Stories about: Stardock

Hostile, bullheaded, mercenary, uncreative, all words that spring to mind when considering Ubisoft and EA's new "always on" PC games policies for upcoming single-player games like Assassin's Creed 2, Silent Hunter 5, and Command & Conquer 4. In order to play any of the latter three, you must have an internet connection or the games won't load. Make that a continuous internet connection, meaning the internet (and presumably each game's respective authentication servers) must be accessible at all times, not just at launch. Unplug your Ethernet cable or disable your WLAN radio (or suffer through a server crash on EA or Ubisoft's part) and the games will simply cease to function.

Hot on the heels of VMware's update of Fusion 3 comes Parallels Desktop for Mac 5.0. Like Fusion, Parallels now boasts support for Microsoft's WDDM graphics, allowing Aero effects in Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Microsoft may have given up on Windows XP, but that doesn't mean you have to.

Free. It's the magic word for an ever-expanding wealth of downloadable software and online services. Free doesn't necessarily mean good, however, and hunting for freebies can mean sifting through a lot of junk.

Don't like the way Windows works? Who does?

Looking for software to get the most out of Windows Vista? As yet, there hasn't been a flood of great downloads designed specifically for Microsoft's latest operating system. But that didn't stopped us from searching high and low for the best free Vista apps available -- and we've come up with 20 real keepers.

Have you embraced the widget movement yet? If not, you will.