Gambhir powers India to victory on Murali's day

Sri Lankan spinner Muttiah Muralitharan completed a record bowling double before a Gautam Gambhir-inspired India scored a challenging 332-5 in the fourth one-day international on Thursday.

Left-handed opener Gambhir smashed a career-best 150 off 147 balls for his sixth hundred in one-dayers to boost his team's chances of posting their record ninth successive win.

India lead 3-0 in the five-match series, having already beaten England 5-0 at home last year.

Off-spinner Muralitharan, the world's leading bowler in Test cricket, became the highest wicket-taker in one-day internationals when he dismissed Gambhir for his 503rd victim.

The 36-year-old Sri Lankan surpassed former Pakistan paceman Wasim Akram's one-day record when he had Gambhir caught by wicket-keeper Kumar Sangakkara in his 10th and last over.

Muralitharan also holds the world record in Tests with 769 wickets in 125 matches.

Gambhir and skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni (94) dominated the Sri Lankan attack with a wide range of attacking shots, adding 188 for the second wicket after the early dismissal of in-form Virender Sehwag.

Sehwag, who scored 116 in the last match, contributed just five this time before uppishly driving fast bowler Nuwan Kulasekara to Sanath Jayasuriya at mid-off in the third over.

Sri Lanka then had to wait for more than 30 overs for their next success as Gambhir and Dhoni made the most of a mediocre attack on a slow pitch. The hosts' fielding also left a lot to be desired under pressure.

Gambhir was the first to reach his half-century, hoisting seamer Angelo Mathews over long-on for a six. Dhoni also completed his fifty in style, swinging Muralitharan over mid-wicket for a six.

Dhoni, who promoted himself in the batting order, fell six short of his fifth hundred in one-dayers when he mistimed a shot off left-arm spinner Jayasuriya, with Dilhara Fernando taking a one-handed catch at point.

The Indian skipper hit two sixes and four boundaries in his 96-ball knock.

Kulasekara then bowled Yuvraj Singh for five and Yusuf Pathan for no score off successive deliveries to raise his team's hopes of restricting India.

But there was no stopping Gambhir, who reached his century with a lofted four over covers off Kulasekara. He hit one six and 14 fours before being the fifth man out.

Gambhir added 103 for the fifth wicket with Suresh Raina, who remained unbeaten with a 37-ball 49.

Microsoft Ad Gadget to Launch in April

Microsoft has unveiled a beta version of a gadget that displays a small window of information when users hover over or click on an underlined word on a web page. A link to Gaze, which is similar to a feature on Yahoo's web pages, can be embed by website owners into their pages. Visitors to the page will know that a word has a link because either it is underlined or accompanied by a small icon that sits next to the word. If a user clicks on the link, a small box pops up that includes information about the word and an advertisement or an offer. Mario Esposito, a developer in Microsoft's AdCenter Labs, said in a blog that end-users can either hover over or click on the link. It's unclear if that means that a link could work both ways or if site publishers have the option to make the links require a click or open when users hover over them. In an example on the blog post, 'Madonna' is underlined and, in perhaps an odd error on the blog, a small box with information and links about Jennifer Lopez appears. The feature looks much like one that Yahoo uses on its own web pages. Esposito added that the technology will be officially unveiled on April 15. Microsoft's AdCenter Labs is a research group that develops new advertising technologies. The team designed the algorithms behind Microsoft AdCenter products such as Paid Search, Content Ads and Behavioral Targeting.

XP to Windows 7 'Upgrade' Scheme Announced

Microsoft will help users upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 by selling upgrade media, but warned XP users they must do a "clean" installation of Windows 7. That means all data on the XP machine will be lost.

"Regarding XP, customers can purchase upgrade media and an upgrade licence to move from Windows XP to Windows 7," a Microsoft spokeswoman told Computerworld US. "However, they will need to do a clean installation of Windows 7."

In a follow-up reply to questions, the spokeswoman fleshed out what Microsoft means by upgrade. "The 'upgrade' part is referring to the licence," she said. "You will be able to get the discounted 'upgrade' licence, but it will include full bits."

That's how David Smith, an analyst with Gartner, interpreted 'upgrade' in Microsoft's description of what it would offer XP owners. "They're talking about the upgrade price," he said, pointing out that most software vendors use the term to designate a lower-priced version aimed at existing customers.

Although Microsoft Tuesday spelled the six planned versions of Windows 7, it declined to provide pricing for them, or for the XP upgrade licences.

Typically, an operating system upgrade offers users the choice between an in-place migration of the machine - including installed applications and all data - and a fresh installation, which overwrites the hard drive's contents. When Microsoft launched Windows Vista in January 2007, for example, it offered people then running XP those upgrade paths.

Smith and other analysts applauded Microsoft's decision to not provide in-place upgrades from XP to Windows 7. "I'm not a big fan of them," said Smith. "They're tough enough from one version to the next, and from two versions [behind], it would be pretty challenging, technically."

