There’s two ways you can look at piracy, a positive and a negative way. You can winge about it, though that just gets folks backs up, or you can make something good about it. Microsoft have been doing a lot of that recently, starting with making OEM licences available to all, and then the Microsoft Office Home and Student edition which gives you 3 licence’s for the basic set of programs.

And now Microsoft has worked something else out, if people will pay £59 for a 1 year Norton 360 subscription, they should definitely pay £35 instead for Windows Live Onecare and Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student edition. Those prices are very approximate conversions between pounds and dollars, but the principle is the same.

So, it’s called Equipt, and for now it is only available in Circuit City but that will be expanding in coming months, not only across the U.S but will be spreading to England town and beyond. Obviously it will need to be renewed, along with your Anti virus subscription but no matter! As I said above it is cheaper than Norton 360, and in my opinion, better value than these cloud things, Google Docs and the like. The support will be there, the compatibility with Sharepoint which many schools use. It’s great.

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It’s another of these arguments we know and love. Apple lover is there saying that Apple is the best and anything else is poor. Then there’s the geezer who likes to have an independent opinion so argues for the sake of it, and he says Creative’s are better because they have far superior sound quality.

The arguments, petty, but thanks to creative, its going to continue. So, iPod touch diehards, you have something to belittle and look down your nose at, and creative diehards, you can be different again because Creative have made this: the ZEN X-Fi.

The features are roughly the same, internet access and a music player. But Apple needn’t be scared, seen as they’ve convinced everyone that anything more than a screen requires a degree in computer science. It does however (so we’re informed) feature Yahoo and Microsoft IM and can share media wirelessly between computers.

I used to have a Creative Zen Sleek Photo, it did me well, it was well built, looked good, reasonably easy to use and I could buy my music from anywhere but iTunes, yet I replaced it with an iPod just over a year later. It wasn’t any major crime the old Zen committed, it was just little niggles about the Zen that make the iPod just better, take the name for instance. The iPod is an iPod, so therefore the Zen is a Zen, right? Wrong. I say ‘Pass me my iPod’, people understand me instantly, what do I say for the Zen? ‘Chuck me my Zen’ doesn’t mean anything, it just sounds, well, stupid. Should I say mp3 player? Boy that’s a mouthful. I just in the end called mine ‘my creative music player thing’. And creative, along with all other manufacturers will be fighting that constantly.

So in essence, my verdict is, looks to be styled as well as any iPod, will play and operate as well as (if not better) any iPod but it’s just far too different to the iPod which completely hits the nail on the head. But still, if the price is right, which I imagine it will be, I’d buy one.

Via Trusted Reviews

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We herd Steve Jobs bit at Macworld about how Apple was now going to add a special bit to all their products, to make them do their bit for the environment. Such as using recyclable material in the Macbook Air so when your done with it you can take it to be recycled where they’ll melt it down and make it in to a new Macbook Air. Of course if you cant be bothered going to such extents you could just put it in your waste paper basket. But with a phone, it’s a bit more difficult…

A phone, designed to live the life of its contract, but not a day longer. To if nothing else, ultimately become obsolete. It is everything but environmentally friendly, even if the outer case could be used again. So in order to keep the hippies over at Greenpeace happy over the coming years the iPhone will be shipped in a recyclable box, made from potato starch. Well, some of it will be recycled spud anyway, the bit inside that actually holds the iPhone will be. 

So there you go, in 10 days time when you lift your iPhone out of ‘tray’ which started life as a potato, you can know that you’ve done your bit, and when your contract runs out in 18 months time you can justifiedly throw your old iPhone away before going back to the O2 shop to buy the 3g iPhone Nano Video 3rd Gen.

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There’s been a lot of talk and idle speculation about Windows 7, Microsoft’s Vista replacement, but really no proper info yet. Some nice screen shots of it that people have put together in Photoshop which is all really sweet but I don’t buy in to that. I still remember some of the ones from when Vista was up and coming.

This aint real, but I still think it’s a darn good UI. 

Anyhow, one thing that might be definitely true is thus: Microsoft’s other less well known Bill, Bill Veghte has sent out a message. He said

"Our plan is to deliver Windows 7 approximately three years after the January 2007 general availability launch date of Windows Vista."

"You’ve also let us know you don’t want to face the kinds of incompatibility challenges with the next version of Windows you might have experienced early with Windows Vista."

"As a result, our approach with Windows 7 is to build off the same core architecture as Windows Vista so the investments you and our partners have made in Windows Vista will continue to pay off with Windows 7,"

So there we have it, January 2010, and lots of bug fixes, I think they can get away with it to be honest, when you think that Snow Leopard is also really just big fixes. Right now I’m placing my bets on some improvements to the design aesthetically and lots of reliability, bit like 98 to XP.

