percent of all North American organizations will have hopped on the WLAN bandwagon, compared to just 56 percent in 2005. The study cites two major reasons for the jump: employee demand and businesses' increasing reliance on wireless mobility.

Even so, growth in the "wired" kind of networking -- specifically, metro Ethernet equipment -- hasn't gone unnoticed by Infonetics' radar. The research company expects worldwide sales to balloon from $5 billion last year to $15 billion by 2009, with carrier-class switches and routers leading the charge. http://www.info.infonetics.com

New Products: StepNote NC1500, Alienware, Iron Mountain, More
The world's most energy-efficient notebook? That's what VIA Technologies and Everex Systems are calling their new joint offering: the StepNote NC1500 notebook, which runs on just 12W at peak power. Retailing for $498 at Wal-Mart, the NC1500 uses the VIA C7-M processor, which the companies say increases the computer's battery life by as much as 20 percent. Other features include a 15.4-inch display with DiamondBrite technology, built-in DVD burner and wireless LAN card. http://www.everex.com/nc1500/

Also claiming its own notebook landmark is computer manufacturer Alienware, which now equips its Aurora m9700 and Aurora mALX notebooks with up to 400GB in hard drive capacity. Customers can configure these notebooks with either one or two 200GB hard drives, the latter translating into enough space for roughly 67 games, 100 feature-length movies and 100,000 songs. http://www.alienware.com/200GBPR

Retention Center, a new Web-based records-retention program due for general availability in the first quarter of 2007, is in the works for Iron Mountain. Designed to help companies comply with evolving federal laws on records retention, the Retention Center will help make pinpointing where specific information has been stored and managing retention schedules easier, the company says.

In that same vein, Iron Mountain announced that it will collaborate with Microsoft to equip companies upgrading to Office 2007 with records-management solutions. The company expects to provide Office 2007 customers with and access to Iron Mountain's consulting services to help them create a records-management program they can implement through SharePoint Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2007. http://www.ironmountain.com

Integration between Windows and Unix/Linux servers just got cheaper, according to MKS Inc. The company has just released the MKS X/Server which, at $199 for a single user license, costs less than half the price of Hummingbird Exceed, MKS says. Even switching servers will cost less than usual; the company has implemented a "Premiere Replacement Program" to save companies money if they decide to swap their current PC X server for an MKS X/Server. The MKS X/Server features cut-and-paste capability between Unix/Linux and Windows apps, color matching and built-in SSH with secure tunneling. http://www.mkssoftware.com

Here's something for Microsoft partners: ThinOffice, Ceryx's hosted Exchange services suite. Developed with Microsoft Canada, ThinOffice lets partners offer customers an HMC-based messaging solution, messaging services like Active Sync and Blackberry Enterprise Server, and the ThinOffice Customer Centre, a Web-based administration application where users can do all their major mailbox management. http://www.thinoffice.com/partner-programs.html

Alt-N technologies has a new anti-virus tool for users of the MDaemon e-mail server with SecurityPlus, now featuring Recurrent Pattern Detection from Kaspersky Lab and Outbreak Protection from Commtouch. SecurityPlus compares the e-mail message patterns of MDaemon users with other patterns collected from live Internet e-mail traffic. Based on this analysis, SecurityPlus can catch zero-hour outbreaks within minutes, the company says. http://www.altn.com/SecurityPlus

For creative professionals up to their ears in audio editing, Adobe's Soundbooth is now available as a free, downloadable beta. Compatible with both Intel-based Macintosh computers and Windows-based PCs, Soundbooth features tight integration with Macromedia Flash to let you clean up background noise from recordings, polish voiceovers and add customized music and effects to an existing audio file. http://labs.adobe.com/soundbooth

About the Author

Gladys Rama (@GladysRama3) is the editorial director of Converge360.

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