Malware Isn’t About Destroying Your Computer Any More

Go back more than a decade, and the phrase “computer virus” had rather specific meaning; it was software that did very, very bad things to your computer, and you generally knew all about it straight away, because the virus writers wanted it that way. Little bleepy messages would play when you started your computer up, letting you know that your files, operating system or (if you were very unlucky or unwise in your choice of software installations) hardware was now corrupt. Fixes were painful and expensive, but you knew you had a problem, and if you’d been stung before, you were far more likely to have backups of your most precious files.

I’ll now pause for a second to remind you: Back up your own files. Do it now — seriously, it’s far cheaper to buy a second hard drive or platter of writeable DVD-Rs than it is to go down the data recovery route by a staggering factor.

Anyway, that was the story regarding viruses, worms and malware more than a decade ago — but it’s not the case today. Today’s malware most definitely doesn’t want you to know that it’s there, because, to drop into a sporting metaphor for a second, the goalposts have shifted. It’s not about malicious programmers causing havoc for the fun of it; it’s about money and identity. If you knew you had malware on your system, you’d get rid of it — and that’d mean that the money trail (whether it’s sniffing around for traces of your bank account details or sniffing around for your identity for different kinds of fraud) would dry up double quick.

For some time Mac users were largely immune from this kind of thing, but the recent outbreak of the Flashback Trojan have shown something that many in the security community have suspected for quite a while. Mac security wasn’t solely a function of its Unix underpinnings, or any other kind of inbuilt security measure; the reasons were more to do with the size of the market that malware writers could target.

Flashback is a nasty little trojan that tries to get your Mac connected up to a network of other machines for illicit purposes; the current outbreak relates to weaknesses in the default version of Java that ships with the current version of the Mac operating system.

Apple’s growth in the home PC space has made it a larger target, and in some ways an outbreak like Flashback — which is said to have infected around 600,000 Macs worldwide — was to be expected. It’s a stark reminder, however, that we live in an age where this kind of computer security problem is very real; bear in mind that a Flashback-infected computer didn’t need any kind of authorisation; it asked for it but if refused used a different channel for infection, and installed essentially invisibly via browser based attack.

So what’s the sensible end-user approach? For a start, an anti-malware package — no matter your choice of computer — is an absolute must. It does still pay to be wary about what you’re installing; while there are more bits of malware that are installing silently, it cannot hurt to not let the more obvious pieces in. Running software updates that you trust from your operating system provider — whether that’s Apple or Microsoft or any of the countless Linux variants out there — should also be a must-do kind of activity; in the case of the Flashback outbreak, Apple released an update to its Java package that blocks further infections, but if you’re not updated, you’re simply not protected. Likewise, an AV package is only as good as its updates, which should be frequently applied.

On the cash side of things, Internet banking is a fine invention, but logging into your internet banking application from a system you don’t control — such as those in public libraries or internet cafes — is a very poor choice. Equally, checking your account regularly is a good idea, simply because if you do spot money going out in suspicious fashion, it can be an early warning sign that lets you put the brakes on any dodgy dealings.

Oh, and backup your files. You did remember to do that, right?

Want Windows 8 For Free?

I’ve written about the impending release of Windows 8 extensively over the last few months, but that’s been largely on the basis of Microsoft’s own announcements regarding the latest iteration of its operating system software. This month, Microsoft’s taken the same steps it took with Windows 7 and released a “consumer preview” edition of Windows 8 that you can download right this minute if you’re so inclined.

Microsoft’s offering up the ISO of Consumer Edition in both 32 and 64 bit versions as a direct download from its servers for anyone who cares to grab them. If you’re keen, head over to

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/iso

and choose the language (English, Chinese (Simplified), French, German or Japanese and then whether you want the 64-bit or 32-bit version. Generally speaking that should be the 64-bit version, especially if you’re going to install it on a system with more than 4GB of RAM, as 32-bit Windows can’t “see” any RAM above that limit — actually technically just above 3GB, in fact.

