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  • Court: Microsoft violated patent; can’t sell Word

    WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a $290 million judgement against Microsoft Corp. and issued an injunction that will prevent the sale of its popular Word software.

    The court injunction is set to go into effect Jan. 11. Microsoft ( MSFT – news – people ) has said such a bar would prohibit the sale of all currently available versions of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office.

    Microsoft had appealed a Texas jury verdict in favor of i4i Inc., a Toronto company. The jury found recent versions of Microsoft Word infringed on a software patent.

    Microsoft has said that it and the public will both suffer if Word goes off the market while the company devises a workaround. The court said the decision does not affect copies of the programs sold before the injunction goes into effect.
    http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/12/22/general-technology-hardware-amp-equipment-us-microsoft-patent_7232307.html?partner=alerts

  • Five turning points of the decade-US.

    — The first decade of the 21st century in the United States was defined by terrorism, crisis and uncertainty. The exuberance of the 1990s, with its strong economic growth and the sense of American military omnipotence, came to an end.
    Most Americans have been left reeling from nine very difficult years, even though the decade neared its close with a presidential election that spoke to the promise and potential of the nation.
    We must remember that any “most important” list should be seen as the beginning of a conversation, not a definitive judgment.
    Historians learn that it is extraordinarily difficult to discern exactly which events will be transitory and which will have the most long-lasting effects.
    Some moments that seem to be turning points shortly after they happen, such as Operation Desert Storm in 1990-1991, seem less important over time. Others that we don’t pay as much attention to, such as the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, look much more consequential with the passage of time.
    September 11, 2001
    Most Americans have been left reeling from nine very difficult years.

    The tragic moment when terror struck in New York and at the Pentagon will be at the top of everyone’s “most important” list. When terrorism caused such devastating damage, the perpetrators defined the central national security challenge confronting the United States and much of the world: Stateless terrorism.
    Even though the nation had faced terrorism for several decades, including the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, nothing compares to 9/11 in scale and scope.
    The event shattered the sense of confidence that many Americans had about being able to avoid the kinds of attacks on civilians that had become commonplace in the Middle East. American national security policy was reconfigured as a result.
    The federal government vastly expanded and reorganized its homeland defense system. It instituted an aggressive program of interrogation and surveillance to combat terrorist threats and refocused foreign policy to concentrate on destroying these networks and the states that support them, including the invasion of Afghanistan to topple the Taliban regime. Eight years later, we are still fighting.
    Iraq War
    The war with Iraq quickly became one of the most controversial aspects of the war on terrorism. The difficulties that the United States encountered in the reconstruction period, and the falsity of the Bush administration’s claims in the build up to war that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, opened up the administration to intensified attacks from the left and the right.
    The war eroded Bush’s political capital and constrained his ability to achieve other objectives, including domestic proposals such as Social Security privatization. Equally important, the difficulties the nation encountered in achieving its goal of creating a stable democracy and combating insurgents has raised serious doubts — domestically and internationally — about the capacity of American military power in conflicts, including the war in Afghanistan.
    Hurricane Katrina
    When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, it revealed the horrible conditions under which many inner-city Americas were living after decades of neglect. The failure of so many levels of government to properly respond to the hurricane and its aftermath also exposed the limited interest of the government — and the public — in protecting these African-American communities even after a tragedy this severe.
    The unwillingness of the federal government to commit substantial resources to the reconstruction effort confirmed that urban America was not central to the national agenda.
    Financial crisis of 2008
    The financial crisis constituted a huge shock to the economic system. As September 11 ended a false sense of physical security within our borders, the financial crisis shattered the economic confidence which had emerged in the 1990s and established the parameters for President Obama’s administration.
    The plummeting market fundamentally challenged decades of policies that centered on deregulation and market-based solutions. The fact that President Bush’s administration put forth a hugely expansive financial bailout package revealed how Americans have come to expect federal intervention in times of economic crisis and showed that there were limits to the Reagan Revolution.
    Election of 2008
    The 2008 election is the one defining event that spoke to America’s potential. Even though the United States clearly has not entered any kind of post-racial period, as Hurricane Katrina revealed, the election of an African-American to the presidency in a country whose economy once revolved around slavery was historic.
    Combined with other developments — such as the growing acceptance of gay rights, despite the setbacks to same-sex marriage — the election signaled a movement away from discriminatory attitudes that have been so deeply rooted in the American psyche.
    Any most important list is inherently incomplete, and only captures a small part of what the nation experienced. Should Congress pass health care reform, which seems likely, that could become a crucial moment in the history of our government. Nonetheless, these five events will certainly be ones that historians will look back to for years to come    .
    http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/12/21/zelizer.tough.decade/index.html

