If you're looking to transition from Windows to Linux but your users are not technically inclined you may want to evaluate Linux XP Desktop 2008. Linux XP tries to emulate the look and feel of Microsoft Windows. The goal being to make the transition to Linux easier for those used to Microsoft like operating systems.

Powering and cooling data centers has always been one of the main challenges associated with data center operations. Businesses must have clean, reliable, steady, cost effective, and increasingly more “green” power solutions. New on-site generation systems such as microturbine technology may be the answer to the upcoming energy crisis we will soon be facing.

IBM has unveiled a new supercomputer called Hydro-Cluster that uses water to cool down the device and reduce energy consumption. IBM claims that data centers using Hydro-Cluster supercomputers can reduce their energy consumption by 40 percent and use 80 percent less cooling. They estimate that water can be up to 4,000-times more effective in cooling computer systems than air.

A new survey from Forrester Research asked 50,000 large enterprise employees which browser they use on a daily basis. They found that over the course of 2007, Internet Explorer's overall market share in the enterprise decreased by 10%. During that same period they saw Firefox's share almost doubled from 9.8% to 18%.

The survey also showed that most companies are using the 6-year-old Internet Explorer 6. Only 23.4% of companies officially used IE7 as their standard browser.

Dell may soon go the way of the Dodo bird. All the signs are there. Some of their recent announcements are setting off warning signals.

These include:
1) Announcements of additional job cuts (5,600 more jobs in addition to the 3,200 already announced).

The NYTimes had an interesting article discussing some of the reasons why we can still find old technologies like the mainframe still kicking around in many business environment.

The CEO of Red Hat at the recent Open Source Business Conference claimed that open source technologies are benefiting from the unpopularity of the US. He suggests that people are resentful of sending billions of dollars back to the U.S. in "intellectual property" taxes. He claims that he's talked to governments like China and Russia and they are very keen on deploying technologies that are not tied to any IP laws of the US.

A survey from Symantec and Applied Research-West reported by Baseline show that younger workers (those born after 1980) pose a greater risk to corporate networks because of their tendency to want to run almost any device and install almost any software on their work machines.

Voltaic Systems Inc. will be releasing a solar-powered laptop bag that will charge laptops carried inside. The company already sells solar-powered bags that carry and charge cell phones, MP3 players and PDAs. This new bag called the "Generator" and will be the first bag designed to charge laptops.

You can bet that Apple wants to move the iphone into the corporate world to compete with the likes of Research in Motion. Their ambitions don't stop there. They now see an opportunity to enter the much sought after world of enterprise computing. They should consider the iphone their "trojan horse" into the corporate IT world.

A survey of IT workers from Computing Technology Industry Association (CTIA) and Rasmussen Reports, taken in early March, shows Obama and McCain at a statistical tie, with each receiving 39 percent of the vote, and Hillary Clinton trailing at 13 percent.

The survey also shows that 35 percent of IT workers report themselves as Republicans while 26 percent call themselves Democrats, and 40 percent chose no party. Over 75 percent of IT workers classify themselves in the conservative-moderate political spectrum.

CIOinsight.com published 12 ways to earn higher IT salaries. Really the title should read "How to Increase Any Salary in any Industry" because the suggestions outlined could be applied to almost any industry.

The list includes the following (I've added my own commentary to all of the bullet items):

1 Work for a Larger Company. Larger comanies (>$1B in revenue) consistently pay more than smaller companies.

An interesting article in the Wall Street journal tries to outline some reasons as to why most business executives fail to see the value of IT within an organization.

IT has been proven to provide numerous competitive advantages within the business world. Companies like UPS, FedEx, Netflix, Amazon, Google to name a few have differentiated themselves through innovative uses of information technology.

Outsourcing IT functions to overseas countries like India seemed to be all the rage just a few years ago. A lot of hype was put into justifying outsourcing strategies for IT. The lure of cheap labor overseas helped fuel the fire.