Apple as early as Monday is expected to announce its 2008 back-to-school promotion, which will encourage students to purchase a new Mac through some of the biggest incentives in the company's history, AppleInsider has learned.

Company senior vice president Ron Johnson stoked anticipation of the promo a few weeks ago while addressing some of his retail staff, people familiar with the matter say. Specifically, Johnson is said to have promised that this year's promo would be the biggest "ever" for Apple.

While it's unclear exactly what that means, speculation among those familiar with past promotions believe there's a possibility the Cupertino-based company will tie some of its touch-screen handhelds into the mix -- like the 8GB iPod touch.

When Apple Inc. recently sent along one of its new iMacs -- a sweet 24-inch model with a 2.8GHz Penryn processor - I agreed to take it home and give it a dose of family testing at the Finnie household. And with three kids aged 3, 6, and 16, that's saying something....

Were I to buy a new iMac (and the kids insist that's something we have to do) after the review unit goes back, I'd buy exactly the unit Apple sent.....

Given that my job is working with computers, you can imagine that I already spend at least 8-9 hours a day in front of the computer full-time. Imagine I do a job that I love, and therefore spend yet more hours in front of the computer, outside of the working day, not just evenings, but also on weekends. Couple time spent in front of the screen with the fact that I am long-sighted and haven't worn glasses in over a decade.

Where is this going? Well ulimately, a point of destruction and potential visual impairment, which is why I am writing about my experience, in order to try and help others with making the right adjustments to the way they work and how they look after and use their eyes daily, because vision is most definitely one sense you can't take for granted.

With Windows Vista still under attack, Microsoft is trying to generate excitement for the next version of its ubiquitous operating system.

A Microsoft demo suggests the next Windows, to be released as early as next year, will feature a leap forward with multitouch technology. That's the two-finger, on-screen manipulation that made such a splash with Apple's iPhone.....

And Microsoft has lost a bit of market share to Macintosh, whose latest Leopard version of Mac OS X won rave reviews while Vista floundered.....

Has Microsoft learned anything? I fear not, judging from the multitouch demo. I'd feel better if Microsoft owned up to Vista mistakes and emphasized that the next version of Windows would be slimmer, faster, and friendlier to hardware.

A long-held knock against Microsoft is that it steals everybody else's best ideas. (It's true.) But if there's one thing you can say after the software giant gave a sneak preview of its next operating system, at least it steals from the best.

Dubbed Windows 7 for now, the new OS boasts multitouch, gesture control screen capabilities a la Apple's iPhone. It's terrific technology, and to be fair, Microsoft's had this sort of thing on hand for a while, as evidenced by the Surface, a kind of computer-in-a-coffee-table aimed at retailers.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Chief Executive Steve Ballmer showed off the gesture control — the most salient feature of the new OS — at The Wall Street Journal's "D: All Things Digital" conference on Tuesday. It looks very pretty, and pretty cool, too. It also looks largely impractical.

Although they may seem like fair game for jokes, building permits are no laughing matter. Unless they involve toilets, which are pretty much always funny. But enough about toilets: as you may know, Apple recently opened a new Apple Store on Boylston Street in Boston. The Boylston Street store happens to be the largest of the Apple Stores, prompting ifoAppleStore to dig up the building permits to see just what a big Apple Store includes. It turns out that there are a lot of electrical and security systems, but surprisingly few toilets.

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