Royal unveils $299 Linux/Microwindows based PDA at CES, Jan 08, 2002

Royal Consumer Information Products unveiled a new Linux-powered PDA today at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, NV. Royal's new "Lin@x" PDA sports a full-color graphic LCD display and is based on a 206MHz Intel StrongARM processor with 16MB of Flash ROM and 32MB of system RAM. This latest Linux-based PDA is expected to hit store shelves by mid-2002 and be priced at $299.

A judge ordered SuSE to halt new software distribution in Germany because of a copyright infringement claim over a program called Krayon, which is bundled on SuSE Linux CDs

A report by the Chinese Academy of Sciences pointed out that if all government organisations adopted Microsoft's products, the government would have to shell out US$21.7 billion over the next five years.

But if homegrown Linux systems and software were used, the total cost would wither down to just US$1.96 billion.

More importantly, the report warned that Microsoft's operating system features a 'back-door' security flaw which rendered the system vulnerable to hackers.

This reportedly aroused the concern of the State Council, or China's Cabinet, and contributed to Microsoft's failed bid.

Microsoft is also looking to attack the perception that Linux is free, Valentine added. The company commissioned a report from analyst firm D.H. Brown Associates on server consolidation. That report will be available for distribution to Microsoft customers. IBM is proposing that enterprises consolidate applications from multiple servers on mainframes running Linux, Valentine noted.

Valentine emphasized that Microsoft will take a more aggressive role in beating Linux--and any vendors that supports it. "I want you to know just how seriously we're taking Linux here in Redmond. ... We have the best d*mn sales force in the world backed by the best engineers in the world--of course we will take any non-Windows OS serious," Valentine wrote. "Linux is out there in some of your accounts and you may not know it. The ground up nature of how Linux is introduced into our accounts means that we need to modify our traditional approaches of finding out about Linux in our customer base. We have to be more hands-on and dig deeper in your accounts."

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