  • 10 Greediest People of 2009


    This makes one feel that Communism is attractive.!
    As ordinary Americans reel from the Great Recession, these gluttonous all-stars continue to claw in absurd amounts of money.

    Has picking a year’s greediest “top ten” ever been easier? We don’t think so. We could, this year, fill an entire top ten just with bankers from Goldman Sachs — or JPMorgan Chase or any of a number of other Wall Street giants. All sport executive suites packed with power suits who fanned the flames that melted down the global economy, then helped themselves, after gobbling down billions in bailouts, to paydays worth mega millions — at a time when, in over half our states, over a quarter of America’s kids are living off food stamps.

    Now that’s greed. But that’s also not the whole picture. The Great Recession’s greedy don’t just sit on Wall Street. They occupy perches of power throughout the reeling U.S. economy. So we’ve tried, in this our latest annual ranking of avarice, to survey that bigger picture.

    Where does all this greed come from? We humans have always, of course, had greed among us. But levels of greed vary enormously from one historical epoch to another — and from one society to another.

    What determines which societies see the most greed and grasping? In a word: inequality. The more wealth concentrates, the more greed grows. The United States remains the most unequal nation in the developed world. Next year, we suspect, will bring us still another bumper crop of greedy.

    10: Richard Anderson

    America’s airlines have been flying, for the most part, under the media radar ever since the nation’s banks went into meltdown mode, and that suits Delta CEO Richard Anderson just fine.

    Delta, now the world’s biggest airline, has been richly rewarding Anderson ever since he became the airline’s top exec in September 2007. If folks were paying attention, they might wonder why. Delta, after all, lost $8.9 billion in 2008. In 2009, Delta and other U.S. carriers, says the International Air Transport Association, will likely lose a combined $1 billion.

    Passengers are certainly feeling this red ink. Delta and other carriers have been trimming seating capacity, a move, notes the Orlando Sentinel, designed to “enable them to raise ticket prices more often.” Delta is also squeezing passengers with airport bag fees. In August, the airline’s bag charges bounded to $20 for the first bag and $30 for the second.

    Anderson and his family, meanwhile, don’t just fly free on Delta. The airline also pays the taxes due on Anderson’s free tickets — and lots more, too.

    For agreeing to become Delta’s chief, 28 months ago, Anderson picked up $8.5 million in stock awards. Seven months later, another $3.4 million. Six months after that, to celebrate the Delta-Northwest merger, more options to buy Delta stock, worth $7.3 million, and more actual shares, worth $6.1 million.

    With all those rewards, Anderson must be devoting every waking hour to making Delta soar, right? Well, almost every waking hour. Anderson has been spending some of his precious hours serving on the corporate board of Medtronic, a medical tech firm. In 2009, from the good people at Medtronic, he’ll pocket $188,000 for his directorship services.

    9: George David/Marie Douglas-David

    This power couple hit the headlines last March, with a nasty divorce trial. We tried to pick the most greedy of the pair. We failed. Here’s why.

    The 67-year-old George David, the former CEO of defense contracting powerhouse United Technologies, comes with impeccable greed credentials. In the four years after the 9/11 attacks, David hauled home bigger paydays than any other defense executive, over $200 million in all, including $88.3 million in 2004, a sum that made him that year’s top-paid CEO.

    Taxpayers, noted the Institute for Policy Studies Executive Excess CEO pay report in 2006, provide a third of United Technologies annual operating income.

