The "surge" in contactless payments has been boosted by mobile payment services, which are set to influence the how payments are made in future, members of the UK consumer finance sector told IT Pro.

"The use of contactless payments has surged over the past year, with monthly spending now at 1.5 billion more than three times what it was last year," a spokesman for The UK Cards Association told IT Pro. "On the high street, one in six card transactions is now contactless as consumers increasingly use cards instead of cash for lower value payments."

Digital wallets, such as Apple Pay and the newly launched Android Pay, are expected to have a significant impact on how consumers pay for goods at retail, Adrian Buckle, chief economist for Payments UK told IT Pro.

"Payments via mobile phones, whether through an app, browser, or as part of a contactless payment will undoubtedly help to shape the way we pay in coming years," said Buckle.

"These new mobile payment technologies are expected to be embraced in particular by younger people and with the exception of banking app payments the majority, such as Android Pay and Apple Pay, are methods used to initiate card payments.

"By using near field communication (NFC) technology similar to contactless cards at the point-of-sale, these types of mobile payments may further increase the volume of contactless card payments."

Spending above the current contactless payment limit is one factor that may become more common as a result of demand for retailers to support mobile payment services.

The national limit for transactions on contactless cards is 30 increased from 20 on September 1, 2015.

However, both Android Pay and Apple Pay, support contactless payments over 30. Banks contacted by IT Pro, including the Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide, HSBC and credit card provider MBNA, all said they already have the infrastructure in place to support larger contactless payments, which require further user verification.

For contactless payments over 30 on Android Pay and Apple Pay, additional verification such as entering a pin code or fingerprint sensor approval is needed from the user.

All of banks we spoke to said it was up to the merchant's appetite to accept payments over 30. IT Pro has contacted some UK retailers for a response.

Google launched Android Pay in the UK last Wednesday. It is planning on adding further mobile web support to the service in coming months.

EasyJet passengers can now check-in for their flights by using an app that takes a picture of their passport, and could speed up check-in times for passengers.

The airline's app, available on iPhone, iPad and Android smartphones and tablets, eliminates the need for passengers to manually input details when registering their journeys. Passengers can simply scan in their passport details using the camera on their mobile device.

The new feature uses technology from credentials management company Jumio. The app has already been downloaded onto passengers' devices 10 million times so far.

EasyJet has declared it the first of its kind in Europe. A similar service has already been implemented by United Airlines.

"Our new mobile passport scanning function will save time for the millions of customers who use the app to input their travel documentation details. It's another example of innovating to make travel as easy as it is affordable with EasyJet," said James Millett, the company's head of digital.

"We've developed the new function in partnership with credentials management service Jumio to ensure details can be scanned in easily, safely and securely. Combined with our mobile boarding passes, customers can now check-in on their mobiles up to two hours before flights in 110 of the airports easyJet fly to across Europe."

Earlier this year, the airline launched a partnership with flightradar24 to track flights on the move, introduced a live update system to connect with travellers and was the first European airline to trial iBeacons.

The updated EasyJet app can be downloaded for free on Google Play and the Apple App Store.

The Royal Bank of Scotland Group has been forced to apologise to customers for the second time in nine months after a technical glitch left them unable to withdraw cash or make online payments.

The problems are reported to have started yesterday evening, and blighted customers of both RBS and Natwest until the early hours of today.

Many used the social networking site Twitter to complain they could not withdraw money from cash points, make in-store card payments or access online banking services.

At the time of writing, RBS had offered no explanation about the cause of the problem, but released a brief statement expressing its regret at the situation.

"We are disappointed that our customers have faced disruption to banking services for a period on Wednesday evening, and apologise for that. All services are now running as normal again," it stated.

The outage comes nine months after RBS, which owns Natwest and the Bank of Ulster, was forced to apologise to customers after a botched software upgrade stopped overnight payments going through for 17.5 million of its users.

This resulted in many of them missing rent, mortgage and salary payments.

Owen Cole, vice president of EMEA at application performance management vendor ExtraHop, said, given the importance of bank transactions, it is astounding that outages like this still take place.

"Downtime is something that could easily be avoided and organisations need to ensure they are utilising the fast changing technology available to them to prevent similar issues occurring in the future," said Cole.

"Businesses need to be able to see, predict and fix issues in real-time to prevent issues before the occur, and with an organisation's customer service, revenue and ultimately its reputation at stake, proactive monitoring and troubleshooting is something they can't afford not to have," he added.

Iain Chidgey, vice president and general manager at database management vendor Delphix, added: "The IT systems that financial organisations rely on are increasingly complex, the volume of data they handle unprecedented, and the risk of failure is higher than ever before. Yet, software teams can't afford the time and cost of creating the test datasets needed to perform adequate testing.

"Unfortunately when things do go wrong, many firms use older backup software to protect their data. Some of these systems have up to a 30 per cent failure rate when restoring from backup, which means that a software bug can crash the system, and recovery takes much longer than desired, further delaying the customers who require the system," he concluded.

Google has disabled the use of prepaid cards in its Wallet service after security researchers claimed a flaw in the technology could allow a hacker to acquire the user's PIN number.

The company temporarily disabled provisioning of prepaid cards for Google Wallet as a precaution until a permanent fix was found.

Despite the action and the research that inspired it, Google claimed its Wallet was perfectly safe to use. It said security issues were more likely to arise if users rooted their phones.

We were able to uncover the contents of the binary data and were shocked at what we found.

"People are asking if Google Wallet is safe enough for mobile phone payments. The simple answer to this question is yes. In fact, Google Wallet offers advantages over the plastic cards and folded wallets in use today," said Osama Bedier, vice president of Google Wallet and Payments, in a blog post.

"But sometimes users choose to disable important security mechanisms in order to gain system-level root' access to their phone; we strongly discourage doing so if you plan to use Google Wallet because the product is not supported on rooted phones. That's why in most cases, rooting your phone will cause your Google Wallet data to be automatically wiped from the device."

