"The Apple booth staff 'freaked' when I tried to plug my FWDepot Cutie FireWire test drive into the new 17" and 12" PowerBooks with Photoshop, Quake3, and other real world test apps. But I knew you wanted some idea of the performance, right? So since the demo units were connected to the 'Net, I downloaded Xbench beta and ran it on the two new PowerBooks... along with a few others." Take a look at the benchmarks over at Bare Feats.

"Macworld Expo in San Francisco is more than a technology convention. It is a personality litmus test, too. By contrast, Apple inspires rave reviews. And accounts for only 2.3% of the worldwide computer market, according to research firm IDC. The company blazes forth, but few answer the call." Read the editorial at C|Net.

zhopon writes "DesktopLinux.com speaks with Andreas Girardet, Founder of Yoper, a New Zealand-based Linux distribution...Girardet relates the goals of the new company, explains what makes Yoper unique, and his philosophy about the emerging desktop market" You can read the rest at desktoplinux.com.

"The purpose of this series of documents is to introduce, and explain how to build a functioning rewindable desktop. Later, in Part III, we'll get into why you'd want to build one in the first place. For now, its all theory, lacking even a single scrap of code to demonstrate a proof-of-concept model. However, that's not to say it can't be done. Below, you will find (as best as I'm able to describe) the blueprints of how a rewindable desktop can be made. Its surely not the only way, but its the best way I know how to do it after much thought." Read the article at LinuxAndMain.

Microsoft, which is trying to move its software from desktops to people's hands and pockets, on Wednesday unveiled plans for a portable media player and a radio-linked wristwatch. The announcements by Microsoft Chairman and founder Bill Gates come as the world's largest software company mounts a push beyond its existing market stronghold in computer operating systems toward a range of devices such as Tablet PCs, cars, monitors and even exercise bikes.

"What is an embedded device? Is it simply a low-resource 'PC', so all you need is a scaled down Linux and off you go? Not really. In this article, a few thoughts on principal differences will be brought up that may need direct addressing by the embedded Linux community to foster the use of Linux in the embedded market." Read it at LinuxDevices.

Linux Para Todos gladly announces the availability of LPT Desktop for Yellow Dog Linux 2.3. It includes GNOME 2.0.3 desktop envoiroment, plus other goodies like Mozilla-1.2.1 (not Xft), galeon-1.2.7, xmms-1.2.7, pilot-Link-0.11 and GNOME Pilot 0.1.71. Everything in RPM packages available as APT repositories. The whole package list and official announce (in spanish) available at Linux Para Todos.

Ryan Murray posted the news to debian-devel-announce yesterday. After long preparations and tests (and waiting for gcc to compile and work properly on m68k - Robot101) Debian has finally changed the default compiler to gcc 3.2 on all architectures in the Sid branch.

In more Linux consumer electronics news, Computerworld has a short article outlining the latest inroads that the open source OS is making in the already crowded phone-OS space.  NEC Corp. said today that it's working on the development of Linux-based cell phones with MontaVista Software Inc., and an executive of the Sunnyvale, Calif., software company said it's in talks with other major cellular handset makers on similar projects.

Apple is starting to promote its public beta of X11 for OS X: "X11 for Mac OS X offers a complete X Window System implementation for running X11-based applications on Mac OS X. Based on the de facto-standard for X11, the open source XFree86 project, X11 for Mac OS X is compatible, fast and fully integrated with Mac OS X . . . Native Aqua and X11 applications run side by side on the Mac OS X desktop. You can cut and paste between X11 and Aqua windows."

"I've got 1GB of memory in my 867MHz PowerMac. But at 15,500 tracks, iTunes is starting to become difficult (not quite impossible) to use. It hums along fine if I don't touch it. But simply selecting a track can result in 20 seconds of spinning beachball. Editing an ID3 tag can take more than 30 seconds. Dragging tracks to a playlist, same. iPhoto is even worse. At around 800 images, it started to bog down on me." Read Scot Hacker's editorial at OReilly NetWork. The book writer (mostly known for his 'BeOS Bible' book, now a MacOSX convert) finds scalability problems on the famous iApps and suggests these to be fixed before adding new features.

"One of Linux's supposed barriers in high performance computing is the 'eight processor limit.' SGI says their new Altix 3000 line, running a patched 2.4.19 kernel, handily breaks this barrier -- it can run up to 64 Intel Itanium 2 microprocessers -- and that "superclusters" built with SGI's Linux-based products can outperform generic Linux clusters in some applications by a large enough margin to justify their additional cost." Read the full article at NewsForge.

Nintendo has announced that a new Gameboy version will be introduced in March. This version will include a front-lit screen, a rechargeable lithium-Ion battery and opens and closes like a mini-laptop. Since the Gameboy introduction in 1989, there have been over 120 million units sold. Of the most recent version, the Game Boy Advance, almost 12 million units have been sold since its June 2001 debut. Update: Gamespot.com has revealed that they have learned that a blue-colored and black-colored version will be available upon release in Japan on the 14th of February.

"Microsoft announced Tuesday its first-ever licensing fees for use of its media delivery software on non-Windows technology, a move designed to expand its reach in the market for digital media players." Read more at ZDnet.