From our point of view, a Boston Globe article about MacWorld Expo's return to Boston next year includes good news and bad news. Of course, your opinions may differ, but regardless, the info is interesting to note.

The good news is, when we heard that the '99 Expo was to be held only at the World Trade Center instead of both there and at the larger Bayside Expo Center, we hadn't heard that the show will actually be held at the World Trade Center and the brand-spankin'-new Seaport Hotel, right next door and with plenty of extra exhibit space and meeting rooms. We originally had a panic attack when we'd heard that the whole '99 Expo was going to be contained in the relatively small World Trade Center; that fact would imply that the show would shrink dramatically, when the probable success of the iMac should instead cause attendance to grow. So that's cool.

The bad news is, the move back to Boston may not be permanent; IDG officials are apparently considering changing the show's location every year, which we consider to be almost as bad an idea as using a web browser as the default interface to one's filesystem. Without a stable location, MacWorld's many parties and events won't be able to attract a regular groove of attendees. Not to mention the fact that another trip to New York would most likely bankrupt AtAT, but hey, that's entirely a subjective deal, y'know? Whatever.

With monopoly comes muscle, and lots of it. Remember how last week several PC manufacturers were strongly cautioning their customers about potential problems that could occur if they upgraded to Windows 98? You know, incompatibilities with different BIOS, lack of proper drivers, the possibility of rendering the system completely unusable, all that jazz? Well, it seems that all of those stern warnings are about to be "tempered," according to a Sm@rt Reseller Online article.

Dell, Toshiba, Compaq, and the rest of the usual suspects who recently posted warnings of varying degrees are now changing their tunes and softening the tone of their online caveats. For instance, Toshiba's pulled the warnings about the lack of a compatible BIOS, despite the fact that such a BIOS is still not available; they claim they're "rewriting" the info and will repost it "at a later date." Hewlett Packard and Dell are both toning down the language in their own Windows 98 warnings as well.

Hmmm, what could be behind this sudden mass change of heart? Big surprise-- it's pressure from big daddy Microsoft, according to inside sources at the companies in question. It just goes to show you how short a leash Microsoft keeps on its licensees; Dell et al may be Microsoft's customers, but in this case, "the customers are always right provided that they agree with the vendor." Either that, or all of these company executives have been drinking a little too much "Windows 98 Blend" coffee at their local Borders.

Faithful viewer Matt Steinecker wrote in to clarify what went wrong during last Wednesday's network speed test, which pitted a Mac running Allegro (soon to ship as Mac OS 8.5) against a PC running Windows NT. If you weren't so lucky as to be at the keynote, you missed seeing NT trounce the Mac after the Mac's file copy got "stuck" shortly after starting. We attributed the problem to the fact that Allegro's still in beta, but Matt's got the real reason:

About the network speed thing: You may already know this, but it was caused by Energy Saver. The hard disk on the other machine had spun down, so the file was copied into RAM, and when that was full, the hard disk [on the server] took its time readying itself for the file... Or so said an Apple engineer at one of the User Conferences.