BlackBerry users have cause for some serious excitement - a new UK mp3 store called 7digital has come out with a BlackBerry music store to rival the popular iTunes mp3 store for the iPhone and Amazon mp3 for the Palm Pre. Finally.

What’s more, 7digital boasts cheaper (and DRM-free) songs - many of which are only $.77, as compared to the many new $1.29 price increases iTunes has seen. For some time now, it seems as if the only option for BB users was to transfer music with desktop software or through a removable media card. No longer.

For me, the immediate problem with this was slow 3G speeds. I love my Curve, but sometimes even keeping an ESPN game tracker open could take forever. 7digital has an answer for this. When you choose to download a song over a slow connection, you will be downloading a lower-quality track. The next time you’re in an area that can handle more data transfer (or in a WiFi spot if your BB supports it), the song will re-download in high quality and replace the old version. Pretty cool, right?

After browsing the available songs in their store, I’m impressed. There’s even a “Future Releases” section to showcase upcoming music - though this is mostly EP’s and lesser known Indie bands. 7digital reports that it currently has over 7 million songs for download.

It seems like the number one thing I get attacked about when comparing the BlackBerry to the iPhone is the lack of music playability. While 7digital currently does not offer a compatible app for the Curve 8320, I’m still excited about the possibility.  Take that iPhone users - and I can listen to my music without squealing in delight at the word “Apple”. Sure, the BB’s storage isn’t comparable to that of the godPhone, but it’s a step in the right direction - and we’ve been able to picture message for years.

(via PCWorld)

Today, Google announced their plans to release an operating system dubbed Chrome OS.  So far, it’s mainly targeted at netbooks, though there are plans for release on all computers.  As with the nature of Google, the focus will be simplicity and effective use.  That is, it will be visually very basic, lightweight, and very user friendly compared to (though they didn’t mention it by name) Windows.

One of the neat things about this planned OS is the focus on a “webtop” environment.  I think Google is the perfect company to dive into this - making email, web browsing, and file access easier and quicker than ever.  As someone who uses every major Google web application (Gmail, Docs, Reader, Calendar, and Maps) quite frequently (and on my Blackberry), I have to say that I’m very excited about this.

Now, I’m not going to even begin to speculate on how Chrome OS will operate.  I think that anyone who does so is a fool - Google has shown us again and again why we shouldn’t predict with them.  They blow us away with simplicity.

Bottom line, I think we have something very exciting in store just around the corner.  Get pumped.  They have taken on a massive project, though.  Even though the technology world is abuzz and tweeting like crazy about this release, the vast majority of desktop users won’t be ready to switch their OS for years.  This isn’t a big deal now - face it, this OS is for the people already using netbooks and web applications.  However, if they are going to truly change the way operating systems work, they will have to prove that they have a safer, simpler, and more reliable alternative to Windows.

What do you think are the major obstacles that lie on the road between Google and a successful Chrome OS launch?  Will they succeed?  Will it be a worthy opponent to Windows?  To OS X?  Unix?!

It’s clear that desktop users have a solid advantage over laptop users in the category of customization and personal repairs. It’s much, much harder to do a repair on or even build a laptop than it is to do so on a desktop. If something goes wrong, such as constant overheating in this case, laptop users don’t have much choice than working around the problem, whereas those with stationary PC’s can simply add a fan.

My Pavilion has been overheating a lot recently, leading to lots of frustration on my part.  I mean, you’d be frustrated too if you had a few tabs open, maybe iTunes and OpenOffice - and your computer just shut off.

Anyway, here’s a quick list of tips/things to use so your computer doesn’t overheat.

• Download SystemExplorer and use it.  It’s much more comprehensive than the default Windows task explorer.  Use it to guage how much memory certain processes are using.  For me, the big killer is Firefox the majority of the time.
• If you know you won’t be using them for a while, quite background programs like LogMeIn, media managers, etc.  Even consider stopping Google Desktop indexing if you’re computer is particularly bad - this program can eat up memory like a piece of fried chicken at a Baptist convention.
• Clean your computer with compressed air.  This sounds weird, but I’ve heard that cleaning out all that dust can actually lower the temperature.
• Allow ample room for ventilation.  Since most laptop fans are on the bottom, this can be difficult.  The best way is by purchasing a cooling pad.  There are basically two types of cooling pads - electric ones and just plain pads.  The pads usually work to prop up the computer and allow the fan to blow out hot air, while the electric pads plug into the USB port and add extra cooling.  You can usually pick up a good Belkin pad for around $20.