More iTablet Rumors

The iTablet never seems to go away and is constantly being talked about on rumor sites. But what if it never actually comes to past? Of course everyone seems to think so, and maybe Apple will make their dreams come true some day. But it sure doesn't seem like they're really interested in going in that direction. For one thing, a tablet would be rather awkward to operate. One of the features of the iTouch/iPhone is that it's small enough to hold on one hand and operate with the other. A tablet needs to be held with both hands.

Whether or not an Apple tablet is in the works or is coming, the rumors about new Apple products will never go away since Apple is a product company and the rumor-mill for Apple is a thriving business. As for me, since an iPhone is out of the question, an iPod touch might just have to do.

Microsoft Word is going away. Far away.

Microsoft has been ordered to stop selling Word due to Patent infringement. Judge Leonard Davis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued a permanent injunction on Tuesday that "prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML," according to a statement released by attorneys for the plaintiff, i4i. Microsoft said in a statement that it planned to appeal the verdict. Toronto-based i4i sued Microsoft in March 2007 alleging that the Redmond,Wash.-based software giant violated its 1998 patent (No. 5,787,449) for a document system that eliminated the need for manually embedded formatting codes. In May, a federal jury in Tyler, Texas, ruled that the custom XML tagging features of Word 2003 and Word 2007 infringed on i4i's patent and ordered Microsoft to pay $200 million in the case. In Tuesday's ruling, Microsoft was also ordered to pay an additional $40 million for willful infringement, as well as $37 million in prejudgment interest. The order requires Microsoft to comply with the injunction within 60 days and forbids Microsoft from testing, demonstrating, or marketing Word products containing the contested XML feature.

Gmail lovers

Email hacking has been around for ages, even the vice-president candidate's email was hacked into. Twitter even got hacked into through Gmail. Here is some info on how to keep your Gmail account safe, and secure from hackers.

Apple Tablet Rumors Getting Closer to Fact

The phrase "rumor has it" is not a stranger to Apple, a company that is pretty secretive about their products. However, the recent line of rumors prove very interesting and they're getting harder and harder to ignore. So hard that there has been talk that the Apple iTouch Tablet has been rumored to be connected via Verizon instead of through Apple's standard cell carrier is quite interesting. Of course it's no secret on here that AT&T stinks.

Apple iPod Out of Style?

Looks like the iPod may be starting to lose steam... of course, the iPhone is humming right along... at least for now.

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Viewsonic Introduces Netbooks?

In a move completely unexpected by myself (and apparently a few others as well) Viewsonic who usually only does monitors and displays is introducing a netbook. This is interesting to me because they wouldn't have introduced it if they didn't think there was a market for it still, even though the netbook market has started to get quite a lot of attention.

ViewSonic is most well known for its display products, but the company has dabbled with various types of mobile computers in the past and was one of the first companies out with a tablet PC. A new announcement of two new netbooks sees ViewSonic entering an already crowded market space.

The two models are the VNB100 and VNB101 and although the model names aren’t that different, the two models have distinctly different designs. The VNB100 is the budget model of the two, yet it offers more features than the more expensive VNB101.

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These new netbooks don't really seem to introduce anything new; they simply are Viewsonic's attempt to create something cool using their technology. Why does it make sense for a company like Viewsonic to get involved in the netbook market? I think it makes sense because they make good LCD screens and that is probably the most expensive component in a netbook. The processors and other technogly in the netbook is really not that expensive and therefore a company that makes quality LCD screens could do very well at making a quality netbook.

Hail Windows 7

Windows 7 has been Released to Manufacturing (RTM'd) today. According to the Windows Blog here's what that means:

As I mentioned previously, RTM officially happens only after sign-off occurs. What happens is a build gets designated as a RTM contender after going through significant testing and meeting our quality bar for RTM. Then, it goes though all the validation checks required for RTM including having all languages of that build completed. If all the validation checks have passed – sign-off for RTM can occur. Today after all the validation checks were met, we signed off and declared build 7600 as RTM.

It looks like we'll be seeing Windows 7 appear on stage shortly. How will Windows 7 benefit you and your work flow? I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to use it since I'm on OS X and have no intention of switching to Wondows, but I would certainly like to see what it's all about sometime. For those of you that will be using it, I'd be happy to hear what benefits you think you'll get from using it and how it'll make your work-flow or fun-flow (for those gamers out there) more productive.