"If you try to sell a machine that can copy itself you have a problem: you'll only sell one," says Dr Bowyer. "So we're giving the entire design and all the software away free like Linux and Firefox."

As corporate and government organizations embrace the Web for delivering more education and training programs, a wealth of free and open source e-learning applications will help lower the barrier to entry. TechWorld looks at the options.

The laptop market has been absolutely turned on its head in the last 12 months. It used to be all about how much power you could fit into a small form factor. And yet, in the year that Alienware has unleashed its frighteningly quick Area-51 m15x gaming laptop, all anyone wants to talk about is the latest low-end Eee PC rival to have broken the £300 barrier.

If Google really wanted to deliver a knockout punch to Microsoft, it would integrate OpenOffice with Google Docs, and sell support for the combined suite to small businesses, medium-sized business, and large corporations. Given the reach of Google, the quality of OpenOffice, and the lure of free, it's a sure winner.

A recent report from ABI Research highlights the rise of mobile Linux, estimating that 23 percent of the world’s smartphones will have a Linux operating system by 2013. It appears that much of that growth will come at the expense of Nokia’s Symbian, and that LiMo and Android will be the main beneficiaries.

Right now, as you read this, there are at least 100,000 people in Sony’s fantasy worlds. They’re pretending to be elves, or trolls, or ninjas, or pirates, or cheese makers, or any of a thousand other fantastic things; and they’re all paying a monthly fee for the privilege.

To keep up with the growing popularity of the recent wave of low-cost, flash drive-equipped, wireless, small form factor "netbook" computers, Ubuntu Linux this week announced its own specially modified Linux operating system that can run on the machines.

Shenzhen, China-based smartphone design company Tranzda Technologies is marketing five phone designs that use its NewPlus Linux phone application stack. All five Tranzda designs include GPS, along with optional features that include WiFi, cameras, and biometric fingerprint authentication.