Recent Firefox releases seem to show that Mozilla are making a genuine effort to eliminate the browser’s performance issues.

If you’re not yet satisfied, though, Pale Moon 6, released today, may be of interest. The browser is based on Firefox -- looks almost identical, works in exactly the same way, supports most (though not all) extensions and add-ons -- but has been carefully optimized to deliver better performance and security.

First in a series. It was an innocent time. There was fun, fanfare and pride. Thousands of people worked together to complete something that would affect billions of lives -- that would be the most successful product of its kind. Ever. Eighteen days later the world they knew changed.

Ten years ago today, Aug. 24, 2001, in Redmond Washington, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Jim Allchin, then vice president of the platforms group, officially released to manufacturing Windows XP. The RTM marked a huge achievement for Microsoft, which finally had a consumer operating system based on the NT kernel. Windows XP marked the end of the DOS/Windows 9x legacy and the beginning of a new lineage of Microsoft operating systems, continuing the path paved by Windows 2000 some 18 months earlier.

Acronis True Image has always been one of the more feature-packed of backup tools, with the ability to copy your emails or select files, individual partitions, complete drives and more.

Acronis True Image Home 2012 extends its reach even further, though, with new support for data synchronization, and fully integrated online backup courtesy of Acronis True Image Online.

It was probably a slip-up and appears to have been taken down, but a Chinese documentary on cyber-warfare shows attacks being performed against US-based Internet properties of Falun Gong and other organizations banned in China. Thanks to F-Secure for passing this on, although they appear to have picked it up from the Epoch Times.

The video was entitled "Military Technology: Internet Storm is Coming" and was published on the Government-run TV channel CCTV 7, Military and Agriculture (at military.cntv.cn). According to F-Secure the specific URL was:

Twitter user NeimanMarcus757 is the first person to tweet using the #earthquake hashtag about today's 5.8-magnitude quake originating in the Mid-Atlantic region. He tweeted less than a minute after the quake started, which was 1:51:04 p.m. EDT.

Other people might have posted sooner, but NeimanMarcus757 used the hashtag, which gives him distinction of being first.

Lenovo said Tuesday it would begin accepting preorders for its
business-centric ThinkPad Tablet. The Android-powered portable begins shipping within a week and will start at $499 for the 16GB model.

The Chinese computer maker aims to market the ThinkPad Tablet to the business sector. It had previously announced the IdeaPad K1 -- its tablet for consumers -- and that device has been on sale in China since March.

It is said by some that Twitter is the fastest way to get the word out about the news -- and in the case of the 5.8 tremblor that struck central Virginia on Tuesday afternoon, for some that may actually have been the case.

Shock waves from quakes travel at a high rate of speed, however not fast enough that there may be a delay in the ground shaking actually occurring.

Earthquakes on the East Coast of the United States are pretty uncommon, especially ones of significant magnitude, so on Tuesday afternoon when a magnitude 5.8-6.0 quake hit central Virginia, sending shocks from New York to North Carolina to Detroit, cellular networks, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless, were knocked out.

Twitter quickly took over as the primary source of communication, as people shared their surprise at the quake -- the biggest on the East Coast since 1886 -- and assured friends and family they were safe. Facebook news feeds were filled with comments from those feeling the quake and checking on those affected.

It’s easy to customize the shortcut icon for a Windows application, at least in theory: just right-click it, select "Change Icon", and choose whatever icon you’d prefer.

Of course you have to find a suitable icon, first, and that’s where life gets a little more difficult. Windows actually provides thousands of icons you could use, but tracking them down isn’t easy, unless you get help from a third-party tool like Icon Explorer.

New York District Court Judge William H. Pauley, III, has determined that MP3tunes falls under the safe harbor provisions in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), protecting it from a four-year old copyright infringement lawsuit from record label EMI and its subsidiaries.

After a multimillion dollar lawsuit by record labels more than ten years ago, MP3.com founder Michael Robertson sold off the site and launched MP3tunes.com, which was designed to help indie artists sell their music. In fall 2005, it added a storage service letting users store files in personal online storage lockers, and songs uploaded to these lockers could be played and downloaded through any web-connected device.

It has been a busy few days for Evernote recently. Less than a week ago the company acquired the Mac application Skitch, and this was quickly followed by a big update to the Evernote iOS app. Just as the main Evernote notetaking app is available on a range of platforms, so Skitch is available not only for Mac but also for Android, making it possible to add annotations and doodles to the photos you take.

Skitch enables you to use a number of text and drawing tools to add information to photographs you have taken. This could take the form of useful notes about a snap you took on holiday, such as the name of a restaurant or attraction you liked, or it could be notes to help someone else understand what is visible in an image.

We don't use CNET's Download.com (big surprise), so it took an article from ExtremeTech reporter Lee Matthews to alert us that the long-running download site and competitor to Fileforum will now put all files in a proprietary wrapper unless the uploader pays a Premium subscription fee to have his software available unaltered, without third party "bloatware" such as toolbars and default home page and search engine changes.

CNET said the reason for doing this was: "The same reason you have your applications on Download.com – for the users. The CNET Download.com Installer ensures a safe and improved download experience by making it easier for Download.com users to complete downloads and launch the software’s installer."

Intel has a big problem, and senior executives know it. Ultrabooks running its processors and Windows cannot compete with MacBook Air on price. There's a strange offing coming, when Macs, which for so long cost more than Windows PCs, will be the value choice -- that's assuming Apple chooses to pass savings on to customers rather than be extra greedy about margins.

Wintel OEMs can't compete on price because Apple realizes cost advantages inherent to its end-to-end development, manufacturing and distribution model. These smaller powerhouse laptops aren't cheap to produce, but it's two secret ingredients in Apple's recipe that will prove decisive.

It's no secret that Hulu is shopping around for a suitor: new reports indicate that process is well on its way. Bids are due by Wednesday, and it's expected they will range between $500 million and $2 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Several suitors are said to be in the running including Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and DirecTV. There also have been rumors that Apple may be interested too: the WSJ's sources have not confirmed that.

Today, In-Stat predicted that the global tablet market will reach 250 million shipments by 2017. It's a seemingly big number, but its real significance is bigger: How much will tablets displace PC sales?

Right now the global install base of PCs is about 1 billion units. Shipments have been above 300 million PCs per year, but they're way down in mature markets, still strong in some emerging markets and losing sales to tablets, according to both Gartner and IDC. Is there market sustainable enough for 300 million PCs and 250 million tablets? I'm the wrong person to answer, having already proclaimed -- to the chagrin of many Betanews commenters -- that the "PC era is over."