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Stories of the month - July 2007
Vista reignites the Mac vs PC debate, Auntie's iPlayer troubles and IT nations...

By Natasha Lomas

Published: Monday 30 July 2007

The age-old Mac vs PC debate was reignited this month when half of the silicon.com CIO Jury decided the cost of upgrading to Microsoft's latest OS - Windows Vista - is encouraging companies to consider investing in Macs or Linux-based machines instead.

Nicholas Bellenberg, IT director at publisher Hachette Filipacchi UK, expressed particular admiration for Ubuntu Linux. He said: "If fellow CIOs haven't checked this out, they should do... Perhaps it's obvious but the quality of open source desktop software has come on no end since I last reviewed it."

Stories of the month - July 2007

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

Photos: Heathrow's Terminal 5 comes alive

Mac versus PCs - the CIO verdict

Five hot outsourcing trends to watch

Orange and TalkTalk the pits of customer service

BBC iPlayer petition hits 10,000

How shiny is the iPhone's halo?

Five questions to ask before moving to Vista

Bluetooth phone hacking tools 'spreading quickly'

BlackBerrys and PDAs bad for work/life balance

Most competitive IT countries named

But it wasn't just IT chiefs chipping in - plenty of silicon.com readers had their say too. This is one debate that is surely going to run and run…

When it comes to the question of taking the Vista plunge, another popular piece of content on the site this month was Five questions to ask before moving to Vista. In this feature, silicon.com reporter Tim Ferguson walked through five considerations for those thinking of upgrading to the latest Windows OS - from potential hardware and software clashes, to how best to migrate - and even whether your business needs Vista (more on that debate here).

An iPhone and an iPlayer were also making headlines this month. The reasons why mobile operators are keen to get their hands on the not-yet-launched-in-the-UK Apple iPhone were explored in this news analysis - How shiny is the iPhone's halo? Meanwhile, the BBC was raising hackles with its on-demand TV service. More than 10,000 people signed a petition demanding the iPlayer support alternative, non-Windows platforms. The newly launched beta can currently only be used with Windows XP - although the Beeb has said Vista and Mac versions are in the pipeline.

Meanwhile, the most competitive countries for IT were named in this article - with the UK ranking a respectable fourth place, behind the US, Japan and South Korea.

And there was bad news for Orange and TalkTalk. It may be good to talk but customers of this pair have been voicing displeasure at the levels of customer service they are getting.

Also big on the site this month was our photo story about Heathrow Terminal 5, which is due to open in spring of next year.