    But George has found his match in avarice. Marie Douglas-David, a Wall Street investment banker before she married George in 2002, signed a pre-nup before her wedding day that entitled her to $20,000 a week should the marriage break up, a not unreasonable possibility given the 30-year age gap between the two.

    The couple did separate last year and this past spring went to court after Marie sued to overturn the pre-nup. She demanded $53,000 a week. Marie needed extra cash, said her lawyers, to cover her basic expenses. Among those basics: “$4,500 a week for clothes, $8,000 for travel, and $1,500 for eating out.”

    8: Steve Wynn

    Last February, Las Vegas gaming industry kingpin Steve Wynn announced an across-the-board wage and hour cutback for all employees at his resort empire. The total savings for Wynn Resorts: between $75 and $100 million.

    In November Wynn Resorts announced a special $4-per-share dividend. Total cost of the dividend payout to Wynn Resorts: $492 million. Total dividend check that will go to Steve Wynn: $88.6 million.

    Wynn currently rates 141st on the annual Forbes list of America’s 400 richest. But his fortune has faded some $900 million, to just $2.3 billion now, since last year. A typical American family, according to Census Bureau figures, would have to work nearly 18,000 years to make $900 million.

    Wynn, ever the trooper, isn’t crying in his cocktails over his near-billion-dollar misfortune. He “rang in” the 2009 new year skimming the Caribbean on a 183-foot mega yacht, then went on to spend lovely winter days dodging gossip columnists on the Riviera and in the Alps.

    7: Robert Rubin

    Back in 1997, then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin won huzzahs the world over for his efforts to fix the Asian financial crisis. One crisis “solved,” Rubin proceeded to help create another — by brokering the 1999 deal that repealed the New Deal’s most important financial industry reform legislation.

    That reform, the Glass-Steagall Act, essentially prevented investment banks from speculating with the cash commercial banks and insurance companies were collecting from depositors and policy holders. Glass-Steagall would be weakened over the years, but still had enough oomph, at century’s end, to prevent Citicorp from finalizing a merger with Travelers Group insurance.

    Citi, America’s biggest bank, and Travelers needed Glass-Steagall eliminated. Rubin obliged. His contacts and credibility, notes Public Citizen president Robert Weissman, helped speed repeal through Congress — and paved the way for the wild Wall Street run that crashed the U.S. economy.

    Rubin, a Goldman Sachs alum before his stint at Treasury, would go on to join the newly merged Citigroup as a senior strategist. Citi, betting heavily on subprimes, would go on to lose over $65 billion during Rubin’s stint, and, this past January, Rubin formally resigned his Citi duties.

    Overall, Rubin pocketed $126 million in cash and stock for his Citi labors. But he seems to regard his years at the bank as something akin to public service. Declared Rubin in one exit interview: “I bet there’s not a single year where I couldn’t have gone somewhere else and made more.”

    6: Andrew Hall

    If you happen to be Andrew Hall, the world’s most celebrated commodity trader, you don’t care what other people think. Hall waged a four-year battle — against his neighbors in the posh Connecticut town of Southport — to keep a 80-foot-long concrete sculpture on his lawn.

    The neighbors won, and Hall had to remove the concrete eyesore. He promptly replaced it with two garishly painted “cartoonlike” sculptures of cars.

    Hall can afford plenty of sculptures. He took home $100 million betting on oil futures and other commodities in 2008 — after picking up a quarter-billion over the previous five years — and stood to receive another $100 million this year.

    But his employer, Citigroup, balked. Citi, by that time, was sitting on $45 billion in taxpayer bailout dollars, and handing $100 million to Hall, the honcho of Citi’s commodity-trading subsidiary, would have created a PR disaster for the bank — and the Obama administration as well.

    Hall didn’t care. He demanded his trading fee. Citi ended up having to sell off Hall’s subsidiary, at a bargain basement price, to end the Hall headache.

