Apple Inc. (AAPL) is planning to launch a netbook computer with a touch screen monitor as early as the second half of this year, two people close to the situation told Dow Jones Newswires Tuesday.

The mini laptop computers will likely have monitor screens that are between 9.7-inches and 10-inches, one person, who declined to be named, said.

Another person said other specifications and functions are still under evaluation.

In Picture:

25 years ago today, on January 24, 1984, the first Macintosh computer went on sale. Now better known as the “Mac,” the name came from the Apple employee who created the project, Jef Raskin, who wanted to name it after his favorite kind of apple, McIntosh, but had to tweak the name for legal rights.

This original Macintosh came with 128 kilobytes of RAM (it would later become known as the Macintosh 128K) and featured a 8 MHz Motorola 68000 microprocessor. It had a 9-inch black and white CRT screen and featured a 400 kB, single-sided 3.5-inch floppy disk drive. The price? $2,495, which in today’s dollars would have been well over $5,000.

The computer featured the signatures of the entire Apple Macintosh division molded inside the case. Those name include Raskin, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and many others.

Macworld.com Monday’s release of OS X 10.5.6 included a number of updates that fix bugs, improve security, and in some cases, add new (or bring back) functionality to the Mac operating system.

To use Parallels and Fusion, which require less technical proficiency than earlier versions, you need a fairly recent Mac and a copy of Windows. Once you have installed the software, you follow the on-screen instructions to set up a Windows “virtual machine.” Then you install the Windows programs you need, and you’re good to go. Full Story.