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Some interesting quotes at a recent conference, from Mr. Microsoft. On the Time-Warner/AOL merger, "interesting to see what comes out of that." Of the many mega-mergers now going on, "It would be fun to own a movie studio, but I don't have any expertise, so we're going to stay away from that." He also said that one of his concerns was to find ways to let people keep from being inundated by unwanted Email and to make PC games easier to use. Together with Steve Case, Bill Gates agreed that major improvements have been made to the Internet but that many annoyances still need to be eliminated.

What to do with them. The EPA says that 315 million will become obsolete during the next four years. The typical PC contains 4 pounds of plastic and 1 pound of lead, and some monitors contains as much as 4 pounds of lead! To help raise public awareness of this problem, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition has begun a Clean Computer campaign. In the Coalition's first report, IBM and Apple Computer scored the highest for recycling and "take-back" programs, with AST, Acer, and Daewoo scoring the lowest. Naturally, Europe is way ahead of the U.S. on this issue. Germany, Holland, and Sweden for example, require recycling programs for all electronic equipment and electrical appliances. Due to the rapidly evolving nature of computers, it's even pretty hard to give away your old computerBif it's not fast and can't play games, practically no one wants it! If you know of companies willing to take old computers, let us know and we'll help spread the word.

Don't you wish YOU could put off the tough decisions? The Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce voted at its December meeting to delay taking a position on how E-Commerce companies should collect and remit sales taxes until their final meeting in Dallas this month. Wonder what they'll do then.

In moves generally attributed to Microsoft, AOL's latest software, Version 5.0, has been described as "the upgrade of death" and accused of crippling existing Internet accounts with rival companies and preventing current AOL users from signing up with competitors. Naturally, AOL says the situation is overblown, and that users don't understand that clicking on the YES button during installation to allow AOL to be their default browser, that it takes over practically all online functions of the computer as well. Hm. That's probably because there's no explanation of just what that YES button will do. Jeff Kimball, AOL's Executive Director says, "If a member picks YES, we make their lives simple." Translation: By allowing AOL to take responsibility for displaying all web pages, sending/receiving Email, and exclusively perform other on-line tasks. I'm sure the truth is out there. Somewhere.