Gmail has had 3 incidents this month of degraded performance or availability problems.

 

Starting in May, Yahoo will offer unlimited storage to its free e-mail users.  The current limit is 1GB; Hotmail has a 2GB limit, and the Gmail limit is 2.8GB.

 

 

A security hole in the way Windows XP and Vista handle animated cursors could be exploited through a Web page or e-mail message.  Microsoft plans to release a patch ahead of the monthly security update because attacks that exploit this are appearing on the Internet.

 

 

With the release of Internet Explorer 7, the market share of IE has grown from 67.5% in Dec. to 70.5% in Mar.  IE 7’s share grew from 6.9% to 18.7%.  The growth in adoption of Firefox has slowed, with an increase in share from 12.5% to 13.4%.

 

Microsoft released Visual Studio Tools for Applications, which is a Software Development Kit for developing applications with the Office applications.  VSTA is the replacement for Visual Basic for Applications.

 

Microsoft is not planning to release a big service pack for Windows Vista, intending to trickle out updates via Windows Update instead.

 

Microsoft sold 20 million consumer copies of Windows Vista in its first month of availability.    12-15 million PCs were sold with Windows XP installed during the holidays, and about 2/3 of those buyers registered for the upgrade to Vista, which is included in the 20 million. Windows XP sold 17 million copies in the first 2 months it was available.

 

Microsoft released an update for Windows Vista that fixes a problem with ejecting an Apple iPod music player.

 

While features like DirectX10 will eventually make Windows Vista a good platform for games, in the short term, many games won’t run on Vista, or run much slower than on Windows XP.  Many video cards either don’t have drivers for Vista, or the drivers that are available don’t work will yet, because of the new driver model in Vista.  The first DirectX10 games won’t be out until later this year.

 

Apple released a beta test version of Boot Camp that supports dual-booting to Windows Vista.  Boot Camp allows an Intel-based Mac to also boot into Windows.

 

Microsoft started limited testing of Office 2008 for the Mac, which includes support for the XML file formats in Office 2007.  Office 2008 is the first version of Office to run native on Intel-based Macs.  Office 2008 is expected to ship in the second half of 2007.

 

 

Bioscrypt is coming out with 3D DeskCam, which is a Web cam that can be used to authenticate a user based on the image plus an infrared scan of the face in 3D to come up with 40,000 identification points.

 

In a few weeks, Dell will sell specific desktop and laptop models with Linux pre-installed; the Linux distribution to be available has not been released yet.  Getting drivers will be a short-term problem for Dell.  OpenOffice.org will be available to be pre-installed.

 

The FCC Chairman wants to continue the ban on use of cell phones on airplanes in the air.  The cell phone industry is against the use of cell phones on planes because of concerns that a cell phone would try to connect to multiple cell towers, and could interfere with the cell phone system on the ground.

 

Philips is coming out with a cell phone that has a AAA battery as a backup to the main battery.  Once the main battery is drained, the AAA will provide up to 3 hours of talk time.

 

Intel’s ClassMatePC low-end laptops for students will come with Mandriva Linux pre-installed.  The laptops will be made in Brazil.

 

The laptops being developed by the One Laptop Per Child project are going to test a new Lithium Iron Phosphate battery, and the crank generator in the power supply has been replaced with a string pull generator.

 

The new Xbox 360 Elite has a 120GB hard drive and a high-definition (HDMI) video port.  The new model will sell for $480, compared to $399 for the current model, which has a 20GB hard drive.  Owners of the current model can add an external 120GB hard drive for $180.  The new Xbox and the hard drive will be available 4/29.

 

Cell phone vendors are working to add music playing to phones, but the user experience is not very good yet, with limited battery life, limited memory, cumbersome loading of music, and difficult navigation through the music on the phone.  The Apple iPhone won’t ship until June, but the iPhone is what everyone is trying to beat.

 

 

Oregon is considering requiring documents to be saved in open document formats, and is also considering requiring libraries to install freeware office applications so users can access and print the documents.  The proposed law does not specify that the OpenDocument format be used, as proposed laws in other states do.