Project Management

On par with a trip to the dentist's office, IT budgeting tends to rank fairly low on any CIO's list of favorite activities.

As shipped, the Windows Vista Firewall offers little outbound protection, and it's not clear how such protection can be configured to protect against spyware, Trojans and bots.

Windows Vista's powerful new graphics engine is engendering complaints from a key segment of potential early adopters: hardcore gamers. A small but significant number of games written for Windows XP either crash or creep along slowly on Vista, according to numerous complaints by game enthusiasts in online forums.

You can't institutionalize innovation but the credit card industry seems to be coming close. Dramatic tech innovations are "rolling like thunder through [the] industry," to quote a MasterCard executive.

IBM's has launched Open Client Offering, a software package that allows companies to deploy and use the same multi-platform applications on the operating system of their choice.

Shiny, new Windows Vista beckons, and an upgrade is mighty tempting. But before you take the plunge, be aware you may end up forking out a lot more money than just the cost of an operating system upgrade.

Now surgery from a distance may become a more pervasive reality thanks to a touch-simulation toolkit created by a Canadian software firm.

Money talks. That's why mobile phone advertising has become such an irresistible topic.