Tuesday, 24 June 2008 3:17 PM
Taken from the Australian IT website
ONLY laptop suppliers will be eligible to
jostle for $56 million worth of NSW government funds as part of the
national schools PC program, leaving desktop and thin client suppliers
lamenting.
NSW has decided to supply high school students solely with laptops due to their portability and features.
"The portability of laptops provides students with flexible learning
options," a state Department of Education and Training spokesperson
said.
Independent and Catholic schools in NSW would receive $4.8 million and $13.8 million, respectively.
"The department intends to release a call for expressions of
interest with detailed requirements for a specialist educational
laptop."
The tender would be made available once negotiations with the commonwealth had been finalised, the spokesperson said.
The funds have been allocated on paper but the Iemma Government and
other state governments are said to be concerned about the operating
costs of managing and maintaining the computers.
Among the main points raised with federal Education Minister Julia
Gillard is who will pick up the tab for electricity, software
licensing, security and technical support.
The department, like its counterparts in other states, is using its bulk-buying power to negotiate better rates from suppliers.
"If individual schools bought computers off the shelf they would pay at least double the price," the spokesperson said.
"The department's solution ensures schools of an integrated system
with the best educational outcome and the best value for the
investment."
Industry heavyweight Intel and laptop manufacturer Asus welcomed
NSW's plan. Intel Australia chief Philip Cronin said the Government had
made the right decision, as laptops consumed far less energy than
desktops.
"With laptops you can get a 50 per cent reduction in power
consumption," Mr Cronin said. "I'm not at all surprised that NSW has
chosen this path."
He said laptops would eventually replace textbooks as more curriculum went online.
Several schools in NSW, Victoria and Queensland have been testing a
low-cost, rugged and colourful ultra-portable PC, dubbed Classmate,
designed by Intel and assembled by local vendor Optima, since late last
year.
The Classmate PC trials incorporate Intel's global teacher-training
program, which aims to educate teachers in how to use information
technology to meet curriculum requirements.
Asus Australia also has a few of its popular Eee PC sub-notebooks on trial in Queensland.
Asus business development manager Michael Serdiuk said the feedback
had been positive, but NSW's decision to embrace laptops was a massive
boon.
"We built the Eee PC for the education market so we'll be very keen to partake in the tender process," Mr Serdiuk said.
When the $500 Eee PC was launched it only ran on Linux but the
company has since added a Windows flavour to the mix, which would
please large Microsoft users such as the NSW education department.
"The ultra-low form factor of laptops and sub-notebooks is more
favourable than desktops. Space is a premium, so that would be an
immediate saving," Mr Serdiuk said.
Virtualisation specialist VMware, whose software powers thin clients, was unfazed by the department's decision.
VMware was banking on thin clients supplied by partner Sun
Microsystems to impress government officials, but local head Paul
Harapin said state governments would ultimately opt for a mix of
laptops, desktops and thin clients.
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Tuesday, 24 June 2008 3:08 PM
Taken from the Australian IT website
GOOGLE has edged out some of the biggest brands in the
enterprise IT services market to pick up another major contract win in
Australia's education sector.
Google partner SMS Management and Technology has emerged as the leading
bidder to supply the NSW Department of Education with 1.5 million
student email services using a customised version of the search giant's
Gmail service, Acting NSW Minister for Education and Training John
Hatzistergos said.
"This commitment is a further demonstration of the NSW Labor
Government's commitment to equip teachers and students with the best
possible means to compete successfully in the constantly evolving world
of information technology," he said.
NSW education department chief information officer Stephen Wilson
said the department was yet to finalise its contract with SMS but
confirmed that it had lodged the winning bid.
SMS will be the prime contractor alongside Google and Telstra to fulfil the contract, valued at $9.5 million over three years.
The department rejected bids from Hewlett-Packard, Telstra
subsidiary Kaz, and incumbent provider Unisys, to award the contract to
SMS.
It's understood that the contract will be one the largest private deployments of Gmail in the world.
The win is Google's second major victory in the academic sector
after Macquarie University signed up for Gmail in September last year.
It could have massive implications for the Australian software market,
as it places Gmail's online word processing software, Google Docs, in a
strong position to challenge Microsoft's Office software suite in the
education sector.
Mr Wilson said the agency had no plans to switch on Google's online word processing software at this stage.
"We haven't made any decision there. This contract was just email," Mr Wilson said.
SMS chief executive Tom Stianos said the trend towards providing software as a service was "unstoppable".
However, the Gmail deployment at Macquarie University hasn't been without controversy.
Gmail is hosted offshore and the university chose not to extend the
service to staff due to concerns that it would generate excessive
bandwidth bills retrieving messages.
The education department's Gmail roll-out will increase current
email storage allocated to students by a multiple of 170 times from
35MB to 6GB.
The department is also deploying extra security filtering, which will be carried out locally.
"You have to remember we're the largest consumer of internet traffic in NSW by a long way.
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Monday, 23 June 2008 11:48 AM
Taken from the Nvidia Website.