The flaw itself did require root privileges to succeed.

Finding the flaw

Joshua Rubin, a senior engineer with zvelo, claimed to have found the vulnerability in Wallet after looking through a "metadata" table in the database used by Google Wallet.

After cracking open the "deviceInfo" row within that table, he uncovered plenty of valuable information.

"We were able to uncover the contents of the binary data and were shocked at what we found," he explained in a blog post.

"Unique User IDs (UUID), Google (GAIA) account information, Cloud to Device Messaging (C2DM, also known as "push notification") account information, Google Wallet Setup status, "TSA" (this is probably related to "Trusted Services" not the "Transportation Security Administration") status, SE status and most notably "Card Production Lifecycle" (CPLC) data and PIN information."

Subsequently, Rubin discovered in the PIN information section a long integer "salt" and a SHA256 hex encoded string "hash." All he had to do then was run a brute force attack to determine the PIN itself.

"It dawned on us that a brute-force attack would only require calculating, at most, 10,000 SHA256 hashes. This is trivial even on a platform as limited as a smartphone. Proving this hypothesis took little time," he added.

"Google Wallet allows only five invalid PIN entry attempts before locking the user out. With this attack, the PIN can be revealed without even a single invalid attempt. This completely negates all of the security of this mobile phone payment system."

Rubin said he had been in contact with Google and the company said it was working quickly to resolve the issue.

The researcher suggested Google may have some trouble in releasing a proper fix as it needed to move the PIN hash and salt details into the Wallet's Secure Element (SE), used to store and encrypt sensitive data like credit card information. This would take time and mean additional financial costs for banks allowing customers to use the service.

"At present, the decision is in the banks' hands. They may actually choose to accept the risk imposed by this vulnerability rather than incur the financial and administrative overhead of allowing Google to release a proper fix (and thereby potentially put the banks on the hook for the PIN security)," Rubin added.

"zvelo feels that this would be a grave mistake and would expose users to undue risk."

It appears Google has been given time to resolve the issue.

If you are the kind of person that goes to a lot of conferences or networking events then you probably find yourself picking up plenty of business cards. Even in this modern age, that old fashioned small rectangle of card seems to be the most popular way of exchanging contact details with someone you meet face-to-face.

However, when you get back to the office, you are left with the tediously time-consuming task of typing the contents of these cards into your computer. Thankfully, you can just simply scan the cards into your computer instead.

There are several business card scanners on the market. The IrisCard Anywhere, the latest model from long-standing manufacturer Iris, looks very impressive on paper. The Anywhere is a small, portable, battery powered scanner that can scan not only business cards but also other documents up to A6 in size (105 x 148mm). The bundled software can store the scanned information and export it to a wide range of applications and data formats.

The scanner's small dimensions of 160mm long, 43mm tall and 56mm deep means it shouldn't take up much room in a laptop bag. It is powered by its own internal battery, which is charged via a mini-USB cable. Iris claims the battery is good for more than 150 scans.

Since scans can be stored on the scanner's internal 512MB of flash memory, cards can be scanned without the aid of a computer. Alternatively, scans can be saved to a USB flash drive, or to an SD card (or microSD card in an SD adaptor). These ports and slots are located on the back of the scanner. A 1GB SD card is supplied which should be more than enough storage. Scanned cards are, by default, saved as JPEG files. In our tests, these were between 102kb and 228kb in size depending on its complexity.

The scanning procedure is very straightforward. Having inserted the SD card or USB stick, or left the slots empty if you want scans stored on the scanner's internal memory, you press the power button and wait the adjacent light to stop blinking. You then feed a card into the front of the scanner and it is pulled through to the back. Then you feed in another card, then another and so on.

The scanning process is fast, and usually processing is finished by the time a card is spewed out of the back of the scanner. Only really colourful cards, or those containing photographs, seemed to need a bit longer. A light flashes while processing is underway, and it goes out when processing is finished so that you know you can insert a new card.

You can leave your business cards as JPEG files, but doing so seems like a waste when you can use the contact details from each card in other software. To make that happen, you need to use the provided CardIris Pro 5 software.

When connected via USB to your PC or Mac, the scanner's storage acts like any external drive, so you can view its contents and delete them when you've imported cards to the Cardiris Pro 5 software.

CardIris Pro 5 imports multiple scanned cards as a batch and uses optical character recognition (OCR) to read the contents of your scanned cards. It then creates entries for each contact in its database and fills in the appropriate fields. Inevitably, its OCR didn't get it right all the time, but it was pretty accurate, and the very well designed user interface makes it easy to correct any errors.

CardIris' contacts database has a fairly good range of fields for contact information including Skype number, email and web site address. You can add custom fields for otherwise unsupported information, such as a Twitter name.

The program is a basic but competent contacts manager. Data can be exported from CardIris Pro 5 to a wide range of external contact management applications including GoldMine, Lotus Notes, Outlook, Outlook Express and GroupWise, and to a variety of formats including HTML, XML, vCard, .csv, JPEG, TIFF, and even straight into an email.

It can retain the scanned card images as an aide memoir. You can view both the front and back of each card, rotate and crop cards, and even change the brightness and contrast of each image. More usefully, you can attach notes and a picture of the person in question to each business card.

There's no getting away from the fact that the OCR capability in CardIris Pro 5 is not perfect, so you will need to check every scan over and make a few tweaks here and there. This wasn't a time-consuming task though, and the scanning process is straightforward too.

Overall, the IrisCard Anywhere is a clever product that does its job well. What may prove more troublesome is being diligent enough to use it regularly, instead of accumulating a huge pile of unscanned cards.

