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Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:43:17 -0500

Ballmer Says Windows 7 Sales Double Those of Vista
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:19:49 -0500Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer isn't talking turkey when it comes to the software giant's newest operating system. At a shareholder meeting Thursday in Bellevue, Wash., Ballmer told investors that Windows 7 sold double the number of copies in one month as its previous Windows Vista operating system.

During the meeting, which was broadcast over the Internet, Ballmer wouldn't say exactly how many licenses or copies were sold to consumers and businesses, but previous reports that put Vista's sales in the first month at 20 million makes it easy to calculate sales of Windows 7 at about 40 million.

Since its Oct. 22 release, Windows 7 has received good reviews from consumers and developers. That doesn't mean, however, that Microsoft can sit back and relax.

Minimal Impact

Gartner analysts expected the launch of Microsoft's Windows 7 to have a minimal impact on PC sales, although inventory adjustments around the same time could artificially affect shipments during the third and fourth quarters.

Recent Windows releases haven't driven PC market growth, according to Gartner's Mikako Kitagawa. The timing of Windows 7, however, is favorable for the industry because of expected economic improvements and an overdue hardware replacement cycle.

Gartner also anticipates more consumers and small businesses will upgrade during the holiday season because of the Windows 7 release. On the corporate level, analysts expect Windows 7 adoption won't ramp up until late 2010.

Shipments Better Than Expected

While analysts predicted the PC market this year would suffer substantially compared to 2008, shipments of PCs have been doing better than expected, according to a Gartner report.

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 80.9 million units in the third quarter, a 0.5 percent increase from the third quarter 2008, according to Gartner.

While most PCs are shipped with Windows operating systems, Apple continues to increase its share of Mac shipments year over year, according...

Flat Shipments Hurt Dell Despite Increased Earnings
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:21:41 -0500Dell's earnings are up and expectations are solid, but the company's stock still took a hit Friday afternoon after analysts signaled the company isn't playing a key role in the PC market recovery. Dell's shipments were flat in the third quarter and down five percent from the year-ago period despite improvements in the large-enterprise and small-and-midsize business segments and increased demand and revenue from business customers.

Dell's total revenue for the third quarter was $12.9 billion, a one percent improvement over the second quarter but a 15 percent decline from the year-ago period. Earnings per share were 17 cents. Cash flow from operations totaled $801 million. Operating expenses were 12.8 percent of revenue, or $1.7 billion, 10 percent lower than last year's third quarter.

"We are seeing improvement in overall underlying IT demand that is continuing into the fourth quarter," said Michael Dell, chairman and CEO. "The same is true with momentum in Dell's business, specifically in our large-enterprise and SMB segments. The launch of Windows 7 is being very well received by SMBs and consumers, and we'll see the benefits of that more fully in our fiscal Q4."

An Active Third Quarter

Dell had an active third quarter. The company completed the acquisition of Perot Systems in early November. Dell hopes the acquisition will give the company an advantage in delivering more practical solutions to help customers reduce IT costs. Dell is in the process of integrating Perot Systems into its business.

"Consistently generating strong cash from operations allows us to expand our own capabilities and acquire new ones," said Dell CFO Brian Gladden. "Those investments will mostly be in higher-margin enterprise solutions, like our purchase of Perot Systems. Adding Perot best positions us to provide streamlined solutions that help customers get the most from their IT budgets."

Dell had a strong quarter...

Barnes & Noble Nook E-Reader Will Arrive After Christmas
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:21:55 -0500In what may remind many consumers of the Amazon Kindle's early days, Barnes & Noble expects shipments of its nook e-book reader to be delayed. On Friday, the giant book retailer said it has sold out its first batch of nooks amid high demand -- and new shipments won't be available until after the holiday shopping season ends.

"While we increased production based on the high consumer interest, we've sold out of our initial nook allotment available for delivery before the holidays," the company said.

A Certificate for the Holidays

Running out of hot products isn't new in the technology world. Beyond Amazon's Kindle, Apple has also had issues keeping iPhones in stock at launch. Sony is also facing shortages of its Daily Edition e-book reader.

