Neowin.net

After Intel's recent announcement that it changed its server processor roadmaps which pushed new features into the future or cancelled them entirely, some are questioning the chip giant's strategy.

Intel has delayed volume shipments of its first dual core Itanium 2 server class processor, codenamed Montecito, from Q1 2006 to Q2. When it does finally appear, it will be missing two key enhancements that were initially promised. Power management technology known as Foxton will now be excluded from the processors, and consequently, the bus speed of 667MHz which was initially planned would now overheat the processor. As a result of the delays, Montecito successors Montvale and Tukwila have been pushed to 2007 and 2008 respectively.

Intel had aimed to get to the point where Itanium and Xeon classes could share chipsets and interconnects, resulting in cheaper Itanium servers. This initiative has apparently been scrapped, which doesn't help the Itanium's future. Both Dell and IBM have dropped support for it, but in Intel's favor Itanium design partner HP has announced a new series of blade servers containing Itanium processors.

AMD has made gains server market over the past few years, and these setbacks will not help Intel regain lost market share. It will be interesting to see what Intel has up its sleeve.

News source: Techworld.com

SharpMT 3.0 offers:

• Save drafts locally - save entries that you're working on to your local hard drive
  
• One button posting - send any of your drafts to the server with one button click
  
• Edit multiple drafts simultaneously - a tabbed interface allows multiple drafts to be open at the same time
  
• Multiple categories per post - select more than one category for each draft published to the server
  
• Standard tag support - add bold, italics, underline, and URL tags via tool bar, menu, or keyboard
  
• Shell checking support - built in spell checking module underlines misspelled words in red
  
• Download existing posts - download the title and entry of existing blog enties from your server and store it on your hard drive for linking and editing
  
• Edit server-based posts - download server-based entries, edit them, and then upload the changes to the server
  
• Sync-able links list - advanced download techniques will always minimize data request for new published posts
  
• Sync-able categories list - pull an updated category list from your server at anytime
  
• Sync-able text filters list - apply existing server based text filters for drafts
  
• MT specific creation - use MT's extended fields, such as publishing status, categories, and excerpts
  
• Integrated Preview - built in Previewing allows you to view your drafts based on an HTML template
  
• Upload Images - upload any of your local images to anywhere within your blog
  
• RSS Aggregator integration - start new Blog entries from the most popular RSS Aggregator applications
  
• MP3 Player integration - add "now playing" information into Drafts with WMP9's blogging plug-in
  
• Favorites integration - list of Favorites from IE available as insertable links
  
• Customizable tag support - change the tags generated for bold, underline, italics and ten custom tags
  
• Customizable toolbar images - change the look of SharpMT by changing two images
  
• Shell integration - double-clicking a draft file will open it in a SharpMT window
  
• Bookmarklet support - any URL that starts with sharpmt:// will be inserted into a new blog draft
  
• Updated UI - using the minimizing, docking and floating window suppose of .NET 2.0 for a modern interface
  
• Help system - a standard Windows based help system with comprehensive and detailed documentation
  
• Extendable interface - developers can add their own Plug-In by supporting the ISharpMTExtension
  

SharpMT is Donation-ware and requires the 2.0 version of the .NET Framework to run on a Windows-based PC.