The ARM-powered device isn't winning many friends apart from the software giant's rank and file. Only last week the firm was reported to have halved production orders with Surface makers in the Far East.Now Boston market research biz DFG has issued a note claiming "sales on Microsoft's Surface RT tablet continue to disappoint". It expected the Windows 8 titan to ship roughly one to two million RT laptop-cum-tablets in calendar Q4 2012, but adjusted expectations dramatically to between 500,000 and 600,000 units."This combined with Microsoft's inability to launch Surface Pro tablets in volume in Q4 suggests that Microsoft's tablet strategy is in disarray," stated DFG.Microsoft has yet to confirm when Surface Pro will ship but hinted it would be about three months after RT, aiming the launch for January.DFG stopped short of describing Microsoft's handling of the gear as a failure because "improved hardware and distribution as well as an ageing laptop fleet in Western Europe should boost prospects in 2013".

Back in the summer when Microsoft revealed the device's blueprints, CEO Steve Ballmer disappointed distribution channel partners by selling the tech direct from Microsoft's own US stores and microsoft.com.DFG said mixed reviews and the $599 starting price were putting off customers, but the major issue has been its go-to-market strategy."Lack of distribution is killing the product," the equity analyst stated, "[lack] of retail exposure at Best Buy and others is severely depressing sales."DFG director for technology research Mark Gerber told The Channel that Microsoft needs to hack $200 off the retail price."The Surface RT price need to come down: $399 with the keyboard would be a good starting price," he said.He also expects Microsoft to change direction and bring on board the distribution channel, "if for no other reasons than to clear inventory".

Channel partners have been "clamouring" to get hold of a Surface device, James Akrigg, Microsoft's head of technology for partners, told us."The current plan is to sell it through the stores that are in the States and the online store. I'm sure we've had a lot of feedback about alternative ways of getting that to market but I've not seen any announcement regarding how that might change." The ten-year-old girl accused of piracy in Finland will probably still find it hard to stay off Santa’s naughty list, but has at least cost her family only €300 after attempting to pinch a Finnish pop song.Big Content, in the form of the Finnish Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre (CIAPC), was last week revealed to have issued a demand for €600 from the Nylund family, in order to compensate recording artist Chisu for the theft and distribution of his work.The family was raided and the girl’s laptop, complete with Winnie-the-Pooh stickers, was confiscated.Torrent Freak reports the laptop’s now on the way home after the story went both viral and global, leading to widespread opining that CIAPC may have chosen the nuclear option when a little sabre rattling would have done just fine.

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The girl’s father reportedly met CIAPC in the middle with his €300 offer and the case is now considered closed, with the laptop heading home. CIAPC has declared itself happy a settlement has been reached, but unease about the way in which a child has been targeted persists. Photos Apple's 21.5-inch iMac, which went on sale in the US last Friday, has revealed two of its secrets: first, that it's a collosal pain to get inside should you want to upgrade its RAM or its hard drives; and second, that at least some of the units currently on store shelves are labeled as being "Assembled in USA".The new iMac – the smaller of the two über-skinny models announced along with the iPad mini and other Cupertinian kit on October 23 – has been duly torn apart by the tools 'n' parts 'n' repair-advice folks at iFixit. Not only did they discover how frustratingly difficult it is to upgrade, but they also noticed that on its back it proudly proclaims that it was assembled in the good ol' US of A.

iFixit was not alone in its discovery. The same provenance was reported by Fortune. It should also be noted that the same "Assembled in USA" notification has been mentioned in Apple's discussion forums as appearing, for example, on a Mac mini in 2006, a Mac Pro in 2007, and an iMac in 2011.Before you jump to the conclusion that Apple is moving its product assembly from China to its home shores, know that such a development would likely be trumpeted by Apple's PR and marketing crews as a patriotic move by Cook & Co. "job creators".It's also instructive to note exactly what "Assembled in USA" means. As AppleInsider points out, the US Federal Trade Commission says that the use of "Assembled in USA" on a product is valid "when its principal assembly takes place in the U.S. and the assembly is substantial. For the 'assembly' claim to be valid, the product's last 'substantial transformation' also should have occurred in the U.S."As an example of an invalid use of "Assembled in USA", the FTC cites a computer with all of its major components being made outside the US, then "put together in a simple 'screwdriver' operation in the U.S." That computer, the FTC rules, "must be marked with a foreign country of origin." Why? Because "An 'Assembled in U.S.' claim without further qualification is deceptive."

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So there's some "substantial" assembly of the new 21.5-inch iMac being done in the US. Exactly what amount we don't know, except – if Apple is rigorously following the FTC guidelines – that it's not a "simple 'screwdriver' operation."Ironically, iFixit discovered in its teardown of the new 21.5-inch iMac that there's little involved in servicing it that could be described as simple, screwdriver or no screwdriver.Even such straightforward matters as upgrading RAM or swapping out the hard drive – now a 2.5-inch laptop drive, by the way, not the older iMac's 3.5-inch drive – are a pain. "Once inside," iFixit wrote in an email, "folks can still replace the RAM, hard drive, and CPU, but they'll have to remove the entire logic board before doing so."And getting inside the new iMac is no trivial matter. "We were quite worried when we saw that super-thin bezel during Apple's keynote," they write, "and unfortunately we were correct: the glass and LCD are now glued to the iMac's frame with incredibly strong adhesive."

After using a heat gun to melt the adhesive and their trusty guitar picks to pry the display loose, iFixit discovered a thoroughly redesigned iMac. The three fans of the previous model have been replaced by one, there's no optical drive (but you knew that), the hard drive is now encased in a rubber vibration-dampening housing, and a second microphone has been added, presumably for noise cancellation "to improve sound quality during intimate FaceTime chats with your mother," they write.The CPU, by the way, is a Intel 3rd Generation (née "Ivy Bridge) Core i5-3330S, which Intel sells in quantity at $177, spring-loaded into its LGA1155 socket. The GPU is a laptop-class Nvidia GeForce GT 640M.So, yes, you can replace the CPU, as well as upgrade your RAM and swap out your hard drive – although there's no room for a second drive, as there was in earlier models. But if you do open the iMac to accomplish these should-be-straightforward upgrades, know that getting it back together is no easy feat. According to iFixit, "You'll have to masterfully peel off the old double-sided sticky tape and apply new tape in order to reseal this iMac into original condition."Call us old fashioned, but we believe that the design of every personal computer should make it simple to add more RAM and to upgrade – or, for that matter, replace – its hard drive. We're on iFixit's side when it gives the new 21.5-inch iMac a dismal score of three-out-of-10 on its repairability scale.