Today Apple announced that the iTunes music store has now sold over 5 Billions songs.

As if that wasn’t enough they are now the No.1 Music retailer in the US.

I can’t be bothered to complain about DRM/Quality or Cost.

No I look on today as a tiny bit of history.

Vinyl > Tape > CD > Download.

Bricks and Mortar > Digital.

Game over Cupertino wins.

By the time my Kids grow up and want to purchase music the world will be a different place.

By far and away the best digital distribution model available today is offered by Steam. If I buy a game from Steam I can play it on any computer I sign into and install the Steam client on.

This iTunes model of Download, License, Backup or Else is just plain dumb in comparison.

I would imagine a subscription based model is the next big thing.

Link: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/06/19itunes.html

I have had an offline on-going dialogue with Dell for a couple of weeks.

The short version of the story is I gave my  Dell XPS M1210 laptop to a client after his failed twice in a month. This left me with his older M1210 to get repaired for the 3rd time. (posts about this here).

I was also slightly worse off as the clients M1210 was a slightly lower spec than the one I gave him.

Jamie my Resolution Manager at Dell initially said as I elected to replace the Clients machine Dell were only obligated fix the broken laptop under warranty. I agreed.

However the next day Jamie called me and offered to send an engineer to replace the CPU, Screen and upgrade the Ram and the Warranty. This would bring the machine back into line with the one I gave away.

I was really pleased Dell offered me this but I was thinking this seems to be a lot of trouble to go to for the now repaired  2 year old laptop.

I then asked if I could perhaps get a discount towards a new machine. He enquired which one I was interested in, I said the Dell XPS M1530.

A day passed then Jamie called and offered a direct swap. My old XPS M1210 for a new XPS M1530.

That’s a pretty good deal, so I took it. Thanks Dell.

Toshiba do have a problem on their hands. HD video is sexy (especially on high resolution laptops)However their implementation of it (HD-DVD) failed to be accepted in the marketplace.

HD-DVD as a format has now been relegated to the bargain bin.

As a dual format guy, I have benefited from all this cheap 1080p goodness, so I am far from complaining.

It does seem like Toshiba are compensating in their updated range of laptops.

Take the 18.4″ Qosmio G55 with its Quad Core CPU.

However a media machine like this with no Hi-Def optical drive is a pretty big problem.

There is next to no downloadable HD content. Apple iTunes doesn’t count because their HD content requires an AppleTV.

I doubt Toshiba can afford to wait the next 3 to 5 years before HD downloads become a reality.

Link: http://explore.toshiba.com/

Which magazine voted Rochdale based ISP Zen Internet as the “Best Broadband Provider”.

Zen scored best for reliability of connection, connection speed, customer service, online and telephone support.

My friend Chris uses Zen and also gives them the thumbs up. He does however pay nearly double what I pay my current ISP.

But if I did switch Zen would be at the top of my list.

Link: www.zen.co.uk