Computer gamer held over student's killing

A German computer gamer is being held in connection with the murder of a British university student after an apparent cyberspace dispute escalated into a killing.

The 21-year-old from a town near Frankfurt is accused of travelling to the UK to murder Matthew Pyke, 20, who was found last Friday.

Police are exploring the possibility that the two men fell out over Wars Central, Pyke's discussion forum.

Pyke's girlfriend, Joanna Witton, discovered his body with several stab wounds at their Nottingham city centre flat. There were no signs of forced entry leading to police to believe the dead man may have known his killer.

The two men are believed to have made contact via Pyke's forum, an internet site he ran with Witton.

The suspect, who has not been named by police, was tracked through internet postings and arrested in Limburg-Weilburg, near Frankfurt, on Wednesday evening on suspicion of murder. Extradition proceedings are under way.

A spokesman for Limburg-Weilburg police said: "A 21-year-old man from the rural area of Limburg was arrested by officers from the West Hessen police headquarters in Hünfelden. It is suspected that on September 19 he killed a man in Nottingham with a knife. After intensive investigations in collaboration with Nottinghamshire police it is believed the two got to know each other over the internet."

Pyke, who was due to rejoin Nottingham Trent University next month after dropping out of a physics course, used the online alias of Shade to discuss tips on strategy, characters and plots for the Nintendo game, Advanced Wars. The game pits armies of cartoon characters against each other.

The dead man was from Stowmarket, Suffolk, but moved to the city two years ago. On his MySpace page, Pyke listed his general interests as Guitar Hero, the Ace Attorney series, Gran Turismo 4, Metal Gear, Evil Genius, Unreal Tournament, Super Smash Bros, the Metroid series, adding "and that's just the video games".

His parents, William and Kim, left a tribute on his Facebook site, reading: "Darling Matthew. We love you so much and miss you. You were a truly good, sensitive person. Your smile will live on in our hearts." The Wars Central forum was closed to new entries last night, but a post left by a gamer using the alias "Eggy" said: "I'm not normally at a loss for words but this is something where I just can't speak."

Are netbooks a threat to Macs?

ThinkPanmure analyst Vijay Rakesh has pointed out that Amazon's list of best-selling laptops is now dominated by netbooks or minibooks such as the 8.9 inch Acer Aspire One (currently No 1) and Aus Eee PC (currently Nos 2 and 4). Apple doesn't appear in the top 10 except for the fifth-placed 13.3 inch MacBook, which is three times the price of the Acer Aspire One.

According to Cult of Mac: "This is an abrupt change from the past, where Apple had been a mainstay" of the list.

The site quotes Rakesh as saying: "We believe this to be the effects of a more price-conscious consumer and global slowdown."

Price is no doubt a factor, of course. In the back-to-school season, it may also be that people just want smaller, more portable, more convenient machines, and Apple doesn't offer any. It has never made a subnotebook (unless you count the Newton MessagePads and/or eMate), and the feature-deficient MacBook Air is bigger, heavier, and much more expensive that a typical netbook.

Cult of Mac says:

As a result, Rakesh lowered the target on Apple to $170 from $200 per share and fiscal fourth quarter estimates to $7.8 billion from $7.9 billion.
Apple's first fiscal quarter of 2009 will likely be $10.8 billion, down from the $11.5 billion previous estimated, according to the analyst.

As Barron's notes, Rakesh also cut his targets on Intel. It says:

Intel is addressing the netbook market with its Atom processor, so the company is not being cut out of the food chain; but Rakesh notes that Atom processors sell at much lower price points and carry thinner gross margins. The Atom, he notes, sells for $20-$40 and carries a 45% gross margin, while the Core2Duo sells for $140-$250 and carries a gross margin of 56%.

Microsoft is in a similar position. The top netbooks on Amazon's list are running Windows XP (the first Linux machine is at No 7), but Microsoft probably makes about half as much on a ULCPC deal as it would if someone bought a Vista laptop.

Still, it would not be wise to get hysterical about this. First, Amazon is a very poor guide to what people are actually buying (which is Dell and HP notebooks, as a matter of fact). It could easily be affected by Mac buyers buying more from Apple or Apple stores instead of from Amazon.

Second, it's not yet clear how many people are buying netbooks instead of mainstream laptops, rather than as second or third machines. If they're substitutes, suppliers are taking a hit; but if they are incremental sales, they're benefiting. I expect it's a bit of both….

It's much like the shift from desktops to laptops, and as I pointed out back in March, suppliers just have to do well enough for the extra sales from new platforms to outweigh the lost sales from old ones. "That's not necessarily easy, but nor is it the end of the world."

Do you still have a landline?

According to brainiacs in Brussels, more and more people in Europe are ditching their landline in favour of going purely mobile. You might be one of them: around a fifth of households in Western Europe now operate this way, apparently, and for every 100 landlines, there are 112 mobiles. But is that progress? Dropping your landline might make sense in terms of cost - certainly for cash-strapped families lower down the earnings ladder. But losing your landline also means forgoing a broadband internet connection (and I'm not convinced that mobile 3G counts). Where does that fit into Gordon Brown's vision of broadband Britain?