The tablet PC has been heralded as the "next big thing" more than once, but there are still few signs of tablets and slates being embraced by the mainstream, says Jim Rapoza

Products such as Parallels Desktop Switch to Mac Edition have enabled Apple to compete in a Windows-dominated corporate world, but Mac penetration remains departmental rather than company-wide

Microsoft is working on Windows 8 - and it will be heavily based on the cloud, whatever Steve Ballmer may have said in recent announcements, says Nicholas Kolakowski

Never mind security and cost. There's one question around cloud computing that could be a show-stopper, says Peter Judge. Do cloud services comply with regulations, and can you safely use them?

t's just a developer preview for now, but it's got a new metaphor for collaboration, and is highly customisable. Jason Brooks reckons we could see a lot more of Google Wave

Sure, with Bing and Chrome OS, Microsoft and Google are aping each other's flagship products. But, says Jim Rapoza, the way the announcements were made shows the companies turning into each other

There's plenty of competition for VMware in making virtualised data centres, despite its strong lead. Is now the time to switch to Hyper-V or XenServer, asks Cameron Sturdevant?

Whoever came up with the idea first, it's obvious that we could use some new thinking around the provision of apps and services, says Peter Judge. Why do we need both an OS and a browser?

You can't have it both ways, says Jim Rapoza. If Google expects users to pay for a service, then it can't call it a beta. Beta software is not ready for prime-time, by definition

How will Google's Chrome operating system compete with the likes of Microsoft? Eric Lundquist lists five reasons why the Chrome OS is a big deal, and five reasons why it isn't