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Following a decision to extend the cutoff date for OEMs and resellers buying Windows XP, which effectively enables customers to stick with the aging operating system until Windows 7 arrives, Microsoft has launched a new web site just for Vista users: answers.microsoft.com. Currently in beta, the site is an official tech support forum run by actual Microsoft employees willing to help out users having problems with Vista.

The site is designed to provide solutions in a Q&A; format. Users can subscribe to a question they ask and be notified via the web browser, e-mail, or RSS whenever an answer posted – either by Microsoft support professionals or other forum members. You can sift through the forum’s content as a guest but will need a Live ID account in order to ask questions or share your knowledge with the community. The lack of support for XP is something of a disappointment, though, with so many people still relying on it.

A few months ago, one of the biggest data-gathering companies around claimed that notebooks had, for the first time since the notebook itself was created, exceeded global desktop shipments on a per-quarter basis. IDC figures at the end of October showed that notebook shipments were responsible for 55% of new PC sales, which represented around 9.5 million machines.

Those numbers have now been backed by other industry analysts such as iSuppli, who show that worldwide notebook sales had a significant gain in the third quarter of 2008, putting them above desktops. Notebooks saw a 40% increase over a year prior, with total shipments for notebooks exceeding desktops by around 100,000 units, sitting at 38.6 million sold. They do specify those figures are for shipments, not actual retail sales, but the pattern is clear: today more people want laptops than want desktops.

What was further interesting was the data showing that demand for computer hardware has not decreased despite of the current economic climate. Q3 was stronger than anticipated for PC sales.

AMD is not expected to launch its Phenom II processor until CES 2009 next month, but the Deneb-based chip will be available to distributors before the end of the year. Specifically, according to a report from Fudzilla, distributors will receive the Phenom II 940 at 3GHz and Phenom II 920 at 2.8GHz starting next week.

Almost immediately following their official launch in January, the new processors will become available for purchase and should be compatible with AMD’s older AM2+ motherboards, a move meant to help their adoption on the market. Chips supporting DDR3 memory and AM3 motherboards will arrive roughly a month after the initial launch and are expected to maintain compatibility with AM2+ boards as well.

Whether this new generation of AMD chips will help the company regain some of its popularity in the desktop field remains to be seen. Few details in terms of performance have surfaced to date, though interestingly a thread over at HardOCP forums seems to indicate that at least one lucky gamer was able to snag an AMD Phenom II 940 processor ahead of its release. Check out some early benchmarks and his general impressions here.

For as sleek as the BlackBerry Storm looks and as potent of a smartphone as it is, apparently the device is failing to erode any of the iPhone’s market share. Despite it marking an obvious shift in strategy by RIM and trying to show that the company has what it takes to appeal to the consumer market, Apple's sales for the iPhone along with its market share have continued to increase. BlackBerry, on the other hand, has remained relatively steady, changing only a few percentage points over the past year.

What further compounds the issue is that a survey of smartphone users discovered that Storm owners are overall not as happy with their new device as new iPhone owners were. Perhaps some of the issues are related to the arguably botched launch of the phone. On top of having a rather lackluster entrance, with no real “launch party” or big promo events, the phone was criticized after launch due to various flaws. Verizon and RIM did ultimately release a firmware update that fixed many of those initial flaws.

Apple may still have cause for alarm in the near future, however. RIM holds a substantial portion of the smartphone market and unlike Apple has a plethora of different models available, ranging from low cost to high end, across multiple different service providers. They also still have Apple one-upped on business appeal. In the meantime, however, the Storm has failed to cause any dent in the iPhone's sales and probably doesn't have Apple worried.

Google's grand ambitions @ News.com
10 things that won't survive the recession @ InfoWorld
Tunable Glasses Could Bring Vision to Billions @ DailyTech
The Top Gadgets of 2008 @ Wired
See more articles and reviews.

