Windows Factor

Skype users who have been getting strange error messages from Microsoft's security products over the past week can breathe easy now. It was all a mistake.

Microsoft said Wednesday that a buggy anti-virus definition update, released Friday, had mislabeled Skype as pop-up adware program called Win32/Vundo.gen!D. The issue was fixed Monday in a signature update, so users who have version 1.31.9121.0 of Microsoft's malware signature file should be fine.

View Full Article: InfoWorld

Microsoft Corp. chief executive Steve Ballmer on Thursday offered a glimmer of hope to fans of the company's XP operating system, saying customer demand may see the company reconsider a decision to stop selling XP in June.

But Ballmer was adamant that "most people who buy PCs today buy them with Vista."

"That's the statistical truth," he told reporters at a press conference at Louvain-La-Neuve university.

View Full Article: Yahoo News - AP

Microsoft Corp. said Thursday that it has sold 140 million licenses of Windows Vista.

Colleen Healy, general manager of investor relations, made the statement during a conference call with Wall Street analysts after Microsoft posted its third-quarter earnings. The company pointed to strong PC sales for helping the much-maligned operating system achieve that number.

However, revenue from Microsoft's client division, which overwhelmingly comes from sales of Windows Vista or XP licenses, was down 24% from last year's third quarter to $4.03 billion. Chris Liddell, Microsoft's chief financial officer, attributed the decrease to strong sales a year ago immediately after Vista's launch, plus increased software piracy in developing countries and other reasons.

View Full Article: Computerworld

Microsoft Gives Up on Vista

The question now isn't "Is Vista Dead?" is It . The real question is: Can Microsoft get Windows 7 out in time to save its desktop domination? I think Microsoft "could" pull it off. Here's how.


Vista is dead.


That's not what Bill Gates said at a seminar on corporate philanthropy in Miami on April 4, but it might as well have been. What Gates actually said, according to the Reuters report, is that he expects that the next desktop version of Windows, Windows 7, would be released "sometime in the next year or so."

Goodbye Vista. It has not been fun knowing you.



I predicted that Microsoft was giving up on Vista in January. It seems I was right. Microsoft's own top brass had hated Vista when it first came out, why should they expect anyone else to like it?

Vista SP1 has proven to be a painful upgrade and its performance still lags behind XP SP2 and, the still unreleased XP SP3. Worse still, from a Microsoft executive's viewpoint, Windows is actually losing desktop market share to Mac OS X and Linux. Microsoft never loses desktop market share. But with Vista Microsoft is finally losing customers.

I think Microsoft saw the handwriting on the wall early on. The company started playing up Windows 7 as early as July 2007. Now, Microsoft's business plan is always to get its customers to upgrade to the next version. It's how they make their billions. But, in this case, Vista was barely out the door.

Can Microsoft actually make a Windows 7 that can ship by 2009 that will win customers? Vista was infamous for its blown deadlines. Windows 7 must not only replace the failed Vista, it has to convince Microsoft's customers that Windows 7 will really be better than XP.

That isn't going to be easy. I find it more than a little telling that Microsoft has given XP Home a new lease on life for UMPC (Ultra Mobile PCs). Still. I think Microsoft has one card up its sleeve that just might keep its customers happy and make it out in 2009: Server 2008 Workstation.

In stark contrast with Vista, Server 2008 works extremely well in eWEEK Labs and in my own Linux-dominated office. Even with some security troubles, Server 2008 is a darn sight better than Vista or Server 2003.



Cleaned and Speeded Up

So, what Microsoft could do is use Server 2008's kernel as the core of Windows 7. On top of that it adds a cleaned and speeded up Aero Glass interface, Silverlight and Internet Explorer 8. At the same time, Microsoft should dump the Vista user interface command structure and return to XP.

One reason why people don't like Vista is not only is it slower than XP, it requires them to relearn how to do bread-and-butter operations. While Microsoft is at it, they can also throw out such annoying 'Vistaisms' as requiring users to answer seemingly endless menu choices on whether they really want to install a program or what have you.

To make darn sure that Windows 7 doesn't have the software compatibility problems that still plague Vista SP1, they can also add an XP compatibility layer. This would actually be an XP VM (virtual machine) running with Server 2008's Hyper-V virtualization. If an application doesn't run with the native Server 8 core, no problem; just automatically run it in the XP VM.