Verdict

The IrisCard Anywhere 4 can be used to scan business cards and then store their contents – as well as facsimiles of the cards themselves. The CardIris Pro 5 desktop software, which works on both Macs and PCs, can be used as a contacts database and can also export contact data to a wide range of external applications and file formats. Some tweaking of the scanned and processed text may be required, but voracious business card collectors will find this perfectly acceptable.

Document feeding: Sheet feed type (single) Resolution (default): 300dpi Document Size (Max): Up to A6 Interfaces: SD, xD, MS, MS Pro, MMC, USB Slave (type-B Mini), USB Host (Type-A) for USB flash drive Output File format: JPEG On-board flash memory: 512MB Battery: 700 mAh Lithium polymer rechargeable battery through USB cable

Is there a subject more sensitive for hardcore computer users than the operating system they use? It's one of those subjects that inspires extreme opinion and zealots will be guaranteed to vent their opinions forcefully, and woe betide anyone who disagrees.

It's with some trepidation then that we pitch the most recently updated flavour of Linux, Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, against the new mainstream choice that is Windows 7.

While Windows is only manufactured by one company, there are literally hundreds of flavours of Linux available out there aimed as specific user bases, but a few are dominant. Ubuntu is increasingly become the defacto choice for standard desktop users simply because a lot of work has been put into making it as easy to use as possible.

Ubuntu is based on a version of Linux called Debian, which itself consists of a Linux kernel, combined with GNU project tools, while the desktop interface is based on the Gnome project. It's all distributed in Europe by Canonical. If that all sounds complicated, then welcome to the world of open source.

Ubuntu (pronounced Oo-boon-tu) has been around since 2004, since Mark Shuttleworth gathered a group of developers to create a new flavour of Linux aimed at the desktop. Version 9.10 is not an update to the ninth version, but rather the first numeral represents the year and the second the version release for that year. Each version is also known by an alliteratively named animal so 9.10 is Karmic Koala and the previous release was called Jaunty Jackalope.

The history of Windows is surely very familiar to people, but we'll have to mention that Windows 7 has been hailed as the panacea for the PR and to a large extent sales debacle that was Windows Vista and it's been very well received by reviewers and analysts alike.

Let the head to head comparison begin...

Our test system was a Lenovo ThinkPad X300 laptop, with a 1.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and a 64GB SSD hard disk, so while not bleeding edge it's still a relatively speedy piece of hardware. Windows 7 has a very straightforward installation process that won't trouble users there almost no user interaction. On our test system it took no more than 25 minutes to go from installing the disk to having a working system. However, upgrading from Windows XP or Vista can take a very long time, depending on the speed of your system and the number of applications you have installed. The bottom line is, if it's not a clean install, set aside a serious amount of time for your upgrade.

Ubuntu is a free system, and the ISO or disc image - can be downloaded from here. Once done the 750MB image needs to be burnt to a CD via a burning program such as Nero Burning ROM.

Windows 7 now has a very handy ISO burning utility built-in. Just insert an empty disc right click to burn and that's what we used to create our CD.

Once you pop it into your system, the Wubi (Windows Ubuntu Installer) comes up. This has a very clever system that enables you to install Ubuntu from inside Windows, without having to create a partition first. This is fantastic for first time users whatever their technical level, as it enables them to try Ubuntu with little effort or risk.

The WUBI effectively creates a virtual hard disk so that once you reboot you've a boot option to choose between Windows and Linux selectable via the arrow keys. There is a performance hit with this approach, but it's not significant.

If you're really in trepidation though you can try Ubuntu without having to install it at all and run it from the CD. A note has to be made of Ubuntu Netbook Remix, a version optimised for netbooks that can be installed directly from an appropriately formatted 1GB USB key.

So while the Windows 7 installation is simplicity itself, we were won over by the flexibility and ease of use of the Ubuntu Wubi tool.

Winner: Ubuntu 9.10

Of course, a quick and easy installation is not much use if nothing works, but fortunately Ubuntu performed flawlessly with the X300. We've had an issue in the past with an older version of Ubuntu and an old laptop, where the drivers failed to recognise the integrated Wi-Fi, rendering the machine fairly useless. There were no such problems here and we were online in minutes.

The installer even found the integrated mobile broadband modem and Bluetooth was also discovered, though for some reason it defaulted to this after every reboot. It even recognised the built-in volume controls. All in all though, Ubuntu felt like a comprehensive and polished OS install, and did better than Windows 7 beta on the same hardware.

It wasn't all peachy though as after a couple of suspends, it failed to find the Wi-Fi again and only a reboot restored connectivity.

Also, we've seen various reports, and one from our Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala reviewer, that it doesn't seem to like some ATI hardware from a few years back such as a Radeon 9600 card. As with all such things then, Your Mileage May Vary.

That said, as we wrote this, our Windows 7 laptop experienced a crash in its integrated graphics drivers, from which it recovered, but it's a clear sign that Windows 7 is not completely bullet proof. If there's something Windows-only you want to run, you have a good chance of doing so under WINE, special software for Linux that lets you run Windows apps.

While we had a very good experience with Ubuntu 9.10, it seems reasonable to say that Windows has the compatibility edge overall.

Winner: Windows 7

Performance and reliability

Ubuntu 9.10 is meant to offer a performance boost over its predecessor, Jaunty Jackelope. Indeed, Karmic Koala felt pretty light on its feet to us, even though it was installed in the Wubi virtual hard disk mode. Nothing ever felt sluggish or laboured and booting to the desktop was even quicker than Windows 7. Ubuntu would be a great way of reviving or pepping up old hardware, and we'd use it over Windows XP.

We were surprised to find an app freeze up on us in only our second day in though we tried to access a network video file knowing the network was no longer present and the media player froze the system.

Windows 7 is again less demanding that its predecessor, but it still needs beefier hardware than Ubuntu. We compared Windows 7 Starter Edition with Ubuntu netbook remix on an Acer Aspire One D250, and the difference was very marked. Ubuntu is certainly the less demanding OS.

