The consumer preview is the name Microsoft has given the beta version of the operating system. The company said in December it would launch the beta by late February.

Microsoft sent out invitations this morning to press to attend the “Windows 8 Consumer Preview.” And while the invitation doesn’t say anything about the debut of the preview itself, it stands to reason that it will coincide with the event.

Largely echoing an IDC report released Wednesday, Gartner researchers said fourth quarter PC sales were weaker than expected. The research firm lays the blame at the feet of a burgeoning tablet business.

“Overall, holiday PC sales were weak in many key regions due to the intensifying competition in consumer spending,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner, in a statement. “Media tablets, such as the iPad, as well as other consumer electronic devices, such as game consoles, all competed against PCs.”

Click here: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9204938/Apple_iPad_other_tablets_blunt_Q4_PC_sales

“We’ve worked tremendously hard on Firefox 4, and it’s time to ship it,” Damon Sicore, Mozilla’s director of platform engineering, said in a message Monday on the Firefox developers mailing list.

Click here: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9204967/Mozilla_pushes_devs_to_make_Feb._ship_date_for_Firefox_4

Google’s uptime commitment remains at 99.9 percent for the Business and Education versions of the suite, but the company will now log every moment of downtime, whereas before it only counted outages of 10 or more consecutive minutes.

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Microsoft re-issued the Outlook 2007 update on Tuesday, saying it had addressed the problems with connecting to mail servers, sluggish folders and automatic archiving that surfaced almost immediately after the original fix was offered to users Dec. 14.

Click here: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9205139/Microsoft_re_issues_Outlook_2007_update_after_Dec._blunder

Digitimes reports that Quanta Computer has started production on the PlayBook, expected to ship sometime in the first quarter, and that it will produce more than one million units.

RIM has not formally announced a ship date or pricing on the PlayBook, though Digitimes said it will launch in March. PCMag got some hands-on time with the device at CES, at which time RIM revealed that the PlayBook will be a 4G device.

Click here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2375753,00.asp

Click here: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/14/the-verizon-iphone-good-for-apple-bad-for-rim/

Redwood City, Calif.-based Qik lets people capture, store and share video over mobile devices, the Web and desktop computers. The deal is expected to close this month. The Qik service is available on more than 200 mobile phones running the Android, iPhone, Symbian, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile platforms, Skype said.

Click here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/personal-tech/ces/skype-to-buy-qik/article1860334/

Apple notes exactly two fixes in its release notes for 10.6.6: one that fixes a cropping problem with some PostScript printing in landscape mode and another that resolves an issue with ATI graphics card-powered Macs where connecting an external DVI display could yield erratic mouse pointer movement.

Click here: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/215848/mac_os_x_1066_adds_bug_fixes_alongside_mac_app_store.html