Amazon.com sells empty Vista boxes for $200?
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And that's the cheap version Amazon sells empty Vista boxes for $360?â¦
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Meritline has a 2.5" hard drive enclosure, perfect for spare notebook drives, for just $10.99 shipped.
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Listings on Amazon.com hint at possible pricing and release info for Microsoft's next edition of Windows. Plus: Upcoming.org adds Yahoo Local events. In Monkey Bites.
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(InfoWorld) - Amazon.com unveiled the Unbox Video Store on Thursday, a direct rival to Apple's iTunes 24-7 video store, which allows U.S. users to buy or rent TV shows, movies and other video content from the Internet. Amazon Unbox is offering thousands of DVD-quality videos from over 30 movie and TV studios, which can be stored on up to two PCs and two portable video players at once, the company said. When a user downloads a movie or show, Unbox automatically sends a second download file optimized for Windows Media-compatible portable devices. It also keeps track of media purchases on a personal page at Amazon's Your Media Library, and acts as a backup, allowing users to download video purchases onto an additional PC. Unbox is one of many new services aimed at capturing the growing interest in downloading video from the Internet. The service will compete with similar video download stores such as Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes, and is a direct threat to traditional DVD services from companies such as Blockbuster Inc. and Netflix Inc. Users interested in trying Unbox can go toÂ http://www.amazon.com/unbox. Amazon Unbox is offering a $1.99 rebate on a user's first purchase, enough for one free TV show. But new users will have to enter their credit card information into the system first as part of the registration process, and then download the Amazon Unbox Video Player software. Unbox is charging between $7.99 and $14.99 for most movies, and rentals of the latest movies for $3.99. Videos can also be sent as a gift. The company's Unbox RemoteLoad technology enables users to buy video from one PC, such as their home computer, and download it to another, Amazon said. Apple Computer OS users can not shop at Unbox. The service only works on Microsoft's Windows XP. Users with older PCs may also find it difficult to meet Unbox's hardware requirements. At minimum, a PC needs a 1.5GHz microprocessor and 512MB of memory, such as DRAM (dynamic RAM), in addition to a DirectX compliant video (64MB) and sound card. Users must also have an Internet connection capable of sustained 800Kbps data transfer rates, Amazon said. Unbox is offering a host of special offers to attract new users. From Sept. 14 through Sept. 27, for example, all of the final, cliffhanger episodes from last season's "CSI," including Las Vegas, Miami and New York, will be on sale for just $0.01, to promote the launch of the new season for all three series. The company is also offering all 79 episodes of the original "Star Trek" series, including the original pilot. Some of the movies available on Unbox include "Inside Man," "Failure to Launch," "Walk the Line," and "V is for Vendetta," as well as classics such as "Ben Hur," and "Poseidon Adventure." Some of the major movie studios signed on with Unbox include Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros. Entertainment.
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'Lucy' goes for the soft sell NSFW Thanks very much to reader Nick L for alerting us to a rather strange eBayer who has decided to deploy her not inconsiderable assets as a sort of mammary display stand. Try this "auction" for a Panasonic CD player front panel:â¦
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Profits warning at DSG Slow adoption of Microsoft Vista has hamstrung profits again at DSG, the retail group that owns PC World.â¦
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Online retailer Amazon.com has started taking orders for Microsoft's long-delayed Windows Vista operating system, saying the software should be available Jan. 30.
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Ever wonder why office-supply stores will offer a ream of paper or $3 for empty inkjet printer cartridges?