Security

Microsoft has made strides when it comes to improving default security and Windows 7 is inherently more secure than Windows XP. However, you still need to ensure you have your firewall setup, your anti-virus software in place and UAC set to a sensible level.

Bit-locker and App locker are also great new features, especially for the business user.

However, Linux is known for its inherent resistance to attacks and has no open ports installed by default. Viruses are still virtually non-existent for Ubuntu, but there are still scanners available should you need them especially if you're going to be running Windows applications under WINE. And if you need to adjust the Firewall, Ubuntu 9.10 has its Uncomplicated Firewall' which is an ironic name considering you'll need to be a command line whizz.

Clearly though, while we note that Microsoft is improving on the issue, certainly the security plaudits go to Ubuntu.

Winner: Ubuntu 9.10

Interface

After your brief installation process you'll arrive at the Ubuntu desktop to find a smart, sleek operating system interface that has shades of both Windows and Mac. A bar sits across the top of the screen with icons at the top right for date and time, email notifications, wireless, audio and battery. Menus to get to applications, folders and system preferences are on the left.

Open files and folders and applications appear in the task bar at the bottom and there are some nice touches, such as the minimise-all button at the bottom left and the recycle bin located at the bottom right. Just to the left of this there's a virtual workspaces tool, as there is on the Mac.

The File Browser interface will also be fairly straightforward for Windows users with default folders for Documents, Music Pictures, Video and Downloads. It's clearly based on Windows XP and is perfectly effective but, the forward, back and up folder navigation may seem a little dated for anyone now comfortable with the Windows-style breadcrumb approach that was introduced with Vista.

It also seems quaint to have to point and click to launch applications. Where's the system wide search as in Windows 7?

Linux many have a reputation for leanness and efficiency, but Ubuntu can do whizzy too. In System Preferences you can adjust the visual effect and while it defaulted to Normal on our test system, pushing it up to Extra gave us Windows that stretch and wobble when they move. And if you want to really go to town on the effects you can install an app to give you more.

It's impressive but there's no doubt that Microsoft has done a great job with Windows 7, with Aero peek, jumplists and and its highly colourful array of icons making for a much improved task bar. And we would be averse to living without Instant search. Now rivalling Mac OS X, Window 7's interface is the very epitome of modern computing.

Winner: Windows 7

One of the key selling points of Ubuntu is that it gives you a great deal of what you need right there in the installation. Top of the list is a fully working Office Suite, in the form of Sun's Open Office, and it immediately impressed by being able to open a Word 2007 docx file, when we feared it would casue an issue.

You also get Firefox 3.5 for the web, Empathy for instant messaging, Evolution, a client for handling mail and a calendar, Gimp, for image editing and F-Spot for photo management. You get a functional media player built-in, a disc burning tool, a music player and even a bit-torrent client.

Of course, you can download Open Office and Gimp on your Windows PC too, but brownie points are awarded for them being ready and waiting in Ubuntu.

Conversely, Microsoft has decided to remove many applications from Windows 7 by default, so you have to download Messenger, Windows Mail, Photo Live Galley and Movie Maker as part of the Live Essential pack. Either this is to keep anti-trust suits off its back, or to keep that installation process light. Or probably a bit of both, but there you go.

Ubuntu also has superior connectivity with the cloud built-in thanks to its Ubuntu One service that offers up to 2GB of free storage. Microsoft meanwhile has Live Mesh for download and SkyDrive, which will give you 25GB for free but many users will not know about this.

Multimedia support is better in Windows. It will install DVDs straight out of the box and there's nothing in Ubuntu to compete with Windows Media Centre for a 10-foot media interface for use when sitting on the sofa.

Overall though, the built-in feature count is stacked in Ubuntu's favour.

Winner: Ubuntu 9.10

Ease of use

New in ubuntu 9.10 is the Software Centre - which gains points for spelling centre UK style - but loses them again for an uninspiring look and feel. However, it does make it pretty easy to install new software.

That said, we had a difficult time doing something as simple as getting an Adobe Flash plug-in working for Firefox. Going to the Flash Player download page gave us three options to download YUM, tar.gz, .rpm, and Deb all different types of installers.

The .deb file is the equivalent with a Windows installer but this generated an error. In this situation, for a new Linux user, there's little advice on offer on what to do from here. Whichever one we chose, we soon found we missed the simple executables in Windows, which are only a challenge if you're not sure how to click next'. In the end, via Google, we knew to look for the Synaptics Package Manager, searched for Flash using that and then successfully updated, thus enabling us to view sites such as YouTube. It was slightly painful getting there though.

The issue is that, in many cases, to install and manage Linux, you're going to need to hit the command line at some point, and get familiar with words the Terminal and words such as sudo'. All in all, the combination of a modern GUI and having to use DOS-like commands to do relatively simple things is really nothing less than odd. Ubuntu may have made great strides in this area but this is one area that Windows wins hands down.

Winner: Windows 7

Overall

There's no great revelation is saying the Windows 7 is a fine operating system that is going to remain the default choice for most, even though it costs money.

However, for a business, if your strategy is to try and avoid Microsoft, end users could be worse off than being stuck with Ubuntu 9.10. If you look hard enough, there's nothing your Windows machine can do that your Ubuntu one can't. That said, we as individuals would still be reluctant to run a machine without Windows on as a fall back.

But as much as we like Windows 7, we can't help but be impressed with what's on offer in Karmic Koala and if you've never tried Linux then it's an easy and relatively painless place to start.

Verdict

It's probably not enough to make Microsoft product managers lose any sleep, but Ubuntu 9.10 still does a good job at taking the fight to Windows 7. It's not quite as pretty or quite as slick, but it looks good, and it works. Though you'll have to get down and dirty with the command line eventually.

