I agree with the rationale stated in this article:

The Google OS Is Doomed

The only reason that Google is creating the OS is to screw with Microsoft.  Now if that is the intended goal then all’s well.  But to think that the Google OS is going to garner any significant market share is just naive.

For one thing, targeting the netbook space as the niche for this OS is going to be an uphill battle.  MS just spent the last two years crushing Linux in that arena and securing over 90% of the market for its own.

Couple that with the fact that linux netbooks have a high return rate –> Netbook returns blamed on Linux 'teething problems'

And couple that with the fact that the Google OS is going to be essentially a linux distro with a browser as shell and the future does not look bright.

Google will be lucky to get more than 5% of the netbook space, I’d be very surprised if it got more than 10%.  Which means a flyspeck of the market.  It will anger MS and make them work harder to get Win7 on netbooks, which is a good result in the long run, but nothing more.

I know, I know, CRAAAZY you say.  But it’s true.  There is now a port of the KDE desktop for Windows.  What was once the domain of only Linux may now be run on Windows as well.

Article:
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/01/testing-kde-42-release-candidate-on-windows.ars

How to do it:
http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/KDE_on_Windows/Installation

[full disclosure, I work for Microsoft.]

Do you have a home computer and a laptop?  Or perhaps a mobile phone running windows mobile along with a computer?  How many different computers do you spend your time on.

Me?

Five.

Two home, two work and my mobile.

Do you want to keep your documents synchronized across that varied landscape?  If the answer to that question is yes then Windows Live Mesh is the answer for you.

How mesh works:
There is a website that you login to using your @live.com email address, http://mesh.live.com.  It becomes your online desktop, the center of the wheel of your devices.  You then download an application to all your other computers that you want to sync with and sign each machine up to the same account.

Once that is done you may create a folder as a mesh folder and the contents of said folder will be sync'ed across all your devices.

It's cool.

Listen to this scenario.

I downloaded the mesh app to my windows mobile phone.  I now have the folder that stores the pictures from my camera phone sync'ed with Live Mesh.  So when I take a picture on my camera, the picture is automatically sync'ed across all my other computers.

Sweet.

Caveats:
You only have 5 gigs to play with for free, so sync'ing your music isn't an option (and any other large media files).  But for personal documents, such as all my writing, it is perfect.  I can pick up any of my writing projects on any machine and just write.

Also, I do not sync my work stuff on my personal pcs.  That is just common sense.

This is just dang cool and once again shows us how the world does not stand still.  Innovation continues apace.

http://translator.live.com/Default.aspx?MKT=en-US

So you say...big deal that's just like babel fish from years ago.  Well yes and no.

techRivet Translated

Voila'.  There's techRivet translated for you.

Still you doubt it.  Been done already.

OK, check out the techRivet homepage.  Look up in the top of the right hand column see the translator drop down?  For the vast international audience of the techRivet blog, this must be a welcome relief.

Choose language, click and go.

And for techRivets IT staff it was a simple implementation.  I didn't even have to get the Project Managers involved just spoke to the developer directly and he had it up and running in a matter of minutes.  (The layers of bureaucracy over here is mind numbing).

The UI is intuitive and easy and configurable.  All goodness.

Windows Live is starting to bear fruit for Microsoft.  Once the Office suite goes online it will be an interesting change of the playing field.

ht: Scott Hanselman's ComputerZen.com

They sure on their last legs those scrappy kids from Redmond.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2163005,00.asp

key graph

The install base of Windows computers this coming 12 months will reach 1 billion," Ballmer told the group. "If you stop and just think about that, parse that for a second, by the end of our fiscal year '08, there will be more PCs running Windows in the world than there are automobiles, which is at least to me kind of a mind-numbing concept.

Unbelievable. That's 1 windows installation for every 6 people in the world. Does that count the illegal copies? Does that count active versions or just all copies sold? Is Windows 3.1 in those figures? 95? I'd be ok if they are counting 98, NT, XP and Vista.

Quite an accomplishment

The closest thing we have in the tech/geek world resembling a world sport is bashing Microsoft.  There are sites dedicated to it, world-wide efforts to bring and end to its products, bias that runs deeper and stronger the geekier you get.

In a way to gain street cred in the tech world you need to hate MS.

But here is something that MS does better than practically anyone else: It knows how to support independent developers (via Sawickipedia.com).

The Sawicki references a Scobleizer post talking about how Apple is playing true to type and how this may jeopardize its long term strategies. Why? At least in part because [Apple] told developers to go pound sand.

The one piece of this pie that I'd like to add is the fact Visual Studio is the best IDE on the market and has been for a decade. They Visual Studio Group at MS has consistently produced a high quality product. The MSDN program and associated sites, Channel 9, all the team blogs...Microsoft knows how important the developer is and wants to make sure their needs are met.

We're wrong and MS is doomed

Now for a countering opinion I send you over to someone with almost the same weight as Scoble: Joel on Software - How Microsoft Lost the API War. In which he basically states that the change to .Net has removed the primary advantage that MS had which was the desktop as a programming environment.  Now that everything is migrating to the web what does it matter the underlying technology.

My opinion is that Microsoft appreciates the developer more than most of its competitors.  And in the long run this will result in continued strength in the developer community maybe not dominance anymore, but still a strong presence.

Ya know when you shut down Windows and it sits there for a minute and then notifies you that a program isn't responding and what do you want to do about it?

You know how irritating that is to me?

I just want to tell Windows, "I said shut down so SHUT DOWN!"

Well here's the fix. All it takes is a little registry work.

1. Click Start > Run and type regedit, then hit Enter.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
3. In the right hand pane, change the following String values:
   
   • AutoEndTasks=1
   • HungAppTimeout=4000
   • WaitToKillAppTimeout=4000
   • WaitToKillServiceTimeout=4000

And if the value doesn't exist just right click and add a new string value of the same name.

Sweet.

More detail here and here.