Making sense of the Windows 8 versions

With only two versions of Windows 8 to be available to consumers, plus one for ARM devices (pre-installed only), what you get ought to be straightforward.

But, as is usual with a new version of Windows, there's still room for confusion because what you get with each version overlaps slightly.

Windows 8 (yes, just Windows 8) is the home version for x86 Intel and AMD PCs. The features you do and don't get mostly make sense; joining a domain, encrypting your disk with BitLocker and being able to log into your PC remotely are business features.

You can connect to a PC at work from a Windows 8 system, with Remote Desktop or a VPN, you can combine multiple hard drives into one storage 'pool' that has multiple copies of your files and you can mount VHD and ISO images as if they were hard drives – but you can't boot from a VHD file.

And anyone who speaks more than one language or travels between countries will be delighted that you can switch not just the keyboard but the Windows interface from one language to another without paying extra.

What doesn't immediately make as much sense is that not only is Media Center not included with Windows 8; it's "an economical media pack add-on" that's only available for Windows 8 Pro, which is otherwise for business users (or enthusiast users). Again it's for for x86 Intel and AMD PCs.

The three Windows 8 versions

• Windows 8 (for x86, Intel/AMD)
• Windows 8 Pro (for x86, Intel/AMD)
• Windows RT (for ARM)

Although Media Center has dedicated fans (around 50 of whom wrote to Windows head Steven Sinofsky to ask about the feature), only 6% of Windows 7 users ever launch it and only 25% of those use it for more than ten minutes at a time.

Microsoft has to pay licences for the codecs used in Media Centre, including Dolby technology. When the Developer Preview came out last September, Sinofsky commented that "the feedback about Media Center was predominantly "we will pay extra, just include it" based on the input directly to me," so it looks like Microsoft is taking users at their word.

All three feature Windows 8 Metro

All three versions of Windows 8 run Metro-style applications written in WinRT, the new Windows RunTime programming framework, which is also what Windows RT is named for. Windows RT will come pre-installed on ARM devices, you won't be able to install it yourself.

This is what we've previously been calling Windows on ARM. It has both the Metro Start screen and the Windows desktop, with Task Manager and Explorer and support for multiple monitors (remember Windows RT devices won't be just tablets and they'll have connectors like HDMI).

But even though you get the desktop on Windows RT, you can't install desktop applications. It comes with ARM-specific versions of Office apps – but just Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, so if you want Outlook you need a PC with an Intel or AMD processor.

Windows RT doesn't include Media Center, or Windows Media Player; it will have updated version of the Music and Video apps we've seen for the Consumer Preview.

But it will have the Play To feature that's only been in Media Player so far; this is now something any software can use to send the music or video you're playing to a DLNA-connected device like a smart TV, Xbox or Sonos music player and we expect to see that show up in the Metro Music and Video apps.

It doesn't have BitLocker, but it does have its own form of device encryption, which is based on a Trusted Platform Module like BitLocker. That's not the same hardware TPM you find in Intel PCs today, it's part of the firmware in the system, but that's the same way that System on Chip x86 PCs running Windows 8 will implement the TPM, to keep power and hardware costs down.

The main difference between device encryption and BitLocker seems to be that BitLocker can be managed by an IT administrator in a business using group policies and a domain; with no group policies or domain support that won't work on Windows RT. If you can manage device encryption it will be through Exchange Active Sync – the way you sync email and calendar appointments – which can already make you use a strong password on a smartphone or a Windows 8 PC.

Windows 8 power consumption

Running desktop apps on a tablet would be a bad idea. Although there will be Ultrabook-style thin notebooks running Windows RT rather than just tablets, tablets with just a touch screen aren't the best way to use the tiny icons and toolbars of the average Windows program.

Even if you could run x86 instructions virtually on an ARM processor they'd be slow, and with all the background services and startup apps and power-hogging tools built into Windows app, they'd run down your battery.

But if you want a thin, light, low power Windows 8 tablet that does run desktop applications, that's still on the cards using low-power System on Chip (SoC) processors from Intel and AMD.

Like ARM-based Windows RT devices, Windows 8 PCs with x86 chips can give also you Connected Standby (where your PC turns off when you turn off the screen but leaves the Wi-Fi or mobile broadband running and receiving only the notifications you've asked for, so your Metro-style email stays up to date and you can get VoIP calls, but apps aren't running and neither is Windows).

