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If you own a relatively successful site that caters to the general public [Alexa] browser stats will reflect the browser and OS usage stats pretty accurately.

Because a large segment of the population is using Firefox and Alexa was an IE only tool that Firefox users would rather do without, I don't think Alexa says anything meaningful. If you define "general public" as "microsoft using public" you could be right.

These are all misleading details. The real story is as the Register got it - Vista made no difference to M$'s bottom line. I'd interpret that as what little marketshare Vista can gain is pure cannibalism. Mac and GNU/Linux incerases are coming from the same pie and their measured sales are up.

Soon $200 GNU/Linux laptops will be all over the place and M$'s stall will turn into an accelerating decline.

you're trying to dispute the trend with a single data point.

Au contraire, the fine article is trying to establish a trend with a single botched number. I've disputed that number and given you two others, M$'s bottom line and RAM sales, which both make the same point.

Until somebody can show hard numbers indicating that Linux is displacing XP installs at a greater rate than Vista, however, I'm afraid the inevitable Year of Linux will have to be postponed. Again.

As more PC makers start pushing out $200 laptops with gnu/linux installed, you will get the counts you want to see. It looks like the only reason Dell jumped into the Linux market is because it's about to eat everything like it ate the embedded market. The WinTel era is over.

Why stop at August - in a mere 9 years it will have 110% of the market!

M$ depends on growth to feed it's "restricted" stock compensation plans. Vista adoption is slower than any Windoze version ever. Significantly, it has not made a dent on M$'s bottom line. They have already been losing developers to Google and other competitors based on the failure of their stock options plans - options for $150 when the stock is selling at $25 are kind of insulting.

They are in the non free death spiral. The downward spiral begins with long development time and poor quality, like Vista exhibits. It ends with the realization that M$'s triumph is not self assured. People can and will use other software when the M$ upgrade gravy train is over. Witness the ultimate end, $200 gnu/linux laptops. At that price point there's no room for the M$ tax. The squeeze makes it even more difficult for them to develop product and things just get worse for them.

Their efforts to own free software are a threat, but one that will be vanquished in short order by everyone else who's making good money with honest software. M$ can join the party or die.

One day, it will. You might wonder if it will ever run Vista well. My bet is on GNU/Linux.

In the mean time, you can keep the $3,800 price difference and get something like this, that weighs 2lbs and comes with gnu/linux installed.

What was that prediction about a $200 price point for PCs? Oh yeah, that's right - non free software won't be able to compete when the price point drops to $200. The world is looking better every day.

$200 laptops are here. It's small, light and has more horsepower than the five year old PIII I'm using. With GNU/Linux, you don't need a portable super computer.

Depends who is doing the Morse:

http://www.engadget.com/2005/05/06/morse-code-trum ps-sms-in-head-to-head-speed-texting-combat/

I'm surprised no one has pointed out the fact that the same thing happed 3 years ago: In South Korea, email is for old people

"Who said anything about TV?" -- Smug PC weenies

I agree with you that a set-top box should be the best solution for some entertainment environments. But unfortunately, all stand-alone set-top boxes that are significantly cheaper than a Mac mini are thoroughly Tivoized. I want to help us come up with some ammunition against smug PC weenies who almost unconditionally prefer the 2-foot experience over the 10-foot experience, so here are four of their objections in increasing order of devil's advocacy:

1. I can't buy a modded Xbox in U.S. retail stores or on eBay; where else should I buy a modded Xbox?
2. If you mean that I should learn to mod one myself, can version 1.6 be modded without soldering? Does your "no cheaper way" estimate include training for somebody who has never soldered before? And I still can't buy modchips in U.S. retail stores or on eBay for the same reason as above.
3. Does your "no cheaper way" estimate include the potential $750 to $30,000 statutory damages (per 17 USC 504 and foreign counterparts) for infringement of the copyright in the Xbox BIOS and/or the XDK libraries against which XBMC and most of these emulators are compiled?
4. Per several comments in other console vs. PC discussions on Slashdot, isn't television output overrated? Isn't it "better" to buy one set of PC, monitor, keyboard, and mouse per person and play multiplayer games over the LAN, because that way each player has a hundred triggers for discrete actions and can't easily cheat off other players' screens?

