Cybernet?s DeskBook, i.e. DeskNote

40È/16È/48È CD-RW from Pacific Digital

Cisco to provide Internet access in airports

New Toshiba Satellite — almost a desktop, even with a mouse

ARM to add cryptographic functionality to smartcards

Itanium 2 solutions from Hewlett-Packard

Cybernet?s DeskBook, i.e. DeskNote

DeskBook features a usual, desktop 1.4 GHz to 2.4 GHz Intel Pentium 4 (the cooling system is promised to suffice even for 2.5 GHz CPU), has 15" TFT LCD screen, 10-40 GB hard disk, 128-256 MB DDR SDRAM, CD-RW/DVD combo, 4 USB ports, IEEE 1394 port, S-video jack and 10/100 Mbps Ethernet.

By DeskNote traditions, DeskBook doesn´t have a built-in battery, but can be powered by a portable accumulator or a power supply unit. Again, by DeskNote traditions, DeskBook has the attractive price of up to $1000. So, why complicate the title?

40È/16È/48È CD-RW from Pacific Digital

The package also includes Nero Burning ROM 5.5 from Ahead Software, adapted for high-speed writing/rewriting and enabling to edit music disc contents without track re-recording, and create Video CD compatible MPEGs.

Cisco to provide Internet access in airports

Cisco Mobile Office service includes Aironet Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), Long-Reach Ethernet (LRE), Building Broadband Service Manager (BBSM) software and, of course, Virtual Private Network (VPN). Among Cisco-powered airports are Munich, Ataturk´s airports in Istanbul, which had Cisco Mobile Office equipment added to the construction project back in 1999, and Copenhagen.

New Toshiba Satellite — almost a desktop, even with a mouse

Satellite 1955-S801 bases on 2 GHz Intel Pentium 4, has 16" SXGA display, 512 MB òó2100 SDRAM and 40 GB hard disk. It´s surprising that Satellite 1955-S801 allows to detach the keyboard and has a wireless mouse. This makes it almost a desktop PC: setup the display, position the keyboard, mouse and — voila! Besides, Satellite 1955-S801 features 32 MB GeForce4 440 Go GPU, DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo, three USB ports and one IEEE 1394 port, V.90 modem and 10/100 Mbps Ethernet.

The price of this high-comfort product is high as well — $2500.

ARM to add cryptographic functionality to smartcards

After signing the agreement with SafeNet, ARM gets rights to provide its partners the hardware acceleration of cryptographic tasks. As it´s mainly about mobile devices, most likely, such systems will distantly resemble the high-performance version of the SafeNet core, used in ATM equipment. The SafeNet core, licensed by ARM, has been developed particularly for company´s architecture.

Speaking about smartcards, the market is to change considerably during the next several years, according to Schlumberger smartcard sales department report. Besides releases of new multifunctional and Java cards, Schlumberger forecasts that public-key infrastructure (PKI) will gain dominating importance for 2.5G and 3G networking, authorising applications and enterprise IT-infrastructuring. As PKI requires longer keys for higher security levels, some cryptographic functions will need to be implemented into smartcard itself.

And some words about the SafeNet core itself. SafeNet EIP-25 require about 5 mA and perform one SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) transaction per 100 ms (0.1 s). The chips feature ARM´s Amba AHB Bus.

Itanium 2 solutions from Hewlett-Packard

These are two servers: dual-processor rx2600 and 4-processor rx5670, and two workstations: previously mentioned single-CPU zx2000 and dual-processor zx6000. Product prices are: rx2600 — 1816000 or $15385, rx5670 — 5173000 yen or $43820, zx2000 — 888000 yen or $7500, and zx6000 — 2191000 yen or $18560.

On the photo above, left to right: zx2000, zx6000, rx2600, rx5670. The background shows rackmount versions. The main specifications of zx and rx series are almost similar. zx workstations differ by an AGP slot and FirecGl4/Quadro4 900XGL and similar graphics. At the same time rx servers enable to multi-processor installations.

Workstations feature the proprietary zx1 chipset. HP states that as it has been developed in close cooperation with Intel, workstations should work 15-20% faster than similar solutions from other makers. Well, we shall see what we shall see. Below are processors with heat-sinks and a part of the chipset.

Workstations and servers will work under HP-UX 11i Version 1.6, 64-bit Windows and 64-bit Linux.

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