Imagine instead of taking over five hours to convert a video for your iPod, it only takes 35 minutesi.
Imagine using your PC to simulate protein folding to help find a cure
for debilitating diseases. Imagine that your PC can dramatically
accelerate everyday tasks, and deliver an exciting visual experience in
the process. Today that imagination becomes a reality now that the
leader in visual computing technologies, NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA), has
introduced its new family of GeForce® GTX 200 graphics processors
(GPUs)-which includes the GeForce GTX 280 and GeForce GTX 260
GPUs-taking graphics beyond gaming and gaming beyond anything that's
ever been possible before on a consumer computing platform.
"The advances NVIDIA continues to make in visual computing are simply
incredible, and we are excited to be one of the first companies in the
world to offer the technology in the new Exhilaration Edition of the
award-winning HP Blackbird 002," said Rahul Sood, chief technology
officer, HP Voodoo Business Unit. "Exceptional graphics quality and
performance is important to our customers, and now the GeForce GTX 200
GPUs are bringing something else into the mix. By using the GPU to
enhance everyday applications such as video encoding and manipulating
photos, HP Blackbird 002 is one of the most cutting-edge PC platforms
ever designed."
Graphics Beyond Gaming
One of the most powerful processors in
the PC is the GPU. Rendering 3D images in real-time is just about the
most mathematically intensive task your PC will ever undertake, but
it's not the only one. As PC applications become increasingly visual,
many ordinary tasks will benefit from the graphics horsepower provided
by the GPU, including encoding and playing high-definition videos,
editing photos, getting driving directions off the Internet, or simply
running a new operating system like Windows Vista.
"Millions of users around the world know how time consuming it is to
convert their home videos for use on video sharing sites such as
YouTube or for downloading to popular media players such as the iPod,"
said Sam Blackman, CEO of Elemental Technologies. "Elemental has
developed the BadaBOOM™ Media Converter, a consumer video application
scheduled for release in August. By taking advantage of the massively
parallel, general-purpose computing architecture of a GeForce GPU, we
are able to transcode high-quality video 18 times faster than with
CPU-only implementations. This unprecedented performance scaling is the
reason why we have made sure that our RapiHDTM Video Platform takes
advantage of NVIDIA GPUs."
By recognizing that the value of a GPU transcends gaming, an increasing
number of applications are also being written that use the GPU for
straight, non-graphical computational tasks. For example, Stanford
University's distributed computing computational program Folding@Home,
combines the computing horsepower of millions of consumer GPUs to
simulate protein folding to help find cures for diseases such as
Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. With the computing processing power of the
GeForce GTX family, applications such as Folding@Home and others can
run upwards of 140 times faster on an NVIDIA general-purpose parallel
processor than on some of today's traditional CPUs.
Gaming That's Beyond
The CUDA general-purpose parallel processing mode will usher in a new
generation of ultra realistic games. Developers can use the
supercomputing power of the "CUDA Computing" mode to simulate
realistic, physically accurate effects then render beautiful images
using the "GeForce GPU" mode. NVIDIA GPUs are also the only ones to
support PhysX™ technology, the world's most pervasive physics engine
that is already delivering dynamic 3D realism to more than 140 games
across multiple platforms, and is being used by more than 25,000
developers worldwide. With PhysX, developers can incorporate effects
such as rigid body dynamics, collision detection, and cloth simulation
that dramatically change the way the games are played and how the
on-screen stories unfold, and then accelerate those effects using the
processing power of the GPU.
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Monday, 16 June 2008 9:12 AM
Toshiba's New 1.8-inch HDD Achieves 160GB, the Industry's Largest*1 Storage Capacity for Drive with a Serial ATA Interface
Taken from the Toshiba website.
Toshiba Corporation today announced a new line-up of 1.8-inch hard
disk drives (HDD) adopting a serial ATA interface, including the
industry's first*1 drive of this type with a capacity of 160 gigabytes.
The new 160GB drive, MK1617GSG, and an 80GB drive, MK8017GSG, will
enter mass production in August.
Toshiba's new 1.8-inch HDDs
boost interface speed to 1.5Gbps and offer a rotation speed of 5,400
rpm, faster than the current generation of Toshiba 1.8-inch HDD
(MK1214GAH, parallel ATA, 120GB). By realizing the industry's first
160GB 1.8-inch drive with a serial ATA interface, Toshiba assures that
mobile PCs will be able to meet the most demanding user needs.
The new MK1617GSG drive is more environmentally efficient than
Toshiba's current MK1216GSG (120GB) model, and raises energy
consumption efficiency, as defined under the Japanese legal standard,
to 0.00281W/GB, a 25% improvement. The drive improves the maximum
internal data transfer rate by approximately 17%, and supports faster
data access in reading and writing that enhances overall performance.
Alongside Toshiba's 1.8-inch HDD of 80GB and 120GB serial ATA interface
drives already in the market, the new drives will provide product
manufacturers with a broad line-up that supports diverse applications.
The new drives will also contribute to achievement of environmentally
conscious products in full compliance with the EU's RoHS directive*2.
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