Microsoft's Ballmer tells customers to stick with Windows

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO has emailed management and IT professionals in a fierce defence of Windows against Linux and Unix in the Enterprise. In the email he warns potential Linux customers, `the number of security vulnerabilities is lower on Windows, and Windows responsiveness on security is better than Linux; and Microsoft provides uncapped IP indemnification of their products, while no such comprehensive offering is available for Linux or open source.` Citing various studies, some of which were paid for by Microsoft - although all 'independent' according to Ballmer - he claimed that while Linux may appear 'free', training, consultancy and continuing support costs meant that over the longer term, Windows was less expensive. ...more

Depressing poll finds Dome depressing

A thousand people voting in an online poll thought that the Millennium Dome was the most depressing feature of the year. They voted for the troubled attraction over the floods, the rail chaos and even the crisis in the Middle East. However, the most depressing thing should be that the poll was ever deemed newsworthy. ...more

Brit named Chairman of Sony

In a surprise move, Sony Corporation has appointed Sir Howard Stringer as the new Chairman and Group CEO. This is the first time that a non-Japanese has been put in charge of a company that has an almost iconic status in its home country. The move is part of a major shake-up in the Sony boardroom with seven members stepping down or moving to other parts of the Corporation. ...more

1Mbit broadband for less than ?15

Freedom2Surf has announced a 1Mbit/sec broadband service at an extremely low price of ?14.99. The Connect Lite service makes use of BT's new capacity-based charging structure and as you would expect at that price, is capped, with a maximum of 1GB of downstream traffic per month. ...more

New toolbar for dyslexics

Although the Internet is a vital resource for many people, many others find reading the text difficult to understand due to dyslexia and other visual understanding difficulties. A British inventor, himself a dyslexic, has come up with the 'Textic' toolbar to make reading the web or even a word processor easier. Once installed on their machine, sufferers can use the Textic toolbar to alter a web site's background colour, text colour, text size, font style and colour, as well as directly access a thesaurus, dictionary and unique messaging 'keypad' especially tailored for use by dyslexia sufferers. ...more