Canon has unveiled a small USB scanner that it claims offers the fastest scans per minute speed currently available from any portable device in its class.

The imageFORMULA P-150 can deliver 15ppm, which the company claimed is twice as fast as its closest competitor.

The compact device, aimed at mobile executives, is USB powered and its software is located on integrated memory, which auto loads when plugged into any Windows PC. It can therefore be used easily when on the road and on any compatible Windows computer.

Paper is placed onto the automatic document feeder that opens up at the top to accommodate 20 sheets of paper.

Trevor Dodsworth, head of marketing for business products, said its appeal was that is was no heavier than a bag of sugar.

Also unveiled was the Canon DR2020U, a 20 pages per minute capable office scanner with an business card feeder built into the side. This is capable of feeding through up to 15 business cards in once go. 50 A4 sheets can placed in the Automatic Document Feeder on top, while there's a flatbed scanner available too.

Canon has also released its first business scanners aimed at the Mac market - the imageFORMULA DR-2010M and DR-2510M.

At a briefing with IT PRO, Dodsworth said that there was still growth in the scanner market and that personal desk-based devices had largely taken over from large scale centralised systems.

"The dynamics have changed," he said. "Scanning has become much more front office orientated - it's no longer a back office function."

Dodsworth also said that Canon's market share for personal business scanners had increased from 13 per cent in 2007 to 25 per cent in the first half of 2009.

A great deal has been written about Windows Vista's failings. As an operating system that emerged unwanted and unloved in November 2006, it promptly failed to please consumers or businesses alike, enabling Apple to make hay at Microsoft's expense and push a fair number of users over to the Mac.

While Microsoft has a reputation as a slow moving beast, by January 2009 users were using the beta of a revamped OS that it hoped would repair the damage wrought by Vista Windows 7. Now, the Microsoft OS is already on the hard drives of millions of users that have access to Technet and MSDN accounts, but come 22 October it will be on retail shelves everywhere.

Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was revealed in mid 2008, and while rumours hinted at an early 2009 release date, it actually appeared on 28 August 2009, held back some say to spoil Microsoft's Windows 7 thunder.

We look at how the two stack up next to each other. Will Apple sweep the board or will it be a Windows whitewash? Let's find out.

Price

If you're buying a new Mac today Snow Leopard will be preinstalled on the system and if you're buying a PC, from 22 October Windows 7 will be on there. If you're choosing between them, the cheapest route will inevitably be Windows. You can buy a netbook now for less than 300, and Windows 7 will be featured on many. At the time of publication, the cheapest Mac you can buy is the Macbook, which starts at 749. The long rumoured tablet - if it appears - will very likely be cheaper than this, but it would still be pricier than a budget Windows machine.

Of course, the operating system that runs the iPhone and iPod touch is essentially Mac OS X, but optimised for those devices, so you could argue that 149 will gain you access to the OS via the 8GB iPod touch - but for this comparison we're keeping things focused on keyboard-equipped machines.

If you're planning to upgrade an existing machine, on the face of it Windows 7 loses out to Snow Leopard which costs just 29 - almost an impulse buy. Windows, meanwhile, will cost you up to 160 for the full Ultimate version. However, that's not really a fair comparison as officially Snow Leopard can only be installed as an upgrade from Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) which means that you need to spend 129 on the Mac Box Set'.

Therefore, at 65 from Amazon UK , Windows 7 Home Premium compares very favourably. However, as ever in life, things are complicated by the realities on the ground', which are that Snow Leopard can in fact be installed over Tiger, it's just that Apple doesn't want you to. And yes, students can get Windows 7 for 30, but that's just students, and only till January 2010. Equally, you could argue that Snow Leopard is really, just a service pack' and so should be free, but we'll have to move past that for this article.

With that in mind, the low price for Snow Leopard makes this a win for Apple.

Winner: Snow Leopard

Installation

Upgrading Windows has traditionally been a fraught process, but with every version of the OS, the installation has been increasingly refined. In our review of the Windows 7 beta we noted that on a well specced laptop with a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo and 4GB of RAM, a clean install tool only 25 minutes. Upgrading is always going to be a more complex, as the OS has to make changes to existing code, look after existing data and won't necessarily be on an optimised hard disk. Therefore, we're going to cut Mac OS X some slack for its 55 minutes install time on a, 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo equipped Mac Book Pro with 4GB RAM. Both processes are effortless though users no longer have to be afraid of upgrading.

Snow Leopard only asks for 5GB of free disk space when installing, whereas Windows 7 wants 16GB. Snow Leopard also gets extra points for freeing up large amounts of disks space. Apple says you'll gain at least 6GB of hard disk space, but in practice you can gain as much as 30GB.

Apple likes to give the impression that this is because Snow Leopard is so much more efficient, but in practice it's down to two things: the removal of many printer drivers that Leopard installed by default but that most people didn't need (now available via download) and the removal of Rosetta', the code that enables software to run on both Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs. Snow Leopard will only run on Intel-based Macs, so there's no need for Rosetta.

Either way though you do gain that disk space back, so it's a win here for Apple.

Winner: Snow Leopard

Interface

For most people this is really going to be killer, as it's the look and feel that differentiates the two operating systems in most people's minds. Apple has clearly been the design and interface leader for a long time, and old-time users will happily argue to the cows come home about how Microsoft allegedly stole the concept of the GUI from Apple in the first place. There's no doubt that Microsoft has made great strides with Windows 7 with a number of small, but when totalled up, significant additions.

Mac OS' Expose has been a tour-de-force of how to get a quick overview access of your system. Just hit a key, and all the open windows on the desktop appear in tile form a feature that has been refined in Snow Leopard. Windows now appear on a grid and if you hover over the app icon in the dock just the open Windows for that app appear.

