"As someone who wants Microsoft to be cooler, I'm all for them making an aggressive pitch to consumers. I say make Windows 7 a simplified, colorful, fun experience for everyday users. Emphasize how it can store and share music and photos. Keep those potential Mac users from switching. Heck, open up retail stores while you're at it. But of course Microsoft has to walk the line here. By kowtowing to consumers, it runs the risk of neglecting its core customer, the business user. In a recent interview on CIO.com sister site Network World, Windows blogger and editor of Supersite for Windows Paul Thurrott contends that Microsoft is biting the hand that feeds it by leaning heavily on consumer features with Windows 7. Enterprise needs have been reduced to an afterthought, he says."

There has been a bit of a buzz lately surrounding some indeterminate patent threats going back and forth between Apple and Palm. Palm is about to launch the Pre, which supposedly could infringe on a number of iPhone patents. Both companies have stated that they will defend themselves against any possible patent infringements. Engadget enlisted the help of two patent attornies, and they took a good look at both sides and came up with some interesting results: while Palm could be infringing on Apple's patents, Apple sure as water is also infringing on a number of Palm patents. Still, that doesn't have to mean anything.

Currently, NVIDIA is really missing out on the netbook market, which is dominated by all-Intel platform designs. NVIDIA has finally woken up to this reality, and the outspoken cofounder, president, and CEO of NVIDIA, Jen-Hsun Huang, has launched an all-out campaign to promote his company's Ion platform - and he isn't shy of flinging some poo to Intel and netbooks in general.

Calm down, calm down. It was simply a manner of speech. No, they haven't developed the all too popular garments that render the wearer invisible, but we are about to take a look at some pretty spiffy technology that will doubtlessly save you some space in the family room as well as give you something to brag about to your somewhat less technologically inclined friends: "invisible" speakers.

The open source leader and founder of the Ubuntu Linux distribution explains the elements that can inspire innovation and change the world--or at least your small piece of it. He'd be one to know, huh?

PCMag has listed its 10 favorite Internet Explorer 8 add-ons, with an explanation of new accelerators and Web slices, including a Digg Web slice and a Facebook accelerator. It looks like IE8 will make browsing more efficient with these two new useful features.

The Lua programming language is a small scripting language specifically designed to be embedded in other programs. Lua's C API allows exceptionally clean and simple code both to call Lua from C, and to call C from Lua. This allows developers who want a convenient runtime scripting language to easily implement the basic API elements needed by the scripting language, then use Lua code from their applications. This article introduces the Lua language as a possible tool for simplifying common development tasks, and discusses some of the reasons to embed a scripting language in the first place.

Despite the success of the Windows 7 beta, which got leaked before it was officially released and had several deadline extensions, Microsoft isn't exactly sitting still. The beta build, with build number 7000, was built on December 12th, 2008, so that leaves enough room between then and now for several newer builds. One such build got leaked this weekend, and it contains some minor changes compared to the beta build.

Sure, Intel's been raking it in with the Atom that is powering so many netbooks being sold in these economically challenged times, but now the chip company is hoping to take a cut of an even more mobile market-- that of MIDs, or mobile Internet devices.

In a recent video, several hard core overclockers had a heyday just after CES lugging in the liquid nitrogen and liquid helium to provide themselves with enough coolant to perform such a feat-- and all for the public eye to see, no less. At nearly absolute zero temperatures of -232 degrees Celsius, these speed demons pushed their Phenom II X4s right into the record books, achieving a staggering clock of 6.5 GHz, not to mention shattering the hopes and dreams of thousands by stealing the 3DMark05 crown with 45,474 points. As a side note, liquid nitrogen is a bit tough to come by in most societies, so you may want to stifle that overclocking beast that has risen within you and keep your chips nice and un-fried as they were designed to be.

The release of KDE 4.0 was not a smooth one, and left a number of users a bit disgruntled. Still, the release showed so much potential that it was oozing out of every pixel. KDE 4.1 improved significantly in many areas of concern, but it wasn't yet ready for everyone. With today's release of KDE 4.2, the KDE4 vision is ready to face not only developers and enthusiasts, but every users. We have taken a look at the release candidate for KDE 4.2, and we have a short interview with KDE's Aaron Seigo.

With Windows 7 having made its grand debut, and with KDE4's vision making leaps and bounds forward with every release, we have two major software projects that have decided to implement some fairly drastic interface changes. Such changes are bound to receive some harsh criticisms - but the funny thing is, these criticisms usually come from people you least expect it from.

AMD has no replacement planned for the aging Geode low-power chip, creating uncertainty for its use in products like future XO laptops made by One Laptop Per Child. Comments by AMD executives end speculation about the future of Geode, an integrated chip used in netbooks like OLPC's XO laptop, ultramobile PCs and devices like set-top boxes.

Adam Williamson, who was let go from Mandriva at the end of last year, has announced that he has been hired by Red Hat as a Senior Quality Assurance Engineer. I'm sure everyone who has benefited from Adam's patient support over the years will wish him success in his new role. A sincere congratulations from the OSNews team, Adam! Update: Adam mentions that Red Hat has also hired Mandriva alum Vincent Danen.