There’s a few caveats there, however; for a start, the 64-bit English download itself weighs in at a hefty 3.3GB, which will take both some time and some serious chunks of your data allowance to actually download. It’s supplied as an ISO image — that’s essentially an archived CD image, although it’s also possible to convert a USB flash drive to perform the same function. From there, it’ll install in much the same way that existing Windows operating systems do, with the only remaining catch being that this is still early software — the full retail version of Windows 8 is expected to ship later in the year — and it’s also time-limited software. When the full version of Windows 8 ships, you should be able to migrate a consumer preview version into the full version of Windows 8, but it’ll cost you whatever Microsoft decides to charge for it. Still, if you’re keen to see what Microsoft’s got just around the corner and have a spare PC — which needs to have the relatively moderate specifications of a 1GHz processor, 1GB RAM, 16-20GB free hard drive space and a DirectX 9 capable graphics card — it’s well worth checking it out. Bear in mind that if you do install the consumer preview onto an existing Windows PC and choose to install the operating system as an “upgrade”, you’ll overwrite the existing operating system — which almost certainly isn’t your best move!

Understanding Windows 8 Tablets

When Microsoft announced Windows 8, it was with a renewed focus on taking on the most popular computing commodity of recent years, namely tablets. Windows 8 will feature a standard desktop interface along with a new touch-based interface, known as Metro.

Microsoft refers to Metro as a “design language”, which is a fancy way of saying that products that are Metro compliant will have a consistent font and design look. Microsoft’s current look for the Xbox 360 console is Metro-based, but the most prominent product that Microsoft’s brought to market to date has been the Windows Phone 7 operating system; if you want a taste of what Metro on Windows 8 will be like, Windows Phone 7 should be your first port of call.

Metro isn’t just Microsoft slapping a skin on Windows 8 and continuing on its merry way with desktops and laptops, however; it’s also the core way that a new version of Windows 8 will run. Historically, Windows has primarily been written for Intel’s x86-based architecture, and that doesn’t change for Windows 8. What comes on board is a version of Windows 8 for devices running on ARM (Advanced RISC Machine) processors. ARM processors aren’t the devices used for most desktop or laptop systems, but they are widely implemented in the tablet and smartphone space, due to their lower power requirements, which means that Windows On Arm (officially WOA) will most likely first appear on tablet-style products.

This isn’t Microsoft’s first stab at Tablets; many years ago Microsoft launched Windows XP Tablet Edition with great fanfare but, aside from some very niche markets, virtually no traction in the market. Windows XP Tablet Edition was in essence a touch-capable (but not terribly functional) version of XP; subsequent operating systems from Microsoft have included touch compatibility but little of great significance was done with it at an application level.

There’s a significant change present for Windows on ARM, however, and that’s due to the fact that ARM isn’t x86; no legacy — that is,  existing or old Windows applications — will run at all. Instead, new WOA applications will have to be written from the ground up.  Microsoft’s likely to supply most of its applications in WOA forms. It’s already known that versions of most (if not all) Microsoft Office applications will have WOA equivalents, although they may only run in the desktop mode, even on tablets. Internet Explorer will also be bundled for browsing purposes, and while it’ll be Internet Explorer 10 in name, it won’t support plugins that will work on the x86 version of IE 10. That means, at least for the time being, that things like Flash won’t work on WOA devices, although it’s always possible that third party browsers or plugin workarounds may emerge.

Windows On ARM also means Microsoft will have even more devices to technically support; while there are many millions of potential x86 combinations of things like graphics cards, network interfaces and peripherals, for the most part external vendors handle those kinds of drivers. But you don’t — and can’t — change the graphics card on a tablet, and that means each iteration of a Windows 8 tablet will need its own updates. So far, it seems most likely that you’ll only be able to get Windows 8 on ARM pre-installed on a pre-approved tablet, so updates shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

In many ways, it’s identical to what Apple did with the iPad and iPhone. It’s theoretically possible that it could have ported the full OS X operating system across, but that would have had an effect on battery life — and not a good one. Starting afresh does mean dropping a lot of application compatibility, but if Microsoft can grow an application ecosystem to rival iOS, it should be able to overcome that particular hurdle. Microsoft has been very active in its developer community in recent years, and it’ll be fascinating to see what comes to WOA.

