Top IT stories this week: Windows 10 is Windows 8 in new clothes, few savings from gov going digital, meerkats and drones

Computing's top seven stories from the past seven days. Read all about it!

Here are Computing's most-read stories from the past seven days so you can enjoy them all over again.

7. Intel 'eating its own children' by ignoring low-end laptop space claims AMD

AMD's Kevin Lensing argues that in pursuing the low-end tablet market at the expense of laptops, Intel is focused on developing the cheapest processor, rather than the best one.

"As you go further down, what we've seen the past couple of years is that Intel has gotten far more aggressive in its strategies on that low end," he says. "That used to be a place where we enjoyed our biggest market share. We're not looking forward to trying to design the cheapest possible processor; ... The focus of our R&D is better products for the mainstream market."

6. Working around the clock: an interview with Aecom's Steve Capper and Matt Sharp

When Aecom merged with URS, CIO Steve Capper and IT director Matt Sharp undertook an integration process that would normally take 12 months and did it in three. Unsurprisingly, there were some casualties along the way, and Capper's own job was at risk.

"You don't need two network leads, just as you don't need two CIOs. The overall downsize was about 10 per cent from both companies," Capper explained.

5. Rentokil looking at using drones for bird control

Why use boring old ladders when you can fly drones instead?

4. HMRC to hire consultants to advise on 400 new post-Aspire outsourcing contracts

HMRC has issued a £20m tender for consultants to advise it on the shift from its Aspire outsourcing arrangement as it moves towards a wider range of smaller contracts to manage and run HMRC's IT.

The Aspire contract expires in 2017 and HMRC is planning to move from one mega-contract and multiple sub-contractors, to managing more than 400 IT suppliers. The aim is that no single contractor will have a contract worth more than about £100m.

3. 'Little evidence' of government departments making savings on staff by going digital

HMRC featured in another of our top stories this week. The National Audit Office examined four departments: HMRC, Ministry of Defence, Department for Transport and Department for International Development and found that while they had significantly cut their staff numbers and costs in the past five years, these savings would not necessarily persist over the long term, and that in particular, expected savings from the "digital agenda" have not been realised.

2. Making movies: How comparethemarket.com got Meerkat Movies up and running in months

When comparethemarket.com CIO James Lomas was suddenly given the task of getting Meerkat Movies up and running in a matter of months, late in 2014, it seemed the ideal opportunity to test the company's nascent shift towards cloud computing.

As well as shifting to Amazon AWS, he also adopted a DevOps regime, using tools such as Chef and Docker, and moved from Microsoft SQL Server to MongoDB.

1. 'Fess up, Microsoft: Windows 10 is merely a rebranded Windows 8

As all the world knows, Microsoft has a new operating system coming out in July, but is the number-jumping Windows 10 release really that different from Windows 8, and has the latter been unfairly maligned? Peter Gothard believes that 10 mostly amounts to 8 plus a slick UI and an even slicker PR campaign.