Brand: MacNews

In an effort to bolster its finances, EarthLink intends to shift its broadband strategy from a DSL-centric approach to one that focuses more on high-speed cable access, which offers higher profit margins. The company plans on using AOL Time Warner’s cable network, now that the service is available to competing ISPs. The vast majority of EarthLink’s current 406,000 broadband customers use connect via DSL.

Marcel Bresink has released TinkerTool 2.0, a new version of his popular utility for easily “customizing” many aspects of Mac OS X. The new version adds the ability to control the size and placement of the background image, control the position of scrollbar arrows, disable automatic play of audio CDs and VCDs, and more. TinkerTool is freeware.

Sonnet has posted Crescendo/MAXpowr PCI Software 1.1.1, which enables systems that use either Sonnet’s Crescendo or Newer’s MAXpowr PCI upgrades to run Mac OS X 10.1. The software also requires Mac OS 9.1; Sonnet advises against installing Mac OS 9.2.1 on pre-beige G3 Power Macs that have been upgraded.

Corda Technologies today reduced the price of PopChart Xpress, its application for quickly creating Web-ready charts, to US$295. The software generates charts from any spreadsheet application, such as Microsoft Excel, and is capable of producing 508-compliant charts and graphs (for federal Web sites).

Microsoft has announced that Office v. X for Mac is complete and being delivered to manufacturers. The highly anticipated title will ship on November 19 exclusively for Mac OS X 10.1. Office v. X will sell for US$499, with upgrades priced at $299. Additionally, Microsoft announced that more than 90,000 Mac OS X users have downloaded a copy of the free Word X Test Drive.