Will Kinect For Windows change the way you use your PC?

One of the more interesting things to come out of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was Microsoft’s official announcement of a Windows-compatible version of its Kinect camera. Kinect, if you’re not familiar with it, is a camera array with 3D sensing capabilities that Microsoft first launched for its Xbox 360 games console. The cameras within the Kinect sensor track your body movements in real time, and this allows the Xbox 360 to offer both physical screen selections — swiping your arms around to select things or change pages — as well as more “physical” gaming experiences, including a number of fitness titles.

Kinect might have its roots in gaming, but it didn’t take long for keen hackers to see the potential in hooking up the sensor to a regular PC and use its 3D modelling capabilities for other purposes. To Microsoft’s credit, it didn’t shy away from or try to block the hackers; there was (in effect) unofficial “support” for Kinect hacking; Microsoft didn’t specifically sell the sensor to do anything but gaming, but was happy enough with some of the side efforts that came out of it. If the hackers broke a Kinect sensor or two along the way, Microsoft was more than happy to sell them another.

Kinect for Windows changes that arrangement somewhat. For a start, the “official” Windows Kinect (which will launch in Australia on February 1st) is more expensive than the Xbox version; a sensor and software will cost $299, something Microsoft puts down to the Windows Kinect sensor being a standalone product; it figures that money can be made with Kinect games on the Xbox 360, whereas the PC version may not generate any more income directly.

It’s also somewhat annoying to note that the official CES announcement pegged the price at $US249, but the Australian price is a chunky $50 more; while there are some tax considerations to take in mind, not to mention shipping, that kind of price difference does sting a bit.
The really interesting question for Kinect For Windows is what it’ll be good for. Clearly there’ll be some cross-porting of existing games titles, but that leaves the Kinect as only a rather expensive games controller.

There’s all sorts of potential for a touch-free navigation environment on the PC, albeit one that’d work a lot better for a PC connected like a home media centre than one connected to a notebook that’s sitting right in front of you. Microsoft’s claim for the Windows sensor (and not the cheaper Xbox one) is that it’s optimised for close up work of this kind, but I’m a little lost to work out what’ll make the most sense for that kind of interaction (outside of certain mobility limited scenarios) that couldn’t be done just as well with the tap of a mouse button or click of a keyboard. The new Windows 8 “Metro” user interface is built on Microsoft’s experiences with touch on the Windows Phone platform, and I can see how that could work with Kinect, but at the same time interface designers will have to work around implementing both Kinect and standard interfaces; at a $299 per user price point I’m not totally convinced that many will.

2012’s Technology Secrets

As I’m writing this, the last few hours of 2011 are ticking away, taking with them one year while ushering in another. 2011’s been an interesting year in the technology world, with touch interfaces — whether on smartphones, tablets or touchscreen laptops and computers — a most notable feature that defined the consumer technology landscape. But what will 2012 bring us?

Any kind of prediction about the technology landscape is inevitably one that involves a certain amount of guesswork, and that means I could be hopelessly (or even haplessly) wrong with any kind of prediction that I make. With that caveat in mind, let’s jump headfirst into the crystal ball, taking a look at three industry heavyweights and how they might fare in 2012.

Apple gets first place in my tea leaf readings, purely on alphabetical grounds. Apple’s widely tipped to update its iPad, iPhone and Mac lines this year; those things are pretty inevitable simply from a marketing point of view. On the Mac front, new chipset availability will allow newer Mac models (the exact same thing is true on the PC front), and it doesn’t take a degree from the dubious institute-of-psychic-studies-that-I-just-made-up (established eight seconds ago) to suggest that new iPhones and iPads will see money flowing into Apple’s coffers. That kind of repeat business latest-model hype is exactly what Apple does, and based on previous years, that’s clearly what it’ll continue to do.

One rumour doing the rounds here at the moment is that Apple will unveil an “Apple” TV. Not to be confused with the small set top box that the company already sells, this would be an Apple branded TV set, hooked into the iTunes store for video delivery.

