Microsoft is greasing the skids for Vista acceptance by offering free telephone support for Vista Service Pack 1 through March 2009. (The toll-free call-in number in the U.S. for Vista SP1 help is (866)-234-6020.)

Outlook for Vista
Are you ready to move to Windows Vista?

We’re still waiting….

ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley reports that it’s unclear when a rumored service pack, SP3, will debut for XP, raising speculation that Microsoft is sending a pointed message about upgrade planning.

Windows Vista’s checkered history is now legend.

Despite past “downgrade” offers from Dell and other PCs makers, and even a cottage industry of sorts around removing Vista from new PCs, most of us will likely be using Vista sometime in the near future.

Is that a bad thing? In my view, no, it’s not. Let’s face it: XP may work, but it’s not pretty. Cosmetics aside, when Vista works well–and in truth that’s more and more often for me–it works very well. I’ve been running Vista on three machines for well over a year. Compatibility issues are beginning to disappear, my wireless network connection no longer mysteriously vanishes, and other random glitches appear to have been fixed.

(Credit:
Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)

Still, maybe I’m setting the bar too low. Should we expect more from Vista? Are you ready to give up XP?

No wonder then, more than a year after Vista’s release, many consumers and business customers have steadfastly held onto Vista’s predecessor, the Windows XP operating system. Microsoft has followed with price cuts and promotions. This is not exactly the “wow” moment the company had in mind. News.com’s Ina Fried has chronicled Vista’s first year in earlier posts.

Still, we know that all good Windows releases eventually come to an end: Windows XP is stable, widely supported, and ultimately doomed. New PCs with XP installed will begin to disappear this summer. Microsoft will stop selling XP completely next January (although the company will provide support for much longer).

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On Tuesday, Dell launched a Vista migration program to nudge big companies toward the OS. The PC maker’s “client migration solution” will cut migration costs by up to 62 percent and reduce labor by an estimated 88 percent, Dell says.

Thirty-nine. That’s the number of PR-related pitches I’ve received in the past 24 hours. Out of those, just one fulfilled my write-up requirements of being a topic that is both interesting and related to digital music. That’s a 2.5 percent pass rate…and today’s a good day. So perhaps I am just caught up in the excitement of having a new item to talk about, but I think Amazon.com’s new “Daily Deal” promotion is pretty sweet. Each day, the MP3 store will feature a different album offered at a deep discount. The price varies by album, but you can expect to pay as little as $1.99. Even the high-end of the spectrum is still very affordable at $4.99. Any way you slice it, you’re getting a deal akin to what you might find in a brick-and-mortar record store’s used-CD bin–and without even leaving your couch. Call me lazy, but I’m thinking this is quite the cool (and wise) move on Amazon’s part.

(Credit:
Amazon)

Amazon is also running a promotion dubbed “Friday Five,” which offers five albums for $5 each every Friday. The chosen albums will also continue the reduced pricing through the weekend. This week, the five albums include the Rolling Stone’s Let It Bleed, Frank Sinatra’s The Essential Frank Sinatra, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss’ Raising Sand, Linkin Park’s Minutes to Midnight, and Andrea Bocelli’s Vivere - The Best Of. This week’s Daily Deals stem from a recent Coldplay release and thus will be offered on some of the band’s earlier albums. You can get all of the band’s previous album releases throughout the week for $1.99. Friday, the EP Brothers & Sisters will be available for 99 cents. Amazon currently offers a catalog of 5.4 million DRM-free MP3s, most encoded at 256kbps.

In addition to the ‘Daily Deal’ and the ‘Friday Five’, Amazon offers a selection of free MP3s each day. Check back often to add to your own music catalog without lightening your wallet. What’s not to like about free (and legal) music?

Mark is the founder of Camino Energy, a information provider specializing in globally traded sustainable energy stocks. He also is an investor in sustainable energy stocks.