Connected Standby needs specific hardware that's not available yet, including Wi-Fi and mobile broadband hardware that can stay awake while the system is asleep, and a new level of ACPI power settings as well a new version of the NDIS network interface standard.

Backwards compatibility vs streamlined UI

And while any Windows 8 or Windows 8 Pro PC can have Connected Standby according to Microsoft's feature list, it's only going to be low-power SoCs that can meet the requirement for only using 5% of battery if you leave them on Connected Standby for 16 hours overnight.

If you want the best of both Windows 8 and Windows RT, SoC PCs will give you that. But running Windows apps also means they need antivirus software and they'll come with all the crapware OEMs like to 'enhance' their PCs with; Windows RT tablets might come with extra Metro apps form OEMs but they'll be easy to remove and they can't run in the background.

When you come to pick a Windows 8 PC, you'll have to weight up compatibility versus losing some of the deadweight of the Windows environment. That's what the different versions of Windows 8 are really about.

Analysis: Apple results loom large for tech - and the market

When Apple's shares fall, is Wall Street's entire performance at risk?

The outsize influence of Apple on both the technology sector and the entire stock market was thrown into sharp relief when the iPad maker's shares fell 4.1 percent on Monday.

The alpha male of the stock market, Apple accounts for a third of the S&P tech sector's 20 percent year-to-date return, the best performance of any of the 10 sectors in the Standard & Poor's 500 index this year.

The problem is, Apple's success may be masking a larger trend in the wider market toward slower profit growth.

Technology companies are expected to report earnings growth of 7.5 percent for the first quarter, according to Thomson Reuters estimates. But excluding Apple, which is due to report results next Tuesday, the technology sector is looking at an earnings decrease of 0.3 percent, according to the data.

"It seems like every quarter, every year, everyone is predicting technology is this great group, and recently, without Apple it would never be there," said Daniel Morgan, who helps manage about $3.5 billion at Synovus Trust Company in Atlanta. Synovus Trust's assets include about 30,000 Apple shares.

Big tech companies that have already reported this quarter have done little to inspire Wall Street. Google reported in-line revenue last week, while International Business Machines and Intel Corp results reported late Tuesday failed to ignite buying. All three stocks ended lower on Wednesday.

Still to come are results from Microsoft, due Thursday, and Texas Instruments, expected on Monday.

In addition to earnings, another key performance measure are company profit margins, an indication of how much control a company has over its costs. Profit margins are higher for tech companies than for any other sector in the S&P 500 sectors, but much of that advantage is a result of Apple.

For the first quarter, the net profit margin for the tech sector is estimated at 17 percent. That falls to 15.7 percent when Apple is excluded, Thomson Reuters data showed, enough to push technology into the second spot, after the financial sector.

It's a similar story for revenue

Tech sector revenue growth is estimated at 6.7 percent. Without Apple? It's just 2.3 percent, Thomson Reuters data showed.

Apple's stock accounts for 4.5 percent of the S&P 500 index, a weighting not seen by any company since 1999, when Microsoft Corp had a 4.9 percent weighting. Apple is the largest holding for many money managers, to say nothing of the billions of dollars in index funds of which Apple is a core holding.

Apple's massive market capitalization, which stands at $566 billion after hitting $600 billion earlier this month, means that the company's impact on the market has been "enormous," S&P analyst Howard Silverblatt said.

Apple stock is up about 50 percent for the year so far, helping the S&P 500 to a rise of about 10 percent. Among stocks in the S&P, its performance is ranked sixth so far this year, and most of those that have out-performed Apple, such as Netflix, are rebounding from big losses in 2011. Not Apple.

"If you were not in Apple in the first quarter, you were hurting. Options on it are extremely expensive," Silverblatt said.

Year-over-year profit growth for S&P 500 companies slowed from 18 percent in the third quarter of last year to 9.2 percent in the fourth quarter. It is estimated at 4.4 percent in the first quarter, Thomson Reuters data showed.

Apple's earnings growth has been on the opposite path. Earnings per share jumped 52 percent in the third quarter from the year-ago period and 116 percent in the fourth quarter. First-quarter EPS is seen up 54 percent, based on the Thomson Reuters consensus estimate.

