I just ordered and paid for my reduced price Windows 7 operating system, the successor to the failed Vista version. I will post reviews on it once I get it in October. However, I was astonished to get a copy at the special offer price of 50 euros ($50 in the US or £49 in the UK, go figure) for those who pre-ordered the Home Premium Edition version.

There were a limited number of pre-ordered copies made available, and frankly a friend had forgotten to order one for me when the offer was launched on July 15 in France. Last week she remembered and went around various stores only to find, as I expected, that the offer had sold out. But she persisted. She took a trip to a larger town and went to one of France's largest computer chains and found pre-order copies were still available. Is this an initial sign that Microsoft will once again face resistance to this new version, a protest against its pricing and upgrade policies? There have been a few voices advocating that Microsoft should actually give those suckers who bought a Vista operating system a free or very heavily discounted version of Windows 7. I am one of them and I regret every minute spent battling Vista on my laptop.

The special discount offer ended on July 11 in the US and Canada. Even in the US the full price of Windows 7 looks very expensive, given that Windows XP works great. In the US, Windows 7 will cost $119.99 for the Home Premium Upgrade version if you are moving from Vista or $199.99 for the full version if you are upgrading from XP.

I wonder how many people, other than the techno addicts, will be willing to pay that price if they don't manage to snag the special offer? How many XP users will be willing to make the changeover to a new system for $200 given that XP works fine and they are paying to take a chance on a system that might just be another Vista Reloaded?

I believe this release could mark a turning point in the Microsoft dominance if it turns out that the company has made another mis-step. The jury is out, and this is one of those times when I get to use a phrase I banned journalists from using in their stories: "Only time will tell".

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All of the film buffs out there will appreciate what is being billied as the first online film festival. Before you turn up your nose at what looks like boring, amateur stuff, note it is being put together by the New York Film Academy working with British portal PutItOn.com ("Home to the world's undiscovered artists"). The site is calling for submissions worldwide for "cinema art". The deadline is November 26 this year for submissions. PutItOn.com offers artists or budding artists one gigabyte of space each for their portfolios. It does not charge for the space or for any sales you may make through the site. You just have to get it on there and hope the site takes off.

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With deregulation of the mobile phone networks pretty well established in most of the open market economies, you would have thought prices would have fallen in some countries by much more than they have. Larger economies would have more competition. Right? And in a globalised world one would have expected more convergence in terms of prices falling further. But it ain't so.

Among the OECD members, mobile phone calls lowest in Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden, and highest in Canada, Spain and the US, according to the latest OECD communications survey. The survey also found that fixed monthly prices ranged from $11 to $53 across countries as of August 2008 for a package of 780 voice calls, 600 short texts (SMS), and eight multimedia (MMS) messages (termed medium-use in the survey). This range persists even though mobile phone call prices fell between 2006 and 2008 an average of 21 percent for low usage consumers, 28 percent for medium usage and 32 percent for subscribers with the highest consumption patterns. I mention the report as a benchmark so you can compare the prices and level of service you are getting in Bermuda, given that it is a smaller market.

Also there is lots of good information on the global development of the Internet. You can view the whole document for free by going to the announcement at www.oecd.org and then to OECD bookstore.

Send any comments to elamin.ahmed@gmail.com