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OS/2 redo on tap?; Microsoft bolsters Windows HPC

Barbara Darrow, Senior News Director
IT channel news in brief for April 12, 2010

OS/2 redo?

OS/2 may be nearly gone, but the operating system is not forgotten. There are rumblings that some folks within IBM want the computing giant to revive the 20-year old client-server operating system

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by layering OS/2 services atop Linux much the way Novell layered NetWare services atop Linux to create its Open Enterprise Server.

The question is why?

Microsoft makes Windows HPC more Linux aware

Microsoft knows Windows lags Linux in supercomputing environments. By a lot. That's one reason the new Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 sports a "hybrid" option so Linux users can run Windows without disposing of their tried-and-true OS. Users can run Windows and Linux on a cluster at the same time or switch back and forth between Linux and Windows nodes.

Windows Azure pricier than expected

Developers aren't finding the Microsoft Azure cloud environment as price effective as they'd hoped. Many are pleased with the features and functions, publicly available since February, but find that estimating bandwidth cost is tricky for big users and that overall fees are too steep for SMB clients.

On a Microsoft-sponsored forum, the top request was to make running very small services on Windows Azure less expensive. The second most popular appeal was for a free developer version.

Check out last week's IT channel news in brief.


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