Within the exchange-traded funds market, Apple accounts for about 18 percent of Powershares QQQ Trust.

Given this prominence, an earnings disappointment from Apple would hit far more than the stock itself.

If Apple were to see margins squeezed, even slightly, it would have an outsized influence on tech sector margins, earnings and by extension, broader S&P 500 performance, Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at BTIG LLC in New York, wrote in a recent report.

That's part of what frightened investors as the stock tumbled nearly 9 percent in a five-session run of losses that ended Tuesday.

Of course, Apple, with its long record of beating market expectations, is not in the business of disappointing people.

Thomson Reuters StarMine shows a predicted surprise of 3.9 percent for Apple's upcoming results. A number above 2 percent suggests a strong likelihood the company will beat estimates.

That compares with a 1 percent surprise for the whole S&P 500 tech sector, according to StarMine. Among other individual companies, Microsoft has a predicted surprise of negative 0.2 percent for earnings.

The pullback in Apple shares has underscored the fact that other tech companies simply do not have the same kind of heft.

Some fund managers and individual investors are assessing the risks of owning too much Apple.

"'No tree grows to the sky' is the adage," said Joseph Doyle, co-fund manager at Morris Capital Advisors LLC in Malvern, Pennsylvania. The firm has trimmed its Apple position twice to take profits, though Apple remains among its top holdings.

Technically, the stock could be headed for more losses, which could drive the S&P 500 lower. The stock broke below its five-day and 20-day moving averages of $623.77 and $613.19, respectively, last Friday, and remains below those levels.

"We expect Apple to act as a drag on the major composites due to its outsized impact on S&P 500 earnings and price movements," said Gareth Feighery, president of options education firm MarketTamer.com in Philadelphia.

Some managers noted more tech companies are paying dividends these days to attract more investors.

"A lot of the old core, mature-growth tech companies like Intel, Microsoft, Cisco and Qualcomm are paying dividends, and that's opening them up for the possibility of new funds that could go into them," Morgan said.

Apple, too, in March said it would pay a dividend, declaring its first dividend in 17 years.

It's hard to deny that Apple presents a conundrum. It's too valuable not to own - creating a risk should its stratospheric rise eventually falter.

"Apple has kind of led us to this point," Morgan said. "The question is, Do some of these other names start picking up the slack if Apple is not doing quite as well?"

Social media is gold for Olympics advertisers

Advertisers are going for Facebook as athletes go for the gold, in the first Olympic Games where marketers are placing such high hopes on social media to create a buzz for their brands.

With the London summer Olympics just 100 days away, advertisers hope that social media will do much of the heavy lifting in raising brand profiles, by getting consumers to chat about promotions online.

Big consumer brands have long seen the Olympic Games as a way to get more consumers to buy their products. This year, several are thinking of them as a way to talk up their brands on Facebook - which of course could lead to even more purchases.

The games run from July 27 to August 12 this year.

"Back in 2008, it was very much about paid media," said Mark Renshaw, chief innovation officer at Leo Burnett, a unit of No. 3 advertising agency Publicis, referring to the last summer Olympics. "Now the reason they want to have a relationship (with consumers) is to generate shared media."

That's in part because of the sheer amount of time people are spending on social media. By the end of last year, some 794 million people visited Facebook each month, and each spent an average of 377 minutes — more than 6 hours — on the site, according to comScore Inc.

In 2008, Facebook had just 145 million users. Online marketing then focused on building websites, Renshaw said. Today, brands are building elaborate campaigns partly designed to create a buzz on Facebook and other social media sites such as Pinterest and Twitter.

Take Samsung Electronics, which recently launched its U.S. Olympic Genome Project. It uses a game called "How Olympic Are You?" to establish people's connections to the Olympics, such as finding athletes from their hometowns, or athletes who like the same music or movies they do.

It gathers the information by tying in to a user's Facebook page. The game dangles prizes such as discounted electronics and a trip to the Olympics to keep consumers coming back; whenever consumers complete an activity, such as a quiz on Olympic trivia, they are invited to post results to their Facebook page.

Facebook "is where consumers are," said Ralph Santana, chief marketing officer of Samsung. "If you can figure out how to build communities around your brand, it's really powerful."

