Windows 7 fails to take down the Apple monster

Microsoft has failed! Or maybe its just a sign that there's room enough in the marketplace for two types of computers. While the PC market  has been enjoying an a spike in sales thanks to the release of Windows 7, Apple has also seen growth in sales ... meaning that the new Windows probably hasn't converted a lot of people to come over to the dark side...

Bangalore: The release of Windows 7 has definitely helped in increasing the sales of the PC at work, but have failed to slow the increase in adoption of Macs at the workplace, according to a study. Apple is expected to grow at the same time, while the number of companies buying Mac desktops remains flat at about seven percent, the number of those buying MacBooks has grown by 10 percent, according to Electronista.

The ChangeWave study also reports that Dell and HP should benefit from a slight increase in corporate sales with a respective 33 percent and 18 percent companies planning to buy both desktops and notebooks from the two. Also, 93 percent of those who had tried Windows 7 were either somewhat or very satisfied with the OS, that hasn't translated into significant decisions to move up upgrades at the office. But only 19 percent plan any sort of change, and only three percent plan a "significant" change to get Windows 7 into their businesses early.

Shouldn't you expect this though? Apple users drink coffee, drive Jettas and tell everyone how great their computer is. PC users have jobs. Enough said.

Bing eats up Yahoo, still way behind Google

Bing is continuing to grow with its market share in the search engine market, taking most of its traffic from Yahoo, which is something that brings up an interesting dilemma since Microsoft will be entering into a partnership with Yahoo. Akkkkkkwwwwaaaarrrrd.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Once the world's online search leader, Yahoo's share has sharply declined, putting it in danger of losing its relevance in a market increasingly dominated by Google.

Yahoo's search market share in November fell to 17.5% from 18% in October, according to a monthly comScore report released late Wednesday. It's the lowest share ever recorded for Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500).

Cannibalizing Yahoo's market share is Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500), whose new Bing search site gained 0.4 points of the search market to 10.3% in November. That was the first time Microsoft owned more than 10% of the market since September 2007.

Now keep in mind that Google still rules the world, but Bing keeps creeping along.

Acer surpasses Dell in PC shipments

Laptop wars! With the Christmas season upon us and probably more than a few people wanting to get one for the Holiday season, it's going to be a bear's market out there. And apparently, traditional power Dell is losing ground.

Acer's Gateway acquisition positioned it as the world's third-largest PC vendor two years ago. Now, boosted by a 16.6% year-over-year growth in notebook shipments, the company has officially leapfrogged past Dell to take the second spot just behind HP. According to the latest figures from iSuppli, the Taiwanese firm commanded 13.4% of global shipments in Q3 2009, compared to 19.9% for HP and 12.9% for Dell. 

I wonder how much netbooks play a part in this as it seems those are becoming more popular. Anyways, be sure to put one of those on your wish list.

The internet apparently makes you crazy

Yesterday we heard about the guy that beat World of Warcraft, meaning that he's probably an internet addict. Hopefully he doesn't hurt himself, because apparently people who spend all their time in front of their computer on the internet are more likely to hurt themselves.

Researchers surveyed 1,618 adolescents aged 13 to 18 from China's Guangdong Province about behavior such as hitting themselves, pulling their own hair, or pinching or burning themselves, and gave them a test to gauge Internet addiction.

Internet addiction has been classified as a mental health problem since the mid-1990s with symptoms similar to other addictions.

The test found that about 10 percent of the students surveyed were moderately addicted to the Internet, while less than one percent were severely addicted.

The students ranked as moderately addicted to the Internet were 2.4 times more likely to have self-injured one to five times in the past 6 months than students without an addiction, said Dr. Lawrence Lam from the University of Notre Dame Australia.

The moderately-to-severely addicted students were almost five times more likely than non-addicted students to have self-injured six or more times in the past 6 months, Lam and his colleagues from Guangzhou's Sun Yat-Sen University reported.

Wow, so basically people with no social lives are more prone to physical harm of themselves? Surprise, surprise...

Congrats to the king of nerds

I don't know if I'd call this an achievement, I'd put this in the category of "what the hell have you done with your life?!"

A Taiwanese man has been named the first ever person to successfully "complete" World of Warcraft, collecting the game's staggering 986 Achievements to effectively do everything there is to do in the hugely successful MMO. This is literally the most amazing news of the day.

'Little Gray" beat the game after killing 390,895 creatures, administering 7,255,538,878 points of damage, completing 5,906 quests (averaging 14 quests a day), raiding 405 dungeons and hugging 11 players. I believe we can safely add another statistic to the numbers -- he has had sex 0 times during this period.

Some nitpicky WoW f*ckheads are trying to downplay Little Gray's accomplishment, claiming he received one event-tied achievement (B.B King) due to a glitch, and did not win it fairly. 

You've got to be kidding me. I mean not only did this guy spend waaaay too many human hours playing this video game but apparently there are some people out there that want to tear down his loser-dom. Seriously? How big of a loser do you have to be to say that another loser isn't as big a loser as he seems? I feel like it's the same people that live in their mom's basement and eat catfood.

