InfoWorld's J. Peter Bruzzese takes an admin look the key decisions and options you'll have to address to ensure a successful migration to Windows 7. Bruzzese's guide -- which includes a hands-on video tour of Windows 7 and a deep-dive PDF report that provides Windows 7 benchmarks -- examines hardware and software compatibility issues, addresses the licensing question, and lends insight for those Windows shops considering the virtualized desktop route.

Software licensing. As home users, it's already an incomprehensible mess of legalese that nobody cares one bit about. However - we home users have it easy. The situation for business users and people managing IT departments is even worse (proprietary software, mostly, of course). Microsoft is a major culprit in this regard, and while the company acknowledges that the situation is messy, they claim they can't really do anything about it.

Manufacturers are taking advantage of the Windows 7 release to roll out a slate of new laptops, and the big trend is low prices. We wrote a couple of weeks ago about Netbook watchers predicting that Windows 7 will be licensed too high for value-priced netbooks. But licensing fees don't seem to be preventing laptop makers from aggressive pricing on their new laptops, even ones with premium features and finishes.

Adobe and various members of the OpenScreenProject announced today news about the upcoming release of Flash 10.1, the first Flash version to get released as a full browser plugin for various smartphone platforms.

So, you thought this whole tug of war over iTunes synchronisation was over, right? The USB Implementers Forum slapped Palm in the face, and exonerated Apple from any wrongdoing. The thing is though, the USB-IF is pretty much a powerless organisation, so Palm tossed them aside, and fixed webOS iTunes sync in webOS 1.2.1.

We already introduced Dell's new laptop wonder, the Z600, to you earlier this week. What makes this laptop special is that it contains a small ARM motherboard which runs a special version of openSUSE Linux, allowing for instant access to basic functionality like checking email, browsing the web, and playing multimedia files. What's news, at least for OSNews, is that research from Dell has shown that people spent 70% of their time in the Linux environment.

"If the last two months should be interpreted as Microsoft suggests, with Bing's gradual ascent in usage share against Google as a sign of Bing's inevitably catching up, then a similar interpretation of September's numbers from live analytics firm StatCounter should be taken as a sign of Bing's ultimate demise. A sampling of five billion or more US page views from Web sites accessed by StatCounter in September reveals that, of the world's top three search services, Google's usage share has climbed back just above 80%, and is flirting with last November's peak of 81.14% -- meaning Google is back to serving four out of five US-based general queries. Bing's usage share in the US descended by 1.13% to 8.51% for the month of September, while Yahoo's dove 1.1% to 9.4%. Google's share among the top three has now climbed above where it stood in May (78.72%), when Microsoft changed the name of Windows Live Search."

What laptop is the most loved, and maybe the most famous laptop in the world? Which laptop went into space? Which laptop won over 300 design awards? I'm sure many of you will be thinking of something made by Apple, but the truth of the matter is that we're talking about something else: IBM's ThinkPad. You might wonder, where does that name come from?

The Ubuntu team has pushed out the beta release for Ubuntu 9.10. "Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop Edition improves on the work of 9.04 to get you going faster, with improved startup times and a streamlined boot experience. Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition integrates Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud setup in the installer and provides improvements to system security with AppArmor, including an AppArmor profile for libvirtd to further isolate virtual machines from the host system. The Ubuntu 9.10 family of variants, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, and Mythbuntu, also reach beta status today."

We reported earlier on a blog post entitled "Ubuntu Report Card (2009)" where the author detailed how they felt the Ubuntu experience had improved over the years. In a follow-up series of articles looking at the future, Tanner Helland has written 10 different broadly-scoped feature requests that 'and many others would like to see by the time Ubuntu 10.10 rolls around'.

Yesterday morning, we ran an item on the Autodesk case, but we (as in: me) got all confused about what exactly was going on. As it turns out, I was right from the start; despite my update to the item, the case was not resolved. The link in the update referred to an earlier stage of the legal ramblings. However, we now have a real conclusion in this case - and once again, Autodesk lost: software is sold, not licensed. Note: Thanks to Brian W. Carver from Cyberlaw Cases for clearing everything up via email. Much appreciated!

AdMob has released their latest set of figures regarding the usage shares of various mobile platforms when it comes to web browsing. The figures are pretty clear: the big winners are the new kids on the block, iPhoneOS, Android, and webOS.

As much as we like to stay away from letting real-world politics bleed over into our ongoing discussion of tech politics, I found an interesting essay over at The Economist's "Democracy in America" blog that draws a parallel between Apple's Mac/iPhone user-friendly ecosystem and the Microsoft Windows freer-but-more-chaotic ecosystem and how that lines up along the authoritarian/libertarian spectrum of real-world political division. They don't mention Open Source in this essay, but I'm sure it could make an interesting addition to the discussion. The essay's main point is that, in governance, attempts to make life more user-friendly for citizens usually ends up giving them less freedom of choice, and a certain segment of the political establishment will reliably oppose such moves. The idea that the tradeoff between choice and usability persists into the world of governance really set me to thinking. What kind of country would you rather live in? An Apple one, a Microsoft one, or an Open Source one?