Windows Archive

Windows 2000 Professional, while not considered a home user operating system, fits my bill for an OS that is stable and has a good combination of performance and compatibility with previous Windows versions, says Brian Bruns.

After months of keeping its prized cow in the barn, Microsoft is beginning to let Longhorn out of the corral for public viewing.

Channel 9 has Dave Probert (who used to be a UNIX head but is now an architect for Windows) giving a four part video presentation of the Windows NT kernel. He does a very good job of comparing the Windows kernel to UNIX-style kernels and how they tackle the same problems differently.Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Many users and IT administrators had a lot to say about Microsoft's removal of the "blocker" mechanism this week, which had temporarily disabled the delivery of WinXP SP2. THG contacted members of the IT community and spoke with often-cited security experts, who discussed their concerns about the damage SP2 may cause and some cases where the download might really be necessary.

TopDesk is an Exposé Clone for Windows XP.Features include support for minimized windows and multiple monitors, live window updates while in Exposé mode, display of window titles while in Exposé mode, customizable mouse and keyboard shortcuts, and mouse hotspots. New features in TopDesk 1.3 include multi-monitor support, improved performance and spatial window tiling, and unicode font support. To try it out, download the trial version. For more information, visit the TopDesk website.

In the last few weeks, the tech industry has been buzzing with speculation that Microsoft's next OS release, Longhorn, will not be ready for its planned 2006 unveiling. If the OS is put off until 2007, some competitors could win more profits, but many analysts say that software and hardware partners will face the most serious challenges and could end up losing more than they anticipated.

Software engineers who attend Microsoft's annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference later this month could get their first taste of a new Windows user permissions model that could change the way thousands of programs are developed and run. But as the company prepares for the final Longhorn development push, questions remain about its plans for a new user privileges model called Least-Privilege User Account, or LUA.

Starting next Tuesday, April 12, computers running Microsoft Windows XP without Service Packet 2 installed will not be able to block the upgrade.

The Register, which is generally no purveyor of Microsoft fawning, notes the many security improvements in Windows 2003 SP1, among those a perceived attitude change in its documentation that acknowledges security challenges inherent to their platform, and nifty features like the ability to tun off inbound network connections during setup to prevent the latest worms striking before you can run Windows Update.

The operating system is based on the kernel WindowsCE version 5.1. It differs from its predecessor in Direct3D Mobile (initially optimized for Wireless MMX), Windows Error Reporting, the possibility to work as a USB storage without drivers, improved support of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and so on.

Microsoft has wrapped up development on the first major update to its Windows Server 2003 operating system and released it for download, the company said Wednesday.

Microsoft will build software for managing identities into Windows in order to beef up security by giving users more control over their personal information, the world's largest software maker said on Tuesday.

Microsoft will rename a product it was ordered by the European Commission to offer--a version of Windows with its media player removed.

Although the hard disk is much slower than RAM, it is also much cheaper and users always have a lot more hard disk space than RAM. So, Windows and other OSes are designed to create this pseudo-RAM or in Microsoft's terms - Virtual Memory, to make up for the shortfall in RAM when running memory-intensive programs.