Windows 7 expands on Vista Aero Glass with Aero Peek, which pops up a thumbnail of each open Window when you roll over it in the taskbar. While the thumbnails are great, there's no equivalent to Expose's All Windows view. You can still Windows-tab for a scrolling 3D view of each Window and Alt-tab has been improved to just show the Windows of the app that you're tabbing through.

Windows does make it easier to arrange apps though and the new Windows Snap shortcut lets you easily snap Windows to the sides of your monitor, which is very useful. Windows Shake, where you can remove all Windows by grabbing the title bar of the one you want is neat too, though we're not sure of the need for it.

Mac OS X also has Spaces, which are simple virtual desktops on which you can place applications.

Apple has tidied up the fonts on the dock, and improved the Stacks feature so you can use it instead of the Finder, but Windows 7 has jump lists, and a much improved taskbar, where you can dock your favourite apps. We like both, but overall, we'd rate Mac OS X as better looking and arguably easier to navigate.

However, as we're comparing specifically to Snow Leopard, the enhancements that have made to it over Leopard are minor, while Windows 7 is a great leap forward from Windows Vista. As such, we're actually giving this round to Microsoft.

Winner: Windows 7

Features

Microsoft probably won't be shouting it to the hills, but the fact is that Windows is based on Windows Vista code - it's still same old Windows under the hood. Windows 7 is, of course, available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions and one of the main thrusts of Snow Leopard is that many of the native applications have been recompiled using 64-bit code. However, 32-bit code is still fully supported on both.

Apple has said that Snow Leopard now deals better than the competition for multi-core CPUs thanks to its Grand Central Station tech, which is designed to take the pain out of coding for multi-core threads. Devs can now code for the OS, rather than create multi-threaded code to start with, which is hard. However, we'll have to wait to see how effective this is, as developers still have to create Grand Central-aware apps.

Microsoft has made much of the fact that it has now baked touch support directly into the OS, and there's little doubt that the launch of the OS will spawn a flurry of touch-related computing platforms. That said, Mac OS has had multi-gesture support for a while, and if you've got a new MacBook Pro you get support for that via the touch-pad.

Delving deeper, while Apple has long offered solid-state drivers in the likes of its MacBook Air, Windows 7 has a step-up on it here with specific support for SSDs, which write data in a very different way to SATA drives.

For media, Apple has introduced Quicktime X, which has a highly minimalist interface that's very effective and a very simple, but also useful, video editing feature built right in. Window Media Player is fine but looks a touch dated now.

We also like the improved information shown in Snow Leopard when you view Wireless networks, but it's also much easier to join a network in Windows 7 than it was in Vista.

Clearly there's some two and fro here so we'll have to make this one a draw.

Winner:Draw

Business use

But what will business users prefer? Apple is clearly making a play for the enterprise with Exchange support built right into the OS. This means that you can use Mail and not Entourage, which is part of Office but it does require Exchange 2007 at the back end. On Windows you need to add Outlook, but overall Outlook still has more comprehensive Exchange support.

As we described in our Windows 7 RTM review, this OS has PowerShell 2.0 system management tools built right in. If you run SharePoint services they will integrate right into Windows 7.

As for Backup, Windows 7 has been improved giving you more control, while Snow Leopard has faster Time Machine capabilities. Apple still wins for simplicity and elegance in execution here.

Nevertheless, despite Apple's efforts and an ever-improving ability to run Macs in a Windows environment, Windows machines are still the default option.

{b]Winner:Windows 7

Security

The headline feature in Windows 7 is the reduced annoyance from the User Account Control feature you can now turn it off and tone it down, and most people will be happy just turning it down a notch.

Windows 7 Ultimate sports Bitlocker to Go, which, if used, will help protect the data on memory sticks. There's also AppLocker, which lets you control applications on a corporate network via Group Policy.

Both have a firewall, but Windows 7 wins for having Windows Defender ready for spyware. Of course a third-party suite is still highly recommended but Snow Leopard's approach to security is still mainly to hide behind the shadow of Windows as a far larger target.

For that reason, we're giving this round, perhaps controversially, to Windows 7.

b]Winner:Windows 7

Overall Winner:

Overall then, we have a draw, two wins for Snow Leopard and three for Windows 7, meaning Microsoft wins our informal little showdown.

Of course, picking a winner in this particular grudge match is fraught with difficulties, and what you ultimately go for depends on your needs.

For serious businesses, who will continue to go with a PC, that will mean Windows 7. However for home users, Snow Leopard continues the trend of making Macs increasingly attractive buys, while the licensing of Exchange will see an increase in Macs in the workplace as business users want the elegance of a Mac while still having access to their work, without having to use BootCamp or virtualisation.

What's also clear from this is that both are forcing the other to innovate, and that's good news for consumers and business users alike.

Verdict

In our battle, Windows 7 places a killer blow over Snow Leopard. Windows is still going to remain the first choice for businesses, but Apple is clearly making strides and many users will want both. This is certainly one battle that looks set to continue for some time yet.

Biometric technology is readily available and of great value to the police, but they need to be accountable and transparent for the public to be on their side when it comes to using it.

That's the view of Ian Readhead, director of information for the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).

Concerned with how the community perceives the police, Readhead said he was keen to see independent regulation and scrutiny about the way police were conducting themselves, so that new technology was used in a balanced way and properly governed.

The police are already rolling out mobile biometric scanners nationwide to read fingerprints.

Readhead also said there was a "huge" debate to be had about other such abilities, such as collecting DNA as a biometric identifier.

He said it would present the government with a difficult dilemma: "We've given the police a power to take DNA from individuals if they commit and record an offence," he said.

"The important word is commit - they aren't charged or convicted. We've got four and half million records now, and many of those people have never been found guilty of any offence."

Readhead said it was important to ask - and have answered - the question of how long the police had a right to retain samples, and whether such samples should indeed be destroyed.

