In a blog post this week, Microsoft’s Chris Flores noted that 20 percent of new Windows Vista PCs in the U.S. that connected to Windows Update in June were running a 64-bit version of the OS, compared with 3 percent of new computers in March.

“Put more simply, usage of 64-bit Windows Vista is growing much more rapidly than 32-bit,” he said. “Based on current trends, this growth will accelerate as the retail channel shifts to supplying a rapidly increasing assortment of 64-bit desktops and laptops.”

The trend is also evident by looking at the kinds of systems being sold at retailers. In its circular this Sunday most of the desktops and half of the dozen notebook models being advertised by Office Depot had the 64-bit version of Windows pre-installed.

The mix was similar in Circuit City’s advertisement, with nearly all of the desktops and many of the notebooks running 64-bit Windows

Gateway, for example, is shifting to an entirely 64-bit Windows lineup on its desktops, starting with the back-to-school shopping season.

It’s a dramatic shift even from last quarter, in which only about 5 percent of its total desktop and notebook models had a 64-bit OS installed. For the third quarter, 95 percent of desktop models and 30 percent of notebook systems will have a 64-bit OS.

Sports fans around the world have been swindled by an international Internet scam which offered thousands of bogus tickets for the Beijing Games, Olympic officials said on Monday.

The International Olympic Committee IOC announced it was taking action to shut down the fraudsters, but the move came too late to help the victims find replacement seats at the Games.

Among those left out of pocket were the families of Olympic athletes in both Australia and New Zealand, with people in the United States, Japan, Norway, China and Britain also reportedly conned by the sophisticated sting.

We cannot accept people paying money for tickets and not getting them, said Gerhard Heiberg, an IOC executive board member.

Heiberg said the issue was raised last week, with both the IOC and the United States Olympic Committee filing a lawsuit on Friday in a district court in California, accusing at least six websites of selling illegitimate or nonexistent tickets.

However, a U.S. lawyer who said he had lost $12,000 in the fraud, accused the IOC of complacency.

They have known about these sites for months and months and did nothing, said Jim Moriarty, the partner of a Houston-based law firm which is looking to represent fellow victims in any subsequent legal actions.

A Thai video game distributor halted sales of “Grand Theft Auto” on Monday after a teenager confessed to robbing and murdering a taxi driver while trying to recreate a scene from the controversial game.

“We are sending out requests today to outlets and shops to pull the games off their shelves and we will replace them with other games,” Sakchai Chotikachinda, sales and marketing director of New Era Interactive Media, told Reuters.

“We are also urging video game arcades to pull the games from service,” Sakchai said. An 18-year-old high school student, now in custody pending further investigations and a trial, faces death by lethal injection if found guilty of robbing and killing a 54-year-old taxi driver with a knife at the weekend.

A new application enabling Apple’s iPhone to share EDGE or 3G Internet connections with other wireless devices briefly appeared in Apple’s App Store, only to be pulled minutes later.

The Netshare app by Nullriver is based on SOCKS — an Internet protocol that enables client-server applications to transparently employ the services of a network firewall. Netshare essentially converts any iPhone into a portable Wi-Fi hotspot, with all Wi-Fi-enabled devices able to share a broadband Internet connection wherever a cellular signal is available.

“We’re trying to get ahold of Apple right now,” said Nullriver spokesperson Maksim Rogov in an e-mail. “Until we hear from Apple, it’s hard to say what the real reason is, because if it was AT&T, well, AT&T is not the iPhone service provider outside the U.S.”