Consumers are spending about 8 minutes per visit, on average, on the "How Olympic Are You?" site, Santana said. That is about double the time they spend on ordinary Samsung sites.

Social media "drives us toward content that is able to provoke consumer conversation," said James Eadie, Olympic portfolio director for Coca-Cola Co. "That drives longevity."

Coke's Olympic gambit is its "Move to the Beat" campaign based on a song created by DJ Mark Ronson and singer Katy B. Fans can collect beat fragments on Facebook and edit a version of the song for their own page.

Procter & Gamble this week unveiled its "Thank You Mom" advertisement showing mothers around the world raising Olympic athletes. Marc Pritchard, P&G's global marketing and brand building officer, is hoping online viewers will "like" the video on Facebook and drive traffic to its own Facebook pages for brands like Tide detergent, Pampers diapers, Oil of Olay moisturizers, and Cover Girl cosmetics.

"What we want to try to do is get a 10 percent lift on our Facebook brand pages," he said, meaning P&G hopes to add 5 million to its fan base of 50 million over the next few months. "That would be a lot quicker than we normally do."

Most brands are developing ways to calculate what each click of the "like" or "share" button is worth, Renshaw said, based on factors such as how many people saw it, engaged with it, and the total spent on a particular campaign.

Digital media spending by London 2012 sponsors amounts to 15-20 percent of budgets, Leo Burnett says, with digital outlets attracting funds that might have gone to television in prior years.

None of the brand representatives interviewed for this article would provide advertising spending estimates for their Olympic campaigns. But ad executives said a comprehensive multimedia Olympic campaign might cost anywhere from $30 million to $50 million.

The pricetag is worth it, brand executives said, because they believe they can weave tighter connections between their brands and target customers during the Olympics compared to other events. P&G's Pritchard said recalls of messages after the company's Vancouver 2010 Olympics television campaign was 30 percent more than for its regular campaigns.

Penveu smart 'whiteboard' pen on test in US schools

An innovative electronic pen which could replace whiteboards is to be tested in schools in the US.

Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second largest with 770,000 students, will soon try out the gadget, named Penveu.

The handheld wireless device "electronically" works on any surface such as a bare wall, computer monitor or pulldown screen.

Penveu's makers say it is far cheaper than existing whiteboard systems.

The device, which writes, points, and highlights on any flat surface, costs $499 (£312) for educational use - far less than existing interactive whiteboards which can cost more than £2,000.

Additionally, Penveu is easier to assemble and use than traditional electronic whiteboards. 

Penveu, essentially, becomes an interactive whiteboard that is so precise both students and teachers can use it close up or from the back of the classroom.

The pen uses technology known as "embedded computer vision", first designed for satellites and military navigation systems. 

The Texas-based Interphase Corporation has refined the technology over the past three years; it has applied for patents.

'Hyper-connected'

The company will unveil Penveu at Demo, a conference for emerging technologies in Silicon Valley.

After connecting to any VGA-ready device (old-fashioned projector, TV or monitor) on any operating system, Penveu is able to draw, write and highlight in nine bright colours without tarnishing the surface. 

Any content created by the Penveu can be saved for future use


It works like a portable electronic wand and the "ink" can be erased with a click of a button. Content, such as lesson plans or slide presentations, can be saved for later reference. 

Warren Dale, who makes technology recommendations for Los Angeles schools, is an early enthusiast. He said this generation of "hyper-connected" children "are used to a much higher level of stimulation".

"Today's kids are all about collaboration, Facebook, taking and sharing pictures, making and sharing movies," he told the BBC. 

"With Penveu, I can easily and inexpensively add another collaborative tool in the classroom."

Mr Dale said that as an educator with over 30 years' experience, he had observed classroom technology improving student learning and test scores. "I see [Penveu] making a major impact in US classrooms," he said. 

"I see [Penveu] making a major impact in US classrooms," he said. 

'Huge' water resource exists under Africa

Scientists say the notoriously dry continent of Africa is sitting on a vast reservoir of groundwater.

They argue that the total volume of water in aquifers underground is 100 times the amount found on the surface.

The team have produced the most detailed map yet of the scale and potential of this hidden resource.

