Brand: MacNews

A c|net article takes a comprehensive look at FireWire and its position in the market. Despite competition from USB 2.0, FireWire has been able to establish a strong following among both PC and peripheral makers. Also, Texas Instruments today will demonstrate 1394b, the next version of FireWire that can operate at twice the speed of the current technology.

Adobe has announced Acrobat Approval 5.0, an extension of its Acrobat product line that allows customers to easily deploy PDF form solutions. eForms created using Acrobat 5.0 can be distributed to any number of recipients, who can fill-in, spell-check, digitally sign, save, and submit the forms. Acrobat Approval 5.0 is available now in English, French, German, and Japanese. Pricing starts at US$39 for a single license, and can range as low as $14 per license when purchased in quantity.

ATI today announced the Mobility Radeon 7500, its next-generation graphics processor for laptops. The Mobility Radeon 7500 features ATI’s Charisma Engine, Pixel Tapestry, Video Impression, and Hyper Z technologies, all of which boost performance and graphics quality, as well as ATI’s new PowerPlay power-management technology, which ATI claims can extend the battery life of a laptop by up to 30 minutes.

The back-to-school buying season isn’t expected to boost lagging PC sales by any significant margin, according to several industry analysts and PC makers. Dell expects industry sales to shrink 5 to 10 percent in the third quarter, while Apple CFO Fred Anderson cautioned, “normally you do get a little bit of a seasonal bounce with back to school, but we think it is prudent not to count on that this year.”

Merilus today announced that its entire line of network security products are now compatible with Mac OS X. Merilus’ product lines include Gateway Guardian, a security and connectivity software package that turns a computer system into an Internet gateway and firewall, and FireCard, a complete, independent computer on a PCI card with embedded firewall, VPN and network management functionality.