In a setback to Microsoft's efforts to push its new operating system, Dell Inc. said yesterday that it would begin offering Windows XP as an alternative to Windows Vista on some consumer PCs. The announcement followed steady demands made on a Dell support forum, where consumers complained that Vista created too many problems for them with old software and hardware.
More good news: The Dow Jones industrials are extending their record gains of late and also approaching the 13,000 level. So not only do consumers seem to be ignoring all the doom-and-gloom predictions about the economy–mostly from housing bears warning of a spillover to other sectors–but the same goes for investors. (Of course, the consumer and the investor often are the same character.)
AP - A Navy Blue Angel jet crashed during an air show Saturday, plunging into a neighborhood of small homes and trailers and killing the pilot, the county coroner said.
AP - The Virginia Tech killer went to eBay to buy ammunition clips for one of the types of guns he used in the rampage, a spokesman for the auction site confirmed Saturday.
AP - Mass public shootings have become such a part of American life in recent decades that the most dramatic of them can be evoked from the nation's collective memory in a word or two: Luby's. Jonesboro. Columbine.
A U.S. Navy Blue Angels F/A-18 crashed in an "enormous fireball" Saturday during an air show in South Carolina, killing the pilot, authorities said. Witness Fred Yelinek told CNN that the jet hit trees, and pieces "as big as a hand but no larger" struck homes.
Investigators Saturday were examining the computer and phone of the woman believed to be the Virginia Tech shooter's first victim, killed in West Ambler Johnston dormitory. Police want to know if there was any link between Emily Hilscher, 19, and the killer, Seung-Hui Cho, a warrant states. Classes will resume Monday, a week after 33 people died in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.
Police said Saturday that a bad performance review may have led a NASA contractor to fatally shoot his supervisor and take another employee hostage before killing himself.