Apple Computer Inc is due to launch its first PowerPC notebook computers on Monday – when most of the UK will be otherwise occupied with the Late Summer Bank Holiday: Apple confirmed the new PowerBook models would be formally announced Monday and that they would range roughly from $2,000 to $6,000; Kimball Brown, an analyst at Dataquest Inc, is impressed, saying These machines far outclass others; he expects Apple to sell at least one million in the first 12 months.

How tacky can a once-great newspaper get? The London Times newspaper has sold its soul to Microsoft Corp because the company has bought today’s entire print run, and the paper is being given away free for the first time in its 307-year history – and the run is being more than doubled to 1.5m copies at a rumoured cost to Microsoft of ú400,000: resisting the temptation to say that the paper has at last found its correct price point, we just wonder what we should call it in future – MS-Times presumably.

Doesn’t quite have the same cachet as a strategic relationship with Microsoft Corp – a grand way of saying that it is to become one of the thousands of information providers on the Microsoft Network – but it may be good for a penny or two on the share price: MAID Plc said yesterday it had an exclusive agreement with Bertelsmann Professional Information to develop and market German language business research services: the service will include application of its InfoSort business categorisation system to German content, and Bertelsmann Professional Information will market the service in Germanic countries, likely starting next year.

Many thousands of people have had copies of Microsoft Corp’s Windows95 for months but that did not prevent dedicated computer users queuing in the street at midnight to buy the thing when New Zealand kicked off the worldwide launch on Thursday when it was still Wednesday in most of the rest of the world – and it costs $180 there.

It may be no more than a dreary new operating system – or the best thing since Apple Computer Inc’s Macintosh – but newspapers all over the world were looking for new angles on the Windows95 story yesterday, and Reuters reporters have been working overtime coming up with many different versions of what is only a very simple story.

Imagine if the music business were like the software business and the first 10,000 or so copies of the new Portishead, P J Harvey or Seal CD could be guaranteed to jump…