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(InfoWorld) - As customers line up toÂ buy new PCs capable of running Microsoft's new Windows Vista OS, vendors like Dell and Hewlett-PackardÂ (HP) are preparing to process a surge of discarded, outmoded computers. Dell advises its customers running Vista Premium to use a PC loaded with a dual-core processor and 2GB of memory. As customers upgrade to meet the new standard, they face a question of how to dispose of their outmoded machines without dumping toxic lead, mercury, cadmium, and chromium into local landfills. "As enterprises deploy Vista, they may increase their rate of replacing, refreshing, or updating PCs, and we're certainly happy to work with our customers on the disposal of machines they take out of service," said Michael Cuno, a spokesman for HP. Vendors like Apple and DellÂ offer free recyclingÂ for anyone returning those companies' old PCs. Dell also runs a network that donates working computers to local nonprofit groups. HP directs consumers to drop-off points at retail stores but advises its business customers to lease their hardware instead of owning it. Dell said it was too early to tell if Vista adoptions would be fast enough to drive a surge in consumer recycling, but the company did say it had recorded an increase from 22.7 million pounds of equipment collected from customers in 2004 to 39 million in 2005. The challenge in predicting future rates is that individuals don't always dispose of their old hardware immediately, said Dell spokesman Bryant Hilton. "We often see, at least anecdotally, consumers who purchase a new computer 'pass down' the old system within the household," Hilton said. "If you have the latest and greatest running your home entertainment center, maybe the system that still works just fine but is no longer cutting edge is good for other household uses. What we of course do not want is the old computer to end up in a closet or storage for the next several years, and that's where the challenge of consumer education comes in." Corporate IT managers who discard outmoded PCs face more complex challenges than consumers because they must also worry about protecting valuable trade secrets and employees' personal data saved on hard drives and because environmental safety regulations vary widely between states or countries, said Jim O'Grady, managing director of technology value solutions for HP Financial Services Americas. O'Grady's division treats that stream of discarded computers as a business opportunity, finding new users to buy 94 percent of the 600,000 computers and parts delivered annually to HP's facility in Andover, Massachusetts. The factory sends only six percent to its recycling plants in Roseville, California and Nashville, Tennessee. Worldwide, HP handles over 1 million PCs returned at the end of their leases each year. That number could jump in 2007Â because customers scramble to upgrade their hardware after each jump in technology -- such as the launch of multicore processors, the advent of flat-panel monitors over CRT (cathode ray tube) monitors, or the sale of Windows Vista. "That's what we saw with dual-core [processors]; it made a big difference. The adjustment had been fairly steady before then," he said. HP accepts hardware from all vendors, often receiving servers built by competitors two decades ago. In the Andover warehouse, workers peel shrink-wrap off pallets loaded with CRT monitors, stacks of Toshiba Satellite and T3100 notebooks, EMC Symmetrix and Clarion storage arrays, and servers like the Appro, Digital Vax and Compaq Alpha. Dell Latitude notebooks and Compaq Deskpro desktops are piled on shelves with their peripherals sorted into nearby crates. The technicians clean dust and rust off the frames and decide whether they can resell the entire machine or just its most valuable parts, such as the processor or optical drive. They prepare hard drives for resale by wiping personal data clean with either powerful magnets, software overwrites, or physical destruction. Most PCs never reach recycling stations. HP says that owners turned in only 7 million of the 70 million computers that became obsolete in 2003, delivering the rest to municipal solid waste handlers, many in developing nations overseas that lack the environmental regulations or technology to process such toxic "e-waste." Â
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Paying customers may not get their hands on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 (Service Pack 1) for weeks, but pirates can download the brand-new code today, according to searches at several BitTorrent trackers.The RTM, or release to manufacturing, versions of both operating systems can easily be found on BitTorrent tracker sites such as Pirate Bay, which has made them available since yesterday.One torrent of Microsoft's newest server operating system, Windows Server 2008, lists 42 "seeders," the term for a computer that has a complete copy of the torrent file, and nearly 190 "leechers," or computers that have downloaded only part of the complete torrent. The Windows Server 2008 torrent installs a 60-day trial edition, according to users on Pirate Bay who have downloaded the 2.5GB disk image.Vista SP1, meanwhile, is even more popular. The most active torrent located using Pirate Bay listed 163 seeds and almost 500 leechers by mid-day Wednesday. Another tracker, Mininova.org, showed similar numbers: 159 seeders and 665 leechers.Pirate Bay reported the file as 2.9GB in size, while users who successfully downloaded the image warned others that it was not an upgrade per se. "This torrent is a complete install of Windows Vista including SP1. So there will be no option to upgrade," said a commenter on Pirate Bay using the alias "Soulshot." "You'll have to backup [sic] your Documents/Music/Pictures/Favorites, install the .iso to a DVD, restart and run the DVD. Which will erease [sic] everthing [sic] on your primary hard disk."Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 moved to RTM on Monday, when CEO Steve Ballmer touted both milestones during a conference call with financial analysts. Vista SP1, however, won't land on the company's download site until mid-March because of problems with device drivers, while the official launch for Windows Server 2008 has been set for Feb. 27. Neither operating system can currently be legally obtained by the public.Microsoft is no stranger to leaks. Last summer, for example, several builds of Vista SP1 that had been given to an invite-only group of some 15,000 testers ended up on BitTorrent within days.The company, of course, takes a dim view of counterfeiters -- one analyst recently estimated that Microsoft made an extra $77 million last quarter by cracking down on piracy. But its response to questions about the latest leaks was muted. "Microsoft cautions consumers and businesses that downloading software from a non-genuine source can pose risks to their environment," a spokeswoman said.
