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Microsoft's timing for Release Candidate 1 of Windows 7 was perfect. I had been living with Build 7000 on my home PC since January and its behavior had been increasingly wonky. It was almost like the build was breaking down and degrading.

Normally, an OS reinstall is a major pain. There's so many apps to reinstall, and in the case of Office, I have to activate it again. Migrating my browser is the hardest part because it while I can save my favorite links, all the accounts and passwords are lost, along with Firefox tweaks.

With RC1, I decided to make the move to 64-bit to begin shaking out my FrankenPC, a home-built monster I constructed from parts acquired at various Fry's Electronics stores around the Valley (yes, I have visited them all. Sunnyvale is my favorite.). The machine had 4GB, with another 4GB sitting in the closet ($32 for 4GB. No wonder memory makers are going broke).

Using 64-bit Windows 7 was my chance to use all of the memory. So, after backing up critical data, I shut down the computer, let it cool, installed the memory, and began the install process. One episode of "Modern Marvels" later, the install was done. Windows saw every piece of hardware, with one exception: my SoundBlaster X-Fi card. No worries, Creative Labs had a driver on its site, and I was all set.

The plus side to newspapers on the Web: a local story gets worldwide attention. So it was with this piece, an AP story, that ran in the Charlotte Observer. It had to do with a tax incentive being offered to Apple in return for building a massive datacenter.

Needless to say, it got my attention

The angle for the Observer was the whole tax break element and the argument it would bring jobs to the state ("jobs" as in employment, not him.). But for someone like me, that raises all kinds of other questions, starting with what is Apple planning?

The AP reports Apple is looking to make a $1 billion investment in a server farm, which is pretty hefty. Microsoft was looking to build a $500 million datacenter in West Des Moines, Iowa, and the company cancelled that due to the economy (much to the dismay of Iowa's governor).

The center would be based in either Catawba and Cleveland counties in the western part of the state, which is pretty far from the state's tech hub in Research Triangle, which is in the Raleigh-Durham area miles away.

Western North Carolina is an ideal spot for a datacenter, as Google figured out when it built a $600 million facility. Land is cheap and they can get alternative power from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Google is pretty obsessed with that and often puts its facilities where it get hydro and wind power.

The state figures Apple will get about $46 million in tax breaks over the next decade, assuming the company reaches its $1 billion investment target within nine years of starting, according to the article. The facility will employ about 100 people, hardly huge in a state with 10.8 percent unemployment, but there are other benefits to the state.

The real question is what they are going to do with a datacenter that big. Apple is talking about building a facility twice the size of the kind Microsoft and Google use. Logically, you have to figure it is expecting some kind of massive growth in the near future. iTunes isn't that popular and App Store, while hot, certainly couldn't require this kind of capacity.

You can bet there will be a lot of attention paid to the vote when it comes up before the full House in Raleigh this Tuesday.

It was bad enough that Microsoft killed off "Flight Simulator" after a glorious 26-year run in a cost-cutting move, but now it seems the oldest Flight Sim community on the net is down for the count, too. And it's partially their fault.

AVSim (don't bother clicking for now, it's down), a 13-year-old community that had gathered countless add-ons for Flight Sim fans over the years, was hacked and destroyed by unknown hackers, who also took out the backups.

You see, site founder Tom Allensworth told the BBC that while they made backups of the site's content, the backups were done between the two servers that hosted the site. There was no off-site or disconnected backup. Server A backed up Server B, and Server B held the backups of Server A, and the hackers got both servers.

I hate to kick a man when he's down, but I'm sorry, that was sloppy.

"The method of the hack makes recovery difficult, if not impossible, to recover from," Mr. Allensworth said in a statement. "AVSIM is totally offline at this time and we expect to be so for some time to come. We are not able to predict when we will be back online, if we can come back at all. "

AVSim held a wealth of content for Flight Sim fans; terrains, skins, and mods, all developed by its own members.

Allensworth has set up a temporary forum for AVSim users while they decide what to do next. The only way to rebuild would be if all the contributors have their own copies that they can donate to the new site.

Let this be a lesson to you. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to buy a 500GB external drive.

If I scratched my head any more over this one, my co-workers would back away from me, thinking I had something communicable. Rackable Systems has completed its acquisition of the operating assets of what's left of the former Silicon Graphics and has now adopted its name.

You read that right. Rackable Systems, which at least had something of a decent name as a datacenter vendor, has now adopted the name of the near-dead, former great Unix vendor that it bought for peanuts, since it also got so much debt. Rackable's president and CEO Mark J. Barrenechea will lead the new SGI. Preferably not into a new wall. SGI was real good that that.

Granted, there is precedent for this. In 2005, Pacific Bell, one of the Baby Bells, ended up buying its momma, AT&T, and adopted that name. Of course, by that point AT&T was a pathetic shell of itself, having sold of many pieces in an attempt to stay afloat. Still, the name had value.

Is Rackable going to get anything out of calling itself "Silicon Graphics?" Maybe in 1994 but not in 2009.

The new SGI will have a customer base of more than 5,000 in more than 25 countries and approximately 1,350 employees worldwide. SGI will be headquartered in Fremont, California, same place Rackable was based. SGI's new management teamis almost entirely made up of Rackable talent. Only Diane Gibson, senior VP of operations and Dr. Eng Lim Goh, senior VP & CTO, remain from SGI.

Obviously to the victor go the spoils. Rackable has been reasonably successful, and unlike SGI, profitable. The name did convey what they are all about. The name change says??? well, I don't really know. Sure, I could call up and get their spin but that's pretty much what it would be. A move like this should have logic behind it independent of the PR spin. This name change does not.

I'll give Google credit, they practice what they preach. The company always looks for sorts of ways to go green, whether it's using alternative energy sources to power their monstrous datacenters or mow the lawn.

The company's Mountain View headquarters are actually somewhat off the highway in a hilly, grassy area. Like any other Silicon Valley company, they could always call in landscapers to keep the vegetation at bay, which they did for a while until coming up with a better solution.

Instead, they rent out some 200 goats, and one Border Collie to keep things orderly, from a company called California Grazing, which offers just such a service. They bring their herd of goats to various offices to nom nom nom your lawn away. As it turns out, Yahoo has been doing this for a while, too.

Anyway, Dan Hoffman, director of real estate and workplace services at Goole noted it costs about the same as landscapers but the goats are "cuter" to watch. I don't know about that, although the Collie might qualify. Google even posted a video (with camera shakiness reminiscent of "The Blair Witch Project.") of the goats at work.

Guess who has a problem with this? If you said "PETA," you win a prize. They complained to TechCrunch, which actually sent a reporter to watch the goats in action, that they had concerns about how the animals were transported and whether they have enough shelter and water.

Google actually responded to the complaint, humorously, saying the goats, while not Google employees, were entitled to an organic lunch. Isn't that what they are getting now?

The latest hyperventilating in the blogosphere is over some NPD Group figures that show the iPhone isn't the top seller among smart phones this quarter. That honor goes to Research in Motion and the BlackBerry Curve 8300, which had a lot of help from Verizon Wireless thanks to a buy one, get one free promotion.

But really, it misses the bigger point that Apple's sales are going to fall off. Right now everyone is expecting a new iPhone. The rumor mill is in overdrive and logic dictates a new phone coming soon, since the first generation phones came out in July 2007, so those people on two-year contracts are coming up for renewal. The last thing Apple wants is people moving to a BlackBerry.

So it stands to reason sales would fall off significantly in anticipation of an announcement at the Worldwide Developer Conference next month.

NPD's first quarter smart phone report lists the top five sellers as follows:

1) RIM BlackBerry Curve
2) Apple iPhone 3G
3) RIM BlackBerry Storm
4) RIM BlackBerry Pearl
5) T-Mobile G1

Smart phones continue to gain ground in the overall handset market and now make up 23 percent of total sales, thanks to price cuts and incentives from carriers to make the phones more affordable.

The real takeaway here is how dominant RIM is. Its sales are split among three models. If it was a one-trick pony like Apple, it would be an unchallenged number one player. It makes for the point of diversity in the marketplace, which hopefully Apple will do soon. Knowing Apple, it will likely be a higher-end unit rather than a cheaper, low-cost one.