News In Brief

Product Pipeline

Disposable Junk Mail:If you're tired of spam but frustrated by cumbersome filter-based junk-mail fighters, try using a throwaway address the next time you're asked for an e-mail address online. ClicVU's $10-per-month Spamex Disposable Email Address Service lets you create disposable e-mail addresses (DEAs) that forward messages to your real e-mail address. If your DEA is harvested by a spammer, you can identify the source and then turn off that address. A 30-day trial is free; a one-year subscription costs $10.

Rugged and Wireless:Designed for true road warriors, Itronix's GoBook II laptop integrates support for up to three wireless networks concurrently. Its die-cast magnesium housing can withstand rain, snow, wind, dust, fire, shock, vibration, and chemical exposure. Shipping in early 2003 with a 1.7-GHz Pentium 4 processor, the GoBook II supports 802.11b, Bluetooth, and wireless WAN technologies. The notebook also has a durable outdoor touch screen, a NiteVue keyboard, and a scary suggested retail price of $4495.

Better Web E-Mail: Web-based e-mail providers such as Hotmail and Yahoo provide their service free, but you must view ads when you access your in-box. Start-up Kobo.biz bets that you'll willingly pay $40 a year for an ad-free Web e-mail account that is easy to navigate. You can share 50MB of storage among up to five addresses, and if your in-box fills up, the service will float you a 25MB loan to prevent incoming messages from bouncing.

Tablet PC Moving Day: Nobody enjoys moving data to a new PC, and jumping from a desktop or notebook to a new tablet PC could be even more of a hassle. Early adopters looking for an easier way should check out Mobile Automation's Mobile Migration Manager. The software lets you migrate user profile data, documents, and PC settings wirelessly, making the switch to a Tablet PC as painless as possible.

Did You Know?

Despite the continuing struggles of the PC industry, sales of computers to the public sector--schools in particular--reached an all-time high of 2.78 million units in the third quarter of 2002. That's a whopping 20.9 percent increase over the same quarter in the year 2001.

Source: IDC

According to a recent survey, about 65 percent of Net users spend 10 minutes or more a day dealing with e-mail spam. About 37 percent of respondents get 100 junk messages a day, and 63 percent get 50 or more.

Source: Symantec and Insightexpress

Tidbyte

Gateway's Grid: To put its nearly 8000 networked PCs to work, the cow-loving PC builder is now selling grid-computing services. By tapping the unused processing power of the PCs in its retail stores, Gateway offers customers the supercomputer-level powers required by complex life-science and financial services companies.

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1. Ad-aware 5.83, 872KB. Rid your computer of advertising spyware by installing and running this freeware utility.
   
   
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3. Sygate Personal Firewall 5.0 Build 1150, 5.1MB. Secure your sensitive files from invaders striking from both inside and outside your network.
   
   
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5. FreeRAM XP 1.22, 517KB. Is your PC acting sluggish? Free up RAM with this tool.