This has been dubbed as the biggest gmail deployment to date.  The New South Wales Department of Education & Training will dump the Microsoft Outlook/Exchange Duo for gmail as their email platform.  This is not the first move by educational institutions switching away from Microsoft products to the more streamlined Gmail platform.  Macquarie University in Sydney did the same thing in Sept 2007.  Five US colleges have adopted Google Appes and several others in Ireland, Israel, and Japan.

Hosted applications has been creeping up over the past few years.  Quite possibly becoming the transition between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0.  Web 2.5 anyone?

Microsoft’s Outlook/Exchange product suite package is a very important revenue stream for the giant.  These are big blows to their bottom line and just compounds how much of a threat Google is to their software arsenel.  It also shows the disgust of Microsoft’s licensing platforms.  If an alternative solution that cuts the expenses by at least 2 or 3 fold then Microsoft seriously has to revamp their business model.

Great news for compulsive masterbaters and porn addicts!  According to search company’s statistics, there’s been a sharp increase in porn that’s viewable on the iPhone.  Now with 3G technology users will be able to get multimedia faster and probably stream movies right off the Internet onto the touch screen.  I use the phrase “touch screen” loosely as I’m sure programmers will find a way to make interactive naughty apps.  Apple has said that it will be a cold day in hell before they allow any adult-related applications on the iPhone app store but so what?  You can also install your own.

I find this bit of news humorous.  It’s no longer a surprise when a company will announce they’re very skeptical about transitioning their systems over to Vista.  But according to the Inquirer, there was an internal memo circulating that said Intel will not use Windows Vista in any of their internal corporate computers.  Now what is even more interesting is that Intel has full access to Vista’s source code and may even know it better than Microsoft since the operating systems need to work fully with Intel’s processors.  Does Intel know something more in-depth about the operating system than meets the eye?

What will Intel use for their own computers?  The other two options are Linux and Mac OS.  Microsoft’s Windows 7 is still about 1.5 years away from release and even with that Intel is not holding their breath.  Was this a wise decision by Intel leaving Microsoft out in the cold?  Time will tell.  As they say, the bigger they are the harder they fall.

Nvidia rolled out its next generation 200 series GPU’s today.  The GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280.  These GPU’s are fabricated on a 65nm process that uses 1.4 billion transistors.  Nvidia claims that the new GPU’s average a 1.5x performance boost over GeFrorce 8 or 9 GPU series.

Now these numbers may be impressive but I can only imagine what the power consumption on these beasts will be.  The rest of the world is trying to be more conservative in terms of reducing dependency on oil and becoming more ‘green’ friendly but these units will definitely drive the electricity bill up.  Nvidia should push into the 45-55nm process arena like ATI to reduce the additional power overhead.

HP’s VoodooPC sister company has announced the Envy 133.  Debuted as just 1.75cm thick compared to the Apple MacBook Air’s 1.90cm thickness.  The Envy 133 will be available to market on June 20th of this year and will become the worlds thinnest consumer based notebook PC on the market.  Sporting a 13.3″  1280 x 800 LED back-lit screen with an ExpressCard 34 slot, 80GB 4200RPM Hard Drive, and an HDMI port.  Apparently the unit also comes with a USB 2.0 port and a combo eSATA/USB 2.0 connector but appear to be integrated on the AC adapter.  The AC adapter port also seems to be flexible and has the ability to addon a multi-format DVD writer.  Additionally, the Envy 133 has Bluetooth and 802.11n built-in.  The battery that comes with this unit seems to only have a battery life of 3h 45m compared to the Apple MacBook Air claimed 5 hours.  Still, this is not a bad alternative to the MacBook Air.  They could try to tweak a better battery life into the next revision.  Maybe switch over to a solid state hard drive to conserve power.  Needless to say, at least it has a removable battery, unlike the MacBook Air!

The rumors have been manifesting throughout the blogworld about an upcoming Dell Inspiron “Mini”due out later this summer.  We can only assume this model would fight the Asus Eee for market share in the ultra portable segment.  Judging by the picture’s at Gizmodoit appears the unit will have an 8-10″ wide screen display.  Although Dell has been tight-lipped about any specifications or even acknowledgement that this unit even exists, most likely it’ll sport the new low powered chips from Intel.  The Intel Atom along with Windows XP would be especially ripe considering Microsoft’s Windows XP extension for portable computers and licensing.