Writing in the journal Environmental Research Letters, they stress that large scale drilling might not be the best way of increasing water supplies.

Across Africa more than 300 million people are said not to have access to safe drinking water.

Demand for water is set to grow markedly in coming decades due to population growth and the need for irrigation to grow crops.

Freshwater rivers and lakes are subject to seasonal floods and droughts that can limit their availability for people and for agriculture. At present only 5% of arable land is irrigated.

Now scientists have for the first time been able to carry out a continent-wide analysis of the water that is hidden under the surface in aquifers. Researchers from the British Geological Survey and University College London (UCL) have mapped in detail the amount and potential yield of this groundwater resource across the continent.

Helen Bonsor is from the BGS is one of the authors of the paper. She says that up until now groundwater was out of sight and out of mind. She hopes the new maps will open people's eyes to the potential.

"Where there's greatest ground water storage is in northern Africa, in the large sedimentary basins, in Libya, Algeria and Chad," she said.

"The amount of storage in those basins is equivalent to 75m thickness of water across that area - it's a huge amount."
Ancient events

Due to changes in climate that have turned the Sahara into a desert over centuries many of the aquifers underneath were last filled with water over 5,000 years ago.

The scientists collated their information from existing hydro-geological maps from national governments as well as 283 aquifer studies.

The researchers say their new maps indicate that many countries currently designated as "water scarce" have substantial groundwater reserves.

However, the scientists are cautious about the best way of accessing these hidden resources. They suggest that widespread drilling of large boreholes might not work.

Dr Alan MacDonald, lead author of the study, told the BBC: "High yielding boreholes should not be developed without a thorough understanding of the local groundwater conditions.

"Appropriately sited and developed boreholes for low yielding rural water supply and hand pumps are likely to be successful."

With many aquifers not being filled due to a lack of rain, the scientists are worried that large-scale borehole developments could rapidly deplete the resource.
Man filling jerry can African water supplies may be more resilient to climate change than was thought

 According to Helen Bonsor, sometimes the slower means of extraction can be more efficient.

"Much lower storage aquifers are present across much of sub-Saharan Africa," she explained.

"However, our work shows that with careful exploring and construction, there is sufficient groundwater under Africa to support low yielding water supplies for drinking and community irrigation."

The scientists say that there are sufficient reserves to be able to cope with the vagaries of climate change.

"Even in the lowest storage aquifers in semi arid areas with currently very little rainfall, ground water is indicated to have a residence time in the ground of 20 to 70 years." Dr Bonsor said.

"So at present extraction rates for drinking and small scale irrigation for agriculture groundwater will provide and will continue to provide a buffer to climate variability."

Concorde

Concorde Specifications

Primary Function:Passenger Aircraft
Contractor:Aerospatiale and British Aerospace
Crew:9 (3 Flight crew and 6 Cabin crew); up to 128 passengers
Unit Cost: N/A
Powerplant:Four Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 Mk910 turbojet engines rated at 38,050 lb afterburning        and 10,000 lb cruise thrust each.
Dimensions
Length: 204 ft. 4 in.
Wingspan: 83 ft 10 in
Height: 28 ft. 8.5 in.
Weights
Empty: 173,500 lb
Maximum Takeoff: 408,000 lb
Performance
Speed: 1333 mph (Mach 2.04)
Ceiling: 63,000 ft
Range: 4,500 miles (max)
Armament:N/A
Service Life
First Flight: October 1, 1969
End of Service: October 24, 2003
Number Built: 2 (prototypes), 2 (pre-production), 16 (production) [20 total]


Concorde Achievements
The Concorde was the first civil airliner equipped with an analogue fly-by-wire flight control system.
The Concorde was one of only two commercial passenger airliners to fly faster than the speed of sound.

Concorde Features  
Concorde was an ogival delta-winged ("OG delta wing") aircraft with four Olympus engines based on those originally developed for the Avro Vulcan strategic bomber. The engines were jointly built by Rolls-Royce and SNECMA. Concorde was the first civil airliner to have an analogue fly-by-wire flight control system. It also employed a trademark droop snoot lowering nose section for visibility on approach.

