NEW ORLEANS — Feb. 26, 2007 — The Gulf Coast region’s economic revitalization after Hurricane Katrina was boosted by an announcement today by Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer of $1.7 million in donations of cash, software and specialized curriculum to several nonprofit partners in Louisiana and Texas. Microsoft is supporting existing local government, academic and nonprofit organizations as they rebuild and establish community infrastructure, technology and work-force training centers. These centers support displaced residents in accessing the technology skills training they need to succeed in today’s technology-driven economy.

The grants Microsoft awarded to nonprofit partners in Louisiana and Texas today are part of Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential 2007 program investments of $55 million worldwide. Unlimited Potential was started in 2003 to broaden digital inclusion and meet the need for computer literacy in society and the workplace. Microsoft’s goal is to provide, by the year 2010, a quarter-billion underserved people around the world with access to the technology and technology skills training they need to improve social and economic opportunities for themselves and their communities.

By working with local business and government representatives, who are the experts in their respective communities, Unlimited Potential provides the necessary training to help foster local economic growth. Toward this end, Microsoft has now invested $255 million in more than 800 projects around the world.

View: Full Story @ Microsoft Presspass

Our first article about configuring AMD and Intel PCs within a budget of £200 / €350 made it clear that systems in this price range are suitable for everyday computing tasks. We equipped our Celeron and Sempron test systems with a fast and affordable 160-GB hard drive and one gigabyte of RAM, and the systems did a great job in Windows XP. But how do they perform with Windows Vista? And do you really know how your PC would perform with Vista?

Microsoft has created two certification logos to help customers choose the right components for their Windows Vista PC. There is “Vista Ready” and “Vista Premium Ready.” If all of your components carry one of the logos, you should be able to at least run Vista properly; if you purchase high-end products you should be ready for the Premium and Ultimate editions as well. However, many products, especially older ones, do not carry any logo to indicate Vista readiness. The reason for purchasing hardware usually isn’t a particular operating system, but an application or specific requirement such as more storage capacity, more RAM or a faster platform. We normally assume that the latest OS will work on hardware that we’re going to buy from retail.

But what do you do if you follow the Vista upgrade path to find out that the fancy new operating system doesn’t work well, or doesn’t even work on your rig at all? Since the update versions of Vista require a working Windows XP installation to execute (the DVDs aren’t bootable), you can at least be sure that your XP product key will still work when stepping back to use good ole’ Windows XP. But you will not be able to install your Vista Update on another machine. This is why we advise against purchasing update versions, although this installation path seems to be more convenient at first. The retail versions are more expensive, but you can keep using Windows XP on one machine while running Windows Vista on another.

Those amusing YouTube Latest News about YouTube video clips that Internet Free How-To Guide for Small Business Web Strategies – from domain name selection to site promotion. users send to friends gobble up large chunks of bandwidth and may cause the net to crash, some elements of the telecom industry warn.

It’s an admonition many dismiss as political posturing intended to dissuade lawmakers from restricting the freedom of phone companies to manage Internet traffic as they wish.

However, no one disagrees that the Web’s capacity is being pushed to its limits.

“We don’t see anything catastrophic near term, but over the next few years there’s this fundamental wall we’re heading towards,” said Pieter Poll, chief technology officer at Qwest Communications International (NYSE: Q) Latest News about Qwest Communications, one of the operators of the Internet backbones, which are the big pipes at the network’s center.

View: Full Story @ technewsworld.com

Google Inc. will begin selling corporate America an online suite of software that includes e-mail, word processing, spreadsheets and calendar management, escalating the Internet search leader’s invasion on technological turf traditionally dominated by Microsoft and IBM.

The expansion, scheduled to be unveiled Thursday, threatens to bog down Microsoft Corp.’s efforts to persuade businesses to buy the latest version of its market-leading Office suite that was developed along with its new Vista operating system.

Google’s software bundle, to be sold for a $50 annual fee per user, also poses a challenge to International Business Machines Corp. and its Lotus suite.

View: Full Story @ newsday.com

Think of how you treat a brand-new car: You cherish and pamper it at first. You even give up your Sunday afternoons to wash and wax it by hand. Your heart skips a beat whenever you see that gleaming steel beast waiting for you in the parking lot. A newly installed version of Windows XP can inspire similar devotion. Not only do you thrill at its pristine condition but you patiently, and even eagerly downloaded all the latest patches from Windows Update so as to keep your OS shipshape.

But over time, most of us begin to take that new car—and that clean WinXP installation—for granted. As it accumulates miles and wear and tear, your erstwhile pride and joy becomes just another drain on your wallet—and your time. Hand-washing, you discover, just isn’t worth the effort anymore. In its place: a quickie car wash at the local gas station. If only there were a simple wash-and-rinse equivalent for WinXP.

Guess what? Such a thing does exist. It’s called slipstreaming—the mystical art of creating an up-to-the-minute Windows XP setup CD with all the latest patches preinstalled, so you won’t have to spend half your life on Microsoft’s Windows Update web site. As always, Maximum PC is here to show you how to do it. Heck, we’ll even help you add RAID or Serial ATA controller drivers to your CD so you won’t need a floppy drive (or the F6 key) to install Windows. (Note: Service Pack 2 wasn’t available when we went to press, but it should be by the time you read this. If SP2 isn’t available, the instructions in this story will still work with SP1.)

View: Full Story @ MaximumPC

After five weeks of sluggish PC sales, retailers received a big boost during the first week of Vista’s launch, according to a report released Thursday by Current Analysis.

PC unit sales soared 173 percent at U.S. retail stores during the week ended February 3, compared with PC sales in the previous week, according to the report. Current Analysis also noted that during Vista’s debut week PC unit sales rose 67 percent compared with the same period a year ago. Computers loaded with Microsoft’s new operating system, Vista, made their debut during a midnight celebration January 29, but initial reports found interest paled in comparison with launches of previous versions of Windows.

The report also found that demand was higher for PCs with the more expensive version of the new operating system.

View: Full Story @ News.com

News that iTunes for Windows isn’t yet ready for Microsoft’s new operating system emerged earlier this week, with Apple warning PC folk to hold off on a Vista upgrade pending the release of updates.

Today’s tech support document names a range of additional Windows applications from Apple that don’t support that new operating system.

These include: QuickTime, the iPod shuffle reset utility, Bonjour for Windows, AirPort for Windows, the iDisk utility, AppleWorks for Windows, and Apple Software Update for Windows. The stand-alone iPod updater for iTunes 6 for Windows also isn’t ready for Vista.

View: Full Story @ ITWorld.com

The Energy Star program is set to release the first revision to the specification for PCs since 1992, which was practically the Bronze Age of the PC industry. Energy Star stickers are familiar to those who have shopped for household appliances over the last few years; it designates appliances or electronics that meet certain specifications for energy efficiency.

The Energy Star program–a joint project of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy–is most important to government and corporate buyers, Abelson said. The government is required to purchase Energy Star-labeled products, and corporations can receive tax breaks for purchasing Energy Star products. Plus, the power saved by using efficient products really adds up when looking across a large network of PCs, allowing those organizations to cut on power bills or expand their hardware at the same cost.

The new specification targets two areas: the power supply and the amount of power used in “idle mode,” said Noah Horowitz, a senior scientist at the nonprofit National Resources Defense Council, which helped the Energy Star program come up with the technical requirements for the new specification.

View: Full Story @ News.com