Fuel Cells had a strong week with the index increasing 7.8%. The increase was due in large part to the 44.6% gain for Ceramic Fuel Cells Ltd. (CFU.L) Ceramic reported it was constructing a manufacturing plant in Heinsberg, Germany and a substantial order for 50,000 2 kW micro CHP units from NUON. If these units are able operate reliability at a reasonable cost this could be an important breakthrough in a significant market targeted by a number of fuel cell companies.

In the Renewable Electricity sector our index advanced 1.8% with 12 stocks advancing and 7 declining. Our scan of the news showed a series of normal announcements typical of an industry with some traction. The index results this week, moving counter to broad markets, are not surprising given the index’s 100 day beta of only .3.

The Solar index suffered another large decline dropping 5.2% bringing the YTD decline for the sector to -38.9%. Solarfun Power Holdings Co. Ltd (SOLF) -16% and JA Solar Holdings Co (JASO) -13.9% led the decline after an analyst downgrade prompted by declining margins and weaker demand. With 25 stocks declining versus 8 advances, these concerns must be widely held.

What did I learn this week? Market developments reinforced the highly “leveraged” nature of solar stock prices. High growth expectations result in high volatility. I also realized I need better information sources for some of the lesser developed markets like Brazil. These are important investment centers and I’ll be looking for improved resources. We also saw investors are carefully looking for the key breakthrough. Ceramic is now center stage.

In Biofuels our index advanced 1.8% led by an impressive 52.7% increase, in US dollars, for Basil Ecodiesel (ECOD3.SA). Despite Basil Ecodiesel being the largest biodiesel producer in Brazil, none of our usual news sources reported any developments to explain the sharp increase. Aventine (AVR) continued downward off another 7.3% in the wake of its liquidity issues, despite S&P leaving Aventine’s rating unchanged.

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

Before jumping on this deal, you’ll definitely want to read David Carnoy’s review of the PRS-505. You can also see his video review up above.

Much as I’m liking this price, my e-book reader of choice remains my
iPhone. I’ve gotten a surprising amount of flak for this (notably in this post about freebie books–many of which are still available, by the way), for reasons I don’t fully understand, but I still can’t see buying and carrying a separate, single-purpose device when I can read comfortably on the device I’m already carrying.

Want an Amazon Kindle but can’t stomach the $359 price tag? (Me, neither.) This might be the next best thing: Borders has the Sony Reader PRS-505 for $199.99 shipped. (Apply coupon code SONY505READ at checkout to get that price.)

What do you think? Is $199 a good entry point for an e-book reader with a nice, big screen? If so, act fast: I’m not sure when this code expires, but probably quite soon.

On to the new and interesting Comcast + TiVo bugs; let me tell you about them.

Turning on the TV has become a thrilling roll of the dice. Aside from the expected picture of live TV, the many outcomes upon powering on the set include a blank, black screen; a frozen screen–often of a channel I never watch or one that I don’t subscribe to; a blank screen with the message “Cannot display live TV”; and a tiny image of live TV in the upper-right corner of my screen.

My contacts at Comcast and TiVo tell me that a software update is in the works, but they’ve been vague on timing. “Coming soon” is as close to a date as I’ve received. I hope it arrives before the finals of the U.S. Open in September.

It’s being hailed as the greatest Wimbledon final in history. This is a tennis tournament that has been played since 1877, and supposedly yesterday’s five-set match between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal topped them all. I say supposedly because my Comcast + TiVo box decided that midway through the fifth set was a good time to stop recording the match. This is merely the latest but–since I’m one of the 12 tennis fans left in this country–certainly the most annoying of the bugs I’ve encountered with Comcast + TiVo service over the past month. If the promised software update isn’t rolled out before the fall TV season, I’m going to return to the old Comcast DVR service.

What I didn't see yesterday: the end of the Wimbledon men's final.

(Credit:
Matt Elliott/CNET Networks)

(Credit:
Matt Elliott/CNET Networks)

Unplugging the cable box to reset it corrects the blank and frozen screens, too, but it also means I must reprogram my remote each time I do. I’ve committed the 30-second skip code to memory at this point: Rewind > Slow > Fast Forward > Play > 3 > 0 > Advance.

