Eleventh in a series. Our celebration of Windows XP's 10th anniversary continues with a contest! You give us reasons to quit XP for Windows 7, and we could give you a prize. Right now we've got five Microsoft mice to give away. But I'm hoping that some other Microsoft group will see the Entertainment & Devices division's generosity and throw more prizes your way. For a contest like this, a few copies of Window 7 would be appropriate. We thank E&D PR for providing: Arch Mouse (two), Explorer Touch Mouse (two) and Touch Mouse (one).

The rules are simple: Submit your reasons in comments below or (if you want to keep your ideas secret from others) email joe at betanews dot com. You can submit up to five reasons, and we will choose five from all submissions -- more if we add to the prize list. Your reasons must be why give up Windows XP for 7. Sorry, but this is a Linux- and Mac-free contest. Reasons can be serious or funny, but they will need some originality or pizzazz to beat out others. For example, "security is better" won't win anything, unless all the submissions are godawful. But "my mother-in-law is a botnet herder" has potential. Our panel of editors will pick the winners. The contest is open from now until 11:59 pm ET on October 29. We'll announce prize winners the first week of November 2011.

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Along with Nokia's new Lumia line of Windows Phones, the Finnish mobile phone maker also debuted a handful of new applications that it will have that other Windows Phones will not have: Drive, Maps, and Music.

We didn't get to see Music today because of unspecified "licensing issues," but we did get to look at the impressive Drive turn by turn navigation mode and Maps location, positioning and mapping service.

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Three weeks after T-Mobile introduced a cheap no-contract 4G data plan through Walmart, the carrier on Wednesday revealed the promised 4G-capable phone to sell at the retailer: the Samsung Exhibit II 4G. The phone runs Android 2.3 "Gingerbread", and is exclusive to Walmart starting October 27 before being available nationally November 2.

The main attraction to the Exhibit II is T-Mobile's aggressive pricing. Consumers can purchase the device with no commitment for $199.99, and those choosing to add a two-year service plan would be able to pick up the phone for $79.99, not including the $50 mail-in rebate offered by the carrier.

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Mac users need to be careful of what they're installing on their computers following the discovery of a new Trojan making its rounds. Security firms ESET and Sophos both say the malware is actually a port of a Linux "backdoor Trojan" that has been around for nearly a decade.

"In terms of functionality, the Mac variant of the backdoor is similar to its older Linux brother, with only the IRC server, channel and password changed," ESET malware researcher Robert Lipovsky says.

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Windows Explorer is an incredibly useful tool for managing your files, making it possible to open, copy and move documents in folders quickly and easily. But the file management tool that is built into Windows is not without its limitations -- why there is a market for replacement tools. One of the greatest, yet simplest, innovations in the humble web browser was the addition of tabbed browsing, and Explorer++ brings the same handy feature to your file manager.

Just as tabbed browsing makes it easier to work with multiple websites simultaneously, so a tabbed file manager makes it easier to work with multiple folders at the same time. Rather than having a huge number of individual windows open when copying or moving files from one folder to another, or simply working with documents stored in different locations, Explorer++ enables you to make do with a single program window.

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Nokia World's low-key United States branch event was held on Wednesday morning in a hotel overlooking downtown Manhattan, and the main attractions were the Lumia 800 and Lumia 710, Nokia's first devices powered by Windows Phone, which were announced earlier in the morning in London.

The Lumia 800 will be Nokia's premium smartphone for the U.S. market, and the 710 will be the "mainstream" device. Though the two are very similar in terms of internal specs (they differ only in storage capacity and camera quality,) the main difference between the two is in their bodies.

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Google has updated its web browser, Google Chrome, to version 15. As expected, changes are evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and some features that were present in the beta version have yet to be migrated across to this stable release.

The only notable change is an extremely visible one: a redesigned new tab/window page. This splits apps, bookmarks and most visited sites into separate sections, accessible via a series of buttons at the bottom of the page. There’s also a Recently Closed page, making it easier for users to open the window of their choice.

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If you’re looking to personalize your PC then customising its system and application icons can deliver great results.

Of course, you have to find alternative icons, first, and so your first instinct might be to browse a few online libraries to see what’s available. But there is a more straightforward alternative: and that’s to explore the thousands of icons already present on your own system. It’s easier than you think.

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At the annual Nokia World conference in London Wednesday, Finnish mobile phone company Nokia officially unveiled its first two smartphones that will run the Windows Phone mobile operating system: the Nokia Lumia 800 and Lumia 710. These will be the first smartphones Nokia will sell in the United States since it partnered with Microsoft earlier this year.

The Lumia 800 is the device that was known as "Sea Ray" in leaks back in June, and it offers a 3.7" AMOLED curved glass display, a 1.4 GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 processor with 512MB of RAM, 16GB of onboard storage, and an 8 megapixel camera. The software it runs is Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango" and it will be available internationally in both GSM and WCDMA varieties.

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BurnAware 4, which ships in Free, Home and Professional flavors, is the latest version of the lightweight but powerful burning tool that handles a wide variety of discs.

Burnaware Free handles most common disc based tasks. You can copy data to all types of CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs, subject to the limitations of your drive. It supports bootable and multi-session discs and it’s possible to make audio discs and disc copies.

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This morning, Gizmodo’s Brian Barret posted "Remember Netbooks? No One Else Does, Either" In the post, Barret cites recent data from ABI Research that indicates the rise of tablet computers at the expense of netbooks: "Media tablet shipments surpassed netbook shipments this quarter, reaching 13.6 million units, compared to just 7.3 million netbooks. Netbooks had previously led the way with 8.4 million shipments in 1Q11, compared to just 6.4 million media tablets".

Barret takes this research as an opportunity to gleefully dance on the grave of the netbook computer, stating that it is now "very hard to find a compelling argument as to why you'd prefer one [a netbook] over a tablet". I disagree.

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You would think the inventor of the iPod's next gadget creation might be some new consumer electronics gadget that will revolutionize the world once more. What if I told you Tony Fadell's latest creation is a new twist on something far, far less revolutionary -- the thermostat?

Fadell's new venture, Nest Labs, aims to create greener technologies. While it may seem somewhat odd for the company's work to begin with the thermostat, it actually makes sense. In our quest to stay comfortable in our homes, constantly fiddling with the thermostat actually wastes a lot of energy.

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Leading online retailer Amazon submitted its third quarter 2011 sales and earnings figures on Tuesday, revealing a big jump in sales -- especially in its Kindle product line -- but an overall decline in income.

Sales increased 44 percent sequentially, going from $7.56 billion to $10.88 billion; this represented a 39 percent increase over the same quarter last year.

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Finnish security vendor F-Secure has released the 2012 editions of its flagship antivirus package and security suite. As updates go, it’s relatively minor, with most of the changes being beneath the surface. Still, there are some worthwhile improvements on offer.

F-Secure says it has upgraded the behavior monitoring, scanning performance and malware removal capabilities in this edition, for instance. Improved automation in the handling of malware samples means F-Secure’s cloud-based protection network can offer an even faster response to the latest security threats.

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A new version of Android will be available in November, initally on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone. Much of the analysis of this Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android is focused on the implications of it running on both smartphones and tablets, where older versions of Android ran on one or the other (1), as well as shiny new gimmicks such as face recognition to unlock a handset.

This unification of smartphones and tablets is a red herring. Other things matter much more for Android. Android tablets are failing in the market, while Google’s smartphones sell in enormous numbers. This is a major issue for Google.

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