Lenovo Joins HP In Free Windows 7 Upgrade

Lenovo is offering free Windows 7 upgrades to customers who buy a Windows Vista PC, following a similar deal from Hewlett-Packard.Lenovo said Friday it will mail a free Windows 7 license upgrade to people who buy a desktop or laptop with an eligible Vista version between June 26, 2009, and January 31, 2010.

The offer applies to consumers and to companies that plan to buy fewer than 25 PCs. Larger organizations are being advised to take advantage of Microsoft's volume-licensing program for their upgrades.

Lenovo customers who buy a Vista Home Premium PC will be entitled to Windows 7 Home Premium. A Vista Business PC can be upgraded to Windows 7 Professional and a Vista Ultimate PC to Windows 7 Ultimate.

HP announced a similar upgrade offer on Thursday. Other major computer makers will likely launch similar offers. In offering the free upgrades, computer makers are working with Microsoft, which launched an upgrade option program for Vista buyers on Friday.

HP and Lenovo and are trying to convince people there's no reason to delay buying a PC until Microsoft releases the new operating system Oct. 22. Windows 7 is getting great reviews — much better than the negative reception Vista received. With the PC market in the doldrums as a result of the economic recession, computer makers don't want to give potential customers any reason to delay purchases.

Microsoft released pricing Thursday for Windows 7. People with older Vista or XP systems who want to upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium and Professional editions will have to pay $119 and $199, respectively.
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Rats play odds in gambling task

Rats are able to play the odds in a "gambling task" designed by scientists to test the biology of addiction.

In the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, researchers describe how the rodents developed a "strategy" in a timed task where they make choices to earn treats.

The rodents avoided high-reward options because these carried high risks of punishment - their sugar pellet supply being cut off for a period.

This decision-making task provides an animal model to study neuropsychiatry.

During the task, which lasted for 30 minutes, rats were given four choices - in the form of holes to investigate.

Nosing each of these holes triggered either the delivery of tasty sugar pellets or a "punishing time-out period" during which rewards could not be earned.

But high-reward holes - those that delivered more pellets at once - also carried the bigger risk of triggering longer periods of punishment.

And rats quickly learned an "optimal strategy" - earning more pellets over the duration of the task by choosing the holes with smaller gains and smaller penalties.


Weigh the odds

One of the authors of the study, Trevor Robbins from the University of Cambridge, explained that the rat task was based on an existing clinical experiment called the "Iowa gambling test".

"This is a game designed to test decision-making in patients who have suffered damage to the frontal lobes of their brains," he explained.

"This type of injury is unusual - it doesn't really affect intellect, but patients become extremely compulsive, making disastrous decisions that can have serious impacts on their lives."

In the Iowa gambling test, participants choose cards from four decks. With each card they draw, they either win or lose money, and the object of the game is to win as much as possible.

Some of the decks are associated with small gains and small losses, and will earn a player more money over time.

Certain "bad decks" carry higher rewards, but also incur larger penalties, and will lose money over time.

Like the rat in its quest for sugary rewards, if the player adopts an "optimal strategy", they will make a profit.

"But patients with frontal lobe damage just don't learn from their experiences", said Professor Robbins. They continue to choose from the "bad decks".

'Truly translational'

To further test their model, the team looked at how the rats' performance was affected by drugs that altered levels of two neurotransmitters, dopamine and serotonin.


These are signalling chemicals in the brain that are both thought to play an important role in addiction.

The rats were given a drug that reduced the amount of serotonin circulating in their brains. This impaired their ability to make good decisions, and to successfully play the odds.

"Not only have we seen that our rats will gamble, but we've also been able to modulate that behaviour," lead author Catharine Winstanley from the University of British Columbia told BBC News.

"This coincides with data we've seen from pathological gamblers, who have been shown to have lower levels of serotonin in their brains," she added.

"We also found that we could make our rats better gamblers by giving them a dopamine receptor antagonist - a drug that reduces the effects of the neurotransmitter dopamine."

This also ties in neatly with clinical findings in humans. "Treatments for Parkinson's disease [which increase dopamine to aid movement] have been seen to induce pathological gambling," said Dr Winstanley.

"The hope is that this will stimulate interest in studying gambling."

Marc Potenza, a psychiatrist from Yale University who specialises in addiction and problem gambling, described the new test as a "significant step forward" that could eventually lead to new therapies to treat gambling behaviour.