I doubt it. I strongly doubt it, although I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that Apple had prototyped such a thing; big IT companies go through lots of prototypes during research and development. The reason why I’m doubtful is that while it sounds good in theory (Apple has a content ecosystem in place, it does good industrial design and as yet nobody’s really “cracked” a good Smart TV), it ignores one of the factors that’s made Apple a whole lot of money in recent years — namely that it likes repeat business. People drop iPhones and iPads all over the place, and new features prompt some buyers to replace every year. Who replaces their TV every year? Almost nobody. A TV is a long-term prospect, and as such Apple would need lots of content to make its model of TV compelling. The existing Apple TV set top box already provides a gateway to its iTunes ecosystem for selling and renting content; I’d be less shocked to see, a say, LG-presents-TV-with-integrated-Apple-TV than a genuine Apple TV.

Next on the reading of the livers of unfortunate animals (and next in the alphabet) would be Google. Google’s likely to continue chipping away at many markets, essentially doing what Microsoft’s done for years; subsidising some products via the massive profits made from just a few. In Google’s case that’s largely search advertising, and it’s funded all sorts of acquisitions (some of which Google shuttered during 2011) and startup projects, most prominently Android-based smartphones and tablets. I suspect 2012 is the year we’ll see a “Google” Android tablet. Previously this could have been one built by another company — in the same way that Google’s own Android phones have been HTC and Samsung models respectively — but with Google having gobbled up Motorola in 2011, it could be an entirely in-house effort. Google’s own moves in the netbook space with its Chromebooks seems to have stalled for the moment, as has Google’ own TV ambitions; I’d be surprised if either made significant headway in Australia, if they ever make it here at all.

Last in my prognosticating list is Microsoft. While it’s not definite, it’s highly likely we’ll see Windows 8 emerge sometime in 2012, although I wouldn’t put a pin anywhere in the calendar before June if I were you. Windows 8 is clearly part of Microsoft’s strategy to more closely align all of its consumer IT properties, from smartphones to consoles to computers under one well understood interface, and it’ll be fascinating to see how well (and how quickly) Microsoft manages this. Its coffers are immense (as are its spending habits when it comes to both R&D and marketing) and it’s got an easy head start in terms of Windows existing place in the market; while big businesses will no doubt take a slow approach to the new operating system and everything it may offer, the push for individual users to bring their own devices (and increasingly laptops) into work may make Windows 8 a very rapidly adopted operating system indeed.

Windows 8: Good For Laptops And Tablets

Microsoft recently held its BUILD conference, a developer-only event at which the highlight was the unveiling of Windows 8. It wasn’t exactly a shock reveal; there’s been plenty of information on Windows 8 available up in bits and pieces, but this was Microsoft’s first peek under the curtain at the nitty-gritty of Windows 8 itself. As you might expect, Windows 8 is expected to run more quickly than its predecessors, but then, Microsoft’s very unlikely to reveal that it’d run slower. A lot of small details emerged, such as the fact that support for NFC (Near Field Communications) will be built into Windows 8, as will simpler setups for refreshing a system prior to selling it, removing malware more efficiently and a revamp of some standard Windows user interface sections such as the Task Manager.  Cloud syncronisation and a very Apple-like App store for Windows applications will also feature on the full desktop client, which at first glance looks an awful lot like Windows 7 does now. That could well change, but a lot of the real meat of what Microsoft had to show off was to be seen in how it’ll adapt Windows 8 for the tablet market.

Microsoft’s had tilts at the tablet market for years now, but outside certain specialised niches, they’ve never had that much success — especially in the era of the iPad. Windows 8 has a lot of tablet-specific features, including a full tablet user interface called Metro that Microsoft showed off at the Build conference on a Samsung supplied tablet that all attendees got to take away with them. Microsoft’s built on the interface ideas it first showed off with its Windows Phone 7 devices, and the results are quite spectacular. It’s also worth noting that while Windows tablets to date have all run on Intel hardware, Windows 8 will also run on more power-efficient ARM processors, although there will be tradeoffs for the ARM models, which won’t run legacy Windows applications, just the specialised touchscreen ones. Whether by whatever time Windows 8 launches it’ll be able to make a dent in the iPad’s near dominance of the tablet market remains to be seen; a good half dozen Android tablets haven’t managed that, and the rest seem to be bogged down in legal battles with Apple.

