Vantage computers has gone into administration following weeks of unanswered support calls. Doubts about the company started when it was expelled from the Professional Computer Association. Andrew Carter former Vantage managing director is reported to be reassuring that all warranties will be honoured.
Dell looks to be falling apart. US investigators are probing its accounts. Some of the problem is due to technical stagnation, some because corporates are holding onto PC for longer, but much is due to the lack of confidence in Dell's customer services. Michael Dell has returned to the company intending to make Dell more attractive to customers.
Redten has suddenly pulled the offer to its customers of a 'free PC' when they signed up for three years of broadband. The news came two days after its parent company was subject to a mysterious takeover.
Can reduce fuel consumption by more than 2.6 per cent just by adding a piece of software to the engine computer, a Dutch scientist found in a university research project together with Ford. It can work on any modern car by controlling the battery charging process slightly differently. Ask your garage to investigate for you.
Outwardly Microsoft and Novell seem to be in agreement again. A couple of large financial institutions in Europe have ordered SuSE linux support certificates from Microsoft. Microsoft has therefore started making money from Linux too. In protest at the deals Jeremy Allison has left Novell. Jeremy was one of the key developers for the Samba project which enables Windows to store files on Linux systems.
Keep your passwords safe. Use the free Keepass utility. Full details at http://www.keepass.info/
Avoid Windows Vista.
The consumer launch of Vista at the end of January is disappointing share holders. Security flaws have already been found and exploited. UK Schools authority has warned institutions to avoid upgrading. Gartner continue to recommend corporates against upgrading. Major hardware vendors such as Nvidia have been unable to release video drivers in time. Australian researchers have also discovered that due to the copyright technologies enforced by Vista that video and audio performance is slower than on previous versions of Windows. The performance drop is by design and can not be fixed by faster hardware.
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