The results of our November 2006 Password Survey have been tabulated. Below is analysis that show how responses varied by age and pc expertise followed by the overall summary results.

The results of our July 2006 Digital Music Survey are in. We have completed our detailed analysis showing some of the interaction between responses. Generally, the younger crowd have indicated that they are embracing digital music and its technology.

Digital Media Desktop Report: November, 2006 Price: $195

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This report tracks the month-to-month global install base for leading digital music applications. Several types of applications are covered, including those related to paid downloads, subscriptions, music management, and file-sharing.

Our research shows that approximately 4% of the PCs that run our on-line tests have some sort of password management software on their systems. RoboForm and Norton appear to be the forerunners in this category.

Make sure to check out our October 2006 password management survey results.

The PC Pitstop Market Research team is pleased to share this exclusive report detailing key trends related to publicly traded software companies. From anti-virus leaders like Symantec in a free fall of market share to the emergence of a new player in the Microsoft dominated office productivity space, this analysis uncovers some very intriguing shifts in the industry. View the video below to learn more.

As the popularity of broadband internet connections has increased, the prevalence of analog modems has declined. Over 40% of desktop PCs running the PC Pitstop on-line tests do not have a modem installed.

RSS feeds, commonly associated with the the term "Really Simple Syndication", are showing up on a growing number of websites. These feeds, generally marked with a small orange logo depicting a radio wave, allow a user to subscribe to information of interest and have that information delivered to them without the use of email or revisiting and searching a web site. A news-feed reader or aggregator application is required to receive the RSS feeds. There are various RSS reader applications available and a growing number of web browsers and email clients that provide RSS read capabilities.

On May 30, 2006, Microsoft entered into the security software market with its U.S. release of its fully supported version of its Windows Live OneCare software. The OneCare product includes firewall, anti-virus, back-up and restore utility, as well as Microsoft's Windows Defender anti-spyware technology. Also included is a tune-up utility which performs routine maintenance tasks such as defragmenting and temp file clean up.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 was released in October 2005 and is proving to be a formidable contender in the office productivity suite arena. The fully featured open-source suite is freely distributed and is a direct competitor of Microsoft Office. The suite contains word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, graphic and database modules. It can read and write most of the of the file formats found in Microsoft Office and many other applications.

Microsoft has released their recommended hardware requirements for their new operating system called Vista.

PC Pitstop compares those RAM, CPU and Hard Drive requirements against the hardware found in systems being processed through our on-line tests to determine the percentage of PC's that do not meet Microsoft's recommended requirements. Also shown is a historical look at the percentages of PC's that did not meet the recommended requirements for Microsoft's XP operating system for the months prior to it's launch.