Summary: New articles of interest, including one from Forbes which says that "odds are increasing that Microsoft's business will just completely collapse."

● Could Microsoft Collapse? (c/f Microsoft - Financials)

Once again, the Chrome/Android momentum has nothing to do with Windows. Once again, it doesn't benefit Microsoft in any way.

Now take a look at what Microsoft's biggest Windows customers--Dell, HP, and the other big PC manufacturers--are up to. Dell is in talks with Google to begin developing devices designed to run Chrome (and who can blame it--if it doesn't do this, it will be left behind in the next wave of consumer devices). And HP just bought the wreckage of Palm so that it would have a better mobile operating system with which to compete against Apple. From Microsoft's perspective, these last two developments are disasters.

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In short, the monopoly "platform" characteristics that have protected Windows all these years are completely breaking down. The PC's relative importance in the world of personal technology is dwindling, and Microsoft has not been able to transfer Windows to other platforms. Google will soon be offering a free alternative for remaining PC-like devices, which, at the very least, will put pressure on Microsoft's margins.

Add all that together, and there's basically nothing good to say about the future of the Windows platform.

● Windows 7 Backup gets users' backs up [via] (c/f Vista 7 Reality Log)

Windows 7 Backup is getting trashed in a Microsoft forum for being unbelievably bad and stupefyingly slow.

Users are posting stories that should defy belief. Jon Hell posted on April 23 that he is backing up 900GB of data on a quad core PC with 7GB of RAM; "After twenty four hours Windows Backup had managed to complete 18 per cent of the backup, but after forty eight hours, it had got even slower, and had only reached 23 per cent of the full backup."

● Kinect Unfairly Compared To...A Sofa

For snots and giggles, this comparison between a sofa and Microsoft's Kinect has appeared on the internet. Just because Kinect apparently doesn't play nice with couch potatoes, that doesn't mean it cannot be compared to couches.

● Malware: certified trustworthy - Update

Virus Teaser According to anti-virus vendor F-Secure, the number of digitally signed malware samples for Windows is increasing - and more and more scareware programs also include a valid digital signature. Virus authors use this method to overcome various hurdles on Windows systems and suppress alerts such as those triggered when a program attempts to install an ActiveX control in Internet Explorer, or before installing a driver. F-Secure's list of potentially undesirable programs contains almost 400,000 digitally signed samples. In terms of malware, the list still includes almost 24,000 samples.