As you’re probably aware, Psystar filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May, and many thought it’d be the end of it, but apparently now they came back with a new website and more importantly, a new computer: the Open(7), which, you guessed it, includes a Core i7 processor. This puts Apple in a pretty bad position, because currently they don’t have any i7 macs. All that for $1499, which is the price of a pretty mid-range mac.

They also seem to be ready to fight Apple, and I kinda hope they win the battle, evenn though I know that’s highly unlikely. What do you think? Will they succeed or just go away like TPB most likely will?

Source: Neowin

As part of Microsoft’s effort to avoid Windows 7 from flopping like its predecessor did, the company is doing everything it can do to convince its users 7 has nothing to do with Vista (even though it’s mostly the same – but better). They’re actually making some Windows 7 tours to demo features on Windows 7 (and on Vista *cough*). Anyways, check it out:

Yeah… It’s certainly a good move, though I’m pretty disappointed about the pricing: $119 for Home Premium is just not competitive enough for a consumer-oriented software product. Let’s also hope there isn’t all that bad publicity there was when Vista came out.

Let’s hope and pray? If Microsoft doesn’t get this one right, it could be “game over” for Microsoft.

Source: Neowin

Tours: LINK

The Pirate Bay, will they ever learn? They have just launched a very early version of their new video streaming website entitled The Video Bay which they hope will combat other video upload giants such as YouTube and Yahoo Videos.

Now; I don’t see how the can argue that they aren’t breaking all sorts of copyright laws. For a start, I’m pretty sure the content is hosted on their servers.

Although it’s a very early version of the site, the sites founders say: “It will be done when it’s done.” This comes just after the news that their request for a retrial was denied and that the original charges for the founders of The Pirate Bay to pay back almost £3 million and spend a year in jail, although they are currently still free men.

The website uses the latest HTML 5 features such as video and audio tags, more specifically, founder Pete Sunde said:

“More specifically the audio and video tags with the ogg/theora video and audio formats. This site will be an experimental playground and as such subjected to both live and drunk encoding, so please don’t bug us too much if the site isn’t working properly.”

Although in it’s very early stages, a preview showed various numbers of copyrighted music videos being available for streaming and viewing in the navigation bar. Some will see this as a provocative move against the copyright holders.

The head of Sweden’s Pirate Party – Rickard Falkvinge – said:

“[This is another step towards the] prolonged legal battle with the record industry. It’s obvious that, given enough time, The Pirate Bay will win this war which will go on as long as the record industry has yet another penny to file a lawsuit. I think they [The Pirate Bay] are taking an important part in that battle, fighting for freedom of expression and culture against monopolistic companies,” he added.

So, what do you think will come of this? Share your thoughts and visit The Video Bay.

Windows 7, probably the best Windows OS since Win2k, is almost ready for release, and of course many have been wondering how well it’d be priced, and I have to tell you, it’s pretty much as good as I thought it’d be, even though that doesn’t mean in any way it’s as good as it should be.

$119 for an upgrade version of Home Premium, $199 for Professional (ouch) and $259.99 for Ultimate (OUCH!). This means if you wasted your money on Vista Ultimate, you’ll have to waste even more on this, and no, you can’t go from Ultimate to Home Premium for example. You can read a full list of prices here.

Something else that’s worth mentioning is there won’t be an upgrade edition of 7 in the EU due to all the mess around Windows 7 E Edition (the version of 7 without IE). This is mainly because an upgrade can’t remove functionality from a previous version, meaning an “upgrade” could not remove IE from Vista. Look at the mess you’ve done, EU!

So yeah, pricing! Anything you didn’t predict? Probably not. Now I only hope they sell something for $99 in the future, hopefully before Windows 8. I can keep dreaming I guess…

Source: Neowin (1, 2)

Well, I know this leaked ages ago, but whatever, Microsoft has finally announced the official packaging for Windows 7:

Yeah, I think you’ve seen that somewhere, haven’t you? But now you don’t need an instructions manual to open the box, as it’s been hugely simplified, plus they’ve reduced the amount of useless paper stuff in the box, in order to reduce overall waste (because you know, no one really reads that!).

