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Everyone’s talking about Web sites moving to a pay-for-content model. Wired News has a good analysis of the trend, ZDNet has a more skeptical view, and of course Microsoft’s HailStorm will be fee-based. Get your credit cards ready.

Last week Microsoft unveiled their HailStorm strategy. I’m still not sure what it is, and neither is Forbes. IT-Director.com has a decent summary. The Register and Wired News think it’s a plot to take over the world. Jakob Neilsen likes it. I’m so confused…

Microsoft has released some preliminary hardware recommendations for Windows XP, including the questionable “does not allow end-user access to expansion bus cards”. Here’s ZDNet’s report . (more…)

As of today, you can pay Microsoft $20 and get the pre-release version of Windows XP when it’s released. The first 20,000 orders will also get a beta version next month. Here’s the report from NewsBytes and the Order Link.

According to this Register article, Apple expects to sell hundreds of thousands of copies of its much-hyped MacOS X, which was released today, in the next few weeks – but some promised features are missing. This is starting to remind me of another company.

Robert X. Cringely has admitted he was wrong about Norton e-mail anti-virus: it doesn’t send your email to any other server. Symantec has updated their FAQ to address this.

The space station Mir fell to earth moments ago, apparently somewhere near its target in the South Pacific. Here’s a summary from New Scientist. Watch this space for links to followup articles.

Logitech is releasing their Cordless MouseMan Optical in early April. Here’s David Coursey’s glowing review. I’ll have to get one of these, unless Microsoft comes up with a cordless version of my current mouse.