Vista Launch, Today Jan 29 4:45pm EST

Watch it live...

Bill Gates Celebrates Worldwide General Availability of Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office System
January 29, 2007
1:45 p.m. PST / 4:45 p.m. EST

From Times Square in New York City, join Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates for a live webcast celebrating the worldwide launch of Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office System. The celebration pays tribute to the millions of Microsoft customers, partners and product testers around the world who provided input and feedback on these products -- helping Microsoft transform the way people communicate, create and share content, and access information and entertainment in the new digital age.

View Webcast:
•500K
•220K
•100K

Top 101 Websites - Useful

From pcmagazine.com

Good resource for some useful websites... not necessarily all are great... and some good ones are missing... but a good starting point.

http://www.pcmag.com/category2/0,1874,7488,00.asp

Microsoft, download Office and Vista

Microsoft Plans Downloadable Versions of Windows Vista, Office

Microsoft plans for the first time to make its new Windows Vista operating system and Office 2007 productivity suite available for downloading by PC users over the Internet.

From informationweek.com, here's the full article.

Phone Support, Talk to a "real" person

Ever wonder how to get to an actual person when calling support services for various companies. Well, take a look at gethuman.com. Listed are hundred's of companies and how to simply and quickly navigate the never ending... press option 1... press option 3... and so on... to get to a live person.

Here's the link to gethuman.com database.

David Pogue Quote

David Pogue quote from nytimes.com

---------------------------------------------------------------------
"There are only 2 types of backup users...those who do... and those who... WILL".
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Symantec Corporate on your Network? Read on...

Persistent zombie attacks target Symantec corporate software

[CGT NOTE: Software does not auto-update to correct the flaw.]

Worm attacks are hitting users of the company's corporate antivirus software; its Norton consumer software is not affected.

Symantec first dismissed the threat, but worm attacks that exploit a known security hole in the company's corporate antivirus tool are proving to be persistent.

The attacks target computers running older versions of Symantec Client Security and Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition. Compromised systems are turned into remotely controlled zombies by the attacker and used to relay spam and other nefarious activities. Symantec's Norton consumer software is not affected.

"What we have been seeing in December and in the last week and a half is related to new variants of Spybot," Vincent Weafer, senior director of Symantec Security Response, said Tuesday. "We had a couple of versions of Spybot that went nowhere, but these ones found a way to propagate more effectively."

Read on for full article.

RIM (Blackberry) - New Devices Coming 2007

New Devices from RIM Expected This Year
from Business Week 01-09-07

RIM looks ready to keep up the pace, with more devices in the pipeline. A product code-named Indigo, that looks a lot like the sleek Pearl phone but which sports a full keyboard instead of the Pearl's abbreviated keyboard, is expected in early 2007.

Yet another device with a full keyboard, code-named Crimson, is expected in mid-2007. There has been some speculation that Crimson will work with blazing-fast EDGE-based wireless phone networks and also connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi hotspots. If that turns out to be the case, it suggests the device will support both traditional wireless calls and Internet-based voice calls.

RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie didn't comment on the new devices during a conference call beyond saying there would be "something else" coming from the company. "There will be a lot of crossover between the consumer and the enterprise side of the business," he told analysts. "There's a whole lot that will become much clearer over the next six calendar months," he added.

---------

Really looking forward to the full QWERTY Pearl-like device!

1 TB Consumer Hard Drives to Hit Shelves

1TB drives getting ready to hit the streets
1/5/2007 1:28:21 PM, by Jacqui Cheng

It seems the day of the 1-terabyte consumer hard drive has finally become a reality. Hitachi announced yesterday, just before the start of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, that it will be shipping a 1TB hard drive by the end of the first quarter in 2007. The drive will be the first of three that the company is expecting to release in 2007; the other two are aimed at video pros and the enterprise market. Those two will ship in the second quarter of the year.

[CGT NOTE: 1 TB is 1000 GB or 1,000,000 MB. Big (for now)! (Actually 1024GB or 1,048,576 MB)]

The 3.5" Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 will run at 7200 rpm, have a 32MB buffer, and be available as SATA 3.0Gb/s or Parallel-ATA 133. The company did not max out on areal density on the drives though; instead of trying to cram 250GB onto four platters, Hitachi opted to go with a 200GB-per-platter, five-platter approach. Hitachi's director of market and product strategy Doug Pickford told PC World that "About 250GB per platter is the next bump on the areal density curve, but we've backed off from doing that in order to achieve higher reliability at this time." Entire article here.