Stories by InfoWorld staff

1999 Product of the Year: Guidelines

The InfoWorld Test Center annually chooses the finest enterprise technologies and solutions for its Product of the Year awards. To be considered for an award, a product must meet two requirements.

The Bug Report

Microsoft: If you are running Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4 or Service Pack 5 on a multiple processor computer, you may not switch over smoothly to daylight saving time. Microsoft officials say a lag of three hours or so may occur. The problem has been fixed in Service Pack 6, although if you don't want to install the whole service pack, Microsoft has made the solution available as part of the BIOSfix hot-fix. You can get this for Intel machines at ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-public/fixes/usa/NT40/hotfixespostSP5/Y2K/BIOS3-fix/Biosfixi.exe. For Alpha computers, go to ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-public/fixes/usa/NT40/hotfixes-postSP5/Y2K/BIOS3-fix/Biosfixa.exe.

3Com boosts Gigabit Ethernet

At its Networks3 user conference last week, 3Com took the wraps off a three-phase integration plan for migrating to a Gigabit Ethernet over copper. According to company officials, the 1000 Base-T implementation plan will increase Gigabit Ethernet over copper speeds by a factor of 10, without the need for rewiring.

The Bug Report

Sun-Netscape Alliance: Netscape Enterprise Server 3.6 Service Pack 3 plugs two memory leaks. One of them was in the browse-tree functionality, and the other was a file descriptor leak. The Service Pack 3 fixes the bug where ssl-GatherData would return an incorrect value.

The Bug Report - Security patches for Linux and Exchange

Microsoft Corp. has issued a patch file for its Exchange Server 5.5. It plugs a hole that could let a hacker use the server to perform mail relaying, if the server is set up as a gateway via the Internet Messaging Service.
Red Hat Software has released a security advisory with Samba 2.0.5a for Red Hat Linux 6.0.

Voice, Data Integration to Surge

The number of large U.S. companies with networks that integrate voice and data services will grow from current levels of 27 percent to 48 percent in the next 12 months, according to International Data Corp.

Microsoft pulls ahead of Netscape in browsers

Microsoft's Internet Explorer has pulled ahead in the Web browser race, according to WebSideStory a company specialising in Internet traffic analysis, traffic building, and user trends.

CA Extends Its Services Plans with LDA Buy

Computer Associates this week announced it is continuing its aggressive acquisition strategy in the services arena with the purchase of LDA Systems, an information management consulting company that specializes in client/server, mainframe, midrange, and Internet technologies.

High-End Server Market Still Has Legs

According to a report released by International Data Corp. (IDC), in Framingham, Massachusetts,the top four high-end server vendors in 1997 were IBM Corp., Fujitsu, Hitachi, and NEC, and all lost significant market share.

[]