Week in Review: iPhone arrives with Rick Astley

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This week, the iPhone undid the shackles of exclusivity with O2, and was made available for the first time on Orange. Sure, the prices are pretty much exactly the same, but it's a step in the right direction to the glory that is consumer choice.

With that in mind, we asked consumers - as in, you people - whether you'd choose to buy an iPhone. Watch the video here.

Of course, after the terror of a Rick Astley-themed worm hitting iPhones, many people may have since changed their minds...

Bing gets ready

Bing had an exciting week, but every week must be exciting with a name like that. (Question: "So, where do you work?" Answer: "Bing!" That would never get old.)

Not only did it tie up with Wolfram Alpha to help us with our maths and calorie counts, it also tweaked its mapping function. Take that, Google.

The UK version also snuck out of beta, but remains without such shiny features as Wolfram and Twitter search. So while rival Google leaves things in beta for years and years despite them being fully functional, Microsoft pulls them out of beta with some features still missing.

McKinnon's woes

Gary McKinnon's legal battle continued its move into the political ring this week. First, Home Secretary Alan Johnson said there was nothing he could do to stop the extradition to the US of the Asperger's-suffering hacker.

Unless, of course, doing so would break EU human rights law.

Yesterday, MPs from the Home Affairs Select Committee told Johnson it was time to take action, and permanently halt extradition proceedings, but he's been told that repeatedly, so it's unlikely he's about to change his mind.

Big players

Also this week, Intel bought off AMD. The legal bickering between the two ended yesterday, with Intel giving its smaller chip rival $1.25 billion to stop picking fights.

The EU meanwhile rejected Oracle's acquisition of Sun, while Orange and T-Mobile signed their final merger agreement. HP also spent some cash this week, picking up 3com for $2.7 billion.

Other news

The ICO said that burglaries and thefts are a major cause of data breaches - it's not all getting drunk and leaving USBs on trains.

The London Stock Exchange suffered a server crash, Novell unveiled openSUSE 11.2 and security experts claimed that Windows 7 won't solve malware woes.

Silver surfers were either encouraged or disparaged with the release of a new six-button, easy-to-use PC just for them. And the government confirmed it still plans to track all our internet and mobile communications - but not until after the election.

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