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Stories of the month - April 2007
The BlackBerry blackout, Dell's Vista rethink and the future of the call centre...

By Natasha Lomas

Published: Monday 30 April 2007

April is the cruellest month - and it's certainly been less than kind to CrackBerry addicts in North America who were forced to go cold turkey as an outage took their beloved devices offline for several hours.

We gave readers regular updates on the story and talked to an IT director about the resulting issues with his email traffic. When it comes to big breaking tech news, it rarely gets bigger or juicier than this.

There was trouble elsewhere this month as Vista got the cold shoulder from PC maker Dell - which has decided to revert to offering Windows XP on some machines.

Microsoft took a philosophical approach to these 10,000 anti-Vista voters. The software behemoth said in a statement: "Dell is responding appropriately to a small minority of customers that had this specific request."

Stories of the month - April 2007

Click on the links below to read the stories everyone is talking about...

Could Second Life kill off the call centre?

Dell U-turns on offering only Vista PCs

Phone thieves hit with 'double whammy'

21CN knocks BT home fibre chances

Is Skype secure enough for businesses?

Offshoring to India - top tips from CIOs

Update: BlackBerry blackout hits RIM's customers

Wi-fi success in the City not all about Cloud density

Google beats Microsoft, Coke in brand stakes

London: The place to be if you're in IT

There was bad news for phone thieves too as the government introduced tough new penalties of up to five years in jail and an unlimited fine for anyone involved in reprogramming a stolen handset. Home Secretary John Reid said the aim is to stamp out mobile phone theft altogether. Chances are muggers will simply move onto snatching iPods instead.

Another popular piece this month was our in-depth look at the future of the customer services call centre. silicon.com's Jo Best explored whether virtual worlds such as Second Life could be set to take over as the place where customers and businesses meet - potentially meaning no more interminable hanging on the telephone listening to 'muzak'.

Whether virtual encounters will lead to virtual punch-ups as angry customers vent their spleen against corporate avatars remains to be seen.

Good news for Google as ever - the search giant is now a bigger name than the likes of Coke, Marlboro and Toyota after being crowned the most powerful global brand of 2007. And which tech giant did it oust to seize the top spot? Who else but Microsoft of course. Now that's gotta hurt.

As our Inside India special report continues, there was still time for another look at the Indian offshoring phenomenon - this time to get the perspective from closer to home. silicon.com's Steve Ranger spoke to IT chiefs at Reuters and Welsh Water to find out if their experience of offshoring to India matched the hype. Read their top tips here.