As of January 11, 2010 Microsoft will no longer be allowed to sell Microsoft Word.

Last August a federal court ruled that a Canadian company i4i holds the patent rights to how XML code is to be used.

A federal court has upheld the ruling and the software giant must stop all violations of i4i's patent.

Not only must they stop selling Word in its current form, Microsoft has to pay a $290 Million judgment.

The January deadline is fast approaching for Microsoft to roll out a fix for its Word product which is sold in shrink wrap boxes, downloaded or bundled with other Microsoft products in various versions of the Microsoft Office Suite.

Does this ruling mean that you will no longer be able to use the most popular word process on the market today?

No.

If you have Microsoft word you will still be able to use it as you always have, but Microsoft is definitely under the gun to roll out a work around until they can tweak the word processing software to be in compliance.

You can continue to purchase the software for use up to the deadline, but there will be no more updates with the violating code available for the product after January 11^th.

This ruling has serious implications for users and for retailers.

Retailers who have purchased the product will have an unsellable product and manufactures who sell PCs and laptops will have to remove versions of Word that do not comply which will not be simple as most manufactures thought that Microsoft would find a way around this ruling.

There are alternatives for users of Microsoft Word such as the Open Office which is an open source code product that works with Word documents.

If you choose to use Open Office Writer which is similar to Word you may lose some formatting from your word documents, but most of the work will come when first converting you documents.

Microsoft says they will have the fix in place by the deadline as they are already removing the code violation from Word and Office 2007 products. 

Word 2010 will be available next year and, according to Microsoft, contains none of the offending code.

Search engine leader Google says it is set to change the way computer operating systems work.

This week Google announced its new Chrome OS will take on the rulers of the Operating Systems–Microsoft’s Windows and Mac’s OS X.

This Google video gives an excellent explanation of  how Google Chrome will run all of your computer programs on the Internet rather than your computer.

The new operating system will look radically different from the operation systems we have a come to love and sometimes hate.

Google Chrome will turn personal computing upside down.

When graphical interface browsers such as Mosaic were first introduced in the 1990’s they were, and still are today, installed as software programs on top of an operating system.

Google’s Chrome browser, however, will run as the computer's operating operating system rather than running on the operating system.

Google engineers say the most used software on any computer today is the Internet Browser whether it is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and more.

Google claims that the browser is the first and most important software we use. The Google guys say most of us spend 90 percent of our time on a computer on the Internet reading email, watching videos, shopping online, chatting, reading news, etc.

You will most likely see the first versions of Chrome OS installed on netbooks fairly soon.

If you are driven nuts by the Universal Access Control pop-ups whenever you make a change to your Windows Vista or Windows 7 operating system this video will quickly show you how to turn the UAC off.

Turn off the UAC in Windows 7 and Vista

What is the biggest advantage and disadvantage of the recently released Windows 7?

The biggest advantage you may find is that the new operating system is not Vista.  Although Vista had some early positive reviews it never gained the acceptance that Microsoft desired.  Today both business and home users still rely on Windows XP.

The Vista operating system failed to provide any notable performance improvement over the accepted and stable Windows XP and the User Access Control (UAC) drove most users crazy.

Since the release of Vista, all too often users were demanding their PC be downgraded to the familiar and comfortable XP.  In fact, Dell offered the option of shipping your system with XP with the option to upgrade to Vista later.

I have been running the Beta and Release Candidate of Windows 7 for several months now and overall I give the OS a big thumbs up.  But, a few of the problems that plagued Vista early on are still present with the new Windows 7.

Chief among those problems is the UAC which is still turned on by default as it was with Vista.  If you are a typical computer user the UAC will continue to annoy you with pop up warnings every time you install software, make a change to the OS or download a file.

I think the UAC is a good idea to maintain a secure and healthy OS. However, if you are annoyed by it and are willing to accept the risk, it is simple to turn off.

The next biggest disadvantage of Windows 7 is that you may not have compatible hardware drivers.  So, there is a chance that printers, wireless routers, web cams and peripheral devices may not work. It is a good idea to check out whether the manufacture of your devices such as printers have updated drivers for you to download and install for Windows 7 as some drivers will not come with new OS.

The biggest problem for most home users that are not very tech savvy is there is no direct upgrade from Vista or XP to Windows 7. You will have to uninstall your operating system and perform a fresh install of Windows 7.

However, Microsoft created the Window Easy Transfer tool to help ease the pain when making the upgrade from XP or Vista to Windows 7.

Now some will say that doing a fresh install is not an advantage, but I will argue the opposite.  A fresh install gives you an opportunity to do some clean up.  Overtime, uninstalling and re-installing software and hardware creates problems with the registry causing declining performance.  So a fresh install, just like moving to a new house, gives you a chance to clear out all of your junk.

The huge advantage I found with Window 7 is with performance. My windows browser and other programs open faster.  Now, this is subjective and I did no benchmark testing. If you have better than the minimum requirements of a 1 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of hard drive space I am confident you will notice improved performance with Windows 7.

And there is a definite increase in the cool factor for Windows 7. From the layout of the start button and applications to the flashy new desktop backgrounds and themes, Microsoft finally increases its cool appeal.