Barnes & Noble customers who order the nook won't get the device until January. The next batch of nooks will ship the week of Jan. 4, according to the company. Consumers who want to purchase a nook as a holiday gift will receive a certificate that highlights the January availability.

Sony's Daily Edition is available on a first-come, first-served basis and Sony isn't making guarantees about holiday delivery of its latest e-book reader. As a result, Amazon may be the big e-reader winner this year. Amazon has a strong supply of various versions of the Kindle.

"Part of the problem with the delays is that Barnes & Noble is not a device company. So they are working with suppliers and getting into businesses that they are somewhat unfamiliar with," said Avi Greengart, an analyst at Current Analysis. "I also think they are dealing with a category that is emerging, and therefore it is incredibly hard to predict the demand. But new e-book readers are debuting at CES, so if they wait too long there will be more competition."

Getting to Know...

New Pogoplug 'Personal Cloud' Does Social Networking
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:46:25 -0500On Friday, Cloud Engines released its newest version of the Pogoplug, a small "multimedia sharing device" that connects hard drives to the Internet and allows a user to access the files remotely. The company described Pogoplug as "your own personal cloud that broadcasts safely from your home."

You connect Pogoplug to your router by Ethernet, attach hard drives or USB flash drives, and then access files by logging in from anywhere through a browser. You can also securely give access to others for downloading or uploading, the company said.

Drives Can Appear Local

The shared content can be searched remotely by file type or other parameters and, with a downloadable desktop application, the drives can work as if they were local to whatever machine you happen to be on. Mobile-compatible devices include iPhone, BlackBerry and Android-based phones.

The newest Pogoplug offers multiple USB ports for as many as four external drives, a drag-and-drop interface to create slide and audio shows, and capabilities for sharing with friends on social-networking sites.

Essentially, Pogoplug is a gateway to deliver your content to yourself or others from a home or office through the Internet. Cloud Engines CEO Daniel Putterman said the company is "giving our customers the best way to access their data from anywhere in the world."

The newest incarnation of this product enables Pogoplug to sync with a Mac or PC, so content can be automatically imported from iTunes, Windows Media Player, or iPhoto. With this "set it and forget it" feature, users can access new photos, videos or music remotely.

Network-Attached Storage

The new model also allows creating a slideshow of photos, videos and music, and then sharing the show via a link. There's an address book to share e-mail addresses, and global search across multiple Pogoplugs and drives. Videos can be played back directly from Pogoplug.

Ross Rubin, director...

Google's Chrome OS Will Be Optimized for Speed
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:41:10 -0500Google is showcasing how its Chrome OS will change the user experience when it launches before next year's holiday season. The new operating system will initially appear on netbook-style devices that will feature bigger keyboards than today's netbooks offer, the company said.

First and foremost, the Chrome OS design team is obsessed about speed, noted Group Product Manager Caesar Sengupta and Engineering Director Matt Papakipos.

"We are taking out every unnecessary process, optimizing many operations, and running everything possible in parallel," Sengupta and Papakipos said. "This means you can go from turning on the computer to surfing the web in a few seconds."

Improving the User Experience

Though Chrome OS still has a long way to go before all its specs are finalized, Google is already showing off some of the features it has in mind. To minimize the amount of screen space devoted to the Chrome OS, the system's user-interface window is expected to combine apps and standard web pages into a tab strip at the top of the screen.

Called the apps menu, the primary OS access point will provide ready access to frequently used web apps and tools featuring desktop functionality. Moreover, individual apps will open in tabs along the strip.

"Within these application tabs, most things behave the same way as they do in Chrome today," said Google spokesperson Glen Murphy.

Some secondary apps will open in small overlays that Google calls panels. Designed to handle specific functions, such as chat and music players, the panels will float on top of other open applications. Or if the user prefers, they can be docked to a bar at the bottom of the screen or placed in a sidebar. Additionally, Google may offer a split-screen mode that will enable users to view two different content selections side by side.