… and wait… and wait… and wait…

Big TV, tiny image: one of the many bugs with Comcast + TiVo service.

Two things I don’t like about the remote: there are no one-day forward and back buttons, and the Select and On Demand buttons are too close to one another. The Comcast DVR remote had buttons that let you jump forward (and back) 24 hours, which was convenient when hunting for a show or confirming that I did in fact have Lost set to record on Thursday. You can jump forward to a particular time and day and channel with TiVo, but it’s not as simple as jumping forward 24 hours at the press of a button. And with the On Demand button located in the center of the remote and directly below the select button, I frequently enter the On Demand screen by accident. The slowness of the TiVo interface only exacerbates this error.

Back to yesterday. I picked up the action in the fourth set (my tennis fandom is offset by fatherhood) and starting recording at the beginning of the fifth set with the intention of watching the conclusion at my leisure–after dinner was consumed and kids put to bed. I actually recorded the program after Wimbledon since the match had been delayed earlier by rain. I padded the recording with an extra 2 hours, knowing that one does not play fifth set tiebreakers at Wimbledon. I was confident I had given myself more than enough space to capture the end of the match. Later, I returned to my 2 hour and 28 minute recording to watch the exciting conclusion only to find the recording cut out after about 10 minutes–at 3-3 in the fifth set. The green status bar at the bottom of the screen showed I had more than two hours remaining on the recording, but it wouldn’t move past 3-3 in the fifth set. I reset the box–something I’ve done regularly the past five weeks–hoping it would allow me to access the rest of the recording. No luck.

(Credit:
CBS Sports)

As I discovered on day one, the Comcast + TiVo box is painfully slow. Navigating the channel guide requires a large dose of patience, and setting a recording takes roughly a minute for the command to register. In one case, the “Please Wait” screen lasted 2 minutes, 14 seconds. With my old Comcast DVR, you could set a recording in less than 5 seconds.

This last outcome is most intriguing. I can change the channel, and receive both audio and video, but the picture remains stuck in the tiny preview box from the “TiVo Central” screen–which is even smaller than the preview box on the channel guide. It defeats the purpose of owning an HDTV, to be sure. Starting an On Demand program and then returning to live TV sometimes fixes the problem; failing that, I must reset the cable box by unplugging it and plugging it back in before I get a picture. The reverse of the resizing problem also crops up from time to time, where the TV picture gets stuck in full-screen mode. It’s less of a problem but means it doesn’t resize itself to fit inside the preview box of the channel guide.

I'm ready.

It’s implemented in a pretty lightweight fashion, so I can’t imagine it being used for anything serious. Potential users need to know that it works on London time only. That may be important if you’re planning a check-in from a different time zone. And what if there’s an e-mail hiccup? What if you’re not dead, but just on vacation and not checking e-mail (and forgot you have a JustInCaseIDie trigger set)? You could easily have “Hello, I’m dead,” e-mails going out that you didn’t intend.

See also:
A Webware challenge: Make cell phones better lifelines
Safety Trip Plan: If I’m not back by 9 p.m., call the cops.

Here’s a creepy site that is based on a sound idea: JustInCaseIDie. On this service you can set up a message to be sent to a single recipient if you don’t check in by a certain time or reply to a reminder e-mail. The idea is that, if you die, you can’t check in, and your canned message will be sent. Said message could be a posthumous love note, a terrible expose, the combination to the safe in the house, and so on.

Toyota’s Prius, numbering a million sold, uses a nickel metal hydride battery. Lithium ion batteries, which are heavily used in consumer electronics, are being built into an upcoming generation of hybrid-electric and plug-in hybrid
cars.

Toyota Motor plans to produce lithium ion batteries next year for a plug-in hybrid vehicle available in 2010.

The company, which also continues to invest in fuel cell vehicles, recently began a lease program in Japan.

Later in the month, Toyota plans to establish a research-and-development center for next-generation batteries that outperform lithiom ion batteries.

Toyota disclosed on Wednesday its plug-in hybrid production plans at a company-sponsored environmental forum in Tokyo, where it outlined its greenhouse gas reduction and clean-technology plans.

