Malaysia awards WiMax licences

Four newcomers have been awarded WiMax wireless high-speed Internet licences by Malaysia's telecommunications regulator, reports BBC World.

The winning bidders were Bizsurf Sdn Bhd, MIB Comm Sdn Bhd, Redtone-CNX Broadband Sdn Bhd and Asiaspace Dotcom Sdn Bhd.

The firms are expected to invest up to 300 million ringgit ($85.7 million) within the service's first three years. The original tender attracted bids from 17 firms, including Malaysia's largest mobile operator, Maxis Communications.

Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report named Israel as home to the most malicious Internet activity per Internet user, reports PC World.

The latest report, covering the second half of 2006, measured how much malicious activity, like spam origination, phishing site hosting and bot-infected computers, could be attributed to an average Internet user. From July through December, 9% of all such activity traced back to Israel. Taiwan came next with 8%, while Poland and the US tied at 6%.

Dave Cole, director of the Symantec security response team, says it does not mean viruses and phishing sites are necessarily created in Israel. A site or piece of malware could be created anywhere, but Israel is the largest host per-capita.

Fujitsu has introduced two touch-screen notebook PCs that are available with custom-ordered solid-state drives (SSD) of 16GB or 32GB, reports Computer World.

The Life Book P1610, a convertible notebook, and the Life Book B6210, a clamshell style, can each be converted to run the flash-based SSDs. The 16GB SSD is priced at $700, and the 32GB is priced at $1 300, said Fujitsu senior director of mobile marketing Paul Moore.

Fujitsu will give credit to business customers for the cost of replacing a hard drive with an SSD, which could be about $250 for an 80GB hard drive, noted Moore.