Hey, I love a blue screen of death as much as anyone, but I wouldn’t drive to the mall just to see one.
I have a Mac. My husband has a PC. This makes for hours of hilarious fun.

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As companies look for new ways to squeeze costs out of their technology budgets, some are deciding that the next PC they purchase need not be a PC at all.

Instead, they are rolling out virtual desktops–a set-up consisting of a screen, keyboard and small connector box that ties into a powerful server in the computer room that has all the software, storage and processing capabilities that each desktop user needs.

Maryland Auto Insurance Fund, an insurance company in Annapolis, Md., says it plans to replace at least two-thirds of its 600 user desktops within 18 months with virtual PCs.

Cindy Warkentin, the company’s chief information officer, estimates that the move will save costs by allowing the company to replace fewer PCs every year.

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Fancy new smart phones and laptops may generate more buzz, but the desktop PC remains the workhorse of the office. Bosses who outfit staffers with mobile devices, however, may be able to wring more work out of them, according to a new Forrester (FORR) study.

The research firm surveyed more than 2,000 employees at companies with 100 or more workers to find how they use technology. Three-quarters use desktop computers, and two-thirds are anchored to their desks for at least four hours a day.

Laptops were only available to one in three computer-using workers, though this varied by profession–47 percent of business employees had them, compared with only 17 percent of retail and manufacturing workers. A mere 11 percent of workers owned smart phones, though that percentage was higher for salespeople and marketers.

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Blu-Ray drives have yet to make a dent in the PC business. In 2009, according to research firm iSuppli, just 3.6 percent of all PC systems will include Blu-Ray drives. In 2013, iSuppli predicts, the total will still be a rather modest 16.3 percent.

So the obvious question is, what happened?

Two reasons, according to iSuppli. One, cost. Conventional DVD drives are simply a lot cheaper. “Given the high price of the product, consumers are unwilling to pay the extra money in order to obtain a high-definition drive,” asserts iSuppli senior analyst Michael Yang.

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Worldwide PC shipments fell 5 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, according to market research firm Gartner. That exceeded the company’s previous forecast of a 9.8 percent decline.

Gartner said the better-than-expected results reflect “a small sign of a PC market recovery in terms of shipment volumes in some regions.” Consistent with comments Intel (INTC) made on its post-earnings conference call yesterday, Gartner says demand was better-than-expected in both the U.S. and Asia-Pacific, while Europe remained weak.

Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), which had a 2.8 percent gain in units on a year-over-year basis in the quarter, remained the market share leader, with 19.6 percent, up from 18.1 percent a year ago.

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There’s a discussion taking place in the PC industry that is equal parts encouraging and sad.

Some of the companies making and selling computers are contemplating a way to give people a more accurate idea of how long the batteries in their devices will last.

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There is something very uplifting about Opera’s vision of a Web that turns every user back into a node on the network, with all the rights and responsibilities that implies (this is the blog post today that explains the idea, and this is an inspirational video.)

The idea behind Opera Unite, in brief: every PC would act as a server on the Web.

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Two years ago, Asustek wowed the world with the hottest selling computing product to arrive in recent memory: the Eee PC netbook. But even that blockbuster device has failed to do much to boost the company’s brand in the United States, a situation the Taiwanese computer maker intends to correct.

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Yesterday, while China Web watchers were digesting the latest bit of news on the requirement that PCs sold in China include government-mandated Internet filtering software, the Web as we knew it a week ago quietly returned.

Last Tuesday, at around 5 PM, Internet users across mainland China began reporting problems accessing popular social networking sites, such as Twitter.com, the Yahoo (YHOO)-owned photo-sharing site Flickr.com, and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Live.com, Bing.com and Hotmail. The sudden unavailability of these sites led many Internet users to suspect that they had been blocked due to sensitivities over the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on June 4. And on Wednesday, dozens of Chinese Web sites also announced that they would be closed for technical maintenance for several days.

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There’s still no mobile phone from Dell (DELL), despite plenty of chatter about that possibility over the last 18 months. But it’s gotten easier to buy from the company using a mobile phone.

Dell recently, and quietly, went live with a new version of its Web site that works better with mobile phones. The new site–-easy to reach by typing in Dell’s Web address from the browser on a BlackBerry or similar handset–-says it’s in beta mode. It makes it easy for users to search Dell’s product listings and order PCs and other devices from their handhelds. It also has a link to Dell sale items.

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Shares of both Seagate (STX) and Western Digital (WDC) are getting battered on fears that the hard-drive sector could once again soon find itself with a glut of supply.

At least in part, the Street is reacting to this morning’s downgrade of Marvell (MRVL) by Barclays Capital, which–as I noted earlier–was in response to indications from Taiwanese component makers of a slowdown PC demand. Barclays chip analyst Romit Shah wrote that “every company that we met with [in Taiwan] indicated that PC order rates are slowing into the back-to-school season.”

Meanwhile, Collins Stewart analyst Ashok Kumar today notes new data on drive production that he thinks raises ominous clouds for Seagate in particular. Kumar says data from Techno Systems Research, a Japan-based market research firm, find that hard-drive unit production was down 18 percent sequentially in the March quarter, comparable to a 15 percent decline in PC shipments.

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Intel (INTC), which helped shake up the PC industry last year by promoting low-priced laptops called netbooks, is at it again. But there’s not such a memorable name this time.

The chip giant is expected to use the Computex trade show this week to discuss a category of portables that fall in a price band between netbooks–which can start at less than $300–and full-featured notebooks, which often cost more than $1,000. Price is not the only distinguishing feature; these ‘tweener portables also will be touted as sleek and stylish–think of Apple’s MacBook Air, but with a starting price of $600 to $700 instead of $1,799.

“Thin is in,” summed up Sean Maloney, Intel’s top salesman, during a speech to analysts in May that provided a sneak preview of the strategy. He predicted a steep sales ramp for the new category, which he labeled on one slide as “ultra-thin affordable.” Just to confuse things, many analysts refer to the niche as CULV, which stands for “consumer ultra-low voltage.” (Instead of Intel’s Atom–a microprocessor used in most netbooks that starts at a list price of $29–the new systems are expected to be based on price-reduced versions of its Core 2 design, which now starts at $113 and up).

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Don’t mess with Texas, especially if you’re a blogger on somebody’s bad side. Houston-based blogger Lyndal Harrington was jailed last week for failing to turn over her computer, as part of a defamation case involving the late Anna Nicole Smith.

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