No Worries Data...

Astronauts Await Word of Baby Girl on Earth
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:42:11 -0500Atlantis' astronauts anxiously awaited word on the birth of one crewman's daughter Friday, as they moved more supplies into the International Space Station and geared up for another spacewalk.

Astronaut Randolph Bresnik was about to become a father for the second time. His wife, Rebecca, was due to give birth Friday back home in Houston. They already have a son who is 3 1/2.

Bresnik, 42, a lieutenant colonel in the Marines, was keeping close tabs on everything and hoped to be in contact by phone for the big event.

Shuttle pilot Barry "Butch" Wilmore said Bresnik was focused on the mission and holding up pretty well.

"He's excited about that. So are we," Wilmore said in a broadcast interview. "It's a great thing to share with him in this environment. He certainly wishes timing could have been better. He'd certainly like to be there for the birth of his daughter ... but timing is what timing is."

Another NASA astronaut -- Mike Fincke -- was on the space station when his second child, also a girl, was born in 2004.

As for celebrating, Wilmore said no cigars will be passed around -- "maybe some chewing gum." Smoking is prohibited aboard NASA spacecraft for obvious safety reasons.

Mrs. Bresnik, like her husband, works at Johnson Space Center. She is the lead attorney for international law there. The astronaut said before rocketing into orbit Monday that if he had to miss the birth, "this is a pretty good excuse and hopefully she'll forgive me for it later on."

The 12 space travelers got some extra moving time Friday. That's because Atlantis was declared free of any worrisome launch damage Thursday, with no further inspections needed until after the shuttle's departure.

The two crews also spent the day gearing up for the second spacewalk of their mission. Bresnik and Michael Foreman...

Review: $100 Palm Pixi Is Stylish But Sluggish
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:13:29 -0500Palm Inc. is fighting harder than ever to snag a chunk of the smart phone market, and just six months after releasing the stylish Pre it's back with a lighter, more petite and affordable version called the Pixi.

It's too bad such a good-looking phone is so aggravating to use.

With its trim candy bar-shaped body, full keyboard and $100 price tag (with a two-year Sprint Nextel contract and $150 in rebates), it's clear that Palm is aiming the Pixi at younger, text messaging-savvy consumers.

The Pixi is one of the most attractive phones I've seen. Its glossy black face features a crisp-though-diminutive 2.6-inch touch screen and a full keyboard that's about the size of a Pink Pearl eraser. The keys are the sticky, rubbery kind familiar to Palm fans. In between the screen and keyboard sits a small area where you make finger swipes to switch between applications.

The Pixi felt great in my hand. The sides of the device are rounded and its sides and back are a matte, rubberized plastic. At 3.3 ounces, it's a featherweight compared to the Pre, iPhone and most BlackBerry phones -- the Pre and iPhone each tip the scales at 4.8 ounces. The Pixi includes 8 gigabytes of storage for photos, music and videos.

The Pixi's display is an elfin version of its older brother's. Like the Pre, it has Palm's easy-to-navigate WebOS software, which organizes your open applications like little playing cards that stretch across the screen, waiting for you to tap on them to bring them to the foreground. (You use an upward finger flick to dismiss them.)

A notable WebOS feature has been its ability to aggregate your contacts and calendar entries from such services as Facebook and Google. The Pixi takes things a little further by letting you include your contacts from Yahoo and...

Call of Duty Setting Entertainment Records
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:13:54 -0500The video game "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" is blasting its way into entertainment history.

After hauling in the biggest-ever first-day sales total last week, the game continues break records.

Activision Blizzard Inc., which released the game Nov. 10, said the latest game in its "Call of Duty" franchise made $550 million in worldwide sales during its first five days. That would put it over the $500 million record set last year by "Grand Theft Auto IV," from Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.

Activision didn't say how many units it has shipped. But Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian estimates the company sold between 8.5 million and 9 million copies.