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Four months after the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft's claiming that 40 million copies have shipped -- but even Microsoft's not claiming that 40 million PCs are humming away with the new operating system. Computerworld.com gets to the bottom of the claims.
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Amazon has something that it wants to show you.
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Trust us Microsoft has offered little satisfaction to Windows Vista Ultimate users frustrated by the dearth of goodies used to justify the operating system's premium price.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - As Microsoftâs five-year-long development effort slouches toward completion, details began to emerge last week that showed the company is (finally) gearing up to release Windows Vista after the new year, as promised. Pricing information popped up on a Canadian Web site, and Amazon.com told visitors that the new OS would be going out on Jan. 30, only to replace that date with a squishier âEarly 2007.â Finally, by the time you read this, Microsoft has promised to release the penultimate test version of its Vista operating system, dubbed âRelease Candidate 1â to an army of testers around the world. Are anticipatory chills running down your spine? They shouldnât be. Because a Release Candidate must be stable enough to allow corporate buyers to evaluate the product for deployment, Microsoft will have done quite a bit of work to RC1 over Vistaâs previous beta incarnations; so get set for a number of improvements. On the other hand, because of this concentration on stability, donât look for any noteworthy new features. Hereâs what Vista RC1 will likely have to offer: Installation: A late beta release dubbed âPre RC1â received kudos from more than one online reviewer for the improvements in this area, and rumors out of Microsoft say RC1 is the first version of Vista (or any Windows version) that has seamlessly installed on a variety of new notebooks and desktops â no muss, no fuss, and with full detection of PC Card and USB peripherals. Graphical interface: Aero has reportedly given Microsoft quite a few Advil moments, and even Beta 2 users were reporting intermittent difficulties. Look for this to be smoothed out in anything that receives RC status. That doesnât mean, however, that you should try to run it on your anemic graphics subsystem from 2003. Microsoft recommends at least 32-bit-per-pixel graphics capability. To you and me that means that for really smooth Aero-nautics, you should have a DirectX 9-capable 3-D accelerator card with 128MB of dedicated video RAM. If your test box lacks this video muscle, RC1 will support a non-Aero interface for weaker or older PCs. Audio: Microsoft has been having trouble with audio in even its most recent Vista Beta release. Toolsmixer controls are intermittently absent, and audio playback is often interrupted or missing. This should be solved in an RC1 release. If youâre a systems or network administrator, RC1 wonât be much different from Beta 2. The new release will ship with Internet Explorer RC1 installed, but even that has few differences from IE7 Beta 2. There will be a new, easier-to-use integrated backup tool, but itâs of little interest to corporate users whoâll most likely be using a centralized third-party app or Windows Shadow Copy. The pricing and availability info â coupled with the OSâs slow march toward âgold,â aka a finished version of Windows Vista ready for manufacturing â shows that Microsoft is serious about meeting its ship date. However, the key criterion for Vista RC1 will be stability. If it installs smoothly, runs smoothly, and gives us the full Vista experience that Microsoftâs been promising, consider it a success. If not, itâs back to the drawing board.
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Microsoft recently partnered with Dell to create a special edition PC to commemorate the launch of Windows Vista. Only a few of the computers have been produced, and there are no plans to sell it, the company says.
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Internet retailer Amazon.com Inc.   has started taking early orders for Microsoft Corp.'s   Windows Vista operating system at prices ranging from  $100 to $399.
