Windows Archive

Loans to Lift Vista Uptake

Thom Holwerda 2006-06-27 Windows 15 Comments

Microsoft Australia will try to prod businesses into upgrading to its planned Windows Vista and Office 2007 products with a set of sweetheart loan deals. The loans will come from the Microsoft Financing operation, which kicked off in Australia in March and offers credit for technology upgrades that include services, hardware and Microsoft software. The aim of the loan products would be to make it easier to tempt businesses into buying the new operating system and Office upgrade along with the hardware necessary to run it.

Reviews: Windows Vista Build 5465

Thom Holwerda 2006-06-26 Windows 42 Comments

Paul Thurrot, ~~Microsoft~~ ~~Apple~~ Microsoft supporter, reviews the new Vista build: "Little more than a month after issuing a bug-laden Windows Vista Beta 2, Microsoft has shipped its first post-Beta 2 interim build of the next Windows and it makes up a lot of lost ground. Indeed, it's hard not to view this build and not believe that Microsoft is absolutely back on track." Another reviewer also states that performance has increased since the previous build.

Designing High-Availability Windows Systems

Eugenia Loli 2006-06-25 Windows 15 Comments

Computer systems that don't provide enough working time are worthless at best and disastrous at worst. But the fine distinction between "available enough" and "99.999% available" can end up hitting the bottom line pretty severely. Rick Cook explains the major options for designing a system with an appropriate amount of uptime.

Submitted by aaron 2006-06-25 Windows 42 Comments

AndandTech, in its usual in-depth fashion (14 pages), reviewed Windows Vista Beta 2. Their conclusions are grouped per competitor-- the MacOS and XP. On Tiger: "However, even with the massive improvements Microsoft has shown with Vista, we still feel they aren't quite ready to beat Tiger in a fight." When comparing to XP: "Feature for feature, Vista is superior to XP, and its only real costs are memory usage, hard drive usage, and price." In the meantime, Microsoft has released a new build of Vista. Update: Screencast of Beta 2.

Submitted by danwarne 2006-06-21 Windows 43 Comments

Microsoft will release updates to the beta of Windows Vista every month until the gold master release to corporate customers in November, the software giant's Australian Windows chief revealed today. Jeff Putt, Director, Windows Client, Microsoft Australia revealed the plan in a briefing to journalists at Microsoft's headquarters in Sydney today. "We're on the bug-hunt", he said.

Fighting Microsoft’s Piracy Check

Thom Holwerda 2006-06-20 Windows 92 Comments

Counterfeiters aren't Microsoft's only opponents in its effort to combat piracy: Some of its customers are against it, too. The company is forging ahead with a program, Windows Genuine Advantage, tied to its free software downloads and updates, that checks whether the Windows installation on a PC is pirated. But some people, including some who say they own a legitimately acquired copy of Windows, have challenged the need for such validation.

Application Testing Under Windows Vista

Submitted by Esther Schindler 2006-06-19 Windows 10 Comments

Vista is supposed to be faster, more reliable, and more secure. The result is that you can't assume your older Windows apps - particularly the ones you wrote - will work. DevSource.com's John Mueller points out where the bodies are buried in Vista's graphics, security, hardware, and third party applications, and where to start digging.

Vista May Require ‘Unproven’ Drive Technology

Thom Holwerda 2006-06-16 Windows 16 Comments

Details have emerged this week that Microsoft may be planning to make it mandatory for laptop manufacturers who want to support its operating system to install hybrid flash drives. A Microsoft document specifying requirements for flash storage led to speculation that hybrid storage would be mandatory for all Vista laptops, from June 2007, but this has been denied by Microsoft.

Submitted by Eugenia Loli 2006-06-16 Windows 91 Comments

Microsoft senior vice president Bob Muglia opened up TechEd 2006 in Boston Sunday evening by proclaiming that Windows Vista was the most secure operating system in the industry. But a bold statement can only go so far, and much of this week's conference has been spent reinforcing that point.

Inside Microsoft’s New Driver Quality Rating System

Eugenia Loli 2006-06-15 Windows 11 Comments

It has long been said that one of Microsoft's greatest challenges has been to support the wild and unpredictable PC hardware market, stemming from the fact that unlike Apple, Microsoft has little control over the hardware that its OS comes to reside upon. True or not, one thing is certain: a bad driver can turn an otherwise stable system into a nightmare. To help put an end to this, Microsoft is turning to a Driver Quality Rating system that it hopes will motivate both OEMs and device manufacturers to increase their commitments to driver quality.

sudo for Windows

Submitted by Gabor 2006-06-14 Windows 31 Comments

"Using a Limited account during your everyday work gives better protection against malicious software infection and accidental misconfiguration. But installing software or changing some system settings can be difficult in a low privileged environment. The sudoWn project can execute individual programs (or even a whole Windows shell) with temporary Administrator privileges under your user profile. This means you can use a low privileged environment and elevate your rights transitionally for software installation or systemwide configuration comfortably."

