Steve Ballmer kicked up a little dirt last week when he said that Microsoft could “wake up smarter” and keep selling XP after the June 30 cutoff date if customer feedback demanded it, but as you’d expect, the company is busily trying to “clarify” that statement by saying that while it always listens to customers, XP is definitely going to die on the 30th. Well, apart from the ultraportable exception that’ll last until 2012 or so. And the backlog of licenses still in reseller’s hands. Oh, and a little company called Dell, which, as rumored, is going to take advantage of a Vista licensing loophole that allows it to sell a copy of Vista but preload XP instead. Yep, that’s the plan — Dell’s going to report a Vista sale to Microsoft, but deliver an XP box with Vista upgrade DVD to customers. (That sound you just heard was a million accountants sighing in appreciation.) The program will be available for Latitude, OptiPlex, Precision, Vostro, and XPS systems (some with a minor fee), and Dell says it’ll keep going as long as Microsoft supports the “downgrade” license option, which could be forever. Looks like June 30 just got a lot less scary for XP fans, no?

Read - Microsoft clarification of Ballmer’s comments
Read - Dell to keep selling XP

written by Jose Castillo \\ tags: dell, Microsoft, windows, windows xp, WindowsXp, xp

Apple released new and improved iMacs today. The new machines are equipped with the faster Intel Core 2 Duo processors, a 1066 MHz front-side bus and can handle up to 4GB of 800MHz DDRS SDRAM.

Apple is touting the new machine’s environmental friendly recyclable glass and aluminum. The new iMac received a Silver rating from EPEAT.

The machines are available in four flavors from 2.4Ghz up to 3.06Ghz, with 20″ and 24″ glossy displays. Check out the full specs here.

written by Jose Castillo \\ tags: Apple, imac, intel, mac, processor, update

From Engadget:

If your pants / panties were in a “bunch” upon hearing news that Windows 7 would be headed into your ever-loving arms “next year,” you might just want to hold off on those party invites for a little bit. Sure, Bill Gates just happened to mention that we’d see a new version of the OS “Sometime in the next year or so,” but it’s looking like that “or so” makes a world of difference. Microsoft wants to chill everyone out with the somber news that its got no plans to introduce Windows 7 any earlier than January 2010 (three years from the launch of Vista), and reassure us that crazy old Gates may have just been talkin’ developer speak. “As is standard with the release of a new product, we will be releasing early builds of Windows 7 prior to its general availability as a means to gain tester feedback,” a spokesman for Microsoft said, downplaying Gates’ statement. Of course, this means that XP’s cutoff will suddenly move even further down the line, which makes us wonder what the point of setting that June 2010 date was in the first place. Why are you toying with us like this, Microsoft?

It seems like no one knows what is really happening. I don’t even think they know whats happening. Oh well, we can wait and see!

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written by Jose Castillo

What’s that? You didn’t take the risk and upgrade your PC to some crappy Intel-based machine Microsoft may or may not have known wouldn’t run Vista as promised? Well, at least now you can get in on the latest version of Windows a little cheaper than yesterday: Ultimate full looks to be officially headed down to $320 from $400, and the upgrade is down to $220 from $260; Home Premium is now at $130 from $160. Will the dip be enough to entice plenty of new OS upgraders? Perhaps, but we think most of those that haven’t already upgraded will probably just wait until their next PC so they can get Vista “free”. But if you’re looking to buy it boxed though, give it a bit for the new prices to propagate through the retail network — not even Microsoft’s site reflects the new Vista price points.\

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written by Jose Castillo

I love that OS X automatically fires up iPhoto when I plug in my digital camera. It’s one of the Mac’s many little touches that make it such a pleasure to use.

But ever since I got an iPhone, I’ve been frustrated that plugging it in opens up iPhoto, too. The combination of iPhoto and iTunes opening and syncing slows my computer to a crawl. And it’s particularly painful when most of the time I just want to sync my address book or music.

Fortunately it’s pretty easy to work around this annoyance. Keep reading to see how you can teach your Mac to open iPhoto when you plug in your camera but not your phone.

I recently stumbled across an option in Image Capture’s preferences that lets you select any application to open when a camera is connected. That gave me an idea: what if I could tell it to open a special application that would check to see which camera I’d plugged in? Then that application could in turn open iPhoto only if I’d plugged in my Digital Rebel.

It turns out you can do all of this using the command line and a little bit of AppleScript. Here’s how:

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written by Jose Castillo