HP to chop off 7.5% workforce after merger with EDS

There is news that HP is going to lay off 7.5% of its existing workforce, which is equivalent to more than 24k headcounts, as part of its merger plan with EDS. So the concern that I blogged about exactly 4 months ago in the article of "HP to buy over EDS for about US$13B" has come to reality.

Employees from EDS are expected to bear the brunt of the cuts, and half of the jobs cuts will be in the US, with finance, human resources and legal departments expected to be affected. This mean that the "damage" will be minimal in their Asia-Pacific offices.

Hope that Mark Hurd is making a wiser move than Carly Fiorina this time.

Improve Windows Systray clock with the free LClock

LClock is a very lightweight Windows 2000/XP Systray clock replacement that consumes very minimal memory and system resources, ideal to make the clock in the Systray looks much better and with additional features such as nice calendar display with a single mouse click.

This free program is developed by Ying Han, originated from the idea of Thrawn's .NET systray clock program. It is a modified (stripped down) version of Kazuto Sato's TClock Light.

It not only displays the time in Systray in a configurable and much nicer way, and also will pop up a nice calendar with a just single mouse click on it. It also features a simple alarm system configurable by clicking on the calendar. The calendar reminders show up in a pop-up window when triggered and can be scheduled to be repeated at different intervals.

With LClock, you can have a much better clock and calendar application in your Windows 2000/XP.

The latest version of LClock is 1.62b released by September 2004.

Click here for more information about LClock.

UltraVNC 1.0.5 released

Glad to know that the long awaited UltraVNC 1.0.5 is finally released, 2 years from the last stable version of 1.0.2.

When I was managing the MIS department of my ex-company, where my technical support team needs to support multiple retail outlets in remote locations, UltraVNC is an excellent tool the team uses for remote support and troubleshooting from HQ without needed to travel for onsite support. It saves a lot of time, money and effort, and helps to solve the problem for the user within a short period of time after the issue was raised.

UltraVNC is a powerful client-server remote control software derived from the famous Virtual Network Computing (VNC) software. With UltraVNC, you can see the desktop of a remote computer as if you are sitting in front of it, and control it with your local mouse and keyboard via the computer network.

There are 3 remote control technologies popular in the market of remote control software:

• Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) designed by Citrix Systems is proprietary. Practical products conforming to ICA are Citrix’s WinFrame and Citrix Presentation Server, which usage is charged by license.
• Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) designed by Microsoft is used in Terminal Services or Remote Desktop.
• Virtual Network Computing (VNC) designed by AT&T is released as open source and is platform independent. There are clients and servers for almost all GUI operating systems including Windows, Linux/BSD/Unix (X-Window), Mac OS, and also for Java. There are even clients that run in web browsers. Most free remote control software are based on this technology.

UltraVNC includes a number of advanced features, making it unique among the various flavors of VNC variants, including:

• Special graphics mirror driver to facilitate ultrafast remote controlling experience.
• Multiple authentication methods, including integration with Microsoft Windows Logon
• Data Stream Encryption Plugin to securely encrypt all data sent between the UltraVNC server and viewer.
• Possibility to send Ctrl-Alt-Del to the remote server, useful to logoff user, shutdown or restart remotely
• Text chat window for user between the server and client to communicate directly.
• Drag-and-drop style remote file transfer between client and server.
• Auto reconnection support
• Multiple monitors support
• Repeater to use UltraVNC viewer behind a NAT router.
• NAT to NAT connector for connections between UltraVNC viewer and server behind NAT routers without any router modification.
• UltraVNC SC (SingleClick), a customizable mini UltraVNC server that doesn't need any installation for on-the-fly usage.

UltraVNC is free and open sourced, released under the GNU General Public License.

Click here for more information and download of UltraVNC.