While you've got your H-Bomb to keep you nice and toasty while surfing through chilly waters, and the Airvantage vest to keep your chest warm while braving the bitter cold, even the most hardcore skiers will probably admit that their fingertips go numb just a few hours after they hit the slopes. Reusch's latest pair of high-end ski gloves looks to solve the chilly finger dilemma (sans USB power), as the new Solaris gloves pack iThermX heating technology, which was developed by Interactive Wear AG. Beneath the supple exterior is an electronics unit with a 16-bit microcontroller that "manages the intelligent power and temperature control and executes application-specific programmable heating algorithms," effectively turning up the heat whenever a user-selected temperature is reached. The heat is powered by two flat, lightweight Li-ion batteries, which can purportedly provide a hand-based oven for "around five hours" before needing to hit up the lodge for a quick recharge. There's even an onboard selector / LED indicator to switch from constant heat to "temperature-defined heating," and while we've no idea just how pricey these gloves will end up being, we're fairly sure any skier who has dealt with freezing fingers will do nearly anything to own them.

Intel doesn't seem to be content with its recent performance and market share wins over AMD, it's really going for the kill here. The chip giant just snapped up another partner in x86 crime: Sun Microsystems. Sun and Intel are announcing a "broad strategic alliance" today to promote Intel Xeon workstations and servers running the Solaris OS. Sun and AMD have been buddy buddy for a little while now, with AMD64 chips being heavily promoted with Solaris as of late, but it looks like those Intel roadmaps and market share promises were just too good to pass up. On Sun's end, Solaris will be optimised up for upcoming single, dual and quad processor Xeon systems that can run Solaris, Windows and Linux, which are due for 2007. Sun will also be working with Intel on "4-way systems," but doesn't seem to be doing away with its current SPARC and X64 offerings just yet. For Intel's part, the chip maker "is embracing Solaris as a mainstream OS," and is joining in a Solaris OEM agreement to allow Intel the option to distribute and support the Solaris OS. Intel will also lend a hand optimizing Solaris and Java for Xeon, and is putting its stamp of approval on OpenSolaris, open Java and NetBeans as well. The two companies "anticipate rapid growth of Solaris on Xeon platforms," but with a mere 4200 apps on "800+ platforms," there sure seems to be a lot of room to grow for Sun.