Dell has apologised to customers after shipping a batch of its Vostro laptops with the wrong keyboard layout.

The firm said it will replace keyboards on its 1310 and 1510 models that went out to customers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Keep an open mind, says Spolsky, in a rant about both unwanted mega-architectures, and the way big companies snaffle up all the best coders.

Shop staff who have been sacked or resigned while under suspicion of dodgy behaviour could soon struggle to find work, as some of the UK's top retailers are set to share information online about their employment history.

But today a leading libel lawyer warned that the scheme to disseminate unproven allegations could prompt a flood of defamation claims against businesses.

Microsoft's service pack three (SP3) for Windows XP has caused havoc on hundreds of PCs, just hours after it was released as an automatic update.

Angry customers have vented their spleen on the firm's Windows XP message board, posting complaints that include spontaneous PC reboots and system crashes after the service pack installs.

Windows Vista is better at protecting against malware than XP but more easily infected than Windows 2000, according to a study by Australian anti-virus firm PC Tools.

The survey calls into question Microsoft's oft-cited claims that Vista is its most secure operating system.

Nvidia has admitted that its vast array of graphics chips is bewildering consumers, who find increasingly difficult to work out what does what.

Updated There's red faces at the office of the Data Protection Commissioner this morning after a blogger lifted an upcoming official report off its website and published it early.

Barclays Capital is forcing its IT contractors to choose between a 10 per cent pay cut or a quick exit from the company.

AMD's annual shareholder meeting today could have been an excellent time to elaborate on the company's plan to reverse course from an extremely rough 2007.

Hitachi is updating its TravelStar laptop hard drive range with a more capacious 320GB disk that spins at 7,200rpm.

According to an IT man from Arizona, F5 is up to something, something good. We've been wondering what it has been doing now that it has acquired Acopia and its file virtualising ARX switch. Well, according to this Arizonan who is familiar with the situation, F5 is developing a single box to replace two that people would need now.

Fayrewood has ended takeover talks with North Atlantic Value LLP which could have led to the company being bought.

Salesforce.com boss Marc Benioff yesterday robustly elaborated on the firm's plans to push yet more services on to the cloud with the official launch of Visualforce.

Speaking at the company's Dreamforce event at the Barbican centre in London, Benioff took the opportunity in front of a crowd of some 2,000 European partners and customers, to outline his Web 3.0 vision.

Creative has told buyers of its ALchemy for Audigy sound software that they'll get their money back following its decision to release the next version of the app free of charge.

Sun Microsystems yesterday released the first beta of OpenOffice.org 3 for Windows and Mac.

The open source rival to Microsoft Office now natively supports Mac OS X without the need to install the X11 module to run the suite first. The beta also includes full Vista and partial VBA support.

Sage Group today reported a nine per cent rise in its first half pre-tax profit, boosted by a solid performance in Europe and the UK.

The business management software firm posted pre-tax profit for the six months ended 31 March of £122.6m – up from £108.6m in H1 2007 – on revenues of £640.4m, compared with £574.7m for the same period a year ago.

Security watchers warn of a rare vulnerability involving software used to control industrial systems. A denial of service vulnerability in monitoring software from Invensys poses a severe risk to the factories and utilities running its Wonderware subsidiary's InTouch SuiteLink application.

Carphone Warehouse is selling a 50 per cent stake in its mobile phone retail business to US electronics retailer BestBuy, setting the stage for a heavyweight fight in the UK's retail electronics market.

AMD today shed light on its upcoming server workstation roadmap, revealing details on its first six-core processor, expected to be released next year, and a 12-core offering, due by 2010.

Reg Tech Panel It used to be that IT security discussions were all about the basics – firewalls, anti-virus, content filtering, etc – but vendors and the media have now moved on, with much more focus on higher level stuff like policy management and the "human factor".