He went on to say that the House of Lords had no problem with keeping samples, but in Europe "22 judges" had a major problem with it.

Toby Stevens, director of the Enterprise Privacy Group, was in agreement and said that the UK was very concerned about privacy.

He said there were some "fantastic" biometric technologies available, but was concerned that they were being used in the wrong way.

Stevens said that technology was being used to identify people from a crowd rather than asking people if they could produce a credential - two very different applications.

"I would be hugely welcoming of being able to use a fingerprint in a shop to buy myself something with a credit card. That's no problem at all," he said.

"What I would be very worried about would be walking into a shop, with a camera taking a photo of my face and saying we are 99.86 per cent sure that you're linked to this bank account."

Stevens said there needed to be a far greater debate over the use of biometric technology for identification as opposed to authentication.

Click here to read about the potential uses of biometric technology in the workplace.

Kyocera Mita's new TASKalfa range is a departmental level multi-function device, based on a copier engine, but with full network print, fax and scanning facilities. It handles A4 and A3 paper as standard and can include a duplex scanner, as well as duplex print facilities.

The look of the machine depends on how many of the options you choose to add. In its basic configuration, it has two, 500-sheet paper trays and an additional multi-purpose tray for special media, including card up to 163gsm. All the trays can be configured to take A4 or A3 paper and the built-in flatbed scanner has an integral 100-sheet Automatic Document Feeder.

This is only the start, though, as you can enhance the configuration with a range of extra trays, finishing devices and multi-bin collators. There are hole punches, folders and staplers, so fully extended, the TASKalfa can produce folded, A5 booklets of up to 64 pages, in one operation.

All such printing and copying tasks are controlled from the machine's full-colour, 216mm, 800 x 600 pixel, touch-screen. While the array of different options can be daunting, particularly if the machine is well expanded, Kyocera Mita has tried to simplify things by offering a series of up to 10 programmable function keys, which take you straight to any control screen with a single press. There's also the facility to assign a sequence of settings to a virtual button, so you can, for example, have a single button for producing that 64-page, A5 booklet.

Consumables load from the front of the machine in typical copier fashion and the TASKalfa, like most Kyocera Mita machines, benefits from the company's long-lasting ceramic print drum, which should be good for 300,000 pages. Black toner is supplied in 25,000 page cartridges and colour toners are each good for 18,000 pages. This gives the machine page costs of around 0.53p per black page and 2.7p per colour one.

These costs assume a direct purchase of the machine. Many customers will opt for lease purchase or per-click leasing and several different options are available through Kyocera Meta's dealer network.

Kyocera Mita quotes speeds of up to 50ppm for black print and 40ppm for colour, both on A4 paper. At A3, the equivalent claims are 25ppm and 19ppm. We tested with 20-page and 60-page black text documents and produced a top, real-world, normal mode speed of 34ppm. While this is some way off the headline figure of 50ppm, it's still a respectable speed for this class of machine.

Our 20-page text and colour graphics document gave 30ppm and when we printed the 60-page duplex document, we saw 28ppm. This is a very good speed for printing double-sided pages, where there's usually a drop-off of 50 per cent or more from the single-sided speed. On A3 pages, we saw 17ppm for simplex colour and 12ppm for duplex.

Colour copying is also fast, with A4 pages fed through long-edge first for extra speed. A 20-page copy took just 34 seconds and when we combined the 20 pages down to a 10-page duplex document, it still took only 41 seconds. Finally, a full-colour 15 by 10cm photo came through in 12 seconds.

When we'd finished printing a 60-page job, the papers were almost painfully hot to take from the machine. We queried this with Kyocera Mita and the company said it would expect the paper to be hotter when printing duplex because of passing the hot fuser twice or using coated papers. Our job was single-sided and on normal copier paper, though.

The other immediate shortcoming is that the paper-out tray is immediately under the scanner and behind the large control panel. A new user may miss this altogether and wonder where his/her prints or copies are and, even when you know where to look, it's not exactly a convenient layout for retrieving pages.

Print and copy quality is very good. Black text comes through dark and dense and, although the machine's default resolution is just 600dpi, this is enhanced to 9,600 by 600dpi in software. Colour graphics, whether from original print or copies, are bright and dense and ideal for business use. Registration of text over colour is also very good, and we could see no haloing in our test samples.

Even our test photo print, something many colour lasers have trouble reproducing, looked surprisingly natural, with less of the 'small gamut' colouring that often plagues such prints. There's no sign of banding and there was even some detail in darker, shadowed areas, which is often lost.

The TASKalfa 500ci is a big, capable machine and Kyocera Mita appears to have covered most of the bases in producing an expandable multi-function device, which prints quickly, has low cost of ownership and enough expandability to grow with your business. A couple of design glitches, such as the positioning of the standard paper

Verdict

This departmental, multi-function device enjoys very flexible configuration options and can produce single and double-sided prints and copies easily, controlled by a large and well thought-out touch control panel. It's long-life drum ticks sustainability and running costs boxes and print quality is easily good enough for any office use.

DPI: 600dpi (9,600 x 600 enhanced), 40/19ppm A4/A3 printer

Paper tray: 2 x 500 + 100-sheet paper trays

Duty Cycle: 15,000 page monthly average duty cycle (150,000 max)

Connections: Direct print USB socket, USB 2.0, 10/100 Ethernet

Languages: PCL6 and PostScript L3 drivers,

Features: PDF direct print, duplex, booklet printing

London has come in at the bottom of the pile when it comes to wireless security protection used by retailers, according to the second annual survey of 4,000 stores in some of the world's busiest shopping cities.

The research also found 44 per cent of the wireless devices used by retailers such as laptops, mobile computers and barcode scanners could be compromised.

