Yeah, but what about 2011, with the app store craze?

NPD released new US data early today suggesting retail software isn't going away soon. As measured in dollars, Microsoft accounted for one-third of US retail software sales last year. Office 2010 led the company's sales. As previously reported, Student and Home Edition accounts for about 85 percent of Office sales. Office pushed the productivity suite category to a four-year sales high.

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In a validation of its strategy to make its content available on as many platforms as possible, research firm NPD Group has found that 61 percent of all legal movie downloads and streams originate from Netflix. That is over seven times its nearest competitor Comcast, with only eight percent of the market.

"VOD and other digital options are now beginning to make inroads with consumers," NPD entertainment analyst Russ Crupnick said. "Overwhelmingly digital movie buyers do not believe physical discs are out of fashion, but their digital transactions were motivated by the immediate access and ease of acquisition provided by streaming and downloading digital video files."

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If there is one truism about IT organizations -- they're risk averse. Some are so against making changes they even take unnecessary risks to avoid others, like continuing to use Internet Explorer 6 even as Microsoft pushes hard to get businesses on a more modern, and safer, browser. Today, Google extended a concession to IT organizations by offering a second track for Google Apps that lets IT organizations delay and take seemingly more control over upgrades. The program smacks against one of cloud computing's benefits: Seamless and seemingly maintenance-free upgrades.

Google Apps' administrators can now choose "Rapid Release" or "Scheduled Release" options. The first track assures that users have the most up-to-date software. The second allows administrators to delay updates, which will be released to them on Tuesdays. Google provides a calendar of planned upgrades, seven days in advance of new features' release.

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At the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin Texas today, Qik, the streaming video service acquired by Skype in January debuted its latest iOS application, called Video Connect.

Unlike other Qik apps released for the iPhone, Video Connect isn't just a video chat client, but a portable video communications suite that includes on the fly editing, live streaming video effects, video mail, as well as instant social sharing and automatic desktop synchronization.

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Microsoft has tagged the Zune music player end of life, although the software will live on. Perhaps the kindest way to think of it is transformation: From caterpillar to butterfly. Zune will be freer now to roam among many devices. But many people posting blogs or news stories about the music player's demise are using it as opportunity to kick the corpse: Some Zune epitaphs are even nastier than I expected. For example, the Apple 2.0 blog turned Zune into a verb to describe future failed tablets.

While the first report originated with Bloomberg, many of the blogs cited Business Insider as the source. Betanews took the time to ask Microsoft about Zune plans. My colleague Tim Conneally emailed Microsoft's outside PR agency for comment; I called and left voicemail. We chose to post an originally sourced story, while also crediting Bloomberg. I posted late last night.

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Tuesday morning, Verizon Wireless and HTC announced Thunderbolt, their first smartphone supporting the LTE 4G protocol, will be available this Thursday, March 17 for $249.99 with a new two-year contract.

Thunderbolt is powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and Android 2.2. It has a 4.3" WVGA screen, an 8 Megapixel rear-facing camera, and 1.3 Megapixel forward-facing chat camera, 8GB of onboard storage and support for microSD cards up to 32 GB.

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Earlier today, Bloomberg reported that Microsoft has unofficially killed the Zune music player. The company isn't officially saying yes or no, but based on a statement there's little doubt. I've read enough non-denials to know a tacit confirmation.

"We're absolutely committed to providing the best movies, music and TV show experiences through Zune on Xbox, the PC, Windows Phone 7 and Zune devices," according to a statement provided by Microsoft's outside PR agency responsible for Zune. "We'll share more information about the evolution of the Zune entertainment service and Zune hardware as future plans develop."

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Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Officer Leo Apotheker on Monday outlined the future plans for his company, which involve three main priorities: public/private hybrid cloud computing, connected devices of all types, and finally, management, security, and analytics software.

As the "consumerization" of the enterprise space takes hold, HP is going to provide products and services that can handle the needs of both the consumer and the enterprise user.

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As expected, Microsoft launched the Release to Market version of Internet Explorer 9 on Monday. The rollout began earlier in the day with a launch in the UK, and was heralded at an event at SXSWi in Austin, Texas. The browser will be available in 39 languages across the globe, and can be downloaded at Beautyoftheweb.com or right here in our FileForum at midnight EST March 15.

"The browser is only as good as the operating system it runs on," Internet Explorer general manager Dean Hachamovich said on Monday evening's event in Austin. But with HTML5 letting the browser tap into a system's GPU for hardware acceleration, the browser can actually do just a little better than that. That was chipmaker AMD's angle on Monday.

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Internet Explorer 9 may have only just been released by Microsoft, but already there is a tool available that can be used to tweak the browser to your liking. TweakIE9 is a free tweaking tool that can customize Microsoft's web browser in a number of ways, helping to iron out annoyances and make the program easier to use.

TweakIE9 includes a number of options, such as the ability to always start Internet Explorer 9 in InPrivate browsing mode, or to create a shortcut to make it easier to access the increased privacy mode. It is also possible to create a shortcut that can be used to launch another Internet Explorer session -- these shortcuts can be added to the Quick Launch bar or pinned to the Start menu for ease of access.

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Apple's second-generation tablet is pretty much sold out everywhere. If you want one, good luck trying. Shortages are sure to intensify demand, and crazy buying behavior. It's a psychology-of-buying thing, like customers running on the bank to get out their cash. People afraid they won't get iPad 2. The next couple of weeks are going to be ugly, as desperate masses fight to get Apple's tablet, further feeding hype and desperation, further pumping up demand (and prices).

The iPad 2 aftermarket is already in motion, as resale parasites -- looking to profit from shortages -- sell iPad 2s they snatched up before genuine buyers could get them from Apple stores. There's hot trade on eBay today, with the 32GB WiFi white iPad 2 selling in the mid $700s. The profiters are interested in more than Americans who couldn't get iPad 2 over the launch weekend. They're looking to profit from sales to international markets where iPad 2 isn't yet available but where there is demand.

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Dozens of electronics and technology companies with headquarters and facilities in Japan have issued initial damage reports in the wake of Friday's catastrophic earthquake and the subsequent tsunamis which resulted in major flood damage, providing the first look at the damage to the country's tech economy.

Currently, most companies are still assessing damages and promise to keep conversant with shareholders as the situation in the country is still unstable.

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Hackers have already managed to break open Apple's latest iPad, with developer and hacker Comex saying he had managed to do so remotely over the weekend. While proof of the jailbreak has shown up in photos and video on the Internet, it will not be made available immediately as it must be packaged for public use.

According to talk on Twitter, versions for both the Wi-Fi and 3G models of the iPad could be released shortly, although no specific date for its release has been given.

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Piriform Software has released a new update for its free Windows defragmentation utility. Defraggler 2.03 is now fully compatible with Windows 7 Service Pack 1, and it includes a number of interesting new features and fixes.

Defraggler is a free (for non-commercial use) tool that can defrag entire drives or just quickly defrag selected files and folders. It supports both FAT/FAT32 and NTFS drives, and it includes a quick-defrag option, scheduler for keeping your drive defragged at regular intervals and an option to defrag free space only.

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You're working away on your laptop, engrossed in your work and typing at speed. And all is well, until you accidentally touch a trackpad mouse button, the cursor jumps somewhere else entirely, and you have to pause to try and undo the damage. It's frustrating, especially when it keeps happening, but you don't have to live with this -- Touchpad Blocker can help.

Once installed and launched, the program runs in the background, monitoring your keyboard. And every time you press a key, it disables the trackpad mouse buttons for half a second, so if you accidentally tap one then it'll have no effect.

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