Five years ago in TechSpot:
The long road to Yukon

When it comes to online safety, many people know that the country of origin for both websites and email is an important concern when deciding if something should be opened or viewed. On the surface, you would think countries with access to the latest technologies would be the least likely to be home to malicious content. To the contrary, the U.S. has once again ranked as number one for malicious content on the web, with a recent study focusing on websites that host malware. China, which is host to nearly 28% of the world's maliciously-crafted (or infected) websites, comes in at a distant second to the U.S., which boasts an unhealthy 37% of the world's malware sites.

All other countries fell under 10% individually, which makes the numbers even more surprising. With the amount of corporate regulation that the U.S. has on the books, you would think that companies would be less inclined to setup shop on a U.S. server, and that hosting companies would be more aware that they are home to such content. Clearly that isn't the case.

This isn't the first time in recent history that the U.S. has come in number one for malicious web content. A little over a year ago, Sophos released a report indicating that the U.S. was also number one for spam, responsible for more than a fourth of spam relayed around the world.

People in the consumer electronics industry have been expecting the end of the VHS era ever since the introduction of the DVD back in the late '90s. But while most of us probably thought the format was already long gone, it wasn’t until recently that the last major supplier of VHS tapes, Distribution Video Audio, shipped its final truckload of the format.

The company prided itself in keeping little tidbits of pop culture alive and supported part of their $20 million a year business by selling mass amounts of VHS tapes on the cheap. And even though watching a movie on modern disc formats (or via digital distribution) is certainly a much richer experience than watching on VHS, one can’t deny the effect this technology had in the video field – I particularly loved the ability to catch up on any missed TV show by recording into a blank tape.

I wonder how long it will be until DVD suffers the same fate and if it will be Blu-ray or digital downloads taking over – they both still have a long road ahead.

Last week, the RIAA announced that it was going to shift strategies to fight piracy. Instead of filing mass lawsuits, the group said it was partnering with internet service providers to identify, serve notice and potentially disconnect persistent file-sharers. The announcement was met with mixed reactions, with some praising it as a move in the right direction and others wary of their tactics. One small ISP in particular is refusing to play ball with the RIAA – at least on their terms – and is letting them know that policing P2P users to protect music costs both time and money.

Jerry Scroggin, owner-operator of Bayou Internet and Communications, says he receives several notices each month with requests to remove suspected file sharers from his network. But while Scroggin understands the labels’ need to protect their content and is willing to cooperate with law enforcement, he also believes that as bystanders in the music industry’s war on piracy ISPs shouldn’t be expected to help enforce copyright law free of charge.

The newly proposed anti piracy approach is certainly less abrasive and saves the RIAA a lot of money. However, significant expense is involved when trying to track down a user who may not be doing anything wrong in the first place and ISPs aren't excited about coping with such costs – many of them simply can’t afford it – which underscores a potential obstacle for the RIAA’s plan.

In the ongoing litigation between Psystar and Apple, the Mac clone maker has made a controversial claim that Apple improperly registered the copyright to OS X and thus their infringement claims against them are invalid. Should the new claim hold up in court it would mean big trouble for Apple but, of course, the mere notion that one of the most protective companies in the industry just didn't take the time to properly register the copyright to its flagship product is rather absurd.

Psystar may well have realized it’s fighting a losing battle and is delaying their inevitable demise under the weight of Apple’s lawyers. This follows a counterclaim suit against Apple being thrown out of court last month and a subsequent change in tactic to focus on copyright abuse. The amended claim also reiterates earlier concerns that Apple is using a startup check in Mac OS X Leopard to block unauthorized systems from running the software.

Intel continues to expand on its solid state operations. Following up the launch of its 2.5-inch 80GB X25-M in September, the company has now announced that the more capacious 160GB edition has begun shipping and that a slimmer 1.8-inch version should be available shortly for ultraportable laptops and other devices.

