Ashlee Vance

Despite strong resistance in some quarters to its merger with Compaq Computer Corp., a senior Hewlett-Packard Co. official said Wednesday that the merger preparations will continue as planned, and that they expect to secure enough shareholder support to push the deal through.

Sun Microsystems Inc. executives took on a more optimistic tone Thursday with regard to hardware sales in the company's second fiscal quarter and announced new developments in its server and storage lines, during a conference call with press and analysts.

Sun Microsystems Inc. has decided to join the blade server fray, but users should not get too excited just yet because the company will not deliver a product until the later part of next year.

The city of San Francisco on Monday quashed some of the warm, fuzzy feelings associated with the Linux operating system when it reached a settlement with IBM Corp. that will have the vendor pay US$120,000 to compensate the city for damages caused by a "guerrilla" marketing campaign centered around Linux.

A slow economy may have put the squeeze on IT budgets, but many users at the Comdex Fall trade show last week were still in a buying mood, on the lookout for storage, wireless technology and Microsoft Corp.'s recently released Windows XP operating system.

LeftHand Networks added to the ever-growing storage alphabet soup with the release of its first NUS (Network Unified Storage) product that combines qualities found in DAS, SAN and NAS servers.

Sun Microsystems Inc. upped the processor speeds on its midrange server line Monday, hoping to offer users more computing power to handle complex applications.

Compaq Computer Corp. will offer users its own high-end storage box instead of IBM Corp.'s popular Shark Enterprise Storage System, as the two companies part ways on a reseller agreement.