"This is truly translational. It's a rat model that is mimicking human behaviour," said Professor Potenza.

"There are currently no approved treatments for pathological gambling or any of the other formal impulse control disorders. Having good animal models is vital in their development."
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Netbook For Kids Puts Disney Back In PC Business

The Disney Netpal, built by mini-laptop specialist Asus, is scheduled to be available in late July through Toys "R" Us and Amazon.

Walt Disney Co. on Wednesday introduced a netbook for kids, marking the entertainment company's return to the PC business after trying to sell a Disney-themed desktop five years ago.

The Disney Netpal, built by mini-laptop specialist Asus, is scheduled to be available in late July through Toys "R" Us and Amazon.com for a manufacturer-suggested retail price of $350. The system is designed for children between the ages of 6 and 12.

The laptop has an 8.9-inch display, Wi-Fi capabilities, kid-friendly software, and lots of parental-control options. The system runs Windows XP Home, is powered by an Intel Atom N270 processor, and includes 1 GB of system memory and a 160-GB hard drive. There's also a built-in 0.3-megapixel camera.

The Netpal has more than 40 parental-control options. Parents can preselect e-mail correspondence options and set up filters to limit access to only certain Web sites. More sites can be added, but only if the parent submits the request through the PC's password-protected system. Parents also can pull up data to determine where children spend time, and for how long.

Besides introducing children to mobile computing, the Netpal is a marketing tool for Disney. The PC's software features Disney characters and icons and includes Disney-themed e-mail and browser.

The Netpal marks the second time Disney has taken a stab at the PC business. The Hollywood studio in 2004 launched a $900 desktop called the "Disney Dream Desk PC," built by Germany's Medion AG, a large private-label maker of PCs.

While Disney has yet to be successful in the PC business, the company has a large portfolio of consumer electronics for kids, including TVs, DVD players, alarm clock radios, and boom boxes. However, the company's consumer products unit has not done well in the economic downturn, posting a 9% decline in sales in the fiscal second quarter, according to Reuters news agency.

The Netpal initially will be released in the United States, but Disney plans to make it available in Europe and Asia by the end of the year.
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Google Working With Microsoft On Outlook Plug-In Bugs

Google (NSDQ:GOOG) launched a Gmail-driven Outlook synchronization for businesses to great fanfare last week, but it turns out that there are still some kinks to be worked out before Google Apps Sync for Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) Outlook delivers the "seamless" Outlook experience touted by the search giant.

"The quick story is that it's not a big deal. Outlook search still works as it always has. There are some other plug-in issues that we're working through," a spokesperson for Mountain View, Calif.-based Google said Wednesday.

Google Enterprise Communications Manager Andrew Kovacs told ChannelWeb that he couldn't predict when a Google Apps Sync issue with Windows Desktop Search would be resolved, but that "we're working with Microsoft on it."

A Microsoft blog posted Wednesday pointed out a problem with indexing and searching Outlook data that results from registry key modifications made by Google Apps Sync plug-ins. Google confirmed the issue in its own blog post later in the day, and went a step further -- serving up several more unresolved issues with Google Apps Sync.

Plug-ins that don't work with Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook include Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, Acrobat PDF Maker Toolbar and Outlook Change Notifier, according to the post on the Google Enterprise Blog by Chris Vander Mey, a Google Apps senior product manager.

Vander Mey also noted that "[p]rograms that interact directly with the Outlook data file, including Windows Desktop Search and PGP.com's encryption plug-in, don't currently work well with Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook."

At last week's launch, Google trumpeted its new integration with Outlook as a major improvement over earlier attempts to couple the Gmail back end with the Outlook experience, part of the company's strategy to compete with Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft's Exchange server by delivering cloud-based, enterprise-class e-mail to users accustomed to the established Outlook e-mail client's look and feel.

But Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook was never intended to perfectly replicate Outlook right out of the gate, according to Kovacs.

"The focus of this product was to make [Outlook's] e-mail contacts and calendar work as seamlessly as possible with Google Apps. We also recognize that a lot of users have additional plug-ins with Outlook, such as Salesforce.com. There still some issues, but it's not a surprise that there are, it's not unexpected," Kovacs said.

Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook is available globally as a plug-in for PCs running Microsoft Windows XP (Service Pack 2) or Vista (Service Pack 1). The current edition only supports English-language syncing with Outlook, but Google says other languages will be coming soon.
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