How many useless gadgets have you bought, rarely use and yet are reluctant to throw away? I have the usual sandwich toaster sitting around that I must get rid of, but all in all I'm pretty good. According to a UK study about ?3 billion is wasted on household gadgets that are rarely if ever used. Three quarters of adults spend ?73.85 on labour-saving devices and other items they once believed would be invaluable but which they rarely if ever use.

Footspas are the most expensive item on a list of the most pricey unused gadgets. The bread maker was second, followed by the sandwich toaster, electric knife and fondu set, said Esure Home Insurance.

How about computer equipment? Are you a pack rat also and tend to save everything you ever bought... just in case you need it again? How many Zip discs, speakers, earphones, games and other computer-related gadgets do you have sitting around. If you haven't used it in a year or have graduated to more up-to-date versions now is the time to think of donating it to some teenager you know who might need it.

I warn, however, that ensure that the equipment is reasonably up-to-date so that it can be useful.

Microsoft has decided to spit on half its customer base in a bid to get them to wean them from older versions of its Windows operating system. Last week the company repeated that those using older versions of Windows can't get an important security update to the Internet Explorer browser without paying for an XP upgrade.

'We do not have plans to deliver Windows XP SP2 enhancements for Windows 2000 or other older versions of Windows,' the company said in a statement. 'The most secure version of Windows today is Windows XP with SP2. We recommend that customers upgrade to XP and SP2 as quickly as possible.' This means that if you are one of about 200 million people using older versions of Windows then your system is not as secure as it could be and that you're lost support for your operating platform. Or you pay the $99 for the XP upgrade.

Windows XP Pro accounts for 26.1 percent of the 390 million Microsoft operating systems installed around the world, while Windows XP Home accounts for 24.7 percent of the market. The remaining 49.2 percent is made up Windows 2000 Professional (17.5 percent), Windows 98 (14.9 percent), Windows ME (6.5 percent), Windows 95 (5.4 percent), and Windows NT Workstation (4.9 percent), according to IDC.

What Microsoft is signalling to its customers is that the company is selling products that sometime or the other the company will arbitrarily decide not to support. Now I say this really calls for a suit in principle against Microsoft. The company should be forced to put an "expiry" date on its products, giving us a firm time when it will no long support is software.

While Microsoft's support policy might be lucrative in the short term, it's stupid in terms of future relations with its customers, who will be more keen to look around for alternatives. I hope the policy backfires, which it looks as if it is. Rather than upgrade from my very stable version of Windows 98 (which took me two years to get that way), I'm now looking to use other browsers such as Netscape, Opera and Motzilla. I suggest others in a similar situation will do the same.

Last week, W3Schools.com released a report showing that Motzilla's Firefox has taken ten percent off of Internet Explorer's commanding share of the browser market. The percentage of IE users has dropped to 75 percent from 85 percent since the start of the year.

During the same period the number of Mozilla users has roughly doubled. Most of those Mozilla users are actually Firefox users.

The job market for tech workers seems to be cooling down, if what's happening in the US is any indication. The US information technology (IT) sector lost 403,300 jobs between March 2001 and April 2004 and the job market remains bleak, according to a report by the University of Illinois-Chicago.

About half of those jobs ? 206,300 ? were lost after experts declared the recession over in November 2001, say the researchers. They estimate that the job market for IT workers shrank by about 19 percent during the period. The study was commissioned by the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers (www.washtech.org), which concludes that off shoring is driving lots of IT jobs out of the US.

Still, it's a bust out there if you plan on changing jobs or were unfortunate enough to have lost yours. Such falling numbers means that if you're about to graduate in IT you're going to have a tougher time competing with all the more experienced job seekers ? or move to India.

There is some bright news on the horizon, so don't drop that IT course just yet. Research firm IDC projects technology and business services spending will rise 5.6 percent this year, to US$553.3 billion in the US. The company forecasts that hiring will pick up with the spending.

Meanwhile Forrester Research says the US and Canadian IT market continues to show modest 2004 growth of five percent and three percent, respectively.

'Computer hardware is still doing well and communications equipment is rebounding, but they are offset by slowing software investments and IT compensation growth that is barely exceeding inflation, despite staffing levels starting to rise,' Forrester said.

Apple Computer will replace the spotty screens that came with its 15-inch G4 PowerBook models. If your screen displays the flaw then Apple will pay for the cost of replacing the laptop's LCD screen and any shipping costs. Apple will also reimburse the cost to those who have already paid for such a repair. The replacement programme covers a limited number of 15-inch titanium and aluminium PowerBooks manufactured between July and November of 2003. Models that are included in the repair effort have serial numbers beginning with either V7334 or V7345 or in the range from QT331 to QT339.

Go to www.apple.com and click under 'Support' to see whether you're covered. You can take the PowerBook to your local Apple dealer to have it checked if you're unsure. The authorised Apple reseller in Bermuda is the Complete Office.