What do MS, VMware and Naked Sky have in common?

[Alpine]

Press releases about software

TIME FOR ANOTHER roundup of software releases, with some big names weighing in. MS, Diskkeeper, VMWare and Naked Sky. Of the four, Naked Sky is obviously the one to watch, but we will mention the others for completeness.


So, MS is the biggest, so they go first with the release of Dynamics CRM 3.0, the new version of their Office based CRM package. It basically adds CRM functionality to Outlook and Excel, so it should be familiar to most people. It will be offered in Small Business and Normal versions, with a hosted offering also in the works.



The pricing will only be through Volume Licensing, which means you have to give them permission to audit you on a whim, something I find unacceptable. That said, prices for the Small Business variant start at $440 per user, $528 per server, and $622 and $1,244 for the non-Small version. Both 'include' one year of software assurance, so it looks like this is a per-year price.



Next up we come to VMware, they released the final version of Workstation 5.5 . We told you about this earlier, and I don't think all that much has changed. It looks good though, and well worth a trial download if you are using a VM.



Then moving on, we get to the company that used to be called Executive, but now likes to be called Diskkeeper. It's new release, Diskkeeper 10 has a bunch of new things on top of being a defragmenter that actually works.



The new bits are 64-bit OS support(yay), support for Terrabyte volumes for NAS/SAN use, and a smarter background monitor to defrag when you will hopefully notice it least. There is also a new Professional Premier Edition.

The most intersting technology is called Intelligent File Access Acceleration Sequencing Technology, or I-FAAST. What it does is look at how you use the files on the HD and optimizes for that rather than alphabetically or other static methods. It could be one of the first breakthoughs in defragging in a long time. You can read all about it here.



Last up, we get to by far the most important company, Naked Sky. A while back, we told you about their new demo/game called Robohordes. It was early, but neat, and plays like the SmashTV game I have in my dining room. Now they are coming out with RoboBlitz, a much deeper but less arcade oriented version of Robohordes.

The game is built on the Unreal Engine 3 and uses the Ageia PhysX engine, so it should be, and from what I have played, is, solid on the physics front. It will be out for the XBox Live Arcade this spring. I just wish they would put out RoboHordes also, we need more arcade games. The site is all flash and PDF so no direct links.

The INQuirer