The game is also blowing past records set by other media. After "Grand Theft Auto IV" comes $394 million in worldwide box office sales brought in by the movie "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" over its first five days, according to Activision.

In its first 24 hours on sale, "Call of Duty" made $310 million in North America and the United Kingdom alone, while "Grand Theft Auto" made that same amount worldwide.

It was also far above the record $155 million opening weekend for the Batman movie "The Dark Knight" last year.

The game, which sells for $60, runs on Windows-based computers, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3.

Shares in Activision, which is based in Santa Monica, Calif., gained 3 cents to $11.72 in afternoon trading.

The weak economy has hit video game companies later than many other sectors because the industry had been thought by some investors to be recession-proof. Shares of both Activision and rival Electronic Arts Inc. have underperformed the S&P 500 since March. Take-Two's shares, meanwhile, have been volatile -- but they are trading roughly at the same level as they were a year ago.

Experts Say Radical Measures Won't Stop Swine Flu
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:15:00 -0500Health experts say extraordinary measures against swine flu -- most notably quarantines imposed by China, where entire planeloads of passengers were isolated if one traveler had symptoms -- have failed to contain the disease.

Despite initially declaring success, Beijing now acknowledges its swine flu outbreak is much larger than official numbers show.

China's official count of some 63,000 reported illnesses with 53 deaths dwarfs estimates of millions of cases with nearly 4,000 deaths in the United States, a nation with about a third of China's population.

Dr. Michael O'Leary, WHO's top representative in China, says there has been a dramatic spike in Chinese swine flu cases recently and those reported by the government are only "minimum numbers."

"We have new cases occurring all the time," he told The Associated Press last week. "There's always more deaths than we could possibly know about."

He said there is little data to prove interventions like mass quarantines and school closures slow down disease transmission. "To draw a causal link ... is not always possible," O'Leary said, adding that WHO expected a disease as contagious as swine flu to spread regardless of what measures countries impose.

China's Health Minister Chen Zhu defended his country's aggressive quarantine policy, telling the AP on Wednesday that the measures helped slow the spread of the virus long enough for China to develop a vaccine, which authorities are now scrambling to administer.

"With initial efforts of containment, actually we not only reduced the impact of the first wave to China, but we also won time for us to prepare the vaccine," Chen said in an interview on the sidelines of a meeting of the Global Forum for Health Research in Havana.

He said China was vaccinating 1.5 million people a day against swine flu as part of a massive effort to try to reach as many as...

FAA Glitch Causes Widespread U.S. Air Travel Delays
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:15:54 -0500Air travelers nationwide scrambled to revise their travel plans Thursday after an FAA computer glitch caused widespread cancellations and delays for the second time in 15 months.

The Federal Aviation Administration said the problem, which lasted about five hours, was fixed around 10 a.m., but it was unclear how long flights would continue to be affected.

Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Union, said controllers were still entering flight plans manually in some locations.

Aviation officials told The Associated Press that the problem began at the computer center in the Salt Lake City area. The officials asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

FAA spokesman Paul Takemoto said the problem started between 5:15 and 5:30 a.m. and affected mostly flight plans but also traffic management, such as ground stops and ground delays.

Airplane dispatchers had to send plans to controllers, who entered them into computers by hand.

"It's slowing everything down," Takemoto said.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the world's busiest, has been particularly affected. Chicago and Washington, D.C., and New York metro airports also reported delays due to the glitch. The problem was exacerbating delays caused by bad weather in the Northeast. Orlando International Airport, Florida's busiest, also reported about a dozen delays due to the chain reaction around the country, and flights in Tampa, Fla., were also delayed.

Mary Rulo, an educator from Atlanta, was trying to get to Philadelphia for a conference. She said her 9 a.m. flight was delayed until 3 p.m. and AirTran was not able to help with other arrangements.

"This is really going to affect my conference schedule," she said. "It's really frustrating."

AirTran canceled at least 22 flights and dozens more flights were delayed as of 8 a.m. Delta Air Lines was also affected.

Passengers were asked to check the status of their flights...

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