LightSquared, the company building a hybrid LTE and Mobile Satellite wireless network that will be sold as wholesale bandwidth to the major U.S. networks, announced Tuesday that it has closed a $586 million loan led by Swiss investment bank UBS AG and JP Morgan. Over the last seven months, the company has raised more than $2 billion in debt and equity to build its ambitious new network.

For as huge an undertaking as building an entirely new network is, LightSquared is moving along at a steady clip. In August, the company's wireless licenses consolidated to allow MSS/ATC to operate in the L-band, then in November, it put its first satellite in orbit, and just under a month ago, it got FCC clearance to sell network bandwidth to other carriers. The money it has secured from UBS and JP Morgan will be put toward "general corporate purposes" and construction of its terrestrial LTE network.

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One of Amazon's best values is its Prime service, which costs $79 a year. For that fee, buyers get free two-day shipping or overnight packages for $3.99 per item. Today, Amazon added something more: free streaming of 5,000 movies or TV shows. Or so the retailer claims. I only see 1,688 movies and 484 TV shows currently available on Amazon Instant Video.

Amazon offers a surpringly good selection, too; that is sure to give Netflix some unexpected and needed competition in the streaming market, and Prime is a better value. Netflix charges $7.99 per month (before taxes) for movie and TV show streaming, or minimum $95.88 a year. Not only does Prime cost less but it offers more in the aforementioned shipping costs -- and there's something else: Amazon allows the sharing of Prime among four accounts in the household. If, say, you're a college student with roomies sharing Primes, the value just got whole lots better.

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Verizon confirmed that it would subsidize the cost of the Motorola XOOM tablet on Tuesday, possibly answering critics that it is too expensive for consumers. While the Android-powered device was introduced at CES to generally good reviews, its $799.99 unsubsidized price could be seen as a deterrent.

Those who subscribe to a 2-year contracted data plan would receive the standard $200 subsidy, lowering the cost to $599.99. At that price, the device becomes a whole lot more competitive with its contemporaries such as Apple's iPad. Data plans would begin at $20 monthly for 1GB of data.

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As expected, Microsoft made the complete, release to manufacturing (RTM) version of Windows 7 SP1 available for download Tuesday.

The RTM build is listed as (7601.17514.101119-1850) and it is expected to be pushed to Windows Update and the Windows Service Pack Center later today. However, for those eager to get the update downloaded and installed right away, we're hosting it for download in FileForum today.

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Apple can no longer remain silent about its CEO's health. This is no longer a debate about corporate responsibility or fair disclosure to shareholders. Now that Paparazzi are following Jobs and taking photos or videos of him outside the cancer treatment facility, Apple must respond. Silence is bad for Apple, bad for its shareholders and quite possibly damaging to Jobs' recovery. How would you feel about seeing your photos in the National Enquirer? How would it affect your cancer recovery?

Jobs announced indefinite medical leave from Apple on January 17. "My family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy," Jobs requested. That clearly isn't happening. Yesterday, Radar Online posted a video of Jobs leaving the Stanford Cancer Center in Palo Alto, Calif. The video was shot 13 days earlier. Last week, the Enquirer published photos of Jobs outside the same facility. Out of respect to Jobs' recovery and privacy, I won't link to either the photos or video. If you want to see them, Bing or Google.

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Lenovo on Tuesday expanded its ThinkPad notebook line-up on the high end by rolling out six new Intel Sandy Bridge-enabled models with features like 30 hours of battery life, Dolby Home Theater v4, NVidia Optimus graphic switching, and Instant Resume, for more continuous wireless connectivity.

The new series of enhanced ThinkPads includes the top-of-the-line T420 and T520, the less pricey L420 and L520, the ultrathin T420s, and the W520, Lenovo's latest portable workstation for graphics-intensive applications like CAD, said Ross Compton, a Lenovo product manager, in an interview.

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Apple may be the most talked about tech company in geekdom and on Wall Street. The brand is hot, but for all the hype Macintosh is not. Sure Mac sales are way up, as is Apple's personal computer market share -- at least compared to May 2001 when CEO Steve Jobs talked about topping 5 percent share when opening the first company-owned retail store in McLean, Virginia. Ten years later, Jobs' has his 5 percent, but Windows PC sales dwarf Macintosh, and there absolutely are no signs of change coming anytime soon.