Microsoft haven’t announced a timeline for when Windows 8 will ship (except to say that it’ll ship “when it’s done”); at a guess I’d say we’d be lucky to see it on store shelves and in laptops, desktops and tablets before at least the middle of next year.

Smartphones Head To Head

If you’re in the market for a new phone, you’ve got two choices. Buy outright, or pick up a phone on a plan. If you buy a smartphone outright, you’re typically looking at between $500-$1000 out of pocket; there are models that are both cheaper and more expensive than that, but it’s a fair average across the most popular models. That’s why contracts make a fair amount of sense. Not only do you shift the handset cost over a longer term (and potentially gain the ability to write it off against tax rather simply under certain business circumstances — but check with your accountant!), you also get the most generously provisioned rates for calls and data compared to most pre-paid plans on a handset you own yourself.

The problem is, most smartphone contracts cost pretty much the same irrespective of the model of phone you choose. Entry level points are now down around twenty dollars, but those are typically last year’s handsets being rushed out the door while they’ve still got stock. Between fifty to seventy dollars a month can get you the handset of your choice, including cutting edge models. It’s easy enough to test the physical layout of a phone by simply gripping it, but what about on the software side? With so many choices, which smartphone operating system do you go for? Here’s a brief rundown of the most prominent smartphone platforms and their pluses and minuses.

Apple iOS

Representative Handset: iPhone 4

Pluses: The largest applications marketplace for any smartphone, hands-down, which gives iOS a lot more flexibility in what can be done with it, especially in the realm of entertainment applications. The fixed hardware platform — basically just the nearly-obsolete iPhone 3G, 3GS and iPhone 4 — also means that all apps run optimally across handsets. iOS upgrades are regular and not subject to the approval of the carriers, meaning they’re usually a little faster than on competing platforms.
Minuses: Apple controls the iOS environment with an iron glove, which some folk plain don’t like; certain applications will never be approved for iOS as a result. There’s also no such thing as a “live” iOS application displaying twitter feeds, weather or the like. Everything is icon-based using push.

Android

Representative Handset: HTC Desire HD

Pluses: Google’s “open” smartphone OS is being rapidly picked up by just about every handset maker out there (excluding Apple and Nokia). That gives you a huge choice of handsets and price points, as well as a wide variety of features. Google’s tailored Android applications for its core search and gmail utilities are incredibly slick, and the applications market is growing rapidly. Applications can act as live widgets displaying up-to-date information constantly.
Minuses: The variety of handsets can make some applications behave in unusual ways, especially as application development isn’t a rigidly controlled as it is with Apple or Microsoft. Operating System software upgrades must be carrier approved before you can get them, which can lead to long delays in getting the latest version of Android for your smartphone — if it ever appears at all.

Blackberry OS

Representative Handset: Blackberry Torch

Pluses: Blackberry has long been the smartphone of choice for the business crowd, and its core competencies have remained the strength and speed of its email client, which simply blows the competition away. If you need email quickly (and want, on most Blackberry models, an excellent physical keyboard), the Blackberry is the one to get.
Minuses: Operating system upgrades are once again at the mercy of operators, and some handsets will get stuck over time. The excellent email service is part of a specific paid service, which (depending on the carrier) might not be the most cost-efficient way to get your email. The application library, like the devices themselves are largely productivity oriented, although this has changed slowly as more consumers have taken up the Blackberry brand.

