NetWorthy Systems Blog

According to Reuters (if you can believe them) Microsoft has offered to put other browsers into their operating system in order to settle a lawsuit from the European Union.

In the old days where profits were consistently up quarter over quarter, MS would hang in there and fight out lawsuits to the bitter end. In today's market, it could make more sense for MS to cave in and settle the lawsuit.

I wonder if this is a sign of times to come from the Redmond campus. Let me know your thoughts, please. The entire article may be found here.

To Your Success,

Tim

I ran across this article on Deal News, a site whose motto is "Every Day is Black Friday". They took a middle-of-the-road laptop and did price comparisons during the year. They confirmed the best time to buy a laptop is: back to school time or August and September.

Other good times to purchase are November (black Friday) and April. Prices ranged from a high of $580 in July to below $500 in April.

So if you are contemplating a laptop purchase, get your credit card warmed up. Back to school time is just around the corner!

To Your Success,

Tim

Today, Microsoft has officially RTM'ed, or Released To Manufacturing the new Windows 7 Operating System. Not a huge deal really, but there is one fact worth noting. 

The BBC is reporting that Etisalat, a United Arab Emirates telecommunications firm, sent a text about an update to Blackberry users, suggesting it would improve performance. Those who downloaded and installed the application, found their battery life reduced, and their cellphones crashing. 

With barely one month passing since the arrival of 128GB thumb drives, Kingston steps up to the plate by releasing a thumb drive capable of 256GB of storage! That's right, it's not a typo. This is a 256 GB thumb drive! Although it's not available in the United States as of yet, the street price is estimated to be around $900 US. So I wouldn't rush out and get one just yet, but I would expect the prices to drop rapidly once its been on the market for awhile. 

According to Amazon, You Don't Own It Even If You Buy It! According to a news report, Amazon removed some electronic versions of George Orwell's books from the kindle store, and deposited a refund in accounts of people who had previously bought them. 

Windows 7 has been in Release Candidate status for a few months. We have received information from Microsoft that Windows 7 will go to RTM, or Release To Manufacturing on October 22, 2009. That means it will be released in its final production form, available for purchase. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, ATT, Verizon, Sprint and some others are under investigation by the Department of Justice. It seems the DOJ thinks they may be abusing their power on the cell phone market. How, you ask? One reason that comes to mind is the fact you can only get an i-phone from one carrier, and it cannot be used on any other carrier. 

I admit it. I am an early adopter and I love to get the latest gadget, whether it's a phone or a robot vacuum cleaner. But keeping up with and researching the latest and greatest gadget can be time-consuming, to say the least. Enter GDGT What's this, you ask? Pronounced "gadget" it's gdgt.com a website dedicated to all us techophiles. 

I ran across an article about differences in cheap laser printers versus more expensive professional versions. As it turns out, for your business, it may just end up costing you more money over time. So the next time you think you might save some money and go on the cheap, you might want to think again. The link is below:

July 1st is the day that the Windows 7 Beta will begin shutting down every two hours. Which is Microsoft's way of telling you to go get the Windows 7 Release Candidate(really, you should have done it quite a while ago). 

Microsoft released Windows 7 in beta form last month. Then they closed the beta, then opened it again. For those that don't know, Windows 7 is Microsoft's latest operating system, set to replace Vista. 

We all know devices continue to get smaller. And they continue to do more. I, like millions of others, carry a device that is cell phone, computer, instant messenger, and email reader all rolled up in one small package. One of the issues with these devices however, has been the limited amount of storage capacity. Most of these devices utilize SSD, or solid state drives. This type of storage has typically been expensive, and limited in storage capacity. Until now.

I ran across an article from the New York Times regarding the hows and how much of texting via your flavor of mobile carrier. While the article is a little technical, it explains why it costs the carriers virtually nothing to carry your sms messages. It raises the question of why the carriers have doubled the cost of texting over the last 3 years. 

Just after I posted regarding the Internet taking over as the preferred medium for news, I ran across a small article about a newspaper company that has continually grown where others have not. It's the TriCityNews of Monmouth County, New Jersey, and it has grown at over 10 % a year since the dot.com bust. You can read all about it here. 

For those die-hards that still think the Internet is a passing fad, consider this new report. For the first time, the Internet has passed all other media except TV as a main source for national and international news. All the other media have steadily dropped, while the Internet has, for the most part, continued to climb. This confirms the reports of newspapers continuing to struggle across the country.

Microsoft has extended the cutoff date for PC makers to install XP on new systems yet again. The new date: May 30, 2009. Now, it may seem to you that this is hardly worth blogging about, especially since it's Jan. 9th, 2009 and the new cutoff date is little more than 4 months away. But, before you pass judgement on this particular post, consider this: THE ORIGINAL DATE FOR XP'S DEMISE WAS JANUARY 30TH......OF 2008! 

According to Isuppli, world sales of notebooks surpassed those of desktops for the first time in history. In the 3rd quarter of 2008, 38.6 million notebooks were sold. During the same period, desktop sales declined to 386 million. That's an increase in notebook sales of over 40 percent for the same period last year. That's a lot of notebooks! 

Just in case you thought the government was taking care of your tax dollars in a fiscally responsible manner, along comes this story. 

A scientist looking around on Google Earth discovered 7000 Hectares of forest that was previously undiscovered, in Mozambique. An expedition was quickly put together. In the first two weeks, they discovered new species of butterflies, and a snake that can kill a man with one bite. I've always known Google Earth was exceptional, but who knew it was capable of this?