Windows Vista wasn't exactly a success, and as such, Microsoft needed different people to manage the development of Windows 7. One of those new people is Julie Larson-Green, who made a very good showing with Microsoft Office 2007, which took the bold move of replacing the menu-driven interface with the newly designed Ribbon interface. The Sydney Morning Herald (awesome name) decided to take a look at who, exactly, Larson-Green is.

After being admitted to the hospital earlier today, the health situation of Professor Stephen Hawking has improved, and he is now "comfortable" according to a spokesperson of the University of Cambridge in the UK. He was admitted into the hospital today after "chest problems", and university spokespeople stated he was "very ill".

Most people probably wouldn't think of the local police as one of the vanguards of mobile computing technology, but the Police in Memphis, Tennessee are pushing the envelope, and its saving them time and money.

We've been debating the merits of a possible IBM-Sun deal for a while now, and even Sun itself seemed to be in the dark as to if it would be a good idea to be bought by IBM. These debates are now all moot: in a surprise move (at least, I didn't see any speculation about it) Oracle has bought Sun Microsystems, at USD 9.50 a share, which equates to a total of 7.4 billion USD. The news got out through a press release.

Thus far it seems that netbooks with Windows XP and Intel Atom processors have been the most successful, leaving little room for other players. There have been those who doubt ARM's longevity in this particular market, so we decided to interview some of the folks at ARM. They told OSNews that the company is confident about its current and future mobile markets, and Linux, which will soon be on various ARM-powered netbooks, is one of the reasons why.

We had an interesting week here over at OSNews. We had lots of talk about the Windows worm Conficker, information regarding computer sales figures, a sentence in the Pirate Bay case, and much, much more. This week's My Take is about the irony of copyright law.

We already knew the Windows 7 Release Candidate would arrive somewhere in May, but we now also have a release date thanks to a "slip-up" (you're not fooling anyone, Microsoft) on the Microsoft Partner Program website: Windows 7 RC will be released on May 5. Just so you know.

"A Customer Experience Index report from Forrester Research came to the conclusion after studying almost 4600 computer users' experiences from 2008 and asking them to score the ease of use of their computers, how enjoyable the experience is and whether or not the systems fulfill their owners' needs. Apple's overall score reached 80 and was not only enough to give it the lead but also leave it as the only company to earn a 'good' ranking in Forrester's view. Every other manufacturer in the list scored significantly lower, with Acer's American label Gateway being closest with a score of just 66; the standing is only 'okay' in the research group's chart."

Remember the Mac trojan that we reported about earlier this year? A trojan was found piggybacking on the back of copies of iWork and Photoshop CS4 found on warez sites and networks, and it would install itself after the user had entered his or her administrator password during the software's installation. This trojan didn't seem like much of a threat back then, but as it turns out, it's now in use in the first Macintosh botnet.

GlobalFoundries, the former manufacturing arm of AMD, has announced they will have a 28-nanometer high-k metal gate process available in the second half of 2010. GlobalFoundries developed the 28nm process in conjunction with IBM, Chartered Semiconductors, Infineon Technologies, Samsung Electronics, and STMicroelectronics as part of the IBM Technology Alliance. According to The Tech Report, the new process will reportedly enable "40% better performance, over 20% lower power consumption, and 50% smaller die areas" versus the current 45nm process, but it was not mentioned what kind of performance numbers the 28nm process will have compared to the upcoming 32nm process.

It's a bit of a mobile day on OSNews today, with news about Cinder and Symbian. Next up is Google's Android. While Android is designed for smartphones, there has been increasing chatter about netbook manufacturers using Android on netbooks. Google has always remained fairly mum on the possibility of Android on netbooks, but during yesterday's earnings call, Google CEO Eric Schmidt talked about this subject.

"Some chaps at Symbian with way too much time on their hands have compiled the current version of the OS onto an Intel Atom processor - proving that you don't have to follow the ARM road to Symbian nirvana. The chaps concerned work for 'S60 in Symbian Customer Operations' and did the port to see if it would work, and if anyone would take an interest. The port is to an Atom reference board from Intel, but demonstrates that Symbian could probably run on a netbook if anyone wanted such a thing."

KenSmith announced the immediate availability of FreeBSD 7.2-RC1 in the FreeBSD-stable mailing list. "The first of two planned Release Candidates for the FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE cycle is now available. Testing of some of the recent work would be particularly appreciated." The release schedule states that the final release is to be expected early May, at which point we'll cover FreeBSD 7.2 in much more detail.

Old World 1, New World 0. The four defendants in the landmark The Pirate Bay case, taking place in Sweden, have all been found guilty, and sentenced to one year in jail. They also received a hefty fine of USD 3.58 million to 17 American media companies, among which are Warner Bros. Entertainment, MGM Pictures, Columbia Pictures Industries, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Blizzard Entertainment, Sierra Entertainment, and Activision. The defendants have already stated they will appeal the decision.