Apparently many people voted with their money and bought a mac.

Ugh, would Mac fanboys please stop pointing to the iMac like it was the first all-in-one computer / monitor combo. Gateway was doing it for quite a while before they were.

Wow, it was a joke. Calm down.

I doubt Gateway was the first, though. There were tons of all-in-ones in the "early days", like the Radio Shack Trash-80s and the original 1984 Macintosh:
http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/trs80iii/trs 80.jpg
http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/03/originalmac. jpg

I doubt Gateway was the first, either.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Cell+phones+f or+elderly
http://cellphones.about.com/od/topcellphones/tp/ce ll_senior.htm
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_33 /b3947040_mz006.htm
http://www.engadget.com/2004/07/28/lgs-cellphone-f or-the-elderly/
All phones and leads on phones with exactly what you require. And, no foreign import issues.
"Ocham's Razor essentially states that all things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually correct."

it doesn't solve Six pack Joe's DRM problems. He will get a Zune, won't bother or know how to crack it

Engadget has the photos. It doesn't look that much thinner to me.

how long before an official unlocked iPhone appears?

5 long years

They make headsets rather small now; and that is from over a year ago!

Furthermore, to the degree that one wants to see major players support Linux, inventing ways to use changes in the GPL to screw Microsoft for peripheral involvement in Linux support seems completely counterproductive.

Are you joking or trolling? 'peripheral involvement in Linux support'?! Do you call this support?

Microsoft thought they could get around the spirit--if not the letter--of the GPL by a technicality (getting Novell to support their patent FUD) and make Free software proprietary, Stallman and his erstwhile chums at the FSF have plugged the gap. Now, please stop trolling and get a clue.

Sorry for feeding everyone, but am worried someone might actually believe this rubbish

http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/03/openmoko-detail s-pricing-availability-for-neo1973/

hth

"Stuff is worth what people will pay for it."

Clearly, the PS3 isn't worth $600 to very many people. I'll be surprised if it's worth $500 either. Despite all the technology they've crammed in there, the games library has almost zero appeal. Boring, joyless games plus Blu-Ray does not equal $500.

With the Wii outselling PS3 6-to-1 in Japan, there's little reason to think third-party software makers will turn this around.

2.8" VGA TFT color display
Touchscreen, usable with stylus or fingers
266HZ Samsung System on a Chip (SOC)
Integrated AGPS

I hope this guy does better than Steorn, which claimed that they could throw away physics and produce free energy. You can see how well this went.

This guy has a beef with mathematics, since he wants solutions to be developed be more naturally. Well, natural intelligence took several million years to develop adaptively, but if I told my client "I'll take your spec and let it 'evolve' into a solution for the next 100 000 years", there's quite the possibility he'll find someone who knows math instead.

He's right about one thing, and in fact I've said this myself lots of times: lots of the consumer apps don't need heavy math to build. they just need work, good UI and adherence to functionality specs.

But all of this "easy development" is still built upon math libraries we take for granted (os kernel and management, image and video compression libraries, DSP libraries, sorting algorithms etc).

As a quick test: let's try and remove all math related machine commands from a CPU and try to work a usable solution with that.. Good luck.

I don't like people who reject hundreds of years of science work (math) and offer nothing as alternative, except vague dreams about more natural computing.

T-Mobile's new UMA offering may justify giving them and just about every other provider to offer UMA service a second look.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/27/t-mobile-goes-n ational-with-hotspot-home-wifi-calling/

The Wizard has had that for three years now. Most smart phones have, regardless of the operating system they are based on. Heck, PalmOS has had that since the mid 1990s on their PDAs, Windows Mobile just copied it making it slightly more intuitive, and iPhone is just the latest revision of the same idea.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned that Vodaphone and T-Mobile files were found on the iPhone. But I'm really surprised that Apple may choose O2 here in the UK. Recently Vodaphone and T-Mobile have really been touting their internet access services while O2 doesn't seem to have anything to offer. I can't see how O2 can even be in this race!

