Jerry Yang, Yahoo's chief executive implored his 14,000 staff to stick to their day jobs in spite of an audacious effort by the billionaire corporate raider Carl Icahn to unseat the internet firm's entire board of directors.

Icahn, a 72-year-old New Yorker with a track record of shareholder activism, has fielded a 10-strong slate of dissident nominees in the hope of snatching control of the company and selling it to Microsoft.

But Yahoo has accused the hedge fund activist of misunderstanding the outcome of the company's failed round of talks with Microsoft earlier this year.

In an email to employees written in his signature lower-case type, Yang urged his staff to keep working: "i ask all of you to put aside the rumours and speculation and stay focused on the business at hand and what we do best."

In a formal response to Icahn's actions, Yahoo's chairman, Roy Bostock, provided the company's first detailed version of the way negotiations with Microsoft ended, insisting that the Seattle-based software company had been responsible for the failure of the talks.

"We do not believe it is in the best interests of Yahoo stockholders to allow you and your hand-picked nominees to take control of Yahoo for the express purpose of trying to force a sale of Yahoo to a formerly interested buyer who has publicly stated that they have moved on," said Bostock in a letter to Icahn.

When it initially approached Yahoo in February, Microsoft offered $44.6bn (£23bn), at $31 a share. Bostock said that on May 2, Microsoft indicated its willingness to raise this to $33 - but he added: "This oral 'offer' was never delivered in writing and did not include any details of a cash/stock mix."

Bostock said Yahoo's board had authorised Yang to meet Microsoft executives, led by the chief executive, Steve Ballmer, in Seattle and to indicate that $37 a share would be acceptable. But he continued: "Microsoft elected, within hours, to walk away from the negotiating table and informed us that they were 'moving on', having never engaged further on price or any of the key non-price deal terms."

Analysts believe there is a good chance that Microsoft would come back to the table if Yahoo wanted to sell.

Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst at Collins Stewart, said: "We believe this deal will likely happen. Microsoft really does not have a plan B without Yahoo."

Icahn's board nominees are coming under increasing scrutiny. One of them, Adam Dell, is the younger brother of the Dell computer company founder, Michael Dell. Another, the former Nextel telecoms boss John Chapple, was previously on a tentative platform of Yahoo directors put together by Microsoft and his presence has been interpreted as a sign that Bill Gates' software company is still interested.

A third nominee, Mark Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks basketball team owner, sold his own internet start-up to Yahoo for $5.7bn in 1998.

A popular Silicon Valley blog, Valleywag, characterised Cuban's involvement as: "Mark Cuban to Jerry Yang: thanks for the $5.7bn - now let's get you fired."

I was hoping this week to attend a protest outside parliament of patients and scientists in favour of human-animal hybrid embryo cell experiments, discussing and explaining the science to MPs, chatting to people with motor neurone disease who have concluded that Christians' sense of intuitive moral unease is not quite as important as a possible treatment for their illness, and wearing a dog's head and goat hooves with patches of hair glued crudely to my naked chest and legs.

But the Medical Research Council, who are older and wiser than me, sent out a circular email to discourage attenders. They explained that lobbying MPs would have a "negative impact" and might "actually be counter-productive" on their softly-softly approach. They couldn't support people who went and, if attending, people should make it clear they had nothing to do with the MRC. Since I may one day be applying to them for a grant, I'd like to clarify formally that I have no opinions. I will leave the real work on public engagement with science to the people who helped manage BSE, GM and MMR. I will not discuss the embryos. I will not distort their finely tuned message.

We would all do well to remember that elaborate runic rituals behind the scenes can have an enormous impact on what is heard. Hi-fi guru Russ Andrews was recently trashed by the ASA for making elaborate claims about a very expensive power cable. He believed he could affect what people heard simply by weaving a lot of wires elaborately into a clever and expensive little spiral. What buffoonery.

