OStatic

After dragging its feet, Hewlett-Packard is stepping up with an answer to cloud computing by inking a partnership with Intel, Yahoo and three universities to create a cloud computing testbed. The cloud will comprise six physical locations where mostly HP servers containing between 1,000 and 4,000 mostly Intel cores will run Apache Hadoop. Hadoop is the open source infrastructure for taking advantage of huge clusters of computers to produce fast results for queries. It's behind much of Yahoo's search, as we covered here. Today, GigaOm offers complete analysis. Check it out.

News is swirling this week about new forms of competition in the market for sub-notebook computers, and open source is driving change in this space--especially in terms of price competition. As I wrote before, Linux-based laptops are going through a renaissance at the moment, especially driven by the $400 Asus Eee PC. These small, useful systems are moving from the VIA chips they were based on to Intel's Diamondville CPUs. Everex's $399 Linux-based Cloudbook laptops are also generating buzz. Now, Hewlett-Packard has a new entrant in the space, with its diminutive Mini-Note, aimed at shoolchildren.