The new hortibot looks suspiciously similar to a remote controlled lawnmoder that tragically killed a danish gardener 2 months ago. Do we really want to add autonomous control to that machine?
http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/31/robot-lawnmower -kills-danish-man-begins-resistance/
http://www.hortibot.dk/index.html

The only exception might be very thin synthetic fabrics such as lycra that are basically transparent except for a black dye that is doesn't absorb near-IR

This is true and why IR voyouism was a problem, even at the Olympics. It was so much of a problem and recieved publicity that now official swimsuits are made to block IR for just this reason.

Cotton does scatter light. Most natural fibers do. Oil based Synthetics such a polyester scatter much less light, especialy when wet.

Here is the Endgadget article on the problem and the IR blocking solution.
http://www.engadget.com/2004/07/27/no-more-infrare d-nudie-pics-of-japanese-olympic-swimmers/

I was studying IR photography and was facinated with all the unseen things such as the new IR stripes on US money, healthy and unhealthy forests & plants, and found the articles on IR pass cloth and tinted windows.
I still don't have an IR camera, but will soon make one.

AT&T and Apple both knew that the iPhone would be immensely popular, but neither company apparently realized how big initial demand would be. The Chicago Tribune reports today that "before the phone's debut analysts expected Apple to sell 50,000 to 200,000 units" during the rollout, but initial reports are that 500,000 units were in customer hands within the first few hours. (see http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-070702i phone,0,1339325.story?coll=chi-business-hed) One problem was that both companies were not only introducing a new product, but a new activation method -- take it home and activate it yourself using iTunes. Store employees were not allowed to open the box or even break the shrink-wrap; it was all up to customers -- all of whom were obviously untrained in the process, and some of whom were probably less technically qualified than others. To make matters even more complicated, at least half of the iPhone first-day buyers were coming from other cell phone providers (see http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/02/500-000-iphones -sold-so-far-but-can-apple-keep-up/), the AT&T activation server was swamped. According to a friend who works for the company, all half-a-million buyers wanted to activate at the same time. Under those circumstances, what could anyone expect but difficulty? One reason I'm waiting until Christmas to get mine ...

The obvious thing would be so simply eliminate the optical drive. I use mine to install software and that's about it. Make it external and still satisfy the daily needs of 85-90% of your userbase.

A second idea, hinted at in a recent patent filing, is to make the access door on the bottom. If you eliminate the need for a side-mounted, slot loading drive, you free up a lot of precious real estate both in terms of thickness and what else you can now put on the side. Flipping over your laptop to change a CD sucks, sure, but again, how often are you doing this? For me it's like a couple times a week max.

Note that all these rumors point to an entirely new product, the "MacBook Thin", which would not be a revamp of the current low-end MacBook line. Sorry, you don't get all this cool new stuff for $999 :-) More like twice that, based on the rumors.

I am betting that the main factor reducing the thickness would be the LED-backlit LCD screens. Sony has had them in their VAIO TX and SZ lines for about a year now and they rock(that was one of the reason I bought a Sony instead of an Apply laptop). The screen is just about 3mm thick and it makes a considerably brighter screen and lighter laptop.

A comparison review of MacBook Pro and Sony VAIO SZ (with lots of pics) Note: This is different from the amazingly awesome superthin and superbright(and superexpensive) OLED screens that Sony is coming out with later this year. Click here for pics

Marry that with software that can "look" at the screen data and recognize patterns, and you'd have yourself an automated player.

Already done.

There is no technological fix for this. Eventually, AI will be so good that it will be hard to tell if a player is human or AI. Since the AI will be another computer with a web came and keyboard inputs, there is no detection.

Unless you requite a Voight-Kampff test before being allowed to play online.

Yeah, status symbols for hipsters. And scientists, graphic artists, video producers, health care imaging professionals, audio engineers, photographers, radio broadcasters, software engineers, web developers, former VPs of the United States of America, etc. I suppose those folks could use your platform of choice to do their jobs, but they probably don't want to *need* people like you around to keep them patched and semi-secure. Nor do they want to associate with you, what with the food stained shirts, bad haircuts, and poor overall disposition due to your invariable inability to secure a sex partner. STFU and go back to your bag of cheetos.