A joint venture between Toyota and Panasonic EV Energy plans to begin production of lithium ion batteries next year and move to full-scale production in 2010. Using the battery, Toyota plans to introduce a small electric vehicle for mass production.

The ARM processor doesn’t have access to the main motherboard or the ports, which should alleviate security concerns, according to Todd Forsythe, vice president of Dell’s commercial client product group. The secondary processor–used mostly in smartphones–also draws much less power than a more robust desktop or notebook processor and so while it’s running in the background it doesn’t drain the battery as fast: using just the instant-on mode will provide up to two days of battery life; when using Windows and the accompanying Intel Core 2 Duo processor, it will get four hours.

The instant-on capability works exactly the way it sounds. Instead of waiting for Windows to boot up, the computer uses a second smaller motherboard and a separate ARM processor. Through a separate, non-Windows interface, it allows e-mail, contacts, calendars, and a
Firefox-based Web browser to be accessed right away. E-mail, contacts, and calendars are always running in the background and are constantly being synced.

Companies like DeviceVM and Phoenix have built businesses out of instant-on capabilities–basically a quick-booting interface built right into the computer’s BIOS that isn’t dependent on Windows. Dell said it decided not to go with either of those because they wanted to use the separate low-power processor for the background syncing.

What Dell, and DeviceVM, and Phoenix, and plenty of others are doing is part of a trend that’s gaining steam: doing a sort of end-run around Windows. HP came out with its own interface on Touchsmart PCs last year that allows for quick sorting between photos, e-mail, and Web browsing on a few models. Lenovo recently introduced a new touch-screen interface for its tablet, and Asus has its own for its popular Eee PC Netbooks and touch-screen desktop called TouchGate.

Most everything about the new Latitude Z is expected: It’s yet another very thin notebook (a metric which PC manufacturers keep using to try to one-up each other), with a different kind of exterior finish (soft-touch, in this case), and comes in a black cherry. It measures 16 inches across, and is 14 millimeters thin at its most narrow point.

The wireless charging is handled elegantly enough. An inductive pad that’s built into a laptop stand can accomplish a full recharge in “about the same amount of time” as a standard-issue cabled charger, according to Dell. While smartphone maker Palm has a similar (albeit smaller) wireless charging system for the Pre, and companies like Visteon and Wild Charge have debuted wireless charging accessories for phones, no PC maker has incorporated the idea until now.

The Latitude Z on wireless charging station, and wireless dock adapter on the right.

Most people aren’t used to seeing Dell trying new things like this, some of it actually ahead of competitors. Last year, we wrote about how Dell was starting to be a little more risky about the types of products it was trying out. Not new to the market, just new to Dell, which has traditionally had a habit of waiting, analyzing the market’s response to new products, and jumping in later with a more efficient, and less expensive way of making that product.

The sliding touch controls–not visible to the naked eye–are located on the right side of the bezel and appear when contact is made. Any controls can be customized and placed there, such as screen brightness, volume, or easy access to specific applications. When controlling an application like Excel or a Web browser, the right side of the bezel can be used as a sort of touchpad for scrolling through a spreadsheet or Web page.

Both cost extra, and are by no means cheap ($199 for each), but the intention is for companies to buy, not necessarily individual consumers.

That Dell is releasing a new laptop for business customers is the opposite of surprising. But the fact that it contains notable features not seen in any other laptops certainly is.

But that way of doing things is over for Dell now. The company has struggled to find the right mix of products and now has less opportunity to be picky. But it’s a good sign that the company is trying out smaller, more innovative, and more practical ideas like wireless charging, docking, instant on, and touch interfaces. Though it’s only in the Latitude Z right now, we hear these features are stirring a lot of interest in other product groups at Dell. It’s easy to see how, for a cheaper price (the Z starts at $1,999), these new features could find much broader acceptance with retail customers.

(Credit:
Erica Ogg/CNET)

But you probably wouldn’t guess that the Latitude Z charges wirelessly. And as far as we can tell, it’s the first laptop to do so. Surprised that this is coming from Dell? You’re not alone.