Microsoft Has a Big Date Set with ‘Black Hat’ Hackers

Thom Holwerda 2006-06-13 Windows 22 Comments

Microsoft's Windows Vista has a date with some of the world's smartest hackers. The software maker will use the spotlight of the Black Hat security conference in August to show off some of the key security features and functionality being fitted into Vista. Microsoft's appearance on the Black Hat stage is a first on many fronts. Microsoft will be the first software vendor to present an entire Black Hat Briefing track on a pre-release product. It is also the first time a representative from Redmond will make an official presentation at the controversial hacker confab. Meanwhile, a patch Tuesay passed by.

Microsoft: Zombies Most Prevalent Windows Threat

Submitted by John McWell 2006-06-13 Windows 48 Comments

More than 60 percent of compromised Windows PCs scanned by Microsoft's Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool between January 2005 and March 2006 were found to be running malicious bot software, the company said. The tool removed at least one version of the remote-control software from about 3.5 million PCs, it added. That's compared with an overall 5.7 million machines with infections overall. "Backdoor Trojans are a significant and tangible threat to Windows users," Microsoft said in the report.

Microsoft Wraps up Code for ‘Supercomputer’ Windows

Submitted by Neal Freemen 2006-06-12 Windows 57 Comments

Microsoft has taken another step in its effort to bring Windows in the world of supercomputing, having finished development of its computer cluster operating system. It has finalized the code for Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, which is designed to allow multiple servers to work together to handle high-performance computing (HPC) tasks. Such work, long handled by systems from SGI and Cray, has increasingly been tackled by Linux clusters, though Microsoft has been planning its entry for some time.

No Fix for ‘Critical’ Hole in Windows 98, ME

Eugenia Loli 2006-06-09 Windows 134 Comments

Microsoft will not fix a serious flaw in Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edition because a patch could break other applications. The security bug relates to Windows Explorer and could let an intruder commandeer a vulnerable PC, Microsoft warned in April. The software maker has made fixes available for Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and Windows 2000, but it has found that eliminating the vulnerability in Windows 98 and ME is "not feasible," it said.

Another Windows Vista Feature Bites the Dust

Thom Holwerda 2006-06-08 Windows 57 Comments

Microsoft has cut PC-to-PC synchronization from Vista. Vista Beta 2, which is slated to go to as many as two million testers, does not include the P2P synchronization technology. Microsoft officials said they cut the feature due to quality concerns, but the functionality is still "something we plan to deliver to our customers in the future," according to a company spokeswoman.

Submitted by diegocg 2006-06-08 Windows 71 Comments

Microsoft released Vista Beta 2 for public consumption. It does not require a Key but will expire on June 1 2007. You can download the 3GB ISOs (or from here) for 32bit and 64bit architectures.

Where Are the Vista Killer Apps?

Thom Holwerda 2006-06-06 Windows 48 Comments

Microsoft will have showcase applications ready in time for the Vista launch, which is still set for January 2007, company officials said. But given recent lawsuits and public disagreements with the likes of Symantec and Adobe Systems - two of Microsoft's biggest independent software vendor partners - which vendors are likely to be leading the Vista charge?

Can Microsoft Make Vista Less Annoying?

Thom Holwerda 2006-06-05 Windows 52 Comments

Microsoft plans to make several significant tweaks to the next beta of Windows Vista to make a key security feature less annoying to users. In response to widespread criticisms that the implementation of the UAC (User Account Control) feature triggers too many privilege elevation prompt pop-ups, the software maker will make changes in Windows Vista RC1.

Submitted by Tyr. 2006-06-02 Windows 45 Comments

Computerworld's Scot Finnie details 20 things you won't like in Windows Vista, with a visual tour to prove it. He says that MS has favored security over end-user productivity, making the user feel like a rat caught in a maze with all the protect-you-from-yourself password-entry and 'Continue' boxes required by the User Account Controls feature. "Business and home users will be nonplussed by the blizzard of protect-you-from-yourself password-entry and 'Continue' boxes required by the User Account Controls feature, for example." Update: Apparantly, Vista Beta 2 sucks up battery juice much faster than XP does.