Windows Archive

"Just days after announcing a delay in when Windows Vista will ship, Microsoft has significantly restructured its Platforms & Services Division and appointed Steve Sinofsky, who headed the Office team until now, to head the Windows and Windows Live groups, giving him broad responsibility for planning future versions of Windows. While the company is saying the reorganization is designed to better align the existing Windows and MSN assets with Microsoft's overall Live strategy, some sources tell eWEEK that the delay in the release of Windows Vista was the catalyst for the move." Microsoft employees want heads rolling.

Yesterday ActiveWin had the exclusive of Windows Vista's official release date. Today, Microsoft confirmed all that by updating its release schedule and making an official press release. "Microsoft today confirmed that Windows Vista, the next generation of the Windows client operating system, is on target to go into broad consumer beta to approximately 2 million users in the second quarter of 2006. Microsoft is on track to complete the product this year, with business availability in November 2006 and broad consumer availability in January 2007."

Microsoft has officially announced to ActiveWin (over a conference call) the release date of Windows Vista. Windows Vista will be made officially to consumers in January 2007, while making Windows Vista available to businesses only in November 2006. In addition, there will be a feature complete Beta 2 CTP released in the next quarter.

"The new OS is designed to offer a shiny new user interface, better security, improved data organization and near-instantaneous search. It will be a major gaming platform release because it includes DirectX 10, an upgraded and rebuilt collection of application programming interfaces that, according to Microsoft, will offer six to eight times the graphics performance of DirectX 9.0. We're opening our series of Windows Vista features with a look at the most striking feature of Vista, the 3D desktop and the new Aero interface."

There's a software product coming that has the potential to demote spyware from a security priority to an afterthought: Windows Vista. Spyware has become a serious security problem for users of Microsoft's operating system over the past years, giving rise to a host of third-party tools to fight the insidious software. But perhaps the best defensive program has yet to ship, some analysts believe.

"The latest Community Technology Preview version of Windows Vista contains a new feature aimed at helping the average Joe and his friendly Best Buy shopping assistant figure out what kind of horsepower is needed to run the new OS. The rating consists of an aggregate total rating on a scale from 1 to 5 and a number of sub-ratings on a scale yet to be specified, broken out by hardware categories like processor, memory, video card, and hard drive."

"This is the year... The year that Microsoft releases the newest version of Windows. We are targeting to make Windows Vista generally available in the second half of this year, and the exact delivery date will ultimately be determined by the quality of the product. So what is so compelling that our customers would want to spend money upgrading to the Vista operating system? Let’s take a quick look at all that Vista offers a small business."

Microsoft has delayed a special slimmed-down version of Windows XP for legacy PCs, which is based on the Windows Embedded code base. The Redmond company had expected to make the operating system available to Software Assurance customers this month, but now says Windows Fundamentals will ship 'in late 2006.' Windows Fundamentals can run on older machines that do not support XP while providing the same level of security.

However old, Windows 3.x is still being used. Calmira XP 4.0 beta gives the Windows 3.x desktop the WinXP look-and-feel. In this new version an XP taskbar has been added, and even experimental support for long file names. Other things Calmira includes is the XP login screen, and more. And here it is, boys and girls, the obligatory screenshot.

This is release 0.9.9 of Wine, a free implementation of Windows on UNIX. New features include better web browser support, recursive directory change notifications, debugger improvements, and lots of other bug fixes and under-the-hood improvements.

BitLocker Drive Encryption is a new feature in Windows Vista that provides enhanced data protection for your computer. BitLocker is Microsoft's response to one of their top customer requests: address the very real threats of data theft or exposure from lost, stolen or inappropriately decommissioned PC hardware and tightly integrate the solution into Windows. Windows Connected recently had an opportunity to ask the Windows Vista Bitlocker team a number of questions.

"With six separate versions of Windows Vista on the way, Microsoft has a marketing challenge on its hands. How will the company properly inform users as to which versions support which features? One part of the plan is now becoming clear: all four 'consumer' versions of the OS will be available to users even after installation. How? They'll all be available for 'instant online upgrade' once Vista is installed."

While testers have been all over the newest Windows Vista CTP build, the new Longhorn Server test build, which Microsoft also delivered at the end of February, has gotten far less attention. Testers confirmed that Microsoft has posted on the Connect beta-download site the Longhorn Server Build 5308 bits for download.

"There's a lot of confusion about Windows Vista these days. Many online discussion forums have a great number of users who express no desire to upgrade to Vista. Sure, we've all seen the screenshots and maybe a video or two of Vista in action, but for many it only seems like new tricks for an old dog. Yeah, it's got some fancy 3D effects in the interface, but OS X has been doing that for years now, and it's still Windows underneath, right? The sentiment seems to be that Vista is another Windows ME. Perhaps part of the problem is that people just don't know what Vista has in store for them."