Michael Gartenberg, formerly an analyst at JupiterResearch, and now a vice president of mobile strategy with JupiterMedia, agreed. "For most end users, it will probably mean that they end up with a more reliable installation," he said.

Microsoft benefits, too. "It makes life a lot easier for Microsoft by not having to support an XP to Windows 7 transition," said Gartenberg. "It means that it's something they can get out the door earlier."

Microsoft has been aggressively pushing Windows 7's timetable. Just two weeks after it launched the first - and in the end, the only - public beta of the new operating system, the head of Windows development said the company is moving directly to 'release candidate' directly to 'release candidate'.

But the process of upgrading a PC from Windows XP to Windows 7 won't be easy, Gartenberg predicted. "It's a double-edged sword. For many consumers who may be looking to go directly from XP to Windows 7, the idea of doing a clean install, backing up their applications, backing up their data, can lead to a lot of hassles," he said.

"Considering that there's a lot of XP out there, one has to wonder why Microsoft is taking this approach," Gartenberg added. "It's not going to be the simplicity of sticking a disc in the drive and upgrading. We'll have to see if that affects the upgrade market."

Microsoft said it was working on ways to help Windows XP users make the move, but would not get specific. "Microsoft plans to have other tools and ways to help people get through that process, but we don't have full details on that at this time," the company's spokesman said today.

End of the Road for Yahoo Briefcase

Yahoo's Briefcase online storage service is finally being shut down.Users of the free service, which soldiered on for almost 10 years with a distinctly Web 1.0 capacity of 30MB, are being greeted by a message that says they have to download or delete their files by March 30. After that, the accounts will be closed and files deleted.

Yahoo Briefcase lets people upload files as big as 5MB and organise them in folders. But Yahoo is discontinuing Briefcase because users outgrew it.

Other services, such as Yahoo Mail and Flickr, offer far greater storage capacity, and the use of Briefcase has fallen in recent years, the company said. The move will help it to focus on services that are more widely used, according to Yahoo.

As it battles Google and Microsoft in the search arena and struggles to bring in more revenue from its array of other services, Yahoo is being driven toward tighter focus. The company announced layoffs last year and has seen its stock price plunge since a proposed acquisition by Microsoft fell apart in May 2008.

Time may have passed Briefcase by, but the idea of internet-based file storage is alive and well. Microsoft last year announced Live Mesh, a service now in beta testing that lets users store files online, keep them synchronised across mobile devices and PCs, and access them on the road. The free DropBox application offers similar capabilities. And Google is rumored to be near introducing an online storage service called GDrive.

First Intel Core i7 Laptops Set for Release

PC retailer Eurocom plans to ship Intel Core i7 laptops, which the chip maker has dubbed the "fastest processor on this planet".

The Eurocom D900F Phantom i7 will include Intel's Nehalem-based quad-core Core i7 chips, which are typically put in servers and high-end gaming desktops. The laptops will ship on May 1, according to the Canadian PC retailer's website.

The laptop's Core i7 920, 940 and 965 processors will run at speeds from 2.66GHz to 3.2GHz and include 8MB of L2 cache. Intel launched the Core i7 chips in November and since then the chip has been praised for its speedy performance.

Calling it the "world's first notebook with i7 processor", Eurocom is targeting the laptop workstation as a desktop workstation replacement. It will include the X58 chipset and an Nvidia graphics processing unit (GPU) to boost graphics performance.

It will have a 17in screen and support up to 1.5TB of storage, 8GB of DDR3 memory and 1GB of graphics memory. It will also include wireless 802.11a/b/g/n technology and a webcam. It will ship with either the Windows Vista or Linux OS.

The laptop will weigh a whopping 5.4kg and it will come with a 12-cell battery. Pricing was not immediately available, though users can expect to dig deep into their wallets considering the use of new technologies in the laptop.

If Eurocom indeed ships the laptop, it could be the fastest Intel-based x86 laptop on the planet. Core i7 chips are built on the Nehalem microarchitecture, which includes the QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) technology. QPI integrates a memory controller and provides a faster pipe for the CPU to communicate with system components like a graphics card and other chips.

Each core will be able to execute two software threads simultaneously, so a laptop with four processor cores could simultaneously run eight threads for quicker application performance.

Nehalem chips are a significant upgrade over Intel's Core 2 chips, which are currently used in desktops and laptops. The new chips cut bottlenecks of Intel's earlier Core microarchitecture to improve system speed and performance-per-watt.

Though Core i7 isn't targeted at laptops, Intel intends to scale down the Nehalem architecture for other chips that will go in mainstream desktops and laptops. Intel will also integrate graphics capabilities in the CPU down the line, which should bring more power-efficiency to laptops. However, gamers might need a separate graphics card for better graphics performance.

Intel has said it will release laptop-specific Nehalem chips in the second half of this year.

Many companies including Lenovo and Dell offer laptop workstations. Last month Lenovo launched the ThinkPad W700DS mobile workstation that has two LCD screens.