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It's probably not the first virus to make it into orbit but it seems like the International Space Station (ISS) has had an uninvited guest. NASA has confirmed reports that laptops carried onto the ISS in July were infected with the virus known as Gammima.AG. The virus lurks, as many do, in order to steal login names for popular online games. Hardly going to bring the station crashing back to Earth but it's certainly an embarrassment considering you can get a virus into space and you can't get a bottle of water onto a plane. The virus was discovered on astronaut laptops used to run nutritional programs and for checking emails but no critical systems or software were compromised, NASA claimed. Most worrying of all is that the laptops used by the astronauts do not run any anti-virus software.-Martin Lynch [SpaceRef] laptop space virus

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Microsoft is being all mysterious today by running a teaser ad for a new mouse technology with the intriguing - or completely misleading tagline - 'Say Goodbye to Laser'. The company looks set to bring something new to the world of computer mice on September 9 and, if the company hopes to have any chance of ousting the fabulous laser mouse, it will have to come up with something really special. Laser mice were a massive leap on from optical ones so it will be interesting to see what new spin emerges. The suggestions are flying in, from the somewhat practical to the downright silly and amusing. The return of the trackball? Accelerometers? GPS? Proton lasers? In-built hadron colliders? Bluetooth to get get rid of the need for USB dongles? A mouse that makes the Windows experience enjoyable? There is actually some information from an Italian site regarding something called Microsoft BlueTrack, for a new mouse called Explorer. According to the Google translation, we are looking at something with blue LED tracking that will work across lots of surfaces, even carpet. Especially handy for those who like to surf while rolling around on the shag-pile. All speculation welcome. -Martin Lynch [Engadget via Microsoft] news mouse gadget

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Microsoft might want the world to believe that Vista is a massive improvement over XP but, according to new research in the US, the public strongly disagree. In fact, some startling figures indicate that 1-in-3 are downgrading their Vista PC or laptop to good old XP. Devil Mountain Software said nearly 35% of the 3,000-plus PCs it examined had been downgraded from Vista to XP. Microsoft has already had to extend the life of XP due to furious customer demand. Craig Barth, the chief technology officer of Devil Mountain, explained: "Either these machines were downgraded by [sellers like] Dell or HP, or they were downgraded by the user after they got the machine. In any case, these machines are no longer running Vista. The 35% is only an estimate, but it shows a trend within our own user base. People are taking advantage of Vista's downgrade rights." It seems that many have been taking advantage of Microsoft 's end user licensing agreement (EULA), whereby Vista Business and Vista Ultimate can be 'downgraded' to XP Professional. Those businesses that purchase Vista Enterprise can also downgrade to XP. Barth based the stats on data provided by users to the company's exo.performance.network, coupled with data from Infoworld, collating things like the vendor and system model number with manufacturers' catalogs. The result was a large list of machines shipped in the last 6 months, the vast majority of which were offered with Vista as standard. The sample may not be applicable to all Vista business users but it's certainly big enough to cause some concern. Have you downgraded lately?-Martin Lynch [Macworld] Microsoft software Windows

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Dell's not known for its artistic looking products but, to be fair, it's been working hard in recent weeks to shed its grey-tinted business image to appeal to style-conscious consumers. Last week we had the very colourful Studio Hybrid desktops and this week we have the Mike Ming series of customised, painted Studio laptops. And very pretty they are too. The urban artist from New York has applied his swirling tattoo-like designs to the Studio 15in and 17in laptops to great effect. There are five designs in all: Sea Sky [above] Seaweed, Sunburst, Red Swirl and Bunch O Surfers. The laptops are available in Standard and Extreme versions, with the latter boasting bigger hard drives (320GB) and memory (3GB). Prices start at £440. The five designs will add an average of £30-40 to the cost of your laptop - a small price for being hip. See some more shots below.-Martin Lynch laptop art news

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Peripherals maestro, Logitech, has taken the wraps off its new Logitech Cordless Desktop Wave Pro keyboard-and-mouse combo, building on the popular Wave Keyboard and throwing in the full-size, hand-contoured MX1100 wireless mouse. The MX1100's MicroGear Precision Scroll Wheel has two scrolling modes, including hyper-fast scrolling for zipping through long documents (a 10,000 line Excel document in 7 seconds) or long Web pages. There are 8 programmable buttons for quickly flipping between apps. Using the software bundled, there's a stealth thumb button for jumping between apps and zoom controls that allow you to zoom in and out of documents without using the keyboard. The mouse boasts adjustable dpi (up to 1,600dpi), which can be useful for editing an image at the pixel level or, when you need to move the cursor quickly within a document. Logitech says the 2.4GHz wireless technology used by the mouse dramatically reduces interference, eliminating delays and dropouts, with the receiver and mouse swapping data 300 times faster than the conventional 27MHz wireless technologies used in many wireless mice. The bundle, which has a US price of around £65, comes with a USB plug for recharging the mouse while in use. A 15-minute charge is enough for a full days' use while a 7-hour charge will give you enough juice for 6 weeks. The mouse also comes an AC adaptor for powering it from the mains.-Martin Lynch [Logitech] news mouse gadget

from @ Gizmodo UK