Facebook is now much bigger than the United States

Remember how we thought "The Matrix" was just science fiction. Well when Facebook 8.0 comes out in 50 years we might all be hooked up to machines and getting used like a AA battery. Why? Because Facebook is spreading like a freakin' virus, what happens when it becomes self aware?

Social networking giant Facebook reached a new milestone this week, surpassing 350 million registered users. Founder Mark Zuckerberg noted the occasion in a blog update, where he outlined how his company achieved that number and where it is going from here.

Zuckerberg also used the time to address concerns about changes to Facebook's privacy policies. A major change will be the nature of networks, where regional networks are disbanded and users are presented with more confirmations on what information is exposed. Other privacy options will be simplified by combining many actions.

You've all been warned. Take cover.

Users love Windows 7, things that dont crash

Windows 7 has been a big hit with software critics (who must live a rockstar-esque lifestyle) and the sales charts - but what has the average user been saying about it? Remember, Windows Vista was treated like the plague when it was released and Windows XP was a mess when it was distributed to the public.

Seven? Well, it's heaven.

Windows 7 is scarcely more than a month old. Most of the people who will eventually use it haven't gotten around to trying it yet; those that have are still settling in. And the Win 7 experience will change rapidly as remaining bugs are squashed, missing drivers arrive, and compatibility glitches are ironed out. Even so, it's not too early to start gauging what real people think of Windows Vista's replacement.

So to riff on Ronald Reagan's famous question from his 1980 debate with Jimmy Carter, Are Windows users better off today than they were a few weeks ago, back in the Vista era? We decided to ask the Technologizer community, a group of tech enthusiasts with a high propensity to acquire new operating systems quickly and push them to their limits. Starting on November 16th, we surveyed our readers (and Twitter followers) about their experiences with Windows 7.Our goal: to do a reality check on the mostly favorable initial reviews of the new OS (as well as our own survey of largely enthusiastic Windows 7 beta testers back in March).

The 550+ Windows 7 early adopters who took our survey mostly echo the positive response that the upgrade has received from professional reviewers, pundits, and users of pre-release editions. A sizable majority say they're extremely satisfied with the OS and rate it as a clear improvement on both the beloved Windows XP and the widely-panned Windows Vista. Crippling installation problems-the bane of every upgrader's existence, and always a legitimate reason to postpone switching OSes-were rare.

So everyone should go out, sell their Mac, and buy a PC with Windows 7. There, I said it.

Wii sales down for Nintendo, but still higher than the PS3 and Xbox

Even though every hardcore gamer (without a girlfriend) will tell you how much the Wii stinks because its graphics aren't as sparkly, the truth of the matter is it's selling a whole heck of a lot more than the other two "superior" systems.

The Wii outsold Sony's PS3 550,00 to 440,000; Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) has not yet published its figures, but said they were "double" the previous November week's, according to vgchartz.com.

Now, the bad news. Although Nintendo sold 550,000 Wii consoles between Nov. 22 and 28, that's roughly 30 percent fewer than the nearly 800,000 units sold during the same period in 2008. And that is also despite a $50 price cut on the Wii this fall. Some observers blame mediocre software on the decline. Others have noted Nintendo has been slow to offer new gaming titles for the Wii; the company's only recent major releases have been Wii Sports Resort in July and Wii Fit Plus in early September. According to reports, Wii Sports Resort is selling well.

In October, the game maker reported lower profit of 69.5 billion yen ($767.8 million) for the six-month period ended Sept. 30, compared with 144.83 billion yen for the same period in 2008. The company expects lower total earnings in 2009 than in 2008 -- the first annual earning decline for Nintendo in six years.

Well what do you expect in an economy like this? Nintendo is still racking in the money, and while I'm not sure about the Xbox - I know the PS3 is a big hemorrhage of money for Sony. Make fun of it's sophomoric graphics but the Wii is a moneymaker, that is for sure.

Good sales in the month of October for computer chips

Any increase in business is a good one, and the computer chip business had some excellent news to report, it was a whiz-bang month for them in sales.

According to data from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), worldwide chip sales rose 5.1% to $21.7 billion in October from September. October is historically a strong month for the semiconductor industry, and improvements were seen in all geographic regions. Europe reportedly grew the most, with a 7.5% sequential increase .

I wonder why October is so strong, is it computer manufacturers gearing up for the holiday season? Or are ghosts notorious for buying semiconductors? I'm just curious, that's all. 

Making counterfeit Apple parts does not pay

Word of advice to tech companies, don't try to make knockoff Apple computers. Or power adapters.

Why? Because they'll go after you.

Apple is taking another company to court, once again over knock-off hardware. Media Solutions Holdings will face Cupertino in court over making power adapters for laptops, at least one model of which allegedly violates an Apple patent.

The company being sued peddles more than just Apple knock-offs, they sell adapters for numerous brand-name laptops, including HP, Acer, Sony, Toshiba and Lenovo. It's a quite common business, as most brand-name power adapters can be expensive.

Apple is often synonymous with pricey, which makes them a common target for manufacturers of clone hardware like Psystar, but the term "counterfeit" better describes this case. It seems that Media Solutions Holdings was attempting to pass its adapters off as genuine Apple hardware.

Do you think consumers were tipped off when they found an orange on the power adapter instead of  an apple?