At the end of June, a long-feared date arrived. PCs preloaded with Windows XP would no longer be available. Industry insiders had braced themselves for that date because XP's successor, Vista, was plagued with performance glitches and a host of problems like driver incompatibility. Though Microsoft has cleared up many of those problems, Vista never really ended up getting the respect of many IT pros. However, Microsoft left ways for people to get their hands on XP. Though retail PCs would not be shipped with XP, business customers -- the ones who really care about incompatibility issues, could still get their hands on the OS. Low-cost notebooks can continue to ship with XP through June 30, 2010. Many users are running XP until Windows 7 ships. Company officials promise the OS will not give rise to the same device driver problems that bugged Vista users. Stay tuned.

Politics 2.0: Obama taps tech to clinch victory

Barack Obama arguably ran the most efficient, organized presidential campaign of all time. Computing power, database technology, social networking, email list management and some form of automated business intelligence (the campaign has been reluctant to reveal the exact ingredients of the secret sauce) were key to his winning campaign. Campaign canvassers were given computer printouts zeroing in on key characteristics of swing voters, supporters were able to create personal online dashboards that made it easier to coordinate their volunteer activities, and mobile communications were tapped to pique the interest of young and tech savvy citizens. Just as technology has become incorporated into core business processes, it will become de rigeur for campaigns to employ cutting-edge computing. One of the more interesting questions in politics and technology in 2009 will be how Obama taps his vast electronic network to help him enact the change that was the premise of his campaign.

The end of an era: Gates retires

When Bill Gates ended his daily role at Microsoft in June, it was a milestone not only in his own career but for the tech industry. Gates did not invent the PC, but he invented the PC industry, providing a software platform on which computers and applications from many companies could interoperate. As a scrappy young entrepreneur in 1981, he struck a deal to provide the operating system for the IBM PC. With IBM's imprimatur, personal computers took center stage in IT. Gates' career reflects the arc that PCs have taken. As Gates steps away from business life, PCs are becoming just one way to connect to the Internet. But even though the classic PC form factor may not be as central to tech as it once was, personal computing software has morphed and found its way into billions of devices of all sizes and shapes. Meanwhile, Gates is still relatively young and has the opportunity to make as much of an impact in philanthropy as he did in technology.