Somebody once said, “Weekends are invented to help us forget that we are all screwed for the rest of the week.” Well, he or she might have been right, or just was a tad too pessimistic.

Whatever or however we look at things, we should never stop being thankful for what we have. I know this sounds the most cliché of clichés. But like that boy who was complaining about not having a new pair of shoes and who was shown a child without a leg, we should keep in mind that somewhere in this world, somebody is in a much worse shape than we are in right now.

Of course, I am not saying that we should derive pleasure from the knowledge that other people are suffering, are in dire straits that are beyond their control. I am coming, rather, from the “glass is half-full” direction.

VAIO Heats Up

Japan’s electronics giant Sony continues wrestling with some product-quality issues. This time, the company must deal with potentially serious customer push-back after admitting that more than half a million of its high-end VAIO laptops are saddled with a “system glitch.”

Sony also said that this so called glitch may cause overheating and possible personal injuries, most likely burns. The company said it received almost 50 complaints from customers outside Japan who said that their computers became distorted due to overheating.

Nearly half of the 535,000 laptops were sold in the United States, with the balance ending up in Japan, Europe, and Asia. The company has started offering a software download designed to resolve the system glitch.

I don’t know about you, but I’m seeing several cases too many of product-quality missteps being committed by our most popular IT vendors. Of course, this is not the first time that Sony’s products have been mentioned in a sentence that also includes the terms “glitch” and “imperfection.”

Dell, formerly the world’s largest PC vendor, also faces some product-recall issues due to some PC components failing quality standards. Apple, meanwhile, is currently trying its best to deal with signal-quality questions with its iPhone 4 smart phone.

Buyers beware, that is all we can say.

Big Blue is Greenest

IBM supercomputers are the greenest supercomputers, according to the most recent edition of the Supercomputing “Green500 List” released by Green500.org. The online group said that 17 of the top 20 most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world are built using IBM computing technology.
IBM also accounts for 65 of the top 100 in the list.

The report also shows that IBM systems are also the most cost-efficient.

Way to go, IBM.

That’s all for the meantime, folks. Join me again next time as we keep on watching IT.