    Our story, to be sure, does have a happy ending — for Hall, Citi, and federal pay czar Kenneth Feinberg. Hall will get his $100 million, but not until next year. That deferral let Citi claim a zero pay expense for Hall in 2009, and Citi’s pay outlays for the year now show up about $100 million less than last year.

    This accounting razzmatazz helped skew the 2009 executive pay totals for the seven biggest bailout basket cases and enabled pay czar Feinberg to claim that pressure from his office had, “on average,” reduced executive cash comp at the seven by an impressive — and thoroughly misleading — 90 percent.

    5: John Chambers

    Earlier this year, with lawmakers mulling over legislation to limit CEO pay, a high-powered New York business group convened a “Task Force on Executive Compensation” to show that corporations could clean up their own act.

    The final report from this task force, issued this fall, asked companies to commit themselves to executive pay that’s “fair” and “clearly aligned with actual performance.” Among the first half-dozen companies to make that commitment: Cisco, the Internet networking giant.

    Just days later, a federal filing revealed that Cisco was awarding “discretionary bonuses” to its five top executives for the fiscal year that ended this past July. Why “discretionary?” The company couldn’t give the execs regular bonuses since all five missed their “performance” targets.

    Cisco says the five execs delivered “solid financial performance” while facing “tough economic challenges.” Not that solid. Cisco has laid off over 1,500 workers since the economy turned challenging. Cisco CEO John Chambers, for his part, has pocketed $232.7 million over the last five years.

    Back in 2000, Cisco reigned briefly as the world’s biggest company, as measured by total share value. Then the dot.com bubble burst. But Chambers unloaded a ton of shares before the bubble popped — and cleared a $156 million windfall.

    The janitor who cleaned Cisco’s executive suites that year, observed the San Jose Mercury News at the time, would have to work 8,653 years to earn what Chambers made in one.

    4: Rupert Murdoch

    Billionaires never rest. They don’t let their assets rest either. Take media mogul Rupert Murdoch, for instance. Three years ago, Murdoch shelled out an estimated $30 million for a 183-foot yacht he calls the Rosehearty. He’s apparently enjoying his investment. Billionaire-watchers have sighted him holidaying offshore with actor Mel Gibson and crooner Billy Joel.

    But what do billionaires do when they can’t find an aging celebrity to join them aboard? They rent their boats out, says Superyacht World — discreetly, of course, through charter agencies that never reveal the boat’s actual owner.

    But sometimes that identity does slip out. Murdoch’s Rosehearty, an enterprising reporter has disclosed, charters for just under $300,000 per week. Murdoch’s “exceptionally solicitous staff” comes included in the fee.

    Speaking of fees, Murdoch has launched a crusade to force Web surfers to pay for the newspaper articles they read online. One reason: His take-home last year from the News Corp. — the base of his media empire — dropped 14 percent to $27.5 million.

    3: Mark Hurd

    Computer printer ink, a high-tech financial analyst pointed out a few years ago, “costs more per drop than expensive perfume.” Mark Hurd, the CEO at Hewlett-Packard since 2005, wouldn’t have it any other way.

    HP, under Hurd, has been busy squeezing every bit of revenue possible out of the printer ink cash cow. Last year, HP upped ink prices up at double the inflation rate. The typical $30 ink cartridge, SmartMoney reported this past June, costs $3 to make.

    Hurd apparently enjoys cutting wages and jobs as much as raising prices. In May, he axed 6,000 workers off the HP payroll and cut paychecks for the survivors from 5 to 15 percent.

    Hurd did take a 20 percent salary cut himself for 2009. But “salary” in 2008 only accounted for $1.45 million of Hurd’s $26.04 million in cash compensation. He took in another $7.9 million in new stock awards — and cleared still another $10.1 million cashing out previously awarded stock options.

    Hurd’s CEO stint at HP has so far seen about 40,000 employees lose their jobs.

    2: Richard Scott

    Mike Snow, a regional health care executive, earlier this month recalled that evening a dozen years ago when his then-boss, Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. CEO Richard Scott, revealed to Snow and the rest of the company’s top management that the FBI had just raided the firm’s El Paso office.

