This week, I unexpectedly started using Google's Cr-48 notebook running Chrome OS as my production system. On Monday, my 11.6-inch MacBook Air fatally crashed, leaving no real alternative since a friend has my Windows laptop. So I fired up the Cr-48, which I reviewed in December in seven parts. It has been a great week that got better after installing yesterday's Chrome OS update -- "0.10.156.46 (Official Build caa798a8)."

I started using the Cr-48 full time a second time with sense of urgency. I couldn't fall back to MacBook Air. It was sink or swim. Treading water wouldn't be good enough. Swim I did: As a work replacement PC, the Cr-48 has proved its worthiness, with Chrome OS obviously being major reason; Google synchronization is another. This second week's use also has me reconsidering the merits of the browser as a user-interface motif.

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Wednesday's announcement of the iPad 2 has seemingly caught Apple's biggest competitor off guard, and Samsung is apparently reevaluating its next moves. In comments to Korea-based Yonhap News Agency, Samsung's mobile head Lee Don-joo said that the next iPad's sleek new design and competitive price are challenges.

The Korean electronics manufacturer's Galaxy Tab tablet is widely considered the biggest threat to the iPad's dominance in the sector. About two million have sold since its debut last September, making it the best selling tablet next to the iPad.

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MobileMe's expected refresh was notably absent from Apple's event Wednesday announcing the debut of the iPad 2, however Cupertino may be working behind the scenes to make a revamp of the cloud service part of a larger push towards streaming content.

Sources have told Bloomberg that Apple is currently in negotiations with several record labels including Universal, Sony, Warner, and EMI with hopes that an agreement could be reached by midyear. Apple wants the labels to allow unlimited access to their content across multiple devices.

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Internet Explorer 6 was released a decade ago, and as of February 2011, 12% of the world accessing the Web still used it. On Friday, Microsoft officially stated that it wants that fragment of the population to just let it go already.

It did this by launching an official "death clock" for IE6 at ie6countdown.com. The website is dedicated to watching IE6 usage drop down to less than 1% worldwide. Microsoft is not kidding around this time, saying it wants website developers to stop supporting Internet Explorer 6. The company is giving site developers the option to embed a banner in their site that lets users know they're using a browser that lacks support for modern web standards.

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Updates to stand-alone antivirus tools generally aren't anything to get excited about. The interface might have changed color, or maybe relocated a few buttons, and of course you'll get the standard promises about improved accuracy, or better performance, but otherwise it's often business as usual.

Avast! Free Antivirus 6.0 is an exception, though, thanks to a host of interesting and highly visible new features: automatic sandboxing, website reputation reporting, improved real-time protection, and many more. And so the end result is a package that looks rather more like a security suite than a simple antivirus engine. But is the new functionality really as effective as it looks? We put the program through some real-life tests in an effort to find out.

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German multimedia specialist MAGIX has released two free photo management and editing packages, each designed to help you get more from your digital images.

MAGIX Photo Manager 10 lets you navigate your photo collection with its thumbnail browser. Automated tools allow you to quickly organise your images into categories, while a "find similar photos" option can search your entire hard drive to locate shots from the same photo session.

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I know that yesterday Apple CEO Steve Jobs proudly proclaimed 100 million iPhone shipments, which is a darn big number. But iPhone isn't winning the smartphone wars, a story that's getting tired to write (Apple could still win the mobile platform wars). Today, ComScore and Nielsen separately released new US smartphone data that puts Android ahead of Research in Motion's BlackBerry and Apple's iPhone. It's quickly becoming an old story.

In January, Android handsets accounted for 31.2 percent of the US smartphone market, up from 7.1 percent a year earlier, according to ComScore. BlackBerry held the second position, after a devastating, steady decline -- 30.4 percent down from about 44 percent in January 2010. Meanwhile iPhone share remained flat, in the 25 percent range, for all of last year. US market share was 24.7 percent in January 2011.

