Archimedes emulator Arculator has been updated to version 2.1 with some very nice new features. The emulator can now emulate an A4 laptop or the A500 prototype and can also emulate more podules, including the Aleph One 386 and 486 podule, meaning you can now run DOS and Windows in the emulator.
 
Other podules now supported include Acorn ROM podules, MIDI podules, Oak SCSI interfaces and Computer Concepts' ColourCard. Support for disc images in the .hfe format is also now included.
 
  
 
Head over to the Arculator website to download the new version.
 

Last week saw this year's annual Consumer Electronics Show go down in Las Vegas. The world's largest consumer technology tradeshow, it's traditionally a source for many product announcements from the major manufacturers. This year there was a lot of focus on 3D TVs, e-readers, and, most importantly for us, next-generation ARM-powered goodies.

 
 

Back at the start of this month I decided to take a break from debugging some code and have a quick de-stressing blast on Team Fortress 2. As I loaded the Steam client, the "updates" window popped up what seemed to be a bargain - Fallout 3, half price just for that weekend! That'll be fun, thinks I, and cheap too!
 
It really didn't turn out that way.
 

Last week saw this year's annual Computex Taipei computer trade show go down in Taiwan. The second largest computer trade show in the world, it's traditionally a source for many product announcements from the major manufacturers. Most of the time these announcements are of x86-based products, but this year it was ARM's turn to take center stage, delivering on last year's announcement that ARM were to make a big push into the netbook market. Although none of the products listed here are in stores at the moment, all announcements point towards a good number of them being made available before the year is out.

 
 

Vista is great, isn't it?
 
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
 
(Insert disclaimer here about how we're not going to become one of those sites that just links to other places etc. etc.)
 

Recently there has been a lot of discussion on the Grapevine mailing list about lack of recent releases of the 3 in 1 MSN, ICQ and IRC client.

One user commented "Personally I would love to see more of the ICQ protocol's functionality added. I would also prefer Grapevine to feel more "RISC OSy" and I think in this respect, as others have suggested, lessons can be learnt from the very elegantly designed "MSNMessenger" by Philip Hardy (http://www.phardy.karoo.net/MSNMess/). The current design and icon set of Grapevine is, quite frankly, ugly."

Other users also commented on the ugly design of the toolbar icons and smileys as-well as the ease of use of the application. Alan Wrigley, developer of Grapevine said that in response to the comments on oversized toolbar icons that duplicate the window's menu, "This is quite normal for RISC OS applications."

Also, Microsofts MSN client has moved on substantionally in terms of features compared to Grapevine.

We got in touch with Andrew Rawnsley from R-Comp who explained that "development is pretty expensive since the author is salaried (probably one of the few remaining salaried RISC OS developers!)"

As most Grapevine users know "R-Comp have an unreleased 2.05
version with a few enhancements", but ICQ problems have prevented this from release. He informed us that although development is currently slow it is not stagnant.

R-Comp are currently deciding what to do next: "Do we add another protocol (eg. AOL or Skype) or do we add bells and whistles to the MSN support. How important really ARE pictures and additional texts? I guess some of it could be added quite quickly."
 

Xara have announced plans to open source their new graphics package, Xara Xtreme. Xara, previously known as Computer Concepts, were the original developers of Impression and Artworks, now maintained by X-Ample and MW Software.

CEO Charles Moir (pictured) said "We're going to a place that Microsoft and Adobe cannot go. The Open Source world is the acknowledged largest threat to established giants such as Microsoft. We felt it was necessary for us to shake up the graphics world a bit, and making one of the most powerful, easiest to use graphics applications Open Source should do the trick."

Xara Xtreme is available now for Windows, and Linux and Mac versions are in the works. In the press release, Moir namechecks Acorn, saying "We used to develop for alternative platforms, such as the Acorn RISC computer in the 1990s, and so fundamentally Xara Xtreme is based on a cross-platform core." Is it time for Xara to return to its roots?

Links
Press release
xaraxtreme.org
 

C|NET have a rather amusing article about a company that has an 80% monopoly in just one of its chosen fields, and yet "doesn't give people the willies the same way behemoths like Microsoft or Intel do". The company in question is, of course, ARM - the chipmaker started by Acorn.

Apparently, after a deal with Sony Ericsson, ARM have an 80% share of the mobile phone market, and 40% of the digital camera market, and are still looking to expand. 788 million ARM chips were shipped last year, and yet "[y]ou'd be hard pressed to find anyone spouting "ARM is evil! EVIL!!!" in a chat room". The reasons given for ARM's "benign reputation" are apparently due to "the company is British, which tends to give their actions a genteel gloss" and "England is a perennial underdog in the IT world"

If you want to read more about Japanese ARM-powered toilets and the like, give the link below a swift clicking.

Source: C|NET article