Hardware

Michael Jackson, Facebook, Twitter, and PerezHilton.com all died yesterday: may they rest in peace. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers shed a tear for the king of pop, the Fail Whale, and Web reliability.

By Richi Jennings -- your humble blogwatcher -- who selected these bloggy morsels for your enjoyment. Not to mention Joe Biden sings!..

IT pilot fish walks into the office one morning and someone immediately grabs him in the hallway. “Go check the printer in shipping,” user tells fish. “Betty is having trouble with it.”

Netbooks have been the one bright spot in PC sales over the last year. But there's some evidence that the glory days of the netbook are over, and that buyers will turn to more traditional notebooks.

When it comes to the fastest of the fast, Linux continues to lead the supercomputer pack.

An upstart start-up wants to change the way you keep the heat off your data center.

During an epic office and lab clean-up, I got rid of 386s, 486s, and old Pentium PCs, but kept a 4MHz Z80 KayPro PC. This led me to the question: "What's the oldest PC that you're still using?"

HP may never be especially consumer-Linux friendly, but lately the company has been making it easier for business Linux users to get what they need. And, that includes Ubuntu and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and Server.

Every time Microsoft seems to sew up the netbook market, it makes yet one more blunder, giving Linux a big market opening. This time around could be the worst: Microsoft apparently plans to charge netbook makers up $55 for Windows 7 Starter Edition, about double what it charges for XP. At that price, buyers just may opt for Linux instead.

It's Digital TV transition time; got your .gov DTV converter box coupon? In IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches bloggers blog the DTV transition from NTSC analog to ATSC digital television.

HDTV via rabbit ears? Let's give it a try!

Not to mention a Star Trek (TOS) communicator? There's an app. for that...

In today's podcast: Rambus reaches tentative settlement with EC; Microsoft to ship Windows 7 without IE in Europe; and Google readies relational database.

Blogs are abuzz over the Palm Pre, new iPhone 3G S, and BlackBerry platform. But which is best for the enterprise? In IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches bloggers pontificate, now they've had a few days to think about it.

Not to mention videogame places you're not supposed to go...

A server has gotten flaky, and this IT pilot fish determines that the problem is a failing motherboard. It's still under a support contract, so fish calls the vendor -- and gets a surprise.

User calls this pilot fish to ask if IT has the external CD writer that belongs to the marketing department. Sure enough, IT does. But when fish arrives to return it, user has another question.

Some bloggers blame the Air France AF 447 crash on the Airbus A330 computer. They're speculating -- often in the most ignorant way -- about the safety of fly-by-wire aircraft. Others work hard to correct these mistakes; some even accusing Boeing of fanning the flames.

In IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings shakes his head at the foolishness. Not only is it an extremely sad time for those left behind by this tragedy, it's also sad to see widely-read commentators get so much wrong, so badly.

Fresh from the success of its "Laptop Hunters" ad campaign, Microsoft is feeling pretty cocky about how it's doing against Apple --- so much so that Brad Brooks, Microsoft's corporate vice president for Windows consumer product marketing, says that Apple is now "scared" of Microsoft's success.