This was still significantly lower than the 85 per cent of wireless devices that had security vulnerabilities in the same survey last year, around the same time as details of the Wi-Fi hack at US retailer TJX, causing one of the biggest known theft of credit card details in the world.

Motorola scanned the airwaves at major shopping centres across the US and in London, Paris, Seoul and Sydney for the presence of wireless networks using systems from the wireless local area network (WLAN) network security provider, AirDefense it acquired in September last year.

The Motorola AirDefense survey monitored 7,940 access points (APs) and found 32 per cent were unencrypted, compared to 26 per cent in last year's survey.

London was ranked the lowest in terms of retail wireless security, where only 51 per cent of APs scanned using some form of encryption. Retailers in Los Angeles and New York came out top, deploying some form of encryption on 77 per cent of their wireless APs and Paris ranked second with 76 per cent.

Overall, a quarter (25 per cent) were still using Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), the weakest protocol for wireless data encryption.

But new WEP deployments are prohibited by version 1.2 of the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) in any part of the cardholder data environment (CDE) beyond 31 March 2009 and must eliminated from the CDE by 30 June 2010.

The research pointed out that, by using the same technology, configuration, security and naming conventions at every retail location, merchants can essentially repeat vulnerabilities across the store chain, rendering them non-PCI compliant and susceptible to attack.

Richard Rushing, Motorola Mobile Devices senior director of information security said that, despite an improvement on the numbers of vulnerable wireless devices found, "a significant majority of retailers are still susceptible to a network intrusion".

"[It's] a sign that wireless security remains an afterthought for many," he added.

A further 12 per cent of all APs monitored were using Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) security protocol protection, while 27 per cent were using WPA-PSK (pre-shared key), which can only be as strong as the shared password used to protect them. Overall, only seven per cent of retailers were using WPA2, the strongest Wi-Fi security protocol available today.

Business scanners have a very different purpose and design from their flatbed, graphic design siblings. Where flatbeds typically have high optical resolutions and are used for producing very high-quality colour scans, often of photographic originals, business scanners are much more concerned with high throughputs of text documents and are used primarily for OCR and document archival.

Xerox's DocuMate 262i is a neat scanner, about the size of a small bread loaf, and feels very solid and well made. Being sheet fed, it can only take individual sheets and can't scan from books or magazines, but it can deal with up to 38 pages a minute, according to Xerox. Since it's a two-sided (duplex) scanner, this translates to up to 76 sides per minute.

Paper feeds conventionally from a rear paper tray to a front one and the only controls are buttons to switch between simplex and duplex scans and one to select between nine different pre-defined scan modes there's a blue, single-digit display to show which one's selected.

The paper trays aren't ideally designed. The rear feed tray folds up neatly out of the way when the scanner's not in use, but unless we missed something, the front one doesn't. There's a choice of simple output tray or output tray with ID/credit card front feeder. This combination clip-on provides a small feed tray, which rests against the front of the scanner, so cards can be fed.

However, it has to be moved away from the scanner when scanning from the rear tray and Xerox has devised a slightly bizarre scheme using two spring-loaded latches which your rotate either side of the front feeder til they clip onto it and pull it forward. The latches have to be released again when you want to use the front feeder. How much simpler to have a simple peg or catch to hold the feeder in its forward position?

Xerox supplies full versions of Nuance PaperPort 11 for document management and OmniPage Pro 15 for OCR. Both are market-leading applications which do their respective jobs very well. You can OCR directly from within OmniPage Pro, though it's probably quicker and easier to scan and OCR as separate operations, using PaperPort.

Under test, the DocuMate 262i completed a 10-page scan of assorted documents, including invoices and tabular documents in 17 seconds. This equates to a scan speed of 35ppm, very close to the rated speed. A10-side duplex document (five pages) took 11 seconds, or 54ppm. Both these tests were conducted at 200dpi, the default resolution of the scanner, which is good enough for archival.

Increase the resolution to 300dpi, the minimum for effective OCR, and a 10-page document takes 25 seconds, or 24ppm. The scanner takes around 10 seconds for the lamp to warm-up, so this time needs adding on to the first scan of a session. With larger scanning jobs the DocuMate 262i can take 50 sheets at once any warm-up time will be a smaller proportion of the total and the scan speed will approach the rated figure more closely.

Pages feed well and even given the high speed, there are few misfeeds. The scanner includes ultrasonic double-feed detection anyway, and the software can auto-straighten and auto-crop pages.

There's a single USB socket on the back of the scanner as a local connection to a PC Macs are not currently supported. A network adapter is available as an option.

The facility to scan ID/credit cards from the front is a useful extra. Feed the card by sliding it onto the guides on the front feed tray and the scanner takes it in, spits it out onto the output tray below and produces a duplex scan of the front and back of the card, as separate pages. As with any job, a card can be scanned in colour, greyscale or black and white.

Xerox puts a 3,000 page-per-day duty cycle on this scanner, so while it doesn't have the vigour of heavy-duty devices like the Canon ImageFORMULA DR-X10C which is designed for scanning bureaus and dedicated archival departments a single DocuMate 262i would be able to handle most of the output from even a reasonably big department. At the price, it would be reasonable to add a second or third unit if that department grows in size, too.

Verdict

This is a fast, efficient, duplex business scanner, which is easy to use and comes with a good selection of useful support software. Given its comparatively low-price, it's well-specified, with features like double-feed sensing, de-skewing and auto-cropping. The front-feed card reader is effective, if a little Heath Robinson in implementation.

Dpi: 600dpi, 38ppm (76spm) A4 sheet-fed scanner Colour: 24-bit colour, 256 greyscale Paper handling: 50 sheet auto-document feeder Duplex: Yes Duty cycle: 3,000 pages per day Software: Nuance PaperPort 11 document manager, OmniPage Pro 15 OCR, Kofax Virtual ReScan 4.2 image enhancer, Vioneer OneTouch bundled