By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

As we close in on the public release of Windows Vista SP1, Microsoft has taken what’s likely an unprecedented step: it’s cut the prices of many of the retail versions of the OS. The timing is obvious: Microsoft has been betting heavily on SP1 as many corporations have been waiting to deploy Vista until its release; Microsoft simply wants to enhance its chances of a bump in adoption rates.

At the same time, who’s going to see the best cuts? Not you or I. The biggest price cuts will show up in developing nations, where upgrade versions of Home and Premium will be dropped and full versions will sell at upgrade prices.

In a press release/interview, Brad Brooks, corporate vice president for Windows Consumer Product Marketing at Microsoft indicated the major cuts in developing nations were to:

“meet the demand we see among first-time Windows customers who want more functionality than is available in current Windows XP editions.”

In other words, a it’s because of a largely first-time customer base in those countries - and though they didn’t say it - piracy.

In the U.S., Vista Ultimate’s full version will go to $319 fro $399 (an upgrade is now $$219, down from $259); Home Premium’s upgrade is now $129, down from $159. I’m unclear as to the full range of price cuts, however - and these cuts only apply to retail versions.

How much will this help adoption? If you’ve got XP on your computer, unless you have Express Upgrade (in which case you should have updated long ago), I see no reason to upgrade your OS. I think most end users feel this way as well, and thus I see this as a rather curious move.

The rather stringent hardware requirements to get full functionality of the OS (as made obvious in the “Vista-Capable lawsuit“) is also a turn-off for end users, and XP remains popular enough for Microsoft to have extended its availability. In fact, it’s so popular many analysts feel it’s Vista’s #1 rival, and should in fact have its lifespan extended still further.

One thing to note, however, if you do want to upgrade: you can buy an upgrade and do a clean install of it, even without an XP license key, as I outlined previously. Just a BTW.

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

Earlier in the month, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile all launched $99 unlimited voice calling plans (T-Mobile’s included text messaging). Sprint waited a week, but they fired back with their own salvo on Thursday.

Sprint’s plan is called “Simply Everything.” And when they say everything, they mean everything. They are offering just about every service they can for $99.99. The press release says:

In an industry-defining move, Sprint today announced it will launch a domestic unlimited pricing plan that gives customers unlimited voice, data, text, e-mail, Web-surfing, Sprint TV, Sprint Music, GPS Navigation, Direct Connect and Group Connect for $99.99 a month. The new pricing plan is available to existing and new customers beginning tomorrow.

There’s even a family discount. Families will get a discount of $5 per month on every “Simply Everything” service that is added to the same bill for up to five additional lines.

To be honest, this is the type of plan I wished the other carriers had offered: everything for one price. However, Sprint has been sagging of late, announcing a $29.45 billion quarterly loss Thursday. It was mostly due to a huge goodwill write-off, but Sprint also forecast further customer losses.

Will this cause the other carriers to follow suit, with a real price war ensuing? Time will tell.

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

Last year AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said we’d get a 3G iPhone this year (and I’m sure Steve Jobs was really happy he opened his mouth). Of course, no date was given, just that we would have it this year.

Thursday UBS analyst Nicolas Gaudois narrowed the timeframe a bit for us, posting a research note that said that not only is a 3G iPhone expected by mid-year, it will include an Infineon modem chip.

While it is certainly obvious to most that Apple will have to provide a 3G iPhone at someday, the exact timing has always been a question mark. And it’s certainly not something Apple would want to leak, and you can bet there would be plenty of people who would wait to buy if they knew a 3G model was coming soon.

Let’s be honest, though: there are plenty of people - myself included - who passed on the iPhone when it was first introduced in June knowing it was EDGE only. And I’ll keep on waiting, as long as it takes.

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

JotSpot was acquired by Google in October 2006, and since then it’s basically disappeared. Last night, however, Google added a new service to Google Apps: Google Sites, incorporating the JotSpot tech, though it looks nothing like the original product.

The original JotSpot site described their product as:

JotSpot’s wiki allows you to create rich web-based spreadsheets, calendars, documents and photo galleries. It’s as easy as using a word processor - you don’t need to know HTML.

