A federal jury ordered Microsoft to pay $1.5 billion in damages to Alcatel-Lucent in a patent dispute over MP3 audio technology used in Microsoft Windows operating systems.
“We made strong arguments supporting our view and we are pleased with the court’s decision,” said Alcatel-Lucent spokeswoman Joan Campion, declining to discuss details of the decision.
On the list of the most hated characters of all time, Microsoft Clippy ranks right near the top sharing space with the likes of Jar Jar Binks, Barney the Dinosaur, and Pikachu. Well, today is the day you’ve all been waiting for, as engadget reports that Clippy is no longer a part of the Microsoft Office family, which ends a glorius 10 year life. Once the forefront for annoying and inconvenient helpful advice for Microsoft’s entire office line, in recent years Clippy was relegated from his role as a starter to a mere second string bench player (in fact he was not even turned on by default in Office 2003). While he may be gone, he will never be forgotten and perhaps one day we can look back fondly on the memories of our fallen friend. RIP Clippy…
On January 30, 2007, Microsoft Vista was released worldwide to the general public. There are many reasons to upgrade to Windows Vista and there are just as many reasons not to. The bottom line is if you are happy with XP then you should at least wait a couple months until software and hardware vendors work out any compatibility issues. Many people recommend waiting till Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is released. Don’t expect this any time soon, remember that Windows XP Service Pack 1 came out 11 months after XP was released.
Microsoft has spent $500-million on its marketing campaign to push both Windows Vista and Office 2007 so it is easy to get caught up in the hype. Just remember that Windows XP is not going away anytime soon! As long as there is no further adjustments to its policy mainstream support for all versions of Windows XP will continue at least until April 2009.
According to the latest official information from Apple, using your iPod and iTunes on the new Microsoft Windows Vista operating system can cause some serious issues including:
Ejecting an iPod from the Windows System Tray using the “Safely Remove Hardware” feature may corrupt your iPod. To always safely eject an iPod, choose Eject iPod from the Controls menu within iTunes.
On a more positive note though, they do list several tips for those of you brave enough to upgrade right away, as to how to avoid major problems. It’s too bad iPods don’t work with anything but iTunes, maybe a few more options would have made this less painful on all of us.