Via The Internet

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And I’m going to start this post, with a lie. Which is as follows: Everybody should buy Macbook Air’s because they’re so portable and at such a good price no body should be without. And now that I’ve told that lie, I suppose I should do everything in my power to guide you confused readers towards something that is cheap, is portable and can run OSX. And that would be the MSI wind.

Yes it isn’t supplied with it pre installed, and it does break the Apple EULA, but these are really just obstacles, because someone over on insanely mac, has managed it. I’ve played about with osX86 and stand by that it works very well, on my Dell Inspiron laptop its battery meter even worked.

But the brunk of it is, it works, running OSX 10.5.2, a modified version of, naturally. There’s still some bits to tweak, but I myself would happily settle for that as it is anyway, a OSX 7" Notebook for $399 (£220 ish).

So there you are, the Macbook Wind.

Via Insanely Mac Forums

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Provided that ICANN don’t consider that morally wrong, you may well be able to buy a .fart domain, or in fact any type of domain ending, as long as you happen to have $50-$100,000. It’s main focus is at companies, and its high price is to put a hold down on cyber squatters. So I may have my eyes of .pib.

Various examples of this idea in use is city domains, such as .leeds or .llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (and yes that is a real place to all our American visitors, search welsh train station on Google some time) but you get the idea.

Companies with trade marked names will get priority over use of them, but to add to the new changes, there’s talk of allowing non English characters for domains, you know, Arabic and Chinese lettering. Personally I think that’s a really sweet idea except that not everyone has an Arabic keyboard do they? Mind you, Arabs don’t have English keyboards either do they. I suppose it’s doable, sounds complicated though.

But there you go, it makes huge scope for addresses for years to come, and takes the emphasis away from the traditional .com.

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I’m going to start this post by reminding you all that I hate Aero. And I’m going to justify this point with a picture.

The top is Aero with one of Microsoft’s cliche wallpapers, and the bottom picture is Aero with a change of wallpaper. Less vibrant, and frankly, miserable.

Now PC manufacturers have been developing interfaces to cover or work with Windows to present it differently or give it their own styling, a bit like Microsoft Bob. And here is dells, though I have to say, it isn’t the most exciting idea, its still worth mentioning.

It’s called the Dell Dock. It takes all your icons and kind of hides them up top in a less straight forward manor. My first impressions are it looks very ‘Appley’. Except those suspicious two on the right. But it’s pretty customizable. Its an ‘innovative’ idea, but it’s risky ground changing the layout and principle of how Windows is used. I doubt it will be forced upon people, but it will be ideal for people who want a play, or people who want a change.

Via Gizmodo.com

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Im sure the instruction manual to my sony PSP says you must turn the Wireless switch to off when flying on planes lest it will intefere with the instruments and cause you to land at the wrong airport. Yet now American Airlines are testing in flight Wifi tomorrow. So if tomorrow a plane falls on your head, you can be rest assured it didn’t work.

But the chances of that are slim, as myth busters tested this myth not so long ago and found no evidence of planes being messed about with through wireless interference. After that scientific investigation therefore, American Airlines concluded it must be safe, so are going to try it on a flight between JFK and LAX and back again. And if the plane doesn’t fall out of the sky, they’ll do it on the rest of their fleet. It will cost $10-$13 depending on flight length, but out of generosity, for testing purposes, its free. They’re good guys really eh?

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Remember night rider? Actually, I don’t to be honest. My dad tried to get me in to it when channel 5 re-ran it in the 90’s, and I think i’f of liked it, were I not 7 years old. Instead I responded words to the effect of ‘just because this program has a fast car in it doesn’t mean I care about it, now go clean the bathroom.’ In fact the exact words were "urr, cool!"

But now being at an age to appreciate Knight Rider, I can live the moments from the series with this GPS from Mio that talks and has the visual appearance of KITT from the old TV show. It even will have the voice of William Daniels, the original voice of the night rider talking car.

Unfortunately however it wont be able to say things much more original than "Hello Michael, where do you want to go today?" But I like it and such an idea would have a place in my car.

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Yes I think Mozilla has successfully managed to roll out Firefox 3 quicker than Microsoft rolled out Vista (Microsoft didn’t have a download day after all did they?) and another platform it has very quickly conquered has been the USB pen drive. 

Yes, hit Portable App’s now to upgrade your USB drive to Firefox 3 and carry all your features, settings and other important bits and pieces around with you. In theory you should be able to get the quicker rendering time now anywhere through your portable installation, and be able to smugly rub it in the faces of Internet explorer users, as oh so many Firefox users still love to do.

So yeah, Portable Apps, Firefox 3, USB Drive

PIB