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What's the adoption rate for Vista in business environments? Excluding those companies who outright won't use it, and only including machines that are sold with Vista by default, it seems there is a significant number of companies “rolling back” to Windows XP. According to one particular study, the rate could be as high as a third – which some people might see as a reluctance to migrate.

The other two-thirds, though, tell a different story. According to those who performed the study, they are seeing similar figures in many different areas of enterprises. Even if many of those systems are downgraded, many are being left as-is. What's likely occurring is that a lot of companies are rolling out Vista, only downgrading to XP in situations where they know it is warranted.

Regardless of how you look at it, this is good for Microsoft. It shows people are willing to upgrade, and it shows that Microsoft made the right choice in allowing XP downgrades to continue unabated.

Streaming content to your PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 is nothing new, but MediaMall Technologies is promising to make your console’s media server capabilities a whole lot better through a new software they’ve released in beta form. Dubbed PlayOn, this easy-to-use client streams media from a number of Internet video sites directly to a user’s DLNA-compliant device – which includes the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 as well as HP MediaSmart HDTVs.

The Windows-only application even handles format conversion on the fly to make sure the devices can play them. In other words, this means you can use your gaming console or networked television to watch videos from providers like YouTube and Hulu almost instantly. Netflix support is just down the road, according to the company, and so is a version of PlayOn compatible with the Nintendo Wii.

You can sign up for the beta here, which is free for the first 60 days but will cost you a one-time fee of $30 after that.

When Yahoo’s Digg-like social news site Buzz first debuted earlier this year, the company opted to run the service in a rather restricted manner taking stories only from about a few hundred pre-approved news publishers. Finally six months after its launch, however, it appears that Yahoo Buzz is officially ready for business with the submission process now open to the public at large.

Despite being fairly new to the social news scene, Yahoo Buzz has a significant advantage over its competitors which is that popular stories on the service can get placement on the Yahoo page itself, and the traffic-related possibilities of this simply can’t be ignored by publishers.

Yahoo also differentiates the service by keeping some editorial control over what makes it to the top, in order to present the news based not only on popularity but also on quality – all while preventing mischievous users from gaming the system. Whether this quality-driven focus will change once there's a massive influx of content submitted to Buzz now that it’s open, remains to be seen.

Google has announced the launch of FreeTheAirwaves.com, a site that pushes for the unlicensed use of “white space” spectrum after the switch from analog to digital TV is complete next February. The initiative invites supporters to sign an online petition, hoping that public pressure will make the FCC cave in to the idea of giving up the spectrum for potentially free public broadband use.

These slices of unused spectrum between television channels called white spaces are the static between channels. Google wants the FCC to open up this spectrum to help expand Wi-Fi, improve broadband speeds and allow the internet to reach more people. But while the idea has its appeal, wireless service providers are unsurprisingly dead set against it. TV broadcasters are also against the idea, arguing that utilizing white spaces will interfere with existing television broadcasts.

In the end, the unregulated use of white space should be nothing more than a technical issue. The FCC recently completed field tests on spectrum interference and is expected to report its findings on those tests soon.

Following news that “significant quantities” of mobile GPUs from Nvidia were overheating and failing at a “higher-than-normal rate,” Dell promptly dished up a list of its notebooks that might be affected by the issue along with a BIOS patch to help prevent it. It seems, however, that the company is prepared to do more than just that.

In a similar move to HP, Dell has announced that it will be offering a 12-month limited warranty enhancement specific to this issue for customers worldwide. Knowing that your notebook will almost certainly be replaced should it fail is no doubt comforting, though one must keep in mind that the overheating GPU might affect other components not covered by the warranty extension.

Dell says full details will be available in the next few weeks, but in the meantime you can head over to their website to find out which systems will be covered by the extension. It’s good to see Dell and HP standing behind their customers, but what I’d really like to see is Nvidia step up and disclose the exact chips affected rather than just keep dismissing speculative reports by calling them “completely groundless.”

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky Goes Gold @ IGN.com
The Business Of College Football @ Forbes.com
Everything You Need to Know About USB 3.0 @ MaximumPC
Nvidia says it will win back performance leadership @ Hexus
See more articles and reviews.

Five years ago in TechSpot:
Microsoft Confirms XP SP2 for 2004

How much is PC gaming worth? Just what size industry are you supporting when you buy a new game? A pretty considerable one, with the PC Gaming Alliance stating that PC gaming raked in over $10.7 billion in 2007. That's a big chunk of change. More interesting than the large amount of money poured into PC gaming, though, is where specifically that money is coming from. Apparently less than a third of that actually came from people buy games off the shelves – but nearly half of it came from online gaming.

The subscription fee model is clearly working well for companies that employ it, with $4.8 billion of that 2007 figure being attributed to it. Another $2 billion was generated through digital distribution, such as Steam.

No matter which way you look at it, the sign is clear – PC gamers want to spend their money online more often than not, and it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to hear that 2008 was the year in which digital distribution overcame retail.

One problem Microsoft has begun to face more often is the resistance to their stubborn licensing. One area has been particularly nasty fort many Network Admins, who didn't take too kindly to the fact that at its face, most of Microsoft's software licenses prohibit running their software inside a virtual machine. That hasn't stopped many from deploying anyway, but it's still been a source of friction between Redmond and many of their customers.

They've taken several steps to amend that, and while apparently outright rewriting their licenses isn't good enough, they have recently made some small changes to loosen VM restrictions. They've removed the need to re-assign licenses if the virtual machine itself moves to different hardware, and removed the portion that limited companies to only being able to move physical hardware once every 90 days. A small change, but one that is probably encountered more often than many realize. One reason for the use of virtualization and virtual machines is to avoid becoming hardware-locked. Should one machine be insufficient, no big deal, just move your VMs to a more powerful one.