The wireless charging stand.

It’s part of what Dell is terming its new “wireless eco-system.” Besides being able to get juice without wires, the Latitude Z will also be able to dock without them. A smaller separate adapter can hook up the laptop with any accompanying monitor, whether it be one in a cubicle, or in a conference room.

Other cool things Dell is introducing: touch-sensitive controls on the screen’s bezel, and its first take on “instant on.”

It’s unclear who’s telling the truth; if the lawsuit continues, e-mails and spoken testimony will probably answer these questions. But it does seem likely that the MBTA requested a copy of the Defcon presentation–they knew it was scheduled; why would they not want to see it?–and never received it. The defendants would have had a very good reason for this; the slides are prepared with a hacker audience in mind and include warnings like “AND THIS IS VERY ILLEGAL!”

Three MIT students are disputing the Massachusetts transit agency’s version of the events that led to the state filing a lawsuit last week–and obtaining a restraining order against their talk on subway card security scheduled for Sunday.

(It is undisputed that the students–Zack Anderson, R.J. Ryan, and Alessandro Chiesa–wrote a separate analysis (PDF) for the MBTA marked “confidential” and presented it to the agency.)

One reason is that the judge in this lawsuit has until August 19 to renew the restraining order (by turning it into a preliminary injunction) or let it expire. Whoever can reasonably claim to have acted in good faith will have a better chance of prevailing.

A response posted Tuesday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is representing the students, said MBTA “misrepresents” the situation:

Another bit of unresolved intrigue is that the MBTA told us on Monday that it wanted to meet with the students again. EFF has steadfastly refused to say whether it would consider such a meeting–making it, uncharacteristically, even less forthcoming than a bunch of government bureaucrats.

After the Monday meeting, the students understood that the MBTA’s concerns were resolved, and that the students were to provide a confidential vulnerability assessment by the end of the week. Contrary to the MBTA statement, the students did not believe that the MBTA wanted to see a copy of the presentation slides, and they did not agree to provide them to the MBTA.

Oops. This is what lawyers call an “admission against interest.”

Opposing parties in lawsuits often tell different stories. Human memories are imperfect. People may honestly remember the same sequence of events differently. So why is this particular dispute important?

[Update: See our related story on a court hearing scheduled for Thursday in this case, and what both sides plan to ask the judge.]

(Credit:
Digeo)

“As we assessed our situation, it became clear that the best action for Digeo was to focus our work on the next-generation product for the retail market,” Gudorf said in a statement. “Building the software and hardware for this category is a complex endeavor, with dynamic technical standards, regulatory issues, and content considerations. Previously, we were spreading our energies across too many platforms.”

The Kirkland, Wash.-based company revealed significant changes Tuesday, including the cancellation of two previously announced product lines, the Multi-Room HD DMR and the Moxi Home Cinema Edition DMR. As a result of slashing those products from its lineup, nearly half of its staff will be laid off, and current Chief Executive Mike Fidler will be replaced by Chief Operating Officer Greg Gudorf, the company said Tuesday.

Update 12:00 p.m. PST: This blog has been updated with more details, as well as comments from Mike Fidler and Greg Gudorf.

In an interview with CNET News.com, Fidler blamed the shift in strategy on the company’s “inability to deliver some products on time” and “dynamics that occur in the marketplace.”

This is a big shift for Digeo, which acquired the Moxi brand when the two companies merged in 2002. Though the Paul Allen-backed company made a big splash with Moxi’s vast feature set at the Consumer Electronics Show that same year, the Moxi DVR was never available to retail customers directly–a la TiVo–and instead was only available from a handful of cable companies. Digeo will still release future retail products, as well as continue its cable relationships, Gudorf said.

If you were eagerly anticipating Digeo’s Moxi Multi-Room HD digital media recorder, don’t hold your breath.

Digeo will focus on, and still plans to release, the Moxi HD DVR for Cable sometime later this year. Gudorf will take over as chief executive “very soon,” according to Fidler, who will stay on as long as necessary to help with the transition. Fidler says he chose to step down on his own.