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The kind of hardware you buy can have a profound effect on the success of your business, but choosing among the available options is now tougher than ever. The advent of inexpensive, binary-compatible 64-bit processors has introduced a new facet to the decision-making process. The "early adoption" phase is over, and affordable 64-bit computers are stampeding toward businesses of all kinds. Should you stay 32-bit or go 64-bit? In as non-technical a manner as possible, here is a crash course on 64-bit hardware, the software that runs on it, and how it affects performance.

Google has improved its Google Video service by eliminating the need for users to download software to play back videos, the California-based company announced Monday.

Is Google becoming the bully that whisperers say it is? The question has come up again since Microsoft announced a major reorganization into three main business divisions, largely in order to be more nimble about innovating and delivering software over the Internet. Naturally, a big part of Microsoft's reaction is due to the growth of open source software, thanks to the ease with which the Internet fosters a community to work on code from far-flung locales.

Dell has added multicore technology to its single-core dual-socket servers and workstations, the company announced Monday. Dell claims the new systems provide a maximum improvement in performance of 53 percent compared with the single-core, dual-socket machines they supersede. Multicore computing is the placing together of two or more CPUs (central processing units) onto a single piece of silicon as a way to both cut costs and lower thermal emissions. Since processor-intensive tasks can be handled separately, multicore chips can also help improve the performance of multithreaded applications.

OPEN-source software has been infiltrating the business world for 10 years, surfacing first as an alternative operating system for web servers and then growing into an array of tools and applications. Starting out as something of interest to computer programmers and engineers only, the concept is capturing the attention of business executives, keen to put its benefits to commercial use.

Hardware-assisted tools vendor American Arium says its principal firmware engineer, John Overton, will speak on debugging Linux on ARM targets, at the ARM Developer's Conference next week in San Jose. Overton's talk will cover Linux bring-up, as well as debugging Linux, drivers, and bootloaders.

Last month, Chinese Red Flag Software, Japanese Miracle Linux, and South Korean HaanSoft jointly released the GNU/Linux-based operating system Asianux 2.0. The three companies will package and sell Asianux 2.0 under their individual brand names.

As Australia's scientific community convenes this week to assess the latest trends in computing-based research, the Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC) announced it has fully completed deployment of its 1,680-processor supercomputer from Silicon Graphics (NYSE:SGI) .

Can Google change the world of instant messaging? With last month's launch of Google Talk, in a first beta version, it is going to try....

Each new release of Fedora Core brings with it new possibilities. Red Hat Enterprise and Fedora Core 4: The Complete Reference by Richard Petersen makes a special effort to incorporate the latest developments of Fedora Core as well as Linux in general. Critical changes have taken place with device management (udev and HAL) and software access, as well as new capabilities like GFS (Global File System). We caught up with Richard to talk about his view of Fedora Core 4. Some standard concerns still remain, and there is the ever present competition with that other OS.

Embedded software developers put Baskin-Robbins to shame when it comes to dishing up a large variety of operating systems flavors. The swirl of Linux permutations alone puts a rocky road in front of those seeking a smooth ride for reuse and modularity of device code.

A former lead interface developer of Internet Explorer posts a fascinating confession about "Why I switched to Firefox," in which he admits his allegiance to Firefox.

The Java programming language is powerful, but it has significant limitations for lightweight development. For certain problems, other programming languages such as Ruby may lead to better productivity. This article shows you what's important for productivity in an application's language.

A slow start of the past week was followed by much activity during the weekend, with a new KNOPPIX live CD and DVD, an updated Ubuntu Colony CD set, and a number of other interesting development and final releases (but still no Mandriva 2006

Microsoft recently lost an opportunity to improve its relations with the Chinese government after Chinese President Hu Jintao's trip to the United States was postponed. Instead, the company found itself in court, hearing an executive who defected to its biggest rival disparage Microsoft's record in China.

How difficult is it for a Linux user to migrate to Windows? Not bad if you're good at playing video games.

Peter van der Linden's Guide to Linux: A Lesson in Encryption, Part 3

Yaakov Menken, CEO of Capalon Internet Solutions of Baltimore, spent the last month of summer setting up an open source-based call center, called Contact Loved Ones, for families separated by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Currently, over 100,000 registered open source projects are on SourceForge.net, and you've never heard of most of them. While the great majority of projects remain in obscurity, some have turned into successful businesses and made the transition to mainstream. Maria Winslow looks at some of the features of this new breed of business.