A lot of this probably has to do with Microsoft's increased focus on Hyper-V, a stock feature of Windows Server 2008. Now that Microsoft is intent on getting customers to use their virtualization suite, they need to make sure their licenses reflect that.

Security and storage giant Symantec has bolstered its consumer product portfolio with the acquisition of PC Tools, an Australia-based provider of Spyware Doctor, Registry Mechanic, and other security tools. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the year and is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

PC Tools will reportedly maintain separate operations within Symantec’s consumer business unit, something the company believes will help it expand its reach to customers in emerging regions. Hopefully the overlap between the two companies’ products won’t stifle the development of better and smarter security and maintenance tools, or even worse end up in the companies just blending their software into bloated products.

Terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but you can see Symantec’s statement here.

It appears that Apple is still having trouble with its new MobileMe synchronization service. In an email sent to subscribers today, Apple said that it had already made “many improvements” to MobileMe but will add 60 days onto the end of every subscription as they continue to sort out a few unspecified bugs with the service.

This latest offering is in addition to the free month all users received when the system first failed and comes hot on the heels of a leaked internal memo, where Steve Jobs admitted that it was a “mistake” to roll out the service at the same time it launched the iPhone 3G and other big products. Details of the extension and eligibility are explained in an Apple Knowledge Base note.

Since tech companies began developing industry certifications, an arguably larger industry has cropped up dedicated to helping people study for and pass these exams. It ranges from courses, online or otherwise, to study books, practice exams and, apparently, outright giving people the answers. The latter is what has earned the ire of Microsoft, who has sued a site that was directly selling answers to questions found on various Microsoft certifications.

The company, Pass4sure, prided itself on their namesake – making sure you passed the certification in question. Their method was to apparently actually sell the questions and answers to the test, which defeats the purpose of taking it in the first place. They went so far as to offer refunds to those who don't pass, a claim that the majority of companies selling test preparations do not make.

At the moment, the company has apparently been served an injunction and is complying. If they truly are outright selling answers, Microsoft took the right step. Given the enormous number of other sites who sell preparation exams, they definitely went above and beyond what Microsoft finds acceptable.

Overall customer satisfaction within the computer industry fell slightly for the second consecutive year, according to newly published data from the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). But while PC makers far and wide are struggling to improve, Apple seems to be moving in the opposite direction with a score of 85 on a scale from zero to 100.

Not only is this a new all-time high for the industry, the roughly 8 percent year-on year leap puts 10 points between Apple and its nearest rival. The score is attributed to the success the company has had with its iPod, iPhone and Mac lines, but it is also pointed out that dissatisfaction with Windows Vista might have hurt the scores for Apple’s rivals.

HP, Gateway and Compaq all fell by 4 percent, with second-place Dell being the only exception posting a 1.4 percent gain to 75. Customer satisfaction is a hot-button issue these days, and if these latest figures are anything to go by, Apple has been doing a good job in this regard for some time now – their increasing market share and revenue certainly seem to reflect this notion. They are not without their flaws, though, and the recent MobileMe debacle is proof of that.

Many people and businesses have been upset by how Microsoft deployed Windows Vista and has treated Windows XP since. The strongest form of protest for most of them was simply choosing not to use Windows Vista, such as when Intel decided to skip and wait for Windows 7. That's fair enough, but some have taken it much farther. Microsoft is finding out first hand that some people are considering to make it a legal issue, which seems ridiculous.

In Taiwan, Microsoft is facing the Fair Trade Commission due to complaints filed against them regarding Windows Vista. In short, people feel they have been forced to buy Vista, due to Microsoft ceasing sales of Windows XP this year. The Taiwan FTC is now going to probe the company's actions in Taiwan, to see if ceasing Windows XP sales is truly “forcing” people to migrate to Vista.

Microsoft could face penalties if that is indeed the finding of the FTC, though nowhere near as high as has been levied on them in other countries for other practices. Even though Microsoft's handling of Vista could have gone better and it is obvious they’d want to strong-arm people into using it, there's truly no "forcing" occurring at any point. Microsoft has proven themselves willing to still divvy out Windows XP licenses (if reluctantly) even today.

Google has been upside down on YouTube since its purchase, with the site costing the company nearly as much as $1 million per day to keep running. This has been made worse by the numerous companies seeking to bleed cash out of Google with lawsuits, such as Viacom, who has been antagonizing YouTube for quite a while now.

Google has tried to change that, and is still trying. Their latest endeavor for the site is to incorporate mobile ads into the service. They have deployed the ads, on a test-only basis, in the U.S. and Japan. This is clearly aimed at a much smaller yet growing portion of the YouTube market, as the number of handsets that can use YouTube mobile pale in comparison to the number of PCs that connect every day.

This is the next step in a series of attempts by Google to find the “right fit” for YouTube advertising, pairing the needs to make it spin a profit with the desire of YouTube viewers and content creators to avoid feeling overwhelmed by ads.

Leaked images and specs of Dell’s upcoming netbook have been doing the rounds for some time now, but so far we’ve only been left wondering about a specific release date. According to a recent report, however, the company’s entry into the crowded mini-notebook market could be just around the corner.

The 8.9-inch Dell E notebook (or as it's now reportedly being called, the Inspiron 910) will be dropping this Friday, featuring up to 16GB of flash based storage and an Intel Atom under the hood as well as up 1GB of RAM, a 3-in-1 card reader, three USBs and a 1.3MP webcam. There’s no new pricing information available, but if previous reports are accurate, a base model with 512MB of RAM and a 4GB SSD should sell for just $299.