Broadcom, Dell ship hybrid 802.11 a/g

Broadcom says it has begun shipping the first three-chip 802.11a/g hybrid chipsets, which Dell Computer will include in its line of Latitude notebooks, reports Extremetech.

Although the "g" standard remains unfinished, vendors like Broadcom are satisfied that the IEEE committee has settled upon a technical implementation. Barring interference and channel limitations, an "a/g"-enabled notebook should run at 54Mbps, using either the 2.4GHz or 5GHz spectrum band.

A leftover April Fool prank concerning Microsoft`s Bill Gates swept through South Korea`s mainstream media on Friday, hammering technology stocks and jangling nerves in the economic community, according to EWeek.

The site reports that Seoul`s Munhwa Broadcasting Company broke regular programming to report that Gates had been shot and killed during a charity event. Within minutes, two of South Korea`s other major networks, Seoul Broadcasting System and news channel YTN, interrupted programming to carry the report.

ITWeb spotted the fake Web site on April Fool`s day and recognised it for what it was, but on Friday the news sparked a massive sell-off of technology shares, according to The Korea Times. Stock traders and software industry representatives jammed local phone networks as the benchmark Korea Stock Price Index fell by 8.5% in the minutes after the broadcasts.

Microsoft officials in Seoul issued a statement saying false reports of Gates` death have become increasingly common and have been used as April Fool jokes in the past. "There`s been years of such news flashes around this time. Now we are indifferent to it," the Microsoft statement said.

Adobe Systems is updating and diversifying its Acrobat product line when version 6 ships in mid-May, reports MacCentral. But instead of one Acrobat, there`ll be three: Standard, Pro and Elements. The first two, and a new Acrobat (now Adobe) Reader, will support Mac OS X only, while the latter will support just Windows.

"With Acrobat 6, we`ve sought to integrate the PDF document format into the enterprise desktop," the company is reported as saying.