Customers can configure their own Dell machines in selected OfficeWorks stores – but Ubuntu Linux is not on offer yet.

Dell’s retail partnership with OfficeWorks to deliver its range desktop PCs and laptops will offer Australian customers the chance to configure their own Dell machine’s in selected OfficeWorks stores — but Ubuntu Linux will not be on offer just yet.

A select number of OfficeWorks stores will have staff on hand to assist customers in configuring their own machines, using its build-to-order facilities.

“With our consumer range, we don’t have Linux as an option here in Australia,” said Evan Williams, Dell general manager of consumer sales and marketing for South Asia. Read more…

In the computer world’s equivalent of “The Amazing Race,” three rival teams of computer researchers are working on new types of software needed to better use computer chips that can process many tasks at the same time.

Stanford University and six computer and chip makers plan to announce Friday the creation of the Pervasive Parallelism Lab. Besides Stanford, the backers are Sun Microsystems, Advanced Micro Devices, Nvidia, I.B.M., Hewlett-Packard and Intel. Read more…

For a long time now, there has been an ongoing effort to fundamentally change the process of how we get things done on our computers. For the most part, if you want to get something done, you purchase a specific piece of software that’s designed to do it. Want to write a letter or document for example? You buy a word processing application such as Microsoft Word. Want to edit photographic images that you took using your digital camera or scanned in with your flatbed scanner? You buy a high-ticket application such as Adobe’s Photoshop if you’re a professional editor. Or if you just want to do some basic editing with the option of doing some of the more sophisticated stuff automatically without having to crack a manual, you may buy the less-expensive, consumer-orientated Photoshop Elements.

But more and more, we’re seeing these applications going online. Now I’m not talking about going online and downloading the software although that really is an added convenience these days. It certainly beats having to drive down to the local computer store where you may or may not find exactly what want. Read more…

You are concerned about spam and viruses? You ain’t seen nothing yet, believe researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC): A next phase of more sophisticated viruses may not only exist in software, but may be deeply embedded in hardware, or what the scientists describe as ““malicious circuits”.

The good thing about all malware out there is that there are to protect your PC from an infection. Should your PC get infected, you can get rid of viruses, worms, Trojan horses, rootkits in a relatively comfortable way and hopefully without having to suffer too much damage. Hiding and finding malware has been a cat-and-mouse-game between spammers/virus authors and security software companies for several years and both sides have created an industry that is estimated to generate billions of dollars not only for malware detection products, but for spammers and virus authors as well. Read more…

Now the back and forth about the existence of Psystar and their Apple Mac Clone is over. We already reported about Open Computers showing up at customers. Now Engadget published a hands-on review with performance comparisons of the Psystar Open Computer to other Apple computers.

The review of the Open Computer shows that it is extremely loud as the fans are not controlled, the graphics performance of the NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT kills onboard graphics of Apple’s hardware and the overall performance is ok, especially for the very low price ($399 + OS X) of the Open Computer compared to Apple’s offering. Read more…

AS IF computer viruses and worms aren’t enough of a nuisance, malicious hardware, which will be much more difficult to detect, could soon become a threat too.

Today, computer viruses, which are programs downloaded either as an email attachment or when someone visits a website, are responsible for most computer attacks. Hackers use them to gain control of a computer so that they can press-gang it into sending spam or downloading more malicious software, such as a keystroke logger, which can record credit card details and passwords typed in by the user. Read more…