According to Shakti technologies, three small pieces of wood cut into a wavey shape called the hallograph can modify the movement of sound information around a room. It is the result of more than 10 years of research "studying the effects of the speaker/room interface", during which the company learned "how to reduce the audibility of the chaotic reflections from the walls of the listening room so they won't overpower and interfere with the direct sound from the speakers. The hallograph contours the frequency, amplitude and time coefficients of the first reflections you hear." Apparently this produces a stunning increase in clarity.

If you're worried about any rough corners in what people hear, you could try the CD Stoplight, a pen that you rub around the edge of a compact disc "to reduce the scattered reflections of the laser beam and increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the detected laser". The result is a significant decrease in harsh "edginess" and an increase in clarity and resolution at only $19.99 from Elusive Disc.

The Marigo Labs Signature 3D Mat has received glowing reviews from Home Theatre and HiFi and may also prove useful to the MRC. "Voices take on additional (natural) weight, depth and fullness. There's also a greater sense of air and three-dimensionality, and a more natural decay to the sound. The differences are unmistakable." This is a £100 Kevlar matrix mat that you stick on top of your source, with a funny little geometric pattern applied by hand using superfine silver strand in a proprietary array.

Meanwhile, MusicDirect sells special supports which can change what people hear simply by lifting the cable off the floor: "The improvements you will hear in detail and dynamics are not subtle." Cheaper than PR advice at just £80.

Or you could go all out and invest in the Shakti On-Lines, little black matchboxes that attach to your hi-fi cables with velcro for only $99. They eradicate any confusing noise in the signal, and produce "a blacker background that increases resolution and dynamics".

I'm wearing one right now. Is it helping?

It's one of the most appealing broadband deals on offer: a free laptop if you agree to take out Carphone Warehouse/AOL's £20-a-month contract for two years. But six months after she signed up (and paid extra for a better laptop) one customer is at the end of her tether, with no computer, mysteriously cancelled contracts, non-existent refunds and endlessly frustrating attempts to contact the company.

East London caterer and mother Diana Ivankovic contacted Guardian Money in a final attempt to obtain a refund of £165 owed to her by Carphone Warehouse. Last November, along with thousands of others, she signed up to the Carphone Warehouse/AOL offer that promised a free laptop to anyone agreeing to pay for a minimum of two years' broadband.

She had been an AOL customer for 10 years and checked with the operator that she would qualify for the deal. "After confirming that as an existing AOL customer I would be eligible, I agreed to pay £164.95 [for an upgraded laptop and delivery] and was told to wait 28 days.

"But a month later there was no laptop, just a confirmation letter from AOL to say that my old customer details would be updated and transferred to a new contract," she says.

Eventually it transpired that Carphone Warehouse had cancelled her order because a member of their staff put in the wrong details. But the company did not tell her, and since then, despite numerous calls to the firm, she is no nearer to getting her money back. Neither does she understand why the contract was cancelled and whether it was because she was an existing customer. "I was fairly fed up having been messed around - but when I asked when I would be getting the refund, I was told that I needed to wait for authorisation and that the cheque would follow in the post. Of course, it never arrived."

Since then, says she has been given numerous reasons as to why her refund has not been processed. "I've never dealt with a company like this before - they are either incredibly incompetent, or there is a policy of withholding customers' cash - I'm still no nearer to deciding which it is," she says.

Ivankovic is not alone. Last year we featured the case of retired teacher Ann Gordon, from Romford, Essex, who was forced to send bailiffs in to Carphone Warehouse subsidiary TalkTalk's west London headquarters in a bid to recover the £630 she was awarded in the small claims court.

Gordon went to court after being left without a landline phone for more than six weeks. Even after she won her case, the company, which she accused of being "unbelievably arrogant", still refused to pay up.

After Guardian Money raised the latest complaint with Carphone Warehouse, the company responded swiftly.

This week it said it had refunded her bank card, and to say sorry, it has now said it will send her the laptop for free.

