Apple signs lease on Regent Street store

Apple will open a retail store on London's Regent Street after agreeing a deal with Crown Estates, which manages the Queen's property. The Times reports that the 20,000ft store will cost ?1.5m a year in rent and will open before Christmas. ...more

C&W given green light for Energis acquisition

Energis shareholders have given their backing for a takeover of the telecommunications company by Cable & Wireless. C&W recently took a leading share of the burgeoning LLU market when it bought Bulldog Broadband. Buying Energis will make it the UK's second biggest telecommunications provider, after BT. ...more

Terabyte backups launched for consumers

Maxtor is launching a terabyte backup solution for consumers. The OneTouch III Turbo Edition comes in 600GB and 1,000GB portions and supports connections to both Macs and PCs via USB 2.0 and various flavours of FireWire. ...more

T-Mobile bails out of mobile payment venture

A consortium of mobile phone network operators has had to shelve plans for a pan-European wireless payments system after T-Mobile withdrew its support. Simpay, a joint operation between T-Mobile, Orange, Telefonica Moviles and Vodafone was hoping to establish a single payment system for m-commerce transactions that would enable mobile device users to buy goods and services from any network provider in any country. The service was primarily designed to facilitate small purchases up to between 10 and 12 Euros. ...more

Thousands more sign petition on UK Vista pricing

Nearly 6,000 people have put their names to an online petition to the Prime Minister urging him to put pressure on Microsoft to cut the price of its latest operating system Windows Vista. The petition was submitted by Paul Milne and people have until 20 April to add their names to the petition. He said that there was a 'huge difference in the price that people in the US and the UK are paying for Windows Vista. ...more