Windows Archive

Vista Beta 1 and Longhorn Server Beta 1 include a new implementation of the TCP/IP protocol suite known as the Next Generation TCP/IP stack. The Next Generation TCP/IP stack in Windows Vista and Windows Server Longhorn is a complete redesign of TCP/IP functionality for both IPv4 and IPv6 that meets the connectivity and performance needs of today's varied networking environments and technologies. Elsewhere, will Office 12 be named... Office Mondo?

"I do not consider Windows ready for the desktop. I found it difficult to use, buggy and lacking in security. I also found technical support lacking. While Windows captured a significant portion of the desktop market, the product is clearly not a good fit for consumers who do not understand the risks associated with logging on to the Internet. The costs of providing aftermarket products can run higher than the price paid for the hardware."

Graphics drivers developed for Vista, Microsoft's next generation operating system, will be far more stable than their Windows XP-based counterparts, and not crash the operating system anymore, an executive of graphics chip developer ATI said.

This is a series of articles exploring the new tools and APIs that developers will find in Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0, Visual Studio 2005, and the .NET Compact Framework version 2.0. The series begins with an introduction to Windows Mobile 5.0 and the tools needed to get started developing for Windows Mobile 5.0 today.

Microsoft announced a sharp reorganization of the company into three divisions in order to streamline decision making and speed to market. The software giant will realign several existing units into three core divisions - Platforms and Services; Business; and Entertainment and Devices - that better represent Microsoft's goals, said Steve Ballmer, CEO. In addition, MS released SP2 for Office:Mac 2004.

"Kam Vedbrat is a lead program manager on the Aero team which redesigned the User Interface of Windows Vista. We spend half an hour looking at the user interface." (stream | file, .wmv)

In previous Windows releases, the entire audio stack ran in Kernel space. Vista will put an end to this. "The first (and biggest) change we made was to move the entire audio stack out of the kernel and into user mode. Pre-Vista, the audio stack lived in a bunch of different kernel mode device drivers, including sysaudio.sys, kmixer.sys, wdmaud.sys, redbook.sys, etc. In Vista and beyond, the only kernel mode drivers for audio are the actual audio drivers (and portcls.sys, the high level audio port driver)."

The news has been around, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says the development process at Microsoft has to change after Windows Vista. The time between releases is just too long, and Microsoft has to show profit to keep shareholders happy. Some say the Redmond empire is due for a slow collapse, but I think there exists an amazing opportunity.

Bob Muglia, Microsoft's senior vice president for Windows Server, on Thursday shed some light on the upcoming Windows Server 2003 R2 release during his keynote address at the Professional Developers Conference here. R2, which is due later this year, would bring features such as Services for Unix, the WS-Management standard, along with the next generation of the management console, MMC 3.0.

Vista's development tools use cross-platform standards, so you can use them to write normal apps that will run on multiple platforms or Web-based apps with multiple browser support. Also, new security features planned for the Vista version of Windows Server will include an automatic patch check and a file system that can fix itself, Microsoft said. Watch some videos of Vista here.

According to many blogs and the Microsoft OEM site, Microsoft is due to release Windows Media Center Edition Update (codenamed Emerald) soon. The update dubbed "Update Rollup 2" will be released in approximately a month. The update will be released to OEM's within the next week. In the same link you will find information on MCE's future.

Again, more news from the PDC. Microsoft senior vice president Steven Sinofsky took the stage Wednesday to discuss Office 12, which he said would hit Beta 1 within a "couple months." Betas of the Open Office XML format schemes are available starting today. Also, more screenshots of Vista build 5219 can be found here, shots of IE7 here. MS also announced a developer's toolbar for IE 6 and 7. The toolbar would allow the developer to see how pages would look in various screen resolutions, validate HTML and CSS code, and perform numerous other functions that Web designers would find useful. You can read transcripts of the various keynotes here.

Microsoft issued an update to its final Update Rollup for Windows 2000 on Tuesday, correcting issues with the initial release. While there seems to be yet more glitches still not fixed, the company says those will be addressed in individual patches.

This week, Microsoft is handing out Vista build 5219 at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. PC Magazine was able to get their hands on it, trying out a number of new features and observing some slick-looking interface enhancements, such as true 3D windows views (with properly skewed video), thumbnail views for desktop apps, and a semi-transparent Taskbar. Take the guided tour to witness some of these new features in build 5219.