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The clock is ticking: Microsoft will end OEM and shrink-wrapped sales of Windows XP on June 30, 2008, forcing users to shift to Vista. (System builders, meaning those who do white-box PCs, can sell XP through December 31.) Don't let that happen!                                                      Millions of us have grown comfortable with XP and don't see a need to change to Vista. It's like having a comfortable apartment that you've enjoyed coming home to for years, only to get an eviction notice. The thought of moving to a new place -- even with the stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, and maple cabinets (or is cherry in this year?) -- just doesn't sit right. Maybe it'll be more modern, but it will also cost more and likely not be as good a fit. And you don't have any other reason to move. That's exactly the conclusion people have come to with Vista. For most of us, there's really no reason to move to it -- yet we don't have a choice. When that strong desire to stick with XP became obvious in spring 2007, major computer makers such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard quietly reintroduced new XP-based systems (but just to business customers, so as not to offend Microsoft).But come June 30, even that option goes away. (See InfoWorld's live XP countdown clock. To use this clock on your own Web site, please e-mail Executive Editor Galen Gruman for the code snippet.)So what to do? Let Microsoft decide where your personal and enterprise software "lives"? Or send a loud and clear message that you don't want to move?We're going for the loud-and-clear option. Join us, and tell Microsoft that you want to keep XP available indefinitely. Not for another six months or a year, but indefinitely. Sign InfoWorld's petition today. And consider submitting a "Save XP" video to our site to help spread the word.And ask your friends and colleagues to join in, too. Just point them to SaveXP.com.Don't think Microsoft will listen? Consider this: Although Microsoft denies that anything is wrong with Vista or that most people don't want it, the company has already postponed XP's demise by six months. That's a start, but it's not good enough.Microsoft doesn't have to admit failure; it can just say it will keep XP available indefinitely due to customer demand. It can take that opportunity to try again with a better Vista, or just move on to the next version that maybe this time we'll all actually want.There is a precedent for that, too: In many respects, Vista is like the Windows Millennium Edition that was meant to replace Windows 98 in 2000 but caused more trouble than it was worth. At that time, Windows 2000 was promising but didn't support a lot of hardware, so users were stuck between two bad choices. Without admitting Millennium's failure, Microsoft quietly put Windows 98 back on the market until the fixed version of Windows 2000 (SP1) was available. Microsoft needs to do something like that again today.Make your voice heard to Microsoft. Sign our petition to save XP today. We will present it to Microsoft.For more on why Vista isn't the right replacement for XP, check out InfoWorld's analyses: The (post-SP1) Vista verdict: Wait for Windows 7 Randall Kennedy's assessment is that for the vast majority of enterprise IT shops, Vista is not -- and likely never will be -- the right choice for their immediate desktop computing needs.Service pack vs. service pack: XP SP3 beats Vista SP1 According to tests by Devil Mountain Software comparing the release candidates for the last Windows XP service pack and the first Vista service pack, XP SP3 performs twice as fast as Vista SP1 on the same machine -- and slower than the initial release of the Vista OS as well.Businesses having second thoughts about Vista Fewer businesses are now planning to move to Windows Vista than seven months ago, according to a survey by patch management vendor PatchLink.Forrester: Businesses still saying no to Vista An anticipated rush by businesses to adopt Windows Vista hasn't materialized as IT managers stick with familiar systems and wait for the release of Vista Service Pack 1.Microsoft: Vista follow-up likely in 2009 With Vista just out the door, Microsoft is now drawing up plans to deliver its follow-up client operating system by the end of 2009.Farewell Vista, hello XP From PCWorld.com: How to make the switch back and deal with the gnarly problem of transferring your Vista e-mail, contacts, and user data back to the old standby operating system.HP CEO: Vista never had its moment in 2007 From CIO.com: Wondering what's happened to momentum for Microsoft's Vista operating system in corporate America? Fact is, enterprise IT has continued to decline the Vista plate like it's an undercooked holiday casserole. Listen to what Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd said: HP never saw a "Vista moment at any time over the past year."UK government report: Don?t upgrade to Vista Report warns British schools not to upgrade to Microsoft's Vista OS and Office 2007 suite, and to avoid Microsoft's OOXML document format because of compatibility concerns.