Brand: MacNews

Intel today announced its AnyPoint Wireless II Network family of 802.11b products. The AnyPoint system represents a departure from the HomeRF standard that Intel has been pushing as a less expensive, wireless consumer networking solution. Products, which are for PCs but compatible with AirPort and other 802.11b-based products, include a PC card (US$129) and USB model ($149).

Sonnet has posted PCI OS X Installer 1.0.3, which corrects an issue with the upgrade driver installation not being completed on some Power Computing PowerWave, UMAX J700 and S900 computers. If users have successfully installed a previous version of the driver, there is no need to install the update.

The O’Reilly Network has added several new software titles to its Mac Open Source Directory, a listing of open-source Mac software.

The final Serial ATA hard drive standard, which supports transfer speeds up to 600MB/sec, will be announced today at the Intel Developer Forum. The standard is seen as a successor to the current ATA/100 standard, which supports transfer speeds up to 100MB/sec. Seagate will demonstrate a prototype Serial ATA drive, and expects to begin manufacturing drives that feature the standard by next year.

Think Computer Products today announced its Fire-n-Ice and Fire-n-Ice To-Go FireWire hard drives. Fire-n-Ice is a full-height, external FireWire hard drive available in 40GB (US$280), 60GB ($340), and 75GB ($415) capacities, while Fire-n-Ice To-Go are mobile, bus-powered FireWire drives available in 20GB ($259), 30GB ($370), and 48GB ($629) capacities. At the time of this posting, Think’s Web site was down.