Where are all the women IT leaders?

It will come as no surprise, reports eWeek, that according to its regular survey, men overwhelmingly outnumber women in IT leadership positions (86.1% versus 13.9%).

"What is surprising, however, is that 16.4% of IT executives over 40 are female, while only 7.8% of those under 40 are - less than half as many. Clearly, fewer women are moving up the executive IT ranks than in the past," it states.

Microsoft has won a patent for an instant messaging (IM) feature that notifies users when the person they are communicating with is typing a message.

The patent encompasses a feature that is present not only on Microsoft`s IM products but also on those of its rivals, AOL and Yahoo. The patent was granted yesterday, reports CNet.

Forrester Research has forbidden IT companies commissioning its product-comparison studies from publicising the results. Forrester spelled out the change to its "integrity policy" in a statement from its chairman and CEO.

The new policy follows the release last month of a study by Forrester unit Giga Research, paid for by Microsoft, that concluded that companies spent less when developing certain programs with Windows than with Linux. Giga polled just 12 companies for the study, which led to criticism of its statistical relevance. Another study, commissioned by PeopleSoft, supported its claims of better customer service than its rivals.

"We stand by the integrity of both studies," Forrester CEO George Colony said in the statement. "However, we erred in allowing those clients to publicise the...findings."

IBM has released two new laptops that include a detection technology similar to that used in automobile airbags, reports Silicon Valley.

The vendor has said its new ThinkPad R50 ($1 529) and T41 ($1 649) models will come with automatic hard drive protection technology. IBM`s patented Active Protection System includes a sensor that senses a drop or a quick change in motion. In such a case, the chip moves the hard drive in to the 'park` position. The process takes about 500 milliseconds and returns to normal operation after it senses the movement has stopped. IBM also offers Rapid Restore Ultra technology, a one-button recovery method for software crashes.

Never before has Microsoft had so much riding on a software upgrade, reports USA Today.

Office 2003, the capstone of its strategy to preserve its "near monopoly" of desktop PC software, will also be used "as a lever to move deeper into corporate computing networks".

Office runs on 94% of desktop PCs, reaching some 400 million users. But most Office users work on older Windows PCs lacking the power to run Office 2003. So Microsoft`s first challenge is to migrate as many of them as it can to the beefier Windows XP machines needed to tap into all the new features in Office 2003.

As use of Office 2003 spreads, Microsoft should sell more of its new line of server software, because Office 2003`s breakthrough features - its ability to let workers collaborate on intelligent work files - work only by hooking into Microsoft`s latest server products.