Today Steven Sinofsky the Senior Vice President for Windows and Windows live announced on his blog that there will not be a Beta 2 for Windows 7, and that the next release will be a Release Candidate or RC.
“The next milestone for the development of Windows 7 is the Release Candidate or ‘RC,’” Sinofsky wrote. “Historically the Release Candidate has signaled ‘we’re pretty close and we want people to start testing the release, especially because all the features are done.’”
There is no word on when we should expect the Release Candidate, but some OEMs speculate it may be as soon as June.
AOL today announced it will lay off 10 percent of it’s workforce by the end of March 2009 to help it get through these hard economic times. A decline in membership and ad revenue is also to blame.
Time Warner in the past year or so has tried to sell AOL to companies like Yahoo. Go Figure.
Today I was browsing the web, when I came across this story in the Chicago Tribune. Apparently a comcast tech who was a bit on the hefty side, climbed a utility pole to fix a dangling wire. The pole then preceded to break under his weight.
While comcast eventually paid to fix the pole, it took an intervention by the local news to get them to actually do something.
Recent research by PriceGrabber.com shows that 1 in 10 consumers have purchased a Netbook. The report is based on a survey of 1,545 US consumers between January 5th and January 14th.
The research also found that consumers believe the netbook complements the laptop and or desktop and doesn’t replace it. The report also found that 54% of online users said they would buy a netbook with a SSD drive if SSD prices continue to drop.
I personally have always said that Netbooks will not replace notebooks or desktops, and this research proves that. Now if only companies like ASUS, HP and MSI would listen to me and give us netbook users the option to sync their netbooks with their notebooks or desktops.
Last week HP made it easier for businesses with 1 to 9 employees to easily find products aimed toward businesses of their size, with a new micro site.
HPDirect.com/biz will help small businesses find the products that are best suited for them. The new micro site will offer 24 hour shipping, savings on ink and toner, and the opportunity to customize their computers along with a easy no hassle return policy.
Microsoft has released RC 1 (Release Candidcate 1) for Internet Explorer 8, and it can be downloaded here.
Internet Explorer 8 is the newest browser from Microsoft, and offers users new features such as Web Slices which basically uses RSS feeds to display content in mini windows, along with improved security features.
IE 8 RC 1 is not available from Windows 7. I was unable to get it to install if anyone was able to install it on Windows 7 please tell us what you did.
Last year Symantec blew our minds, with the release of Norton Internet Security 2009, not only did it install in under a minute and in some cases under 45 seconds, it also had a high accurate detection rate for virus, and it wasn’t as CPU intensive and as much of a memory hog as previous versions.
While the 2009 product is amazing, there is still room for improvement and after playing with NIS 2009 it’s hard to see what they can improve upon. But there are little things that I noticed that need improvement, and one would hope that Symantec knows it needs to improve.
But often times companies are satisfied with what they have done and do little to improve upon it. After all that is in my opinion what happened to Symantec in the past, they got comfortable with what they had and instead of improving it, instead they added more to it, and there came a time when there was so much to the program it didn’t do what it was supposed to do effectively.
Mary-Jo Foley is reporting that Microsoft will be cutting 1,400 jobs today, and another 3,600 more over the next six months.
While rumors have flown around with some estimates saying Microsoft would cut 15,000 jobs, I personally didn’t believe it. I thought Microsoft would decrease spending in PR and maybe can one of their PR firms, or just let go a whole lot of sub contractors.
When speaking with Mary-Jo this morning she even said she was surprised at the decision and yesterday on her facebook had said she hadn’t written about Job cuts because she didn’t think it would happen.
Since I was first introduced to the HP Touchsmart tx2 back in September 08 at a private NDA event, I became an instant fan of what I saw, and although the touchsmart tx2z is one of the few HP notebooks I haven’t had a chance to review for a long period of time it is probably one of my favorites if not my top favorite.
The tx2z is similar to the tx2000, with one huge difference. The tx2z has a multi-touch screen the tx2000 doesn’t. While both can double as tablets, because of the Multi-Touch you can do quite a bit more.
I am in the need of a new TV, and have been looking for a new TV since about early September. But times are tough and I have put the TV on the back burner, as it’s a want and not really a need. However if a deal comes by that is too good to pass up I will buy a new TV.
So today I thought that too good to pass up deal had come by, Sharp sent me an email telling me they were having a Customer Appreciation Sale that started today and ended the 23rd of January 2009. I was excited checked out the TV’s saw the prices and well the price was still too high for me. But since I thought it was a great deal I forwarded it on to a friend of mine.