The drives are based on NAND flash memory, which holds the promise of faster read and write performance than conventional hard disk drives, and are based on Intel’s multilevel cell storage technology. Expect similar performance to its 80GB counterpart – 250Mbps read times and 70Mbps write speeds – together with a hefty price tag of around $945. Larger-capacity drives from other SSD suppliers are also on the way, with Samsung now producing a 256GB solid state drive and Toshiba expected to release a 512GB monster by mid-2009.

Shortly after EA announced that they were officially partnering with Valve and distributing via Steam, the company has made a further announcement stating they have expanded that offering. Initially only open to the U.S. and Canada, any Steam users in Europe were out of luck if they wanted to snag EA titles through the service.

That's changed, and now EA's Steam titles are officially available in Europe as well. They mention that this applies to “most” of Europe, which indicates that some regions still may not have access to the games through Steam. It’s also worth noting that, perhaps in an effort to win back PC gamers, EA has made its titles available on Steam without third-party DRM schemes like SecuROM – a world of gamers just might respond quite positively to this change.

The Australian government is planning to install mandatory content filters at the ISP level to target not only web traffic – which is already worrisome by itself – but also peer to peer applications like BitTorrent. The move is supposedly aimed at filtering child pornography and terrorist websites, though rather than actually doing something about illegal content like tracking down criminals, they’ll just filter peer to peer traffic along with a static blacklist of sites while ignoring obvious details such as false positives and the civil liberties problems inherent in this approach.

Such a plan has of course generated a wave of criticism and petitions against its proposals, but apparently the minister responsible for it, Stephen Conroy, has maintained its intention to go ahead with the initiative and is set to begin live testing any day now – even though the ISPs that want to participate haven't received instructions yet.

It can't be argued that 2008 was the year of the netbook. Asus is credited with officially bringing the first netbook to market last year with their Eee PC, but as many first adopters will tell you, companies rarely “get it right” on their first at bat and the Eee PC was no different.

A big second wave of netbooks arrived in mid-2008 and as expected, improvements were made all around. These netbooks offered larger screens capable of higher resolutions, better storage mediums (either SSD or traditional hard drives), and the option to have Windows XP pre-installed.

Today we will be taking a look at four popular netbooks from four different manufacturers: Lenovo, Acer, Smooth Creations and Asus. While all of the netbooks here today share similar hardware specs, each is vastly different and unique in its own right. Built quality, screen size, keyboard layout and touchpad implementation are only a few of the many aspects that will be covered in-depth.

Read the complete round-up.

Project Playlist may have suffered a setback when MySpace made the decision to ban the service from their site, but it isn't all doom and gloom for them altogether. Facebook has made the decision to keep the service onboard, ignoring cries from the RIAA to remove it. Whether or not that will last is less important than the legal battles the company is facing, with Warner, EMI, UMG and RIAA all bearing down on them with lawsuits.

In that sea of bad news, however, there is a bit of hope for them as well. Sony BMG has opted to work a deal with Project Playlist, avoiding lawsuits and hopefully improving the service. Relying on “business speak,” the founder of Project Playlist claims that working with Sony BMG will let them improve the quality of content, along with enhancing the service in general. Whether or not corporate sponsorship will improve a service like this is debatable, but at the very least they have found something that may help prevent them from going under. In the past, online playlist services have not lasted long, and it certainly seems like the bell has tolled for Project Playlist. Their deal with Sony BMG may make or break them.

It’s a known fact that Mozilla is dependent on Google for the vast majority of its revenue and recently the company secured an extension for its search advertising deal through 2011. Apparently, however, things have become “complicated” between the two ever since the release of Chrome back in September.

Google launched the first full version of Chrome earlier this month and recently replaced Firefox with Chrome as the default browser software in its Google Pack application bundle, which could be seen as a threat to both Firefox’s share of the browser market and Mozilla’s revenue source. This has left Mozilla in the strange position of having to co-operate and compete with its biggest financial backer.

Despite the complications, Mozilla CEO John Lilly says he’s confident the company can continue to build on its success. He nonetheless admits they will have to wean off their dependence on Google dollars and claims their three year agreement with the search giant will give them enough time to continue building products and develop other revenue streams.