Windows Phone 7

Representative Handset: Samsung Omnia 7

Pluses: Windows Phone 7’s “tiles” arrangement is amongst the simplest smartphone visual layouts of any smartphone platform, making it very easy to pick up and use. Xbox Live integration is built in for the gaming crowd, and the application market, while still quite small, is growing rapidly.
Minuses: There’s a relative dearth of available handset choices, although that’s likely to change with Nokia recently making the shock declaration that it would start building smartphones utilising Windows Phone 7. As yet for the existing models from HTC, LG and Samsung the full operating system upgrade path is quite unclear; even the patches to date have had a rocky history. At the time of writing, Cut & Paste functionality still wasn’t present, despite being promised as “coming soon” when it launched.

For any of these platforms it’s certainly well worth having a test run in a mobile phone shop to see not only which one may suit your needs, but also your style of smartphone use. Some users will prefer the full touchscreen setup of the iPhone or most Android models, while other users may favour the keyboards found on most Blackberry models.

Is Touch Going To Be Enough?

For a very long time, there have been pushes to move computing beyond the confines of the keyboard. The mouse as a computing device actually dates from 1963, but it was the mid 1980s before mice in computing became particularly widespread. In recent years, even the mouse has been updated, improved and worked upon, whether it was the switch from mechanical, ball-based mice to laser-guided devices, or the move from cabled to wireless mice, or even the more oddball mice concepts out there, such as Air Mice that double as 3D pointers.

Mice themselves might become a technological oddity as (if you’ll pardon the rather obvious pun) touch really does take hold. Tablet PCs are the obvious place where touch is most prominent, but it’s not the only “digital” platform; a number of vendors offer PCs and notebooks with inbuilt touch capability, thanks to the fact that Windows 7 natively supports touch based input. To date, I’ve not been thrilled by touch on Windows 7, largely because while it works, there aren’t that many applications that make as much sense within the way that Windows 7 applications are written to use touch rather than a mouse and keyboard. That doesn’t mean a new application can’t use touch sensibly, but at this stage it’s a nice thing for Windows 7 rather than a key feature.

Operating systems that use touch as the basis for everything and are written that way, such as Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS fare better in this regard, because software developers think of them in those kinds of terms.

Touch still relies on physical contact, and one of the other reasons why I’ve yet to be really wowed by a touch-capable notebook is the physical effort involved in reaching over to the screen. Not that this is an onerous task per se, but simply because on a regular notebook, you’re still reaching right past a perfectly usable keyboard and trackpad to press an onscreen button that could be clicked on instead. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Even that effort might rather rapidly become something rather quaint, however, and via a rather unusual agency: Console gaming. Specifically, Microsoft’s Kinect, an add-on camera for the Xbox 360 console. The Kinect is intended (at this stage) for games, as it allows a gamer to wriggle, jump, box, or do whatever the game commands, and see those movements mapped onto an in-game character. That’s the theory, but it took very little time at all for intrepid hacking types to grab hold of the USB-connected Kinect camera and use its body-mapping technology for all sorts of other purposes on a PC. Interestingly, Microsoft hasn’t jumped on the lawyer-heavy bandwagon to stop this kind of thing, and some press interviews suggest that a Windows version of Kinect might not be that far away. Suddenly, all those cool sci-fi images of people working on virtual floating computer displays that don’t exist at all are very close indeed.

What does 2011 hold for the Tablet?

2010 was, if anything, the year of the Tablet. Apple kicked matters off convincingly unveiling the iPad in January, although it would be a couple of months before anyone could buy an official model locally. Since then, we’ve seen the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Tab and a couple of very low-cost Tablet alternatives from Telstra and Optus, along with a lot of noise about potential models from other manufacturers, but precious little to actually put your hands on.

2011 will see some of these models come to market. I recently attended the launch of Viewsonic’s range of tablets, called (not that inventively), Viewpads. Viewsonic will launch with two models; the Viewpad 7 and Viewpad 10. The 7 inch Viewpad 7 isn’t that dissimilar to the Galaxy Tab; it’s a 7″ Android based tablet running on Android 2.2, and at an RRP of $699, it’s also a fair chunk cheaper. That’s at least partly because it’s a lower specification tablet, with a slower processor, lower resolution screen and less internal storage. My brief initial hands-on suggests it’s a decent enough machine, although the units I tested with were early production samples, and it did show. I suspect there’s a solid enough market for lower-priced Tablets, although it’s still more than the comparable Telstra T-Touch Tab or Optus MyTab, both of which sell for less than three hundred dollars.