Old Windows hands will recall that Microsoft once used a similar approach in Windows NT 3.5 with a WOW (Windows on Windows) sub-system that let users run Windows 95 applications on NT.

If Microsoft were to take this path, I can actually see the company delivering a new desktop operating system by 2009 that users would actually want to use. If they try, as they did with Vista, to reinvent the desktop operating system wheel, there's no way they'll get anything out until 2011 that users will want to run.

And, by then, Microsoft's problem may be convincing Linux and Mac OS users to come back to Windows rather than trying to get XP users to upgrade.

Update: The build number for the final version of SP3 is 5512.

Nick MacKechnie: Windows XP SP3 has been released to manufacturing as of April 21st (US Time) with the release to web planned for April 29th (US Time). The detailed schedule by channel is below.

Windows XP SP3 - detailed by channel schedule

Channel / Release Vector

Planned dates (US)

RTM (release to manufacturing) Apr-21

OEM Channel Apr-21

Windows Update Apr-29

Download Centre Apr-29

MSDN/Technet Download May-02

Windows XP SP3 Fulfillment Media May-19

VL Customers via download Jun-01

Automatic Updates Jun-10


View Full Article: MSDN Blogs

If you are like me, a telstra phone customer you would have gotten a call from telstra asking if you want to switch to bigpond. I wish i could said to them "I would choose them for a internet provider when hell freeses over:lol

They were telling me that i could get unlimited ADSL2+ for $70. I said to myself this sounds a bit funny. so i went on there web site and check if they made some sort of deal but i couldn't find it. so i rang Bigpond and ask about the deal and this is what they said

You can get unlimited downlaods and your internet will be slowed down when you go over a certain limit. so when they say unlimited they mean they will shared your connection and we not chared extra like every other internet provider does?

I am just out ranged that they can trick people into a 24 months contract by lieing by saying the word "Ultimated"

I say they are the worst Internet provider and i would never go with them in a million years

With Service Pack 3 for Windows XP just over the horizon, we've managed to get our hands on the internal schedule for the release of the highly anticipated update to the aging operating system. As you can see in the list below, most of the stages will occur before the end of the month, though forced automatic updates won't land until June. This delay should give system administrators an ample amount of time to prepare for the upgrade or simply come up with an excuse when things go awry.

• April 14, 2008: Support is available for the release version of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP
• April 21, 2008: Original Equipment Manufacturers, Volume License, Connect, and MSDN and TechNet subscribers
• April 29, 2008: Microsoft Update, Windows Update, Download Center
• June 10, 2008: Automatic Updates

View: Windows XP Service Pack 3 Overview

IBM is developing a type of memory that it says could one day be faster and more reliable than today's hard drives and flash memory.

Called "racetrack," it is a solid-state memory that aims to combine the best attributes of flash, like having no moving parts, and the low cost of hard drives for an inexpensive form of nonvolatile memory that will be stable and durable, said Stuart Parkin, an IBM Fellow.

Racetrack memory stores information in thousands of atoms in magnetic nanowires. Without the atoms moving, an electrical charge causes data to move swiftly along a U-shaped pipe that allows data to be read and written in less than a nanosecond, Parkin said. A nanosecond is a billionth of a second and commonly used to measure access time to RAM.

View Full Article: Yahoo News

AMD Senior Vice President and CTO Phil Hester has resigned to search for new opportunities, AMD said Friday.

The decision to leave was Hester's, and he left on good terms, said Rob Keosheyan, an AMD spokesman. Hester hasn't announced what he's going to do or where he's going, Keosheyan said. The company has no plans to replace him.

Hester wasn't responsible for product or silicon development, Keosheyan said. AMD divides those responsibilities between CTOs in five business units, and that will continue. Hester helped establish the breakdown of product development to unit CTOs, Keosheyan said.

View Full Article: InfoWorld

Adobe Systems on Wednesday plans to release Adobe Media Player (AMP), a free download for playing Flash-based Web videos on Macs or PCs.

Written with Adobe's AIR, AMP is a hybrid online/offline application that lets people subscribe to different video Webcasts. Adobe has signed on some initial partners including CBS, PBS, MTV Networks, Universal Music Group, CondeNet, and Scripps Networks.

The videos are either streamed from the content producer's Web site or they can be downloaded. Adobe will host a catalog, called Adobe TV, on its site where people can find videos. Because it's written with AIR, people can be offline or online when they watch.

Source: cNet