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Owning an iOS device is meant to make it easy to access the music you have stored on your computer -- plug in and synchronize the latest tracks ready for listening to on the move. However, in practice, many of us regularly work with more than one computer, be it an office and home computer, or a laptop and desktop machine. Each of these computers may have a different selection of music on the hard drive. There is a simpler way. SuperSync can be used to centralize your collection and ensure that everything you want is available by providing you with a single, constantly updated music library.

Using the app you can easily compare two iTunes libraries and decide which tracks need to be copied between them -- synchronization is a breeze and beats having to manually transfer tracks individually. This in itself is a useful feature, but SuperSync also provides an all-important backup option.

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Few people give a second thought to files and data stored in the cloud, but just like local data, it is important to backup online information. The recent problems suffered by Google Gmail highlights the importance of ensuring that your online data is safeguarded, and BackupGoo provides a quick and easy way to back up your Google account in its entirety.

After providing your Google username and password, the application is able to access your account and can then be used to download your emails, documents, calendars, contacts and more. If you do not use all of Google's services -- not everyone has a need for Google Docs, for instance -- you can select precisely what you would like to backup and where the files should be stored on your hard drive.

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At Thursday's open meeting of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a set of reforms to the Lifeline/Link-Up program was proposed, aiming at "modernizing and driving tougher accountability" for the program that provides discounts for telecommunications service and installation for lower-income consumers.

The existing program is part of the Universal Services Fund (USF), which is paid into by the major telecommunications companies and their subscribers. It offers discounts of up to $10 per customer for monthly bills and one half (up to $30) of installation fees for basic services. To be eligible for the program, consumers must be at, or less than 135% of, the federal poverty line (which has been set at $10,890/year per individual for 2011.)

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German security vendor G Data has released G Data CloudSecurity 1.0, a free browser plug-in for Internet Explorer and Firefox users that adds an extra layer of protection to Windows PCs. It works by blocking access to known phishing and malware-infested websites, throwing up a highly visible prompt warning the user that the site they're about to visit is considered to be dangerous.

G Data CloudSecurity won't rely on regular updates to provide protection against known websites, but utilize data from other users of its security software in the cloud to monitor behavior and spot malicious and fake websites, deploying protection to all of its users.

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After more than four years in prison, Robert Soloway is now a free man. Dubbed the 'Spam King' for his role as the head of a spam ring that sent an estimated 10 trillion junk e-mails between 2003 and 2007, Soloway is now busy reintegrating himself into everyday life, according to Wired.

He was first arrested in May 2007 and charged with 35 counts including fraud, identity theft, and money laundering, and sentenced in July 2008. Soloway was widely considered one of the top ten spammers in the world, and had also lost multimillion dollar suits to Microsoft and an Oklahoma ISP as a result of his actions.

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The official Twitter app for iOS has been updated with a new Quick Bar that provides easy access to trending topics from the comfort of your timeline. The new feature is exclusive to the iPhone version of the app, but iPad users can also benefit from features and tweaks added to both versions of the app.

The bar appears at the top of the screen, and you can scroll through trending topics by simply swiping left or right. The trending topics feature has also been updated so that trends are displayed based on your current location.

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A year ago, PC shipments were on the rebound. The recovery is over for consumers, according to Gartner, which today lowered its global PC forecast for this year and next. PC shipments aren't going to be bad, just not as good. You can blame Apple and China.

Gartner lowered 2011 PC shipment growth by about a third -- 10.5 percent down from 15.9 percent. The analyst firm now predicts 387.8 million PCs shipped globally this year. Gartner expects 440.6 million PC shipments in 2012, with growth lowered much less -- 15.9 percent to 14.8 percent.

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Aiming to harness some of the buzz surrounding deal of the day websites as of late, Microsoft said Thursday it had partnered with The Dealmap. The San Francisco-based aggregator site takes content from about 200 sites like Groupon and LivingSocial, and lists them on a single page organized by city.

Instead of attempting to create its own program, or look to acquire an existing service like Google's failed buyout of Groupon last year, Microsoft believed it easiest to partner with an aggregator like The Dealmap to bring a deals offering to Bing users.

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