The Viewpad 10 is a slightly different critter. At $799, it’s not that much more expensive, and it pops the screen size up to an iPad-competitive ten inches. It’s also dual-boot capable between Android and Windows 7 Home Premium, which at least sounds interesting. To accommodate both operating systems, though, Viewsonic’s limited itself to Android 1.6, which limits the applications that’ll run on the Android side. On the Windows side, while Windows 7 is touch capable, that’s a different thing to being touch optimised. Windows software will run, but not always as you’d expect it to, and often in a way that’s less than ideal, as you struggle with onscreen keyboards and software that just assumes you’ve got a real mouse and keyboard. From my brief hands-on with the ViewPad 10, it also didn’t appear as though you could easily swap data from one boot partition to the other, although again this was an early unit and that might change.

Research In Motion, makers of the Blackberry line of smartphones, also have an upcoming tablet product that should be made available here in the first half of 2011. The Playbook’s a WiFi-only tablet, which in itself is an interesting gamble. The idea is that RIM will sell it primarily to existing Blackberry owners, and most Blackberry owners enjoy unlimited Web access via their Blackberry smartphones. Tether a Blackberry to a Playbook, and what need do you have of inbuilt 3G? Other than the lack of 3G, the Playbook certainly sounds like it’s decked out with impressive hardware, including a dual-core processor, two HD cameras and inbuilt Adobe Flash support. Whether the larger, non-Blackberry using market will get all that excited about the PlayBook remains to be seen, especially as the device pricing remains a mystery.

Speaking of mysteries, there’s Apple. The company is famous for not saying anything about upcoming products, but the rumour mills are churning right now with speculation that an iPad 2 (for want of a better name) announcement is likely in early January. It’s taken most of 2010 for competitor tablets to catch up to Apple’s first iPad release. Whether Apple will reinvent the category again, or merely tweak around the edges with a new release will be very interesting to see indeed.

Twenty Five Years Of Windows

The chances are pretty good that you’re reading this on a Windows-based computer. Rough estimates suggest there are around billion personal computers on the planet, and Windows accounts for around ninety percent of those systems. Even if you are using a Linux or Mac OS based system, you’ll have felt the impact of Microsoft’s market-leading operating system.

A quarter of a century ago as I write this, if you were using a computer, the odds are quite high that you weren’t running a version of Windows, even though that was when Windows 1.0 was brand spanking new and on the software seller’s shelves after a couple of years of development. The cutting edge system you’d need to run it required MS-DOS 2.0, two double-sided disk drives, 256K of memory and a graphics adaptor. If there’s a lift where you work, it’s probably over the minimum specification to run Windows 1.0 now.

By what you’d expect from an operating system Windows 1.0 wasn’t much to get excited about, and the DOS (Disk Operating System) it ran on was arguably a bit more interesting than what Microsoft referred to as an “operating environment” than an operating system.

At the time, IBM-compatible PCs were solid business tools, but at the smaller business end of things plenty of users got by on systems as simple as the Commodore 64 and its 8-bit ilk. Microsoft couldn’t even make particularly good advertisements if this pitch for Windows 1.0 (featuring current Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer doing his best dodgy car-salesman impersonation) is anything to go by: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl5a9qUX_D4

It wasn’t until the third release of Windows, and its network capable upgrade, Windows 3.11, that Windows really picked up steam and became a truly competitive operating system. Microsoft continued with DOS-based Windows operating systems through Windows 95, 98, 98SE and the particularly poor Windows Millennium Edition before switching over for Windows XP to the codebase used for its more business-centric Windows NT lines. While Windows XP has its problems, it’s a note of its success that nearly a decade after its release, there’s still plenty of systems running Windows XP quite happily. It’s quite likely that its successor, the much derided Windows Vista, won’t be seen much in a decade, although the much more stable Windows 7 just might have that chance.