These and other features permitted Concorde to have an average cruise speed of Mach 2.02 (about 2,140 km/h or 1,330 mph) with a maximum cruise altitude of 18,300 metres (60,000 feet), more than twice the speed of conventional aircraft. The average landing speed was a relatively high 298 km/h (185 mph, 160 knots).

Concorde pioneered a number of technologies:

For high speed and optimisation of flight:

Double-delta (ogee/ogival) shaped wings
Variable inlet ramps
Supercruise capability
Thrust-by-wire engines, predecessor of today's FADEC-controlled engines
Droop-nose section for improved visibility in landing

For weight-saving and enhanced performance:

Mach 2.04 (~2,200 km/h - 1350 mph) cruising speed for optimum fuel consumption (supersonic drag minimum, although turbojet engines are more efficient at high speed)
Mainly aluminium construction for low weight and relatively conventional manufacture (higher speeds would have ruled out aluminium)
Full-regime autopilot and autothrottle allowing "hands off" control of the aircraft from climbout to landing
Fully electrically controlled analogue fly-by-wire flight controls systems
Multifunction flight control surfaces
High-pressure hydraulic system of 28 MPa (4,000 lbf) for lighter hydraulic systems components
Fully electrically controlled analogue brake-by-wire system
Pitch trim by shifting fuel around the fuselage for centre-of-gravity control
Parts made using 'sculpture milling' from single alloy billet reducing the part-number count, while saving weight and adding strength
Lack of Auxiliary power unit (Relying on the fact that Concorde will be used for premium services to big airports, where a ground air start cart would be readily available)
Flush fitting lights

The Concorde programme's primary legacy is in the experience gained in design and manufacture which later became the basis of the Airbus consortium.[citation needed] Snecma Moteurs' involvement with the Concorde programme prepared the company's entrance into civil engine design and manufacturing, opening the way for Snecma to establish CFM International with General Electric and produce the successful CFM International CFM56 series engines.

Although Concorde was a technological marvel when introduced into service in the 1970s, 30 years later its cockpit, cluttered with analogue dials and switches, looked dated. With no competition, there was no commercial pressure to upgrade Concorde with enhanced avionics or passenger comfort, as occurred in other airliners of the same vintage, for example the Boeing 747.

The key partners, BAC (later to become BAE Systems) and Aerospatiale (later to become EADS), were the joint owners of Concorde's type certificate. Responsibility for the Type Certificate transferred to Airbus with formation of Airbus SAS.

Concorde Background
In the late 1950s, the United Kingdom, France, United States and Soviet Union were considering developing supersonic transport. Britain's Bristol Aeroplane Company and France's Sud Aviation were both working on designs, called the Type 233 and Super-Caravelle, respectively. Both were largely funded by their respective governments. The British design was for a thin-winged delta shape (which owed much to work by Dietrich Kuchemann) for a transatlantic-ranged aircraft for about 100 people, while the French were intending to build a medium-range aircraft.

The designs were both ready to start prototype construction in the early 1960s, but the cost was so great that the British government made it a requirement that BAC look for international co-operation. Approaches were made to a number of countries, but only France showed real interest. The development project was negotiated as an international treaty between the two countries rather than a commercial agreement between companies and included a clause, originally asked for by Britain, imposing heavy penalties for cancellation. A draft treaty was signed on 28 November 1962. By this time, both companies had been merged into new ones; thus, the Concorde project was between the British Aircraft Corp. and Aerospatiale.

Scheduled flights began on 21 January 1976 on the London-Bahrain and Paris-Rio (via Dakar) routes. The U.S. Congress had just banned Concorde landings in the US, mainly due to citizen protest over sonic booms, preventing launch on the coveted transatlantic routes. However, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, William Coleman, gave special permission for Concorde service to Washington Dulles International Airport, and Air France and British Airways simultaneously began service to Dulles on 24 May 1976.

When the U.S. ban on JFK Concorde operations was lifted in February 1977, New York banned Concorde locally. The ban came to an end on 17 October 1977 when the Supreme Court of the United States declined to overturn a lower court's ruling rejecting the Port Authority's efforts to continue the ban (The noise report noted that Air Force One, at the time a Boeing VC-137, was louder than Concorde at subsonic speeds and during takeoff and landing.). Scheduled service from Paris and London to New York's John F. Kennedy Airport began on 22 November 1977.[citation needed] Flights operated by BA were generally numbered "BA001" (London to New York), "BA002" (New York to London), "BA003" (London to New York) and "BA004" (New York to London). Air France flight numbers were generally "AF001" (New York to Paris) and "AF002" (Paris to New York).

