A well-received debut for its newest operating system and fresh signs that businesses again want to spend on computers gave Microsoft investors reason to hope a more than yearlong sales decline is coming to an end. But it may take big spending by consumers to pop Microsoft stock out of its tight trading range.

For more than two centuries, the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has endured — as has the speculation about what led to his sudden death at age 35 on Dec. 5, 1791.

Was the wunderkind composer poisoned by a jealous rival? Did he have an intestinal parasite from an undercooked pork chop? Could he have accidentally poisoned himself with mercury used to treat a bout of syphilis?

A Canadian astronaut on a six-month stay aboard the International Space Station says it looks like Earth's ice caps have melted a bit since he was last in orbit 12 years ago, Reuters has reported.

Bob Thirsk said that there is a "thin veil of atmosphere" around the Earth that keeps us alive — but there are some effects of the human destruction of the Earth as well.

Toyota Motor Corp's Prius hybrid was Japan's best-selling car in June while Honda Motor Co's rival Insight ranked fourth, helping the two hybrid leaders dominate the list of top-selling models.

Sales of the Prius, which was remodeled in mid-May, jumped 258 percent to 22,292 units from the year-earlier month, data from the Japan Automobile Dealers Association showed.

Sony will begin selling its first netbook computer next month and in doing so enter the only sector of the PC market showing significant growth.

The Vaio W is based around a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 processor, the same processor used in many other netbooks.

Like other netbooks the Vaio W has a 10-inch screen, but its display has a resolution of 1,366 by 768 pixels rather than the more common 1,024 by 600 pixels.

With the intense -- some would say obsessive -- scrutiny of Steve Jobs and his health, what is sometimes overlooked is the company he founded and built: Apple Inc.

After taking a six-month medical leave that involved a liver transplant, Jobs, 54, will return this week to a place that hasn't skipped a beat since he left it.

Despite warnings from AT&T that claimed high demand for the new iPhone 3G S would prevent it from shipping pre-orders by the June 19 launch date, Apple is still promising to satisfy all web pre-orders with a Friday delivery.

The Boy Genius Report cited internal sources at AT&T as saying that customers who had not ordered the new phone by June 15 would have to wait one to two weeks after the launch to receive their order or stand in line to buy one.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll know that Apple has announced its latest iPhone -- the iPhone 3G S.

The third iPhone to be released since the first was launched in the U.S. in 2007, Apple claims the iPhone 3G S is faster and more powerful than the current iPhone 3G. Although it retains an identical form factor and design, the iPhone 3G S has some nifty new features. Here are 10 of the best:

Microsoft's new Bing search engine has received positive reviews in its first week on the planet, but did that early buzz translate into traffic? A report from Statcounter picked up by TechCrunch suggested that Bing's debut was successful enough to eclipse Yahoo Search during its first week, but subsequent analysis from Search Engine Land as well as data from CNET's network of sites suggests otherwise.

Microsoft Corp. hasn't had much success competing head-on with Google Inc. in the Internet search market. Now it's staging a flank attack.

Its new Bing Internet search engine, which it showed publicly for the first time Thursday, will still provide search results for any term an online user types into it. But Bing is initially designed to provide a much richer search experience for people looking for information in four categories: shopping, travel, health and local businesses.