Monday, September 18, 2000		Latest in IT world

THE virus scare has hit the handheld/palm top users with the discovery of a Trojan horse for the palm tops. This was released in an Internet chat room for palm top developers last week. Its discovery has made anti-virus companies busy for finding out a solution to the new threat. Since Trojan Horse is not considered harmful, so its discovery has not rung warning bells among the users but has opened up a new market for the anti-virus companies. Symantec Corporation, one of the biggest anti-virus companies, has released a beta version of the anti-virus programme on its site for downloading, which consumes only 12-kb of memory of the handheld device. Other anti-virus companies, like McAfee and Trend Micro, have also launched their anti-virus products, but stays on the computer and not on palm tops.

Hewlett-Packard, the computer giant, has now bounced back to take on Sun Micro system and IBM with its new superdome computer for the Unix server environment. The company is launching 32-processor version of superdome computer, which is supposed to be one of the most powerful in its category. HP has also announced the launch the 64-processor version superdome in the coming months. This is HP’s effort to get back its share in the Unix server market, from Sun Micro System and IBM.

IBM has developed a computer programme and incorporated it on a chip, which can move Internet data faster on a computer. This chip will actually categorise the data on the basis of its importance and will facilitate the more important data to move faster. This chip, called PowerNP, contains the "bandwidth allocation technology’’ software and is used in switches and routers used in computer networks, which connects with the Internet.

The WAP fever is catching on fast as the world’s top cellular phone maker Nokia said that it is planning a new product called Media Terminal, aimed for home users. This product will be based on Linux and use digital broadcasting to give access to the Internet by using home display device. This is likely to be launched by middle of next year. Using this product, one can shop online, do banking transactions and watch digital TV through Internet, besides recording programs on the hard disk. It will also enable the user to send and receive e-mails and connect printers and digital cameras with it.