Stan's List

C|Net has an article about the uncertain future of the popular anti-virus software companies, due to M$$$$’s intent to include security software in Vista. A sort of coming to the party late, but bringing the 500 gorilla. More …

T3 reports on Steve Jobs’ comments indicating that 2007 will be the “most exciting” product year in history for Apple. “As ever, Apple’s mercurial mastermind refused to be drawn on what exactly those ‘new products’ would be, but of course, we’ve got a few predictions of our own. We all know iTV will make an appearance in the first three months of the year, bringing with it European iTunes movie downloads, but will it stream in Hi-Def?” More …

Take note, the London Times reports that Apple’s Euro 2006 sales were larger than 2002-04 combined. More …

Jon Poon, the Microsoft employee responsible for anti-virus management, has struck back at Apple’s criticism of Redmond over the small number of iPods which shipped with Windows virus.

“Heard about the portable video and music device that came preinstalled with a virus?
Instead of focusing on how and why it was even included in the first place, the company that published a series of video ads, including this one, actual try to divert the blame on the Windows platform!
It’s not a matter of which platform that the virus originated. The fact that it’s found on the portable player means that there’s an issue with how the quality checks, specifically the content check was done. This also indicates that through the manufacturing cycle, the base device from which the image was duplicated to the other devices in the manufacturing run, was connected to a PC that most probably did not have , and i quote their press release, “up to date anti-virus software which is included with most Windows computers”. More …

CNET posted computer ratings with a link on the front page entitled “Best desktop PCs we’ve ever seen.” It leads to ratings in five categories, three of which Apple took top honors:

Mainstream PCs - 17″ iMac

Media Center - 24″ iMac

Business - 17″ iMac

In “Budget PCs” the Mac Mini came in second but with a caveat that “… if you want a small, innocuous computer for sending or receiving media or other files between rooms, no other computer offers the deal that Apple has with this one.”

In “Performance PCs” the Apple Mac Pro tied for second place with an “Excellent” rating at 8.0, with a Dell costing $1,500 more grading out at 8.1. More …