NetWorthy Systems Blog

If you want to upgrade your family computers to Windows 7, it's not going to cost you an arm and a leg. Windows has released the Family Pack pricing. Officially priced at $149, it's actually a pretty good deal, compared to previous Microsoft upgrade pricing. If you are wondering whether you should upgrade or not, I recommend you do. Windows 7 is a good operating system, as evidenced by our experiences of running the Release Candidate of the software.

The Family Pack will let you install 3 copies of Windows 7 Home Premium. There is additional pricing released for individual computer upgrades as well. If you want the details, you can find it here.

To Your Success,

Tim

Last week, I blogged about Amazon remotely deleting selected books from their Kindle readers even after customers had paid for them. Apparently, the situation has progressed. Justin Gawronski had his electronic notes for his summer high school assignment on his Kindle, and they were rendered useless when Amazon pulled their "blunder" of the year by purposely deleting the aforementioned books from the Kindle devices.

It looks like Justin has found a lawyer and filed a class action lawsuit seeking punitive damages for people affected by the deletions and an injunction against Amazon to keep them from improperly accessing any Kindles in the future.

Now, I'm not one to justify frivolous lawsuits, but in this case, I say go get them, Justin. I think Amazon has it coming to them. After all, when you pay good money for a device, subscribe to the service, and pay for the books you read, what business does Amazon have digging around in your E-book reader, deleting books that you paid for, just because a publisher changes their mind about publishing in e-book format?

Let me know what you think.

To Your Success,

Tim

According to MacWorld, Barnes & Noble bookstores along with AT&T have decided to make their WiFi access free to anyone in their bookstores nationwide. Previously, WiFi access at the bookstores was only available as a pay for service through At&T.

Why are these two companies being so generous? Well, probably not because they are trying to be nice. Barnes & Noble has launched an e-book service similar to the Amazon Kindle offering, and is ramping up to compete against the behemoth book seller. And how could they get you to buy an e-book from them if you have to pay to get WiFi in the first place?

And you thought they were just trying to help you out during a poor economy? C'mon folks. Let's get real!

At any rate, it's a win for any business person needing to get online while traveling. Just hop into your nearest Barnes & Noble and score some free WiFi access! Nobody said you had to buy an e-book from them!

To Your Success,

Tim

No sooner do I post a blog about storage space getting bigger while form factor gets smaller, then along comes another big player in the storage market with another milestone. It seems Western Digital has announced the first 1 Terrabyte 2.5 inch mobile drive. WD claims a 3GB/s transfer speed as well. 

Would You have invested in this company back in 1978? I mean, look at them! Kids, really. What do they know about running a business? No way this small business is going to make it. Especially with the nasty economy we had after President Carter came onboard. Doomed for failure, I would say.

According to Reuters (if you can believe them) Microsoft has offered to put other browsers into their operating system in order to settle a lawsuit from the European Union.

In the old days where profits were consistently up quarter over quarter, MS would hang in there and fight out lawsuits to the bitter end. In today's market, it could make more sense for MS to cave in and settle the lawsuit.

I wonder if this is a sign of times to come from the Redmond campus. Let me know your thoughts, please. The entire article may be found here.

To Your Success,

Tim

I ran across this article on Deal News, a site whose motto is "Every Day is Black Friday". They took a middle-of-the-road laptop and did price comparisons during the year. They confirmed the best time to buy a laptop is: back to school time or August and September.

Other good times to purchase are November (black Friday) and April. Prices ranged from a high of $580 in July to below $500 in April.

So if you are contemplating a laptop purchase, get your credit card warmed up. Back to school time is just around the corner!

To Your Success,

Tim

Today, Microsoft has officially RTM'ed, or Released To Manufacturing the new Windows 7 Operating System. Not a huge deal really, but there is one fact worth noting. 

The BBC is reporting that Etisalat, a United Arab Emirates telecommunications firm, sent a text about an update to Blackberry users, suggesting it would improve performance. Those who downloaded and installed the application, found their battery life reduced, and their cellphones crashing. 

With barely one month passing since the arrival of 128GB thumb drives, Kingston steps up to the plate by releasing a thumb drive capable of 256GB of storage! That's right, it's not a typo. This is a 256 GB thumb drive! Although it's not available in the United States as of yet, the street price is estimated to be around $900 US. So I wouldn't rush out and get one just yet, but I would expect the prices to drop rapidly once its been on the market for awhile. 

According to Amazon, You Don't Own It Even If You Buy It! According to a news report, Amazon removed some electronic versions of George Orwell's books from the kindle store, and deposited a refund in accounts of people who had previously bought them. 

Windows 7 has been in Release Candidate status for a few months. We have received information from Microsoft that Windows 7 will go to RTM, or Release To Manufacturing on October 22, 2009. That means it will be released in its final production form, available for purchase. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, ATT, Verizon, Sprint and some others are under investigation by the Department of Justice. It seems the DOJ thinks they may be abusing their power on the cell phone market. How, you ask? One reason that comes to mind is the fact you can only get an i-phone from one carrier, and it cannot be used on any other carrier. 

I admit it. I am an early adopter and I love to get the latest gadget, whether it's a phone or a robot vacuum cleaner. But keeping up with and researching the latest and greatest gadget can be time-consuming, to say the least. Enter GDGT What's this, you ask? Pronounced "gadget" it's gdgt.com a website dedicated to all us techophiles. 

I ran across an article about differences in cheap laser printers versus more expensive professional versions. As it turns out, for your business, it may just end up costing you more money over time. So the next time you think you might save some money and go on the cheap, you might want to think again. The link is below:

July 1st is the day that the Windows 7 Beta will begin shutting down every two hours. Which is Microsoft's way of telling you to go get the Windows 7 Release Candidate(really, you should have done it quite a while ago). 

Microsoft released Windows 7 in beta form last month. Then they closed the beta, then opened it again. For those that don't know, Windows 7 is Microsoft's latest operating system, set to replace Vista. 

We all know devices continue to get smaller. And they continue to do more. I, like millions of others, carry a device that is cell phone, computer, instant messenger, and email reader all rolled up in one small package. One of the issues with these devices however, has been the limited amount of storage capacity. Most of these devices utilize SSD, or solid state drives. This type of storage has typically been expensive, and limited in storage capacity. Until now.

I ran across an article from the New York Times regarding the hows and how much of texting via your flavor of mobile carrier. While the article is a little technical, it explains why it costs the carriers virtually nothing to carry your sms messages. It raises the question of why the carriers have doubled the cost of texting over the last 3 years. 

Just after I posted regarding the Internet taking over as the preferred medium for news, I ran across a small article about a newspaper company that has continually grown where others have not. It's the TriCityNews of Monmouth County, New Jersey, and it has grown at over 10 % a year since the dot.com bust. You can read all about it here.