Paul Thurrot (there he is again) compares Vista Beta 1 to Tiger: "For Windows enthusiasts, Windows Vista Beta 1 is a much-needed demonstration that Microsoft can still churn out valuable Windows releases, after years of doubt. For Mac OS X users, however, Windows Vista Beta 1 engenders a sense of deja vu. Isn't a lot of this stuff already in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger?"

According to Paul Thurrot, Microsft is planning on releasing Vista to manufacturing on August 9th, 2006, with broad market availbility on November 15th of that year. Beta 2, RC0 and RC1 will be released, respectivily, December 7th (2005), April 19th (2006) and June 28th (2006). All this also applies to Vista Server, with the exception that Server's RTM is scheduled for Januray 10th, 2007. WinFS is supposed to be released in Q3 2007. All these release dates are ahead of schedule.

Vim, or vi improved, is an open source text editor for multiple platforms. This article gives an overview of vim's latest improvements over vi. New features include multiple windows, syntax highlighting, multiple levels of undo, and color themes. All of these improvements are made possible by the use of vim plugins.

The WinFS rumors were true: Microsoft has posted for download by its Microsoft Developer Network subscribers a first beta of its next-generation WinFS file system. While many developers were not expecting Microsoft to release a Beta 1 build of the technology until late 2006, Microsoft officials said on Monday that getting early bits to testers before Windows Vista shipped was actually the plan of record since last year. Update: Channel9 has a video of WinFS (WMV).

GridShell is designed to incorporate grid concepts into command shell environments. In this article, the author describes the motivation for GridShell and provides a high-level description of the extensions to the language interface the tool provides. GridShell extends the TCSH and BASH syntaxes. Users familiar with both will be able to write scripts that include these grid shell language extensions, and orchestrate and coordinate the execution of programs across the grid.

To celebrate their 10th anniversary, Opera is throwing an online 'party' and as part of that a special treat is free registration keys for all platforms for Opera from a page on the party area of the site.

Linuxwatch.com is running a great story called "Five Reasons NOT To Use Linux." It includes a nice list of reasons why one might want to steer clear of Linux, along with a nice comparison to how easily these reasons are addressed in Microsoft Windows.

Feelin has been ported to AROS. Feelin is an object-oriented system for AmigaOS as described on their website. It provides a GUI toolkit that looks polished (screenshot). The AROS Archives is up and ready to accept your files. This web site will be the main repository for all AROS software.

The OpenOffice.org project has released the second beta of version 2 of their office suite. "This is our second beta of OpenOffice.org 2.0. That means it probably has bugs; use caution. Download, test it out, and file bug reports with the QA Project."

When Microsoft announced a year ago that it had decided to rip the next-generation Windows File System from Longhorn, many company watchers wrote off the feature as little more than vaporware. But it seems Microsoft didn't simply shelve WinFS. According to sources close to the company, Microsoft just last week put the finishing touches on the first beta release of WinFS. And the company is moving ahead with plans to back-port the WinFS technology to Windows XP.

For as long as most technologists can remember, there has been Wintel, the $250 billion industry dominated by Microsoft's Windows operating systems and Intel's microprocessors. But Lintel, or the Linux operating system and Intel, is now encroaching on this empire, and behind it is the entire open-source software movement, which threatens to overthrow the Windows industry.

Partition Logic is a graphical, easy-to-use partitioning and hard disk management tool for PCs, based on the alternative Visopsys OS. It can create, delete, reorder and move partitions, and modify their attributes, as well as doing things like copying entire hard disks. It boots from a single floppy or CD image. Version 0.57 (freshmeat announcement) has a number of tweaks and some important bug fixes. A change log is here, and downloads are here.

A petition has been started to present to Codeweavers to show that BSD is a viable platform for which to release Crossover Office. Update: For those who aren't keen on posting their email address this note posted by the petition organiser will hopefully put your minds at ease.

Secure Startup is primarily designed to prevent laptop thieves and other unauthorized users with physical access to a computer from getting access to the data on the system. Secure Startup uses a chip called the Trusted Platform Module, or TPM, which offers protected storage of encryption keys, passwords and digital certificates. Vista uses this capability to verify that a PC has not been tampered with when it starts up and to protect data through encryption.