By around 1981 in the UK, the future for Concorde looked bleak. The government had lost money operating Concorde every year, and moves were afoot to cancel the service entirely. A cost projection came back with greatly reduced metallurgical testing costs, but still, having lost money for so many years, the government was not keen to continue. In late 1983, the managing director of BA, Sir John King, managed to get the government to sell the aircraft outright to (the then state owned, later privatised) BA for 16.5 million plus the first year's profits.

After doing a market survey and discovering that their target customers thought that Concorde was more expensive than it actually was, BA progressively raised prices to match these perceptions. It is reported that BA then ran Concorde at a profit, unlike their French counterparts. The plane was reckoned to make an operating profit for British Airways after the British and French governments agreed to write off the development costs of the plane. BA's profits have been reported to be up to 50 million in the most profitable year, with a total revenue of 1.75 billion, before costs of 1 billion.

While commercial jets take seven hours to fly from New York to Paris, the average supersonic flight time on the transatlantic routes was just under 3.5 hours. In transatlantic flight, Concorde travelled more than twice as fast as other aircraft - other aircraft frequently appeared to be flying backwards. Up to 2003, Air France and British Airways continued to operate the New York services daily. Concorde also flew to Barbados's Grantley Adams International Airport during the winter holiday season. Until the AF Paris crash ended virtually all charter services by both AF and BA, several UK and French tour operators operated numerous charter flights to various European destinations on a regular basis.

The Paris Crash
On 25 July 2000, Air France Flight 4590, registration F-BTSC, crashed in Gonesse, France, killing all 100 passengers and nine crew on board the flight, and four people on the ground. It was the only fatal incident involving the type.

According to the official investigation conducted by the French accident investigation bureau (BEA), the crash was caused by a titanium strip, part of a thrust reverser, that fell from a Continental Airlines DC-10 that had taken off about four minutes earlier. This metal fragment punctured a tyre on the left main wheel bogie. The tyre exploded, and a piece of rubber hit the fuel tank and broke an electrical cable. The impact caused a hydrodynamic shockwave that fractured the fuel tank some distance from the point of impact. This caused a major fuel leak from the tank, which then ignited due to severed electrical wires which were sparking. The crew shut down engine number 2 in response to a fire warning but were unable to retract the landing gear, hampering the aircraft's climb. With engine number 1 surging and producing little power, the aircraft was unable to gain height or speed, entering a rapid pitch-up then a violent descent, rolling left. The impact occurred with the stricken aircraft tail-low, crashing into the Hotelissimo Hotel in Gonesse.

Prior to the accident, Concorde had been arguably the safest operational passenger airliner in the world in terms of passenger deaths-per-kilometres travelled with zero. After the accident, the death rate was 12.5 fatal events per million flights, more than three times that of the second worst aircraft. However no aircraft's safety can be accurately measured from a single incident and safety improvements were made in the wake of the crash. The crash of the Air France Concorde nonetheless proved to be the beginning of the end for the type.

On 10 April 2003, Air France and British Airways simultaneously announced that they would retire Concorde later that year. They cited low passenger numbers following the 25 July 2000 crash, the slump in air travel following 9/11 and rising maintenance costs.

It has been suggested that Concorde was not withdrawn for the reasons usually given, but that during the grounding of Concorde it became apparent to the airlines that they could actually make more revenue carrying their first class passengers subsonically.

In 2000 Concorde was most useful in the celebrations of the millenium. This allowed england and france to fly to america quickly enough to celebrate the millenium with americans aswell. It would have taken 7 hours in a normal jet but concorde only took 2 hours. Some reports say they landed with only 78GALLONS of fuel left in the tanks (they afterburned on several occasions to get there quicker)

Sonic boom

A sonic boom is the sound associated with the shock waves created by an object traveling through the air faster than the speed of sound. Sonic booms generate enormous amounts of sound energy, sounding much like an explosion. The crack of a supersonic bullet passing overhead is an example of a sonic boom in miniature.