The company issued the following statement: "Unfortunately, due to an administrative error, Mrs Ivankovic's free laptop deal was incorrectly processed and her laptop was never delivered. Whilst waiting for a refund, Mrs Ivankovic upgraded her account to a standard AOL broadband package without any subsidised hardware. We apologise for any inconvenience that Mrs Ivankovic may have experienced and will send her out a free laptop as a gesture of goodwill."

"I'll be delighted - if it turns up," she says. "I'm not going to believe it until I see it with my own eyes."

m.brignall@guardian.co.uk

It's probably an age thing, but my heart sinks when I arrive home and find that the item I've bought comes with an installation disc. It means an hour faffing about, another icon on the desktop, something else to go wrong. One day it won't be possible to open a loaf of bread without first downloading the eating instructions.

Both of this week's running systems, from Nike and Adidas, require such special preparation, so if, in your view, jogging is a solipsistic, unadulterated and spontaneous form of recreation and exercise, look away now.

Trainers, in my wardrobe, are a form of casual footwear or a fashion item, and even though I played five-a-side football until quite recently, these days I keep fit by not eating crisps. So it felt odd slipping my feet into the Nike "air zoom structure" running shoes with the intention of going farther than the paper shop. The Nike+ SportBand system (£40; 0800 056 1640, nikeplus.com) involves the triangulation of three components: a sensor, a band (worn around the wrist) and the mission-control computer program. The sensor is lozenge-shaped, about as big as a Werther's Original, and is inserted into the shoe prior to running. It has no moving parts, no battery and looks like a piece of foam packaging. Annoyingly, there is no pocket or housing for the sensor (if one exists, I never located it) and I ended up tucking it into my sock.

The wristband houses a "Link" device, a sort of memory stick-cum-digital watch, which gives a read-out of your performance in terms of calories, distance, time and pace, based on information sent from the foot sensor. The Link detaches from the wristband and connects to the computer via a USB port (which also recharges the Link) and the computer uploads the record of your exertions into the Nike+ program. Once hooked up to the computer, you can choose various training routines, monitor just about every aspect of your jogging, and go online to compare or compete with other runners in the Nike community. It's like Facebook for people who can't sit still, and once set up it's simple enough to use, practical and informative, and fun.

Meanwhile, the obscenely over-packaged Adidas miCoach box (and several other boxes within it) contains a half-decent Samsung quad band phone, a "winged" foot sensor and a chest band, both of which require batteries, plus a phone charger, a USB cable, an earphone cable, another piece of wire I never quite figured out, many instruction manuals, plus, of course, a software disc (Samsung Adidas miCoach, around £110, or from free on contract; 0870 726 7864, samsungmobile.com).

A sort of jogger's selection box, the miCoach system operates along the same principles as the Nike+, but with a few essential differences. The sensor wings are designed to slip beneath the laces of a training shoe - a good idea, unless your shoes have Velcro fasteners. The chest band measures heart rate, and to work effectively needs to be moistened slightly to provide decent contact with the skin. A little bit of sweat does the trick, it says in the instructions. So no problems there, I'm thinking. The foot sensor and heart monitor then transmit information to the miCoach program on the mobile phone, which can also play music and offer motivational guidance en route. I'd hoped this might include phrases such as, "Come on, I could walk faster" or, "Put the Mars Bar down and pick up the pace, lazy arse" but it's more like a speaking clock. "Twenty-five minutes; 1.2 miles; 105 calories," she informs me at the top of the hill.

But there's a bigger problem with the miCoach. Running down the road with the sensor lashed to my foot, the band digging into my ribs and the phone in the pouch of a tourniquet strapped around my biceps, I felt less like a jogger and more like a tagged offender in breach of his Asbo, or someone who'd escaped from police custody midway through a polygraph test. The loneliness of the long-distance runner? Fat chance.

· Stephen Fry will return in July.