Jack Schofield

As Apple chairperson, inventor and entrepreneur, Steve Jobs made an unprecedented impact on the world's consumer electronics markets.

As Apple chairperson, inventor and entrepreneur, Steve Jobs made an unprecedented impact on the world's consumer electronics markets.

I don't think there's much doubt about whether you're safer using Windows or Mac OS X: the answer is Mac OS X.

The first thing you'll notice about Windows 7 is that it looks like Vista. It also works like Vista, except for a very welcome graphics upgrade.

Internet Explorer 8 is much snappier and far more secure than IE6 and IE7 and has some innovative features that are not available elsewhere.

Jack Schofield meets Vint Cerf, the "father of the internet", and finds out what he thinks about net neutrality, spam and abuse of the web.

Apple produced a stunning set of financial results on Monday, with one big surprise. In a quarter that has been dominated by talk of the iPhone and new iPods, the Macintosh computers were the stars of the show. Apple sold 2,16-million units, which is more than in any other quarter in its history.

Last week's feature about the possible future of audio file formats attracted much feedback -- which is odd, because most people don't really care which ones they use, and may not even know what they are. But it turns out there's a handful of open-source evangelists who think you should use Ogg or Ogg Vorbis.

For its CeBIT trade show press conference this month, Microsoft said it had scheduled 30 seconds for its Ultra Mobile PC announcement, known as Origami. The company didn't know that Digital Kitchen had left an old concept video online, nor that bloggers would find it. The result was that the project attracted far more hype than intended -- and, naturally, failed to live up to it.

In the early days of the web, sites measured attention by the number of hits they attracted. Today, companies such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon and eBay are interested in collecting much more specific data. The things to which you pay attention -- what you search for, the products you look at, the ads you click, what you buy -- provide a picture of who you are.

The launch of Apple Macintoshes based on Intel processors raises a space-saving -- and perhaps a money-saving -- idea. Will we be able to run Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X on the same machine? There are two ways to do this: the first is to buy a Mac and install Windows. Apple executives have stated that they will not try to prevent this.

Intel plans to leap ahead this year with a strategy based on its Core Solo and Core Duo processors, a new media PC platform called Viiv, and a new logo where the ''Leap Ahead'' tagline replaces ''Intel Inside''. That is the gist of the speech that Intel boss Paul Otellini will give later on Thursday on the first day of the giant Consumer Electronics Show.