Source: Neowin

The Pirate Bay case has generated a lot of controversy on both sides: many argued tey were just linking to the files, while other believed the site should take more action to remove links to copyrighted stuff. TPB ended up getting in quite a bit of trouble and the site’s faith is unclear at this point.

But we’re not done (thankfully for us bloggers): another company got fined this time, none other than RapidShare. Unlike The Pirate Bay, they’re actually storing the files, but on the other hand, they can’t control every single file that’s uploaded to their servers, but they often do remove pirated material, meaning they at least do care, unlike Pirate Bay who sends insulting messages to companies who request content to be taken down.

Personally I think it just makes no sense. I understand the need to get rid of piracy, but don’t blame sites that are actually useful, as they can’t just review every single upload they get. That’s like closing a restaurant because one customer felt sick one day after eating there.

Source: Torrent Freak

I still remember the day Microsoft announced it was finally getting rid of its commercial OneCare suite, which was used by approximately 2 people around the world. A free antivirus solution would appear instead, which even got me more excited, and it’s finally here with us, or a beta at least.

The beta is out right now and it’s pretty much all you can get, but believe it or not, I think it’s one of the best-looking free antivirus I’ve tried, even comparing to those who have had new versions for years now (*cough*AVG?*cough*). When everything’s alright, the app should look like this:

Windows Defender users will find huge similarities on this, while new users will be simply blown away at how streamlined the program is. So let’s say you did a scan and something went wrong?

You get that. You can look at the threats that were found, look at their risk level, read more about them and take action, which should usually be “Remove”. I know every single antivirus solution does what I’ve just said, but I just like how this one does it, and how well it looks. The only thing I must complain about is the slow engine, which still disappoints me a little bit, but I’m sure it’ll get better once this reaches final stage.

Of course it’s not your huge security suite, but if you want simple antivirus protection, this will be the way to go once it ships later this year. Wondering what free antivirus makers will do about it?

Download: MS Connect

When Steve Jobs quite Apple this past January, many geeks got worried, not only about Apple, but about Steve’s life, because love him or hate him, he was a visionary and did a lot to help build the tech industry as it is today. And to make everyone even more worried, there were no signs of him at WWDC.

Luckily things are turning brighter for Apple fans: for like 2 days now, many Apple employees claim they’ve spotted Apple at the campus. Interestingly enough, Apple hasn’t said anything officially, so this is all up in the air.

On one hand, this would be confirmed by his previous announcement that he’d return in June, but on the other hand, it’d be kind of a record time for a liver transplant recovery. What do you think?

Source: Neowin

Last year, when T-Mobile announced it’d launch an iPhone killer running Android, I was very excited, but when I looked at the product, I thought “you’re kidding, right?”. It just had too many hardware flaws and frankly, you couldn’t even sync it to your computer, can you imagine that? And on top of all that, the design was very ugly.

Not anymore, with T-Mobile’s myTouch 3G:

Well, looks a lot sleeker. You’ll be able to pick one up by late July for $199, which isn’t a bad deal if it’s actually a better-quality phone. How will this compete with the iPhone?

Source: G4TV The Feed

If you remember last year, you probably know Apple got into some trouble when the iPhone 3G came out. No, not the numerous hardware and software issues customers complained about: activation problems! Imagine how great it’d be if you walked home, turned on the phone, connected it to iTunes and bo0om, “server not available”. Or even worse: imagine standing in line waiting for your iPhone to be activated (because you kinda have to before leaving the store). Yeah, fail.

So you’d expect things to be better now, after 1 year of work. But no, sadly: things were just as crappy. Millions of customers were left in the dark when their brand-new iPhone just wouldn’t work, leaving you to a $200-brick. No, the looks don’t matter in this case.

Luckily for you affected customers, Apple is letting you all sort of enjoy a small prize: $30 of iTunes credit. Yeah, for your apps and songs. Sounds like a good deal, but please don’t screw up again next year.

Source: CNET