I happened to be using a laptop the other day that I don't normally use, so, as you may expect, on booting it up I had a whole shed-load of updates to install.

I install a LOT of software in the course of any given month, and so I'd like to think that I'm impervious to the annoyances of downloads, but after a little impatient finger drumming and a trip to make a cup of tea I discovered that there is still one aspect of the install that manages to leave me apoplectic EVERY SINGLE TIME.

The pre-ticked 'install other software' box.

So, when Sun prompts me to install an update for Java – I'm fine with that. I use it, I need an update. Fine.

Do I want to install Yahoo's toolbar? No, I really, really don't. And that fact that you pre-tick that box that says I do? That makes me hate your company a little bit. And Yahoo, for that matter.

Apple and Microsoft

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I was recently asked to run a half marathon by Sony Ericsson at its forthcoming Run to the Beat event on the 27 September.

The premise for the event is simple - run for 13.1 miles around lovely Greenwich on a pleasant Sunday morning, and to help out, Sony Ericsson has partnered with Dr Costas Karageorghis from Brunel University to inject an element of science into the proceedings.

And, of course, there's always the added boost of technology - high tech trainers, fitness and heart rate monitors, those special stretchy tops you always see the fitter people wearing - to help pick up the slack when the fitness lacks.

I'll be testing out all the options on offer in the coming weeks to see if it helps out (or makes things easier) so if you're thinking of heading out on a long jog you'll know which fitness kit is best.

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According to well-respected Time's website, the world's greatest tech failures of the last decade include Windows Vista, Palm and, believe it or not, YouTube.

Now the list, assembled by 24/7 Wall St, documents what are called 'colossal failures' picked with a number of criteria which seem to largely boil down to "missing the mark of living up to the potential that its creators expected, and that the public and press were lead to believe was possible."

That's right – it's a seemingly arbitrary list that has some fairly non-offensive failures (who can disagree with Zune or Segway?) and some that, well, perplex.

YouTube is included in the list by dint of losing a lot of money. "YouTube is big, but that has not made it a success," says the author.

Harsh but unfair?

Of course, you would be entitled to point out that, considering it is one of the most trafficked sites in the world, considering it is still growing and considering it is slowly moving towards a more profitable model, writing it off at this stage as a "colossal tech failure" would seem a little bit, well, premature.

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I love my Asus Eee PC 701, even though it's starting to look a bit long in the tooth next to some of the funkier new models.

Why I love it is pretty important to the rest of this argument, so let's just recall why everyone got so keen on the netbook in the first place:

• It's cheap. It's so marvelously cheap, I can afford to lose it/have it nicked, which means it gets taken to places my laptop doesn't. Like on holiday.
• It's the right kind of cheap. £250 or so is a classic mass market price point for tech. It's where a purchase stops being something you need to talk yourself into, and becomes something you need to talk yourself out of. Just as the digital camera went ballistic at £250, so went the netbook.
• It's so small. I'd wanted something like a netbook for years, ever since I saw my first ultraportable Sony Vaio, but there was no way I was going to pay Vaio prices when I already had a laptop. With the Eee PC, I got the size without the pricetag.
• And it can do so much. Nuff said.

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Twitter has really come into its own this week. Yep, so there have been some disappointments, like @CHRISDJMOYLES and @schofe discussing it for a near half hour on Radio 1.

And then there was all that rubbish with Stephen Fry in the lift. I'm not even going to write his Twitter name for fear that he might get more followers, swelling his surely already rather large head/ability to get free stuff.

But the good old British weather has brought out the very best in Twitter. Usually my feed is filled with tech PRs and journos tweeting endlessly about the news and reactions of the day, but this week #uksnow (that's a 'hashtag,' in case you didn't know) has filled the agenda.

Instead of jabberings about web apps, networking events and the upcoming Mobile World Congress, gleeful workers were instead posting pictures of snow-bound streets and people wittering on about Starbucks withdrawal symptoms. It's been a lot of fun.

Today, it's still very snowy in Bath, where some of us TechRadarians are based – and quite unbelievably it's our local bus station that really makes me think that Twitter is useful for far more than just inane wibblings.

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