That’s still the same, but rather than using the structured templates that JotSpot rolled out in the 2.0 version, you get some very basic templates (above, click to enlarge):

• Web Page
• Dashboard
• Announcements
• File Cabinet
• List

There are a bunch of themes with names like Toothpaste and Wintermint, though. And you can easily embed stuff from Google Docs, Google Calendar, YouTube, and Picasa.

Still, at its core Sites is a way for teams to build collaborative websites, and that’s unchanged. Google says:

Google Sites, a new offering from Google Apps, makes creating a team site as easy as editing a document. Use Google Sites to centralize all types of information — from videos to presentations — and share your site with just a few people, your entire organization, or the world.

Just as with Docs, you can make Sites private, public, or shared. Users can subscribe to a site to be informed of site or even page changes, however you’re limited to 10GB of storage space for files and site content - which is still pretty generous.

No, it’s not a Sharepoint-killer. But as with anything Google, it’s bound to draw a lot of interest. And as with most things Google, yep - it’s beta (note to Google: it might be safe to remove the “beta” label from Gmail now).

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

Well, they only missed it by a little more than a week. Wednesday Apple started emailing invitations to a special media event to be held March 6th. While Apple is generally close-mouthed about these events, this time they were pretty open, saying in an email sent to members of the media:

“Please join us to learn about the iPhone software roadmap, including the iPhone SDK and some exciting new enterprise features.”

The invitation-only event will be held on Thursday, March 6 at 10 a.m. on the Apple campus in Cupertino.

Announced in October of last year, the SDK was expected on Tuesday, but what’s a week between friends? The iPhone was birthed as a very closed platform, with no easy way to add application - except through web applications, and of course hacking.

The SDK would mean native applications could be written without “jailbreaking” the phone.

Perhaps even more interesting is the part about “new enterprise features.” Could this be Exchange server support?

You’ll recall that although the iPhone was launched as a consumer phone, earlier this year it was reclassified by AT&T as an Enterprise-class device. I can see CEOs salivating over possibly trading in their Blackberry devices for iPhones.

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

Last June, iTunes passed Amazon.com to become the #3 music retailer. Eight months later, it’s passed Best Buy and is now #2, trailing only Wal-Mart.

The numbers are - well, pretty amazing. Apple says there are now 50 million iTunes Store customers, with a total of over four billion songs sold - and according to Apple, with an incredible 20 million songs sold on Christmas Day 2007 alone (wasn’t anyone opening presents rather than buying more?).

Let’s face it, CDs are now passe. With music downloading (legal guys, not just illegal!) becoming more and more the norm, Wal-Mart had better start watching its back.

That said, I’d really like to know how Amazon MP3 is doing. With all their music DRM-free, I would expect them to make some serious inroads - except perhaps for one thing. Using iTunes (the software) to integrate with your iPod, of course it’s easier to just go to iTunes (the store) to buy.

However, all the people I know are looking at Amazon MP3 as their first choice, not iTunes. Of course, the signing of Sony BMG just happened in mid-January - but I’d still expect (hope) Amazon MP3 can make a dent in the iTunes juggernaut.

Check out the full Apple press release here.

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

In March of 2007 Nokia Research Center and the University of Cambridge announced a research partnership, and here we have the first fruits of their labor, though this is far from being ready for consumers.

The Morph is a nanotechnology-based concept phone. It’s flexible and stretchable, has self-cleaning surfaces and transparent electronics, has solar charging. It’s so flexible it can even wrap around your wrist when not in use. Give it the ability to wrap around your wrist when in use, a webcam feature and you’ve got yourself a Dick Tracy wrist TV.

The Morph is on display from February 25th through May 12, 2008, at the “Design and the Elastic Mind” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

While I wouldn’t expect to see any of this tech anytime soon, Nokia does say it is possible at least some elements of its design could see the light of day in actual phones within the next seven years.

And people wonder how Nokia keeps its market-leading position.

Watch a video with the Morph in “action”: