$99 PC unveiled

Ahead of Microsoft's recent unveiling of its Windows Azure cloud services operating system, Australia's ThinLinX will bring forward production of its US $99 computer, the Hot-e TLX400, reports Tech-On.

ThinLinX's TLX400 is designed for the cloud computing environment, as a substitute for a standard PC.

Apart from its diminutive size, the 5V PC boasts what the company claims to be the lowest power consumption of any PC on the market; the main processing and data storage duties are carried out by remote servers accessed via the Internet.

Symbio has created a stateless, ultra-secure thin client technology, certified and accredited for use in the US energy department's classified networks, says MarketWatch.

Its Symbiont-certified thin clients contain no non-volatile memory, no operating systems, no applications, no file systems, no network addresses and no moving parts, do not require management, use up to 95% less electricity than PCs, and work with all servers.

Symbio's solution also includes the Symbiont Boot Appliance, which boots up to 250 desktop units at a time, directing them to the appropriate application servers, and the new Symbiont Boot Stick, a USB pen drive that boots any USB-bootable device, even outdated PCs and laptops.

Microsoft is initiating the fourth in a series of data centre upgrades to enable its cloud computing services, according to a Microsoft blog post, states Redmondmag.

The Generation 4 Modular Data Centre is described as "a highly modular, scalable, efficient, just-in-time data centre capacity programme that can be delivered anywhere in the world, very quickly and cheaply".

The new data centre configuration is seen as "the foundation of cloud data centre infrastructure in the next five years", according to the blog, which was co-written by Michael Manos, MS Data Centre chief; Daniel Costello, director of Data Centre research and engineering; and Christian Belady, principal power and cooling architect for MS Data Centre.