Red Hat's latest offering is a finely tuned offensive into the lucrative corporate desktop market. With the Linux steamroller on a collision course for Redmond the last year has seen a number of major wins for the open source upstart with corporations such as IBM and governments that include Germany, France, China, Japan, Russia and Britain either already making the switch or considering it. And not just for servers, but on workstations too.

Being enterprise software, one usually needs considerable expertise and time to obtain optimal performance and functionality. This is especially true for a product as comprehensive and feature rich as Lotus Domino 6.5 which is fully programmable and can provide workflow, knowledge management, document management, archiving, database and collaboration services via a client-server or browser based thin client model.

Despite various attempts at Windows Desktop alternatives, Linux is still best suited to servers, for which Red Hat is by far the most popular choice. With this in mind, it came as no surprise when in May 2002 Red Hat split its product line in two: Linux and Enterprise Linux.

More tools and good support options are just some of the highlights of this server package.

The power and flexibility of an enterprise product, but F-Secure Anti-Virus Small Business Suite 8 also comes with a good deal of the complexity of one.

Sophos Anti-Virus is clearly aimed at the enterprise market, with the minimum purchase being a 10-user licence, renewable annually. Unlike some of the other packages, Sophos is available for most operating systems including Unix, Open VMS, NetWare and Macintosh.

The arrival of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 (ES2K3) is a significant event in the history of this product. First, it brings to a close the second era of the codebase. Released back in 1996 on the NT 4 wave, ES4 (there was no 1, 2 or 3) brought enterprise-level email, contact management, diary management and so forth to the Windows Server platform in a new and comprehensive BackOffice application.

Why are we reviewing something that is a mere 36GB? Simple -- because this one drops access times and pumps up the transfer rate. Not targeted at the home user, the 36GB WD Raptor is marketed as an enterprise-level SATA drive -- the fastest drive on offer by WD. Capacity becomes an afterthought for the Raptor with its 10,000rpm spindle concerning itself with speed, resulting in seek times of around 5.2ms, compared to the 8.9ms of a 7,200rpm drive.

Not the sleekest smartphone, but the screen, keyboard and battery life are all superb.

Seagate's latest enterprise SAS bridges the gap between performance and capacity. Surely there's a trade-off somewhere here.

A familiar face with a new name, and it offers support for a wider range of systems than before.

Buying a business PC, or indeed looking for a fleet of PCs for your business, can be a tricky enterprise at the best of times. While we've taken a lot of the hard work out of this for you with this guide to what's available, there are a few things you need to consider when shopping for your business.

Excellent value for so many features, though BitDefender Small Office Security could be easier to use

Computer Associates (CA) is one of the biggest names in the software industry, even compared to Microsoft. Most of its business is done in the enterprise and corporate field, and this heritage shows in eTrust Antivirus.

An entry level PDA

Astaro Security Linux turns any PC with the right hardware in to a dedicated firewall and router system with minimal fuss.

An effective group-working tool, especially for those with the infrastructure to take full advantage of it.

Enact comes with the complete box and dice including application software, database, web-server and application server and the server can be run on a basic Windows XP Professional desktop. While the Java-based interface can be a bit buggy and slow at times, it is generally clearly set out and easy enough to use.

A three-PC licence as standard, superb silent interface and effective security utilities make Norton 360 a tempting buy.

Computer Associates is offering a free 12 month subscription of eTrust to all Microsoft users as part of Microsoft’s international PC Protect campaign. The problem is that most home users will find it too difficult to configure.