Newly published data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index show that Apple leads other personal computer manufacturers, beating out Dell, HP and others. On a 100 point scale, Apple merited a score of 83, according to the ACSI, a 2.5 percent year-over-year increase and a 7.8 percent increase from 1995, the first year the ACSI measured the PC industry. The annual ACSI is sponsored by the American Society for Quality and University of Michigan's M. Ross School of Business. It's derived from phone interviews with customers contacted by using digital-dial telephone samples. More than 70000 consumers are identified and interviewed annually.

MSDN's Channel 9 has two videos in their 'Going Deep' series which dive, well, deeper into Singularity, the operating system in development at Microsoft's research department. The first of the two is about, among other things, Software Isolated Processes (SIPs). The second of the two actually shows Singularity in action.

After pushing the launch of Windows Vista to late 2006 for corporate customers and early 2007 for consumers, Microsoft insisted that quality, not timing, would dictate the product's release schedule. The company's loyalty to that guiding principle is soon going to be put to the test.

IronPython is the code name of the new implementation of the Python programming language running on .NET and Mono. The latest version, 1.0-RC2 was just released. Changelog here.

KDE has released a development snapshot of KDE 4, ironically named "Krash". Nothing much to see for users, but should help kickstart porting and development.

Validation reports whether a document adheres to the rules specified by the schema. Different parsers and tools support different schema languages such as DTDs, the W3C XML Schema Language, RELAX NG, and Schematron. This is a good guide to learn about this XML validation API and how Java 5 adds a uniform validation Application Programming Interface (API) that can compare documents to schemas written in these and other languages.

LinuxForums has a review of Freespire 1.0 (screenshots): "I was very pleased and impressed by the quality of this distribution. It is a pity that Freespire isn't completely "free" though, as you have to pay to use its preferred package manager. I really liked the fact that the distribution released an OSS version which didn't include the proprietary and restricted pieces of software. This should help Freespire in getting a better reputation among Linux users. Freespire is a nice distribution with a lot of handy tools and great ideas. It is comfortable and easy to use. In its non-OSS version it comes pre-installed with Java, flash plugins, multimedia support and even spell checkers within its web and email applications."

Haiku, the open-source BeOS replacement project, turns five years old today. Founded in August 2001 as OpenBeOS with the intention of replacing BeOS due to the lack of action by the then-ailing Be, Haiku has seen five years of change in the BeOS market but continues to progress.

"Another LinuxWorld Conference & Expo has come and gone. More than 10000 attendees and 175 exhibitors passed through the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The show ended yesterday after a shorter schedule of talks and exhibits, including a session by kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman. Here's our final report, including more video goodness."

Slashdot published an interview with Fedora Project leader Max Spevack where he answers questions on everything from what has changed since the birth of Fedora Project and its goals, driver support in Linux up to what he considers the worst aspect of the Fedora.

Ars' Hannibal takes a look at the announcements concerning quad-core processors from Intel and AMD. "The past few days have seen a burst of quad-core-related news items from both AMD and Intel. In this post, I'll take a look at announcements from both companies and try to put them in the larger context of the Intel-AMD rivalry." He concludes by saying: "This is a tough one to call, but don't expect a blow-out on either end. Also, the performance of the K8L core is the big wildcard, since it could go either way."

BareFeats updated its Mac Pro test page with results from the 3.0Ghz version. Should you make the leap to the Mac Pro? "Should you buy a new Mac Pro or a closeout or refurbished Quad-Core G5? If cost is a factor and you use non-UB pro apps, then we think the Quad-Core G5 is still a valid choice. If you are running Universal Binary apps, can handle the cost of the new Mac Pro plus the expensive memory, and can tolerate the hidden gotchas of 'version 1' of the Intel towers, then you would benefit by making the leap to the Mac Pro. The main frustration in the short term will be the 5 week wait for the optional Radeon X1900 XT or the scarcity of correct memory from upgrade sources."

"The open source revolution has shaken the slowly crumbling foundations of closed source software, and while it hasn't taken over completely just yet, the tide is beginning to turn in its favor. Your normal everyday user may not really understand or appreciate what open source means, but that doesn't mean that they're not experiencing the effects of it."

Gus Robertson, vice president of Red Hat Asia-Pacific said open source has helped lower the cost of IT but there are far more strategic reasons for choosing open-source software over proprietary competitors. However, Dion Wiggins, research director and vice president of Gartner in Hong Kong, advised businesses against having a strategy specifically for open source.