Ars analyses the concept of a modular Windows, and concludes: "Modularization - and the discriminatory pricing it permits - might appeal to accountants and economists. But it is bad for consumers, bad for Windows, and ultimately, bad for Microsoft. A modularized Windows, or worse still, a modularized subscription-based Windows, undermines the purpose and value of the Windows OS. If it comes to pass it will surely sound the death knell of the entire Windows platform."

"Intel's next generation laptop platform, code named Montevina, has a nice feature that remains quite unheraleded, Displayport. Not only does it allow you to drive an external DP monitor, it uses it internally." My take: So let me get this straight. We are finally leaving the days behind where TVs were TVs and computer monitors were computer monitors, entering a brave new world where a TV can be a computer monitor and vice versa, all thanks to DVI/HDMI - and now we're getting Displayport on computers, recreating the wretched OR situation of yore? If I had any hair, I'd be pulling it out right now.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said on Friday he expected the new version of Windows operating software, code-named Windows 7, to be released "sometime in the next year or so". The software giant has been aiming to issue more regular updates of the operating system software that powers the majority of the world's personal computers. Nevertheless, Gates' comments suggested that a successor to the Vista program might be released sooner than was generally expected.

"Earlier this week Nick White, Product Manager for Windows Vista and blogger at WindowsVistaBlog, announced that he was leaving Microsoft. We previously interviewed Nick about what SP1 for Vista was all about, so we sat down with him yesterday to get the details behind his departure, his proudest moments at Microsoft, a few regrettable moments, and more."

GoboLinux 014.01 has been released. "We are pleased to introduce GoboLinux 014.01, the new release of GoboLinux, the Linux distribution featuring a rethought file system structure. This release is our first 'point release', providing a stability update for our latest major release, GoboLinux 014, which was released three months ago."

Microsoft will shutter its Windows XP line June 30, as planned, ceasing sales of Windows XP Professional and Windows XP Home to retailers and direct OEMs, Microsoft confirmed to eWEEK April 3. The statement from Redmond executives ends weeks of speculation that Microsoft would extend the life of the operating system as users turn up their nose at Vista, the operating system meant to supplant XP, and OEMs argue lighter versions of desktops and notebooks don't have the juice to run Vista.

The releases just keep on coming, don't they? The GNUstep live CD has been updated "The GNUstep live CD contains a lot of software for GNUstep, a free implementation of the OPENSTEP framework (which was also the base as Cocoa in Mac OS X)." The GNUstep page can tell you more about GNUstep itself.

And Slackware too puts out a test release. Patrick writes in the changelog: "OK, we're going to call this Slackware 12.1-rc1, though there is still some more minor work to do." So there. Just so you know.

"It's easy to view the computer interface as nearly static. Since the advent of mouse-driven, windowed interfaces over 20 years ago, much of human-computer interface (HCI) has gone the same route. But a proliferation of mobile devices is beginning to change that and, even if that weren't the case, important differences are developing in what information is available to computers, and how we access it. In March 2007, Microsoft Research invited 45 leading researchers to discuss where HCI would be in 2020; a report summarizing their conclusions has now been made available."

People shouldn't read anything into the fact that of the three laptops set up for last week's 'PWN to OWN' hack challenge, the only one left standing was running Linux, said the security expert who oversaw the contest. "There was just no interest in Ubuntu," said Terri Forslof, manager of security response at 3Com Corp.'s TippingPoint subsidiary, which put up the cash prizes awarded at the contest last week at CanSecWest. "A contest such as this is not a measure of relative security between operating systems. It's not an accurate barometer."

A first release candidate of version 4.4 of Qt, the cross-platform C++ development toolkit, was released today. Thiago Macieira says that this is considered release quality and good enough to use for most tasks. Major new features include support for Windows CE, a WebKit-based HTML rendering module (WebKit is based on KHTML and used in Safari), a Phonon-based multimedia module, XQuery 1.0 (and thus XPath 2.0) support in XML, a concurrency framework allowing multi-threading without the mutexes needed previously, and a new help system. Downloads are available (source, Windows and Mac installers) from Trolltech.

The SkyOS team has released build 6915. "This build features the complete new software store as well as the new viewer supporting location favorites and a query panel. Additionally the new C++ API got a lot of new features like Job support, HTTP download, etc. Just take a loot at this video to see the new features in action."

"Testing 64-bit performance is still a somewhat dicey proposition. Major benchmarks are either lacking, or don't work properly. For example, SYSmark 2007 simply doesn't run on a 64-bit OS (Vista or XP). And while there's now a 3ds Max 9 SPECapc benchmark, the benchmark crashes consistently with a scripting error before it completes when running on 3ds Max 9 64-bit under Vista 64-bit. On the other hand, there are more 64-bit applications and benchmarks now. That system-sapping game, Crysis, ships with a 64-bit client. 3ds Max 9, Lightwave 9, POV-Ray, and the Cinebench rendering benchmark all have 64-bit versions. Futuremark's PCMark Vantage offers a 64-bit version of that Vista-centric, synthetic test. On top of that, anyone using 64-bit Vista will still be running a lot of 32-bit applications. So we benchmarked some of those as well. Let's take a look at the benchmarks and test system."

"The next security and maintenance release for Apple's Leopard operating system could arrive sooner than later if the company maintains its current cadence, which has seen two successive pre-release builds land in the hands of developers in just five days. On the heels of the first external test build labeled Mac OS X 10.5.3 build 9D10 and released privately late last week, the Mac maker on Tuesday followed up with build 9D11, which adds nearly 20 more fixes and code corrections, bringing the new total expected with software's release to nearly 100."