Science and technology news blog

Ever since I bought my Dell Inspiron 6400 I have had consistent problem with the laptop’s internet connection dropping off for no real reason. At first I was under the impression that this was happening because of my laptop going to sleep/hibernate. But then it started happening when it was idle for a long time (I changed the power setting to stop it from going to sleep when its plugged in).

Anyway so I decided to contact Dell, as it was no point contacting Microsoft since they would have referred me back to Dell. After a week or so of emailing, not their fault I was busy with work, the Dell rep told me that she is arranging for my wireless card to be replaced. And yesterday the news came out that Microsoft was releasing two important patches on Tuesday. One of them was to fix the TCP/IP problem when the computer returns from Sleep/Hibernate mode. This got me very interested.

I emailed them back (still waiting for a reply as I just sent the email about half an hour ago) letting them know that I am going to wait till Tuesday for the update to come so I can try out. If it works then I don’t have to let my laptop being replaced as I don’t trust these service guys. They would just go ahead and reinstall the OS and I would end up losing all my settings, documents and all my installed applications. So at the moment all my hopes are pinned on this update that Microsoft is going to release. And that is saying a lot, as not many people hope for Microsoft to come through.

Microsoft claimed yesterday that they would be making changes to how Vista users search for files. After an official complaint from Google that disabling Vista’s built-in search is next to impossible, Microsoft has made an announcement that when Vista SP 1 is released by end of this year, it will be much more easier for users to switch to a third-party desktop search engine such as Google’s Desktop Search.

This from an article on Ars Technica:

Microsoft here is splitting the difference, somewhat, as the company will retain Vista’s built-in search results in the upper right hand corner search box present on most explorer windows. The document explains, “Microsoft has agreed, however, to add a link that, if clicked, will launch the default desktop search program and display search results from that program.” 

Just have a look at this video, matches vista’s tagline perfectly:

http://www.uvouch.com/video-Windows-Vista-crash-337128

Looks like old habits die hard.

It might look like it from reactions such as the Mini-Microsoft blog, which complained in its headline: “Stop Him Before He Speaks Again!” What Ballmer was actually trying to do was lower the financial expectations of some Wall Street analysts, who were being “overly aggressive” about Vista’s impact on Microsoft’s profits. “We’re driving it hard, but I think some people have gotten a little overexcited,” he said.

Ballmer was speaking to a group of financial analysts in a hotel in New York, but an undeniable side-effect was that Microsoft’s shares took a beating, falling by 2.4% in a day. That was never going to please the folks back home in Redmond, especially employees with stock options.

Expectations have been buoyed by market research group Current Analysis, which reported that PC sales by US retailers for the week ending February 3 were 67% up on last year, and 173% higher than the previous week. Also, Current Analysis reckoned that Windows Vista Home Premium had 70% of sales, compared with 22% for Vista Home Basic. (On notebook PCs, it was 76% to 59%.)

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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has already proclaimed that there is “More where that came from” when it comes to operating systems. According to PC World, 2009 is when we can expect more “wow” from Microsoft. During that year, Microsoft is expected to release the follow-up to Windows Vista which is codenamed Vienna.

Microsoft doesn’t want another repeat of the 5-year drought between the release of Windows XP and Windows Vista, so the company is accelerating its plans for its next generation operating system.

The time and effort that should have been exerted on Windows Vista were instead diverted to getting Windows XP SP2 out the door. “Then when we came back to it, we realized that there were incremental things that we wanted to do, and significant improvements that we wanted to make in Vista that we couldn’t deliver in one release,” said Ben Fathi, a corporate VP in Microsoft’s Windows Core Operating System Division.

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We may not have seen tent cities forming in from of Best Buy in the week before the launch of Windows Vista, but first market reports indicate that the operating system made a huge splash in U.S. retail. Compared to the same week of 2006, PC unit numbers were up more than 60%, revenue surged more than 50%.

The PC industry has seen growth around 10% over the past year, what appears to be solid, but substantially less than in previous years. Some analysts had mentioned that one of the reasons for sagging growth could have been the wait for Vista and consumers that were putting off new purchases until the availability of the new operating system. Current