During fourth-quarter 2010, Apple's PC market share fell sequentially, dropping to fifth place in US market share -- from third place according to IDC (10.4 percent to 8.7 percent) and from fourth by Gartner's reckoning (10.6 percent to 9.7 percent). Combined Windows PC market share is still about 90 percent, and let's be brutally honest: Windows PCs are used pretty much everywhere.

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The different epochs of consumer computing are marked by catchphrases that coincide with the great money-making technology of the time. At the dawn of the twenty-teens, we're already well into the generation of "smart devices." Let's take a look at what brought us to this new age of smartness.

In the 8-bit computing era, everything was "micro." From microprocessors were born microcomputers, and from there we had a whole slew of products, brands, and companies using the prefix in their name: Microprose, Microsoft, Microware, Microvision, BBC Micro and its related TV show Micro Live, Micro-Star International (MSI), and Micronics.

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They say if you can't beat them, join them. Rather than fight back against enterprising hackers aiming to get the Xbox Kinect motion-sensing controller working with Windows, Microsoft has now announced the availability of an SDK to come this spring.

The news shouldn't be all too surprising, however: CEO Steve Ballmer had made statements that compatibility with PCs was in the works at this year's CES.

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The first major update to the Windows Phone 7 software is now being delivered to customers, Microsoft said on Monday. While the update does not include highly anticipated features such as cut and paste, it does lay the groundwork for future updates.

Microsoft has improved upon the software update process in order to make it more efficient. While the company did not give much detail on what exactly the update changes, Microsoft did call the update "important because it's paving the way for all future goodie-filled updates to your phone, such as copy and paste or improved Marketplace search," hinting towards what the company is working on.

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Not every photo comes out perfect, and the beauty of image-editing software is that it allows you to rescue those photos that would be perfect but for one or two flaws that render them useless. The trouble is, while image editors give you these options, they're not always the simplest to use. And if you're forced to perform several fixes, say color correction followed by blemish removal, then each fix must be performed in turn, making it more difficult and fiddly to restore your photo.

SoftColor PhotoEQ is a brand new tool designed to make image correction a simpler, less frustrating process. It combines a number of useful tools behind a simple user interface that anyone can understand, and which can quickly and easily lead to vastly improved photos.

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If you need to collaborate with others online then you'll probably think first about using email. But while this is a simple way to tell people what you're doing, there are far more powerful options available, and LogMeIn join.me is top of the list.

This one free tool (LogMeIn's replacement for LogMeIn Express) allows you to connect up to 250 people, for instance. They'll all be able to view your screen, while individuals you select can also control your system. A file transfer option makes it easy to share data, while the integrated chat client allows you to keep everyone in touch with what's going on.

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Last week, DisplaySearch joined Canalys classifying iPad as a personal computer. Canalys claims that iPad lifts Apple to third place in global PC market share. DisplaySearch puts Apple No. 1 in the United States by similar reckoning. The Apple fan club of bloggers and journalists delighted in the DisplaySearch data, gifting Apple with "its No.1 headlines." I write to correct the record about Macs outselling Windows PCs. They don't, and you can put your wishful thinking back in the draw or closet from whence it came. Apple's tablet is not a PC.

In August 2010, I asked: "Is Apple the real US PC market share leader -- or soon will be?" That could only be if iPad classified as a PC. I write posts like that one to get people thinking, to look at something from a different perspective. Also, based on iPad's functionality and available applications, it was legitimate consideration -- Apple's market share would be so much greater if iPad was a PC.

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So much for the $600 WiFi-only Motorola XOOM tablet, gadget geeks pine for. While Moto may have promised the lower-cost model, there are no signs it's coming this week. Best Buy has started taking preorders for the 3G/4G/WiFi model for (cough, cough) $799.99, available February 24 -- that is based on earlier leaked information. The higher-cost XOOM requires (cough, cough) Verizon cellular contract and (cough, cough) one month's service required to turn on WiFi capabilities.

Can you say price gouging? Best Buy isn't taking preorders online. Shoppers must go to stores to cough up 800 bucks. Here, in California, applying 9.95 percent tax puts the price at nearly $880 out the door.

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Maintaining skepticism is good practice for consumers, but even moderate consumer skepticism can play serious hell with a company that pushes its product too hard. This is especially true among tech adopters. Betanews' Tim Conneally takes an objective look at Gunnar Optiks and the value of their "digital eyewear" against the skepticism it elicits.

Anyone who spends enough hours on the Web will eventually learn to recognize targeted marketing; but people who follow cutting edge technology face an especially large amount of product marketing and sales pitch hyperbole.

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