Your link should have pointed to the openmoko wiki.
Potential iPhone buyers should give this page a glance, a better screen and more storage space through microSD cards( 8Gb microSD cards will be released soon and who's willing to bet that in two years time the capacity of microSD reachs 32Gb,

Can they please go back to making computers now?

No

On the other hand, they'll be first to market with the LG CDMA/EVDO iPhone copycat, starting at $199.

You mean the LG KE850 that was launched before anyone had seen the first glimpse of the iPhone? I can see, based on that, why you'd call it a copycat - because Apple must be the innovator, right?

Let's not let the laws of physics get in the way of bashing companies for copying Apple by releasing a similar product (in design, if nothing else) before Apple's launch, huh?

There are rumours of a major speed boost (up to 200 kbps) in the EDGE network today.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/28/atandt-customer s-seeing-sudden-boost-in-edge-speeds/

No idea if this is true, but there are similar rumours coming from elsewhere as well.

Seems that there are credible reports coming in that in the last 24 hours AT+T have increased EDGE speeds to >200 k bits/s. This should be good news to all AT+T EDGE users:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/28/atandt-customer s-seeing-sudden-boost-in-edge-speeds/

As we know, increased means they probably removed some artificial cap....

I wonder how many days will go by until the drop the speed again? I guess there will be a halo effect of new iPhone buyers showing their friends - "hey look at this I can browse the web" - just for the sake of it....

The calendar syncs with Exchange indirectly through Entourage or Outlook. Also it syncs with Address Book, which syncs with AD for contacts. Kinda hokey, but I guess it'll work. Beats me about the car.

Here.

Things that surprised me were:

• No A2DP stereo Bluetooth support?
• No MMS or IM?
• No voice dialing??
• No cut/copy/paste?!? WTF?

Uhm? I don't understand. Did you use html-tags to illustrate something, because in that case (for someone that is part of the slashdot crowd and knows the difference between html and plaintext), you should use html entities. No, really, they are very nifty to actually display greater than and lower than signs. Try this the following time &gt; for >, and &lt; for <

And as for the "modded naked PC", there is weird stuff out there...

Read this. that's an amazing coincidence!

I find it fascinating that Engadget's headline on this very same story is:
Report: Vista more secure than OS X and Linux

Way to spin, slashdot!!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/22/report-vista-mo re-secure-than-os-x-and-linux/
An article on engadget that is pointing to the EXACT same data...yet the title there most certainly provides a seriously different outlook does it not? I do not blame anyone, however, as if I had seen an ACTUAL nuetral title along the lines of 'microsoft employee posts dubious data of questionable usefulness to anyone except PR departments' I would without doubt have just scrolled on...

Seems to me tech addiction/love/desire/demand is not at all constrained to the West: it's a function of income, pricing and product availability, among other factors. Are you somehow forgetting the obvious huge explosion of tech driven economies of China and India? Perhaps the massive marvels of Dubai escaped you? Japanese supercomputing slipped your mind ? Do you really think all the brainpower creating these things goes home and doesn't indulge in the same level of personal tech lust that drives the average Jose in Denver? That's a bit ignorant and baiting, anonymous.

Or perhaps you missed the internet debunking of that rumor.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/26/fuh-yuan-retrac ts-299-wal-mart-hd-dvd-statement/

Our memory isn't short, we just read more than you do.

The iPhone, from this chart, essentially comes with two batteries compared to other devices. That was one complaint...

But even if that were not enough for you, there is a viable solution to extended power I have seen used with Windows Mobile phones - a small external battery pack that can recharge the phone. It's around the same size as a normal phone battery, and gives quite a bit more power.

In fact, it's such a good idea - they are already being made today. That's for the iPod, but since the iPhone uses the same dock connector...

Does no one bother that most of these so-called Walkman phones don't offer a 3.5mm headphone jack? The W910 doesn't have one. Yeah, you can get these adapters but then you end up 2m of cable which just sucks. Sure, there's Bluetooth but none of these phones comes with a stereo BT set and most 3rd party BT headsets are expensive, creepy, and/or unreliable.

I don't even mind the ads, 'cause they keep it free.

Until you see a KFC ad that intentionally annoys people with good hearing.