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The good news is that Google, the lead developer of the Android operating system in the Open Handset Alliance, has begun to push Android 2.2, a.k.a. "Froyo," out to costumer beginning Monday, June 28.

The down side is that it's only for Nexus One users.  You remember Nexus One, the HTC phone that was going to be on all four carriers but now only has two (T-Mobile & AT&T), was sold online but eventually had to go to retail.

Ok, sarcasm aside, there is a reason other phones will take longer. The fact is, most Android phones don't ship with a vanilla Android installation. They customize it or put some kind of software layer over it, which requires testing on their own part. They have to certify Android on their hardware, then their software, and all the apps that go with it.

So, while Nexus One users will begin to receive the Android 2.2 via an over-the-air software update (one of iPhone's most glaring deficiencies), the rest have to wait. It likely won't be too long. HTC told the mobile phone blog Recombu.com that it's working on the Android 2.2 port for its phones and will ship it some time in the third quarter. Which happens to start in two days.

Froyo is said to provide better performance, the ability to turn the phone into a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot, improved Microsoft Exchange support and, in a big differentiator from Apple's iPhone, support for Adobe Flash 10.1. The full list of features is here.

Nexus One users will get a message on their phone's notification bar that the 2.2 download is available. Just approve the download and let it run.

The line in the Hillsdale Shopping Mall in San Mateo, Calif. only stretched about 100 feet from the entrance to the Apple Store.

Line? Sorry, there were two lines stretching about 100 feet; one for those who pre-ordered and one for those who did not.

The ones who pre-ordered were moved through a little faster, but those waiting without a reservation were escorted in by Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) employees in blue t-shirts and wielding iPhones and iPads modified for point of sale and inventory management.

The line was slow, but it did move. Staffers inside the store said there had been no problems getting phones activated, a far cry from the disastrous pre-order day, where AT&T's servers crashed from customer overload.

Steam is one of the overlooked analytics providers, probably because they derive their stats from gamers, who really are not reflective of PC buyers. Gamers tend to have more advanced rigs, are more likely to use a desktop instead of a laptop, and aggressively upgrade their system piecemeal instead of holding on to it for years and never opening the case once, then replacing the whole thing when it dies.

(In other words, how I roll.)

Steam isn't primarily an analytics firm, it's a digital game download service. With less and less shelf space for games in brick and mortar outlets, online distribution is a popular new model, and Steam is the leader in this market. Because it runs a small agent in the background of your computer, this gives the company a chance to collect analytics information on its player base, which it does for the game developers.

What they found is that in May, eight months after its release, Windows 7 has passed Windows XP to become the most popular OS among Steam users. That's if you total up the 32-bit and 64-bit versions, however.

Windows XP 32-bit is still the most popular single operating system, on 32.9 percent of Steam-connected PCs. Windows 7 64-bit is 24.7 percent of the population and 32-bit Windows 7 adds another 11.2 percent. So in total, they surpass XP. Vista 32-bit and 64-bit combined have 21 percent total. In January, Vista had a combined 28 percent.

Windows is on a slight downward trend since Steam recently came out for Mac OS. Very quickly Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6 now account for 8.1 percent of Steam-connected PCs. But that does not mean Windows is being abandoned, it just means the overall pool of operating systems is being diluted with a new OS.

Other stats from Steam show Intel holds 69.5 percent marketshare vs. 30.5 percent for AMD, which is well-above the numbers from IT-oriented market research firms. Nvidia has 60.9 percent GPU market share while AMD has 31 percent. About 25 percent of Steam users have quad-core systems, 55 percent have dual-core systems and 18 percent have single-core systems.

Bookseller Borders Books has been lagging behind Barnes & Noble for some time, but now is making an effort to catch up. The company has announced plans to carry up to 10 e-book readers in its stores by the end of this year.

As part of this effort, Borders announced a deal with Aluratek to sell its $120 Libre e-book reader, along with taking pre-orders for Kobo's $149 e-reader, due in stores this month, and selling Sony's e-book reader. The Libre has a 5-inch LCD black-and-white display and can play digital music and inexplicably has a built-in photo viewer. It claims up to 24 hours of battery life.

The Libre will come with a link to the Borders eBook store powered by Kobo, a recent spin off from Canadian Indigo Books & Music. The e-book readers will be sold at Border's bookshops in a section that will be called "Area-e."

Borders ultimately plans a good/better/best plan, offering readers starting at $100 and up to$250 and even $500, according to the firm's interim president and CEO Mike Edwards.