    Scott defiantly declared the government had no case. Mike Snow and his fellow execs lustily applauded. Remembers Snow: “Like so many others that night, I drank the Kool-Aid.”

    The federal government went on to indict key Columbia/HCA personnel for “bilking Medicare while simultaneously handing over kickbacks and perks to physicians who steered patients to its hospitals.” The company ended up pleading guilty to 14 felonies and paying $1.7 billion in criminal and civil fines.

    The board of Columbia/HCA, then the nation’s biggest for-profit hospital chain, would go on to ease Scott out the door, but ever so gently. He left with a $10 severance package and stock worth $300 million.

    This past spring, Richard Scott burst back into the news, pouring more Kool-Aid as the moving force behind the year’s first media blitz designed to demonize the Obama administration’s drive for health care reform.

    If President Obama ever gets his way, Scott warned in one ad that his multimillion campaign ran, bureaucrats will “decide the treatments you receive, the drugs you take, even the doctors you see.”

    Scott’s ads would set the “Tea Party” tone for the year’s health care debate — and help leave tens of millions of Americans without affordable health care, a state of affairs that has never bothered Scott, originally a corporate attorney specializing in buyout deals.

    As Scott used to rail back in his CEO days: “Do we have an obligation to provide health care for everybody? Where do we draw the line? Is any fast-food restaurant obligated to feed everyone who shows up?”

    1: Larry Ellison

    Larry Ellison appeared on our “greediest” list last year. He may appear every year. No one may better personify, personally and professionally, the self-absorption, arrogance, and insensitivity that separates the merely greedy from the greediest.

    In 2008, Ellison, the CEO of Oracle business software, contested the $166.3 million tax appraisal on his Northern California estate. The assessment appeals panel gave him a $3 million tax refund in a ruling that will cost the local school system an annual $250,000, the cost of hiring and supplying three teachers.

    Ellison, the holder of a $27 billion fortune, spent a good bit of 2009 sparing no expense to build a yacht speedy enough to win next year’s America’s Cup, the world’s top sailing race. His new racing yacht has a $10-million mast “18-stories tall and sails large enough to cover a baseball infield.” Some 30 designers and scientists spent 130,000 hours putting the vessel together.

    For more casual water fun, Ellison takes to the seas on his 453-foot mega yacht, the Rising Sun, a boat he co-owns with Hollywood mogul David Geffen. This five-story little ship boasts 82 rooms and a basketball court that doubles as a helicopter pad. The construction cost in 2004: $200 million.

    On the business side, Ellison did his best in 2009 to top the $557 million he took home as Oracle’s CEO in 2008. His magic formula: Ellison’s a serial merger. He buys companies, takes their customers, and fires their workers. His top 2009 gobble-up: Silicon Valley’s Sun Microsystems.

    The Sun merger, analysts believe, will almost certainly end up eliminating more jobs than the 5,000 positions lost when Oracle bought out rival PeopleSoft.

    And did we mention the dividends? Oracle this past spring announced plans to pay out its first dividend. The announcement, CNBC estimated, meant a $57.5 million quarterly check for Ellison in May and another $230 million in dividend checks over the next 12 months.

    In 2009, the old Silicon Valley joke still rang true: “What’s the difference between God and Larry Ellison? Answer: God doesn’t think he’s Larry Ellison.”

    http://www.alternet.org/workplace/144718/10_greediest_people_of_2009

  • 2009 Cricket Awards.Guardian,UK.


    Batsman of the year: In 40 international matches this year, he scored
    2,539 runs, over 150 more than anyone else. In 12 months he has
    scored four centuries against India, two against Bangladesh, two more
    against Pakistan, and one apiece off New Zealand and South Africa. He
    also had a 96* against West Indies. He has been prolific in Twenty20,
    Test matches and fifty over cricket, and even coined his own shot.
    Tillakaratne Dilshan has been all but unstoppable, and as well as
    being the year’s best batsman, must also be the game’s most improved
    player.

    Bowler of the year: Was there one? Top of the Test match tables is
    Mitchell Johnson, who has taken 57 wickets at 28.8 each so far.
    Worryingly, only one of the top twenty wicket-takers in Test matches
    managed to taken them at average of under 25 each, and that was Nuwan
    Kulasekara, who took exactly 20, enough only to place him 20th on the
    list. The biggest single problem facing cricket is the imbalance
    between bat and ball, a bias brought about through bigger bats,
    flatter pitches and the seeming impossibility of staying fit as a
    fast bowler in the modern game. Looking back on the year, I just
    don’t feel that I have seen enough great quick bowling, and with
    Muttiah Muralitharan on the wane, there is no shoo-in contender for
    this prize any more. In the absence of any outstanding candidate, I’d
    plump for Swann, who bowled more deliveries in Test cricket than
    anyone except Johnson, and took 64 wickets at 29 each in all forms of
    the game. Not bad for a man who, two years ago, was seen by many, The
    Spin included, as just another county journeyman.

    XI of the year, picked for performances in all
    formats of the game and with a strong degree of personal prejudice:
    TM Dilshan, V Sehwag, MJ Clarke, AB de Villiers, AJ Strauss, MS
    Dhoni, SR Watson, DL Vettori, GP Swann, MJ Johnson, DW Steyn.

    Match of the year: Ideally, the game should be watched from a seat at
    the ground. Failing that, a sofa in front of the television will do.
    But my favourite day’s play of this year though was followed over the
    radio. There is something especially magical about Test Match
    Special. It seems to make a tense game seem tighter still. On the
    fifth day at Cardiff, as Jimmy Anderson and Monty Panesar were
    playing out those fraught final 40 minutes, I was in the pub, sat
    around a small personal radio plugged into a tinny pair of portable
    speakers, listening, along with a group of complete strangers, to Jon
    Agnew’s crackling description of the denouement. It was one of those
    moments when the country seems to stop. Walking the dog, washing the
    car, cooking the roast, all that could wait. The only thing anyone
    was interested in, whether they loved cricket or not, was whether
    England could bat out the match.

    Shot of the year: Something about playing Australia seems to bring out
    the best in Chris Gayle. Maligned and mocked through early part of
    the English season after his offhand comments about the future of
    Test cricket, Gayle set the World Twenty20 alight with his innings of
    88 from 50 balls against Australia at the Oval. All Englishmen love
    seeing Australia lose, especially in an Ashes summer, and to see them
    humiliated is a greater pleasure still. Brett Lee followed a bouncer,
    which Gayle had hit out of the ground for six, with a cunning slower
    ball. Gayle moved his front foot aside and hit through the line over
    long-on, sending the ball high into the air. If this shot was heard
    around the world, it was only because of the almighty clatter it made
    when it landed. Sky measured it at 105m. “It’s the first time I’ve
    hit it so far,” Gayle reckoned afterwards.

    Blunder of the year: On the morning of 20 August, Australia decided to
    leave Nathan Hauritz out of their team for the fifth Test, on a pitch
    which, as every fool knew, was always going to spin. Graeme Swann
    took eight wickets in the match, Australia had to cobble together 52
    overs from their three part-timers. “In hindsight, a specialist
    spinner would have been pretty handy out there,” reflected Ricky
    Ponting afterwards. Well duh. This is an especially strong field and
    special mention should also go to John Dyson, for his unique
    interpretation of the Duckworth-Lewis method, and Kevin Pietersen,
    for the premeditated sweep against Hauritz that got him out in the
    first innings of the Ashes.

    QUOTE OF THE WEEK

    “I’d love to, but I can’t” – Chris Gayle responds to a request from a
    comely young female photographer that he sit with his knees together
    while she took the team’s picture. As Peter Lalor joked in The
    Australian, she’s still blushing now.

    -guardian.uk.

  • Most Affordable 2010 Cars

    Pay attention to more than price when looking for a wallet-friendly vehicle.
    In 2010, three tailor-made Bugattis–the Veyron Sang d’Argent, the Grand Sport Soleil de Nuit and the Veyron Nocturne–will hit the road. The supercars, which get to 60 mph in under 2.5 seconds, will be available next spring. Price? More than $2 million apiece.

    For the driver looking for speed at a less-racy price, a 2010 Chevrolet Camaro or Jaguar XF will still roar (the Camaro’s V8 SS gets to 60 mph in 4.6 seconds, the Jaguar’s supercharged V8 in 4.7) but won’t break the bank in the process.

    Those performance cars join the Toyota ( TM – news – people )Avalon, Lincoln MKS and Nissan Maxima on our list of the most affordable vehicles in their segment. They may not have the lowest manufacturer suggested retail prices on the lot, but over years of ownership, their value becomes readily apparent.

    Behind the Numbers
    To identify 2010’s most affordable vehicles for their segment, we used Vincentric data to determine the total cost of ownership for a vehicle, including five-year totals for fuel costs, maintenance, repairs, average national insurance rates, depreciation, interest, opportunity costs and taxes. (Vincentric is an auto consulting firm based in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.)

    The data assumes an annual rate of 15,000 miles driven per vehicle and a price of $2.60 for regular fuel, $2.86 for premium, and $2.75 for diesel. It also applies an inflation rate for fuel prices, since the calculations predict costs over five years. We evaluated affordability based on the percentage of each vehicle’s total five-year costs compared with its total costs, including base price and one-time fees. MSRPs are adjusted for fees and destination charges, in accordance with Vincentric data.

    Toyota and Chevrolet each did well on our list, with entries like the $27,670 Toyota Prius, $27,075 Toyota Tacoma, $65,588 Chevy Silverado, and $68,280 Chevrolet Corvette all leading their segments.

    Sales last month for each of those automakers reflect their appeal: Toyota posted gains of 1% over November 2008; Chevrolet gained 4.8% year-over-year. Overall, the industry broke even in sales year-over-year. Asian brands gained 6.8% total; domestics lost 6.8%.

    From our list of affordable cars, the Prius sold 9,617 units last month, up 11.1% over November 2008. While Prius owners can expect to pay $4,296 on fuel for five years, and $915 on repairs, owners of vehicles in the same segment can pay as much as $12,300 and $1,240, respectively.

    Education Pays
    Experts say cars like the Prius and BMW’s X6 (up a respectable 7.8% last month) appeal to consumers because they offer a whole package of value, not just a cheap sticker price. Prospective buyers are smarter than ever about determining which vehicles are affordable.

    Two things automakers are doing to improve the affordability of their cars–besides lowering the price, of course–are improve reliability and efficiency. (The combustion engine alone could improve its efficiency by as much as 20%, according to engineers at Bentley). Maintenance, repairs and fuel comprise a large chunk of expenses over five-years’ time. The less often a car has to be at the gas station or in the shop, the more money it saves.

    Consumers are catching on. Auto sales are projected to hit 11 million by year end (down from 13.2 million in 2008)–but Internet traffic related to buying is way up, says Chip Perry, CEO of Autotrader.com. The Atlanta-based automotive marketing company lists local dealer inventories, buying and selling tips, comparison tools, reviews and pricing and incentive information for prospective buyers. It has gained a 35% year-over-year increase in on-site traffic for the past 10 years. Perry doesn’t expect it to let up anytime soon.

    “Our average monthly total audience was 15.3 million [unique visitors] through September,” he says. “You would expect that our numbers are going down, but we’re up 8% over 2008. We expect to grow next year.”

    Seventy-five percent of car-buyers shop online, according to AutoTrader data, with the average buyer spending 55 minutes a month researching vehicles on the site. Chevrolet is the No. 1 shopped-for car brand on AutoTrader.com. Toyota is No. 3. (Ford is No. 2).

    David Wurster, who leads product development and industry analysis for Vincentric, says the exponential growth in online research is no surprise. Self-education is the key to finding something affordable.

    “Just intuitively, you know that in a down economy that is what consumers need to be doing,” he says. “This is how you really determine how much it costs to operate the car, as opposed to just the payment.”

    That’s small consolation to would-be Bugatti owners. No amount of research will make those cars affordable.