At first glance, The VAR Guy was underwhelmed by Dell’s decision to offer Sun Solaris on selected servers. But after an hour of digesting the news — and his lunch — The VAR Guy thinks this deal is a rare triple play for Dell, Sun and customers.

During his keynote address at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco, Sun chief executive Jonathan Schwartz unveiled Sun xVM, the company's new open virtualisation and management platform.

Wal-Mart officials said Wednesday that the retailer plans to re-stock a hot selling, Linux-based PC that is currently sold out on its Web site. The Everex TC2502 Green gPC will again be available at Walmart.com "in the coming weeks," said a spokesman for the company.

British open source advocates will be boosted by the news that German support vendor Credativ is expanding its open source center (OSSC) to support all distributions of Linux in the U.K.

What does a marketing guru with a passion for the South Seas and a penchant for entrepreneurship do? He launches an e-commerce site that sells noni juice, custom surfboards, and island-inspired home accessories, of course.

As IP telephony gains acceptance in the SMB market, it's not likely to be the products of mainstream IP PBX vendors that lead the change. Open source software, some say, may be the mechanism whereby IP telephony vendors bring affordable, reliable, and innovative products into the largely untapped—and highly cost-conscious—small-business arena.

This turns what might otherwise be a bog-standard Windows PC into open source's first major assault on the most massive PC mass-market of them all: Wal-Mart shoppers that even Everex identifies as "unsophisticated."
But is it any good? The technology stork just dropped this baby at the door, so let's take a look!