Lucky number 7 for Windows

After all the dismal retail and business news over the past few weeks, it's been good to see at least the semblance of song cheer coming out of the annual Consumer Eletronics Shows (CES) in Las Vegas. This show run at the begining of january and while visitor numbers were being predicted to be down on last year, there was still plenty of glitz and hype to be found on products ranging from web-enabled TV's to 3D desktop scanners.

One of the first big stories was Microsoft's announcement of an initial public beta for Windows 7. By the time you read this, the beta download will problably have been stoppped, as we understand that Microsoft intends to limit the number of downloads.

It now looks as though Microsoft intends to launch Windows 7 before the end of 2009, perhaps in an increasingly precarious state. I'm not even going to attempt to make any predictions that far ahead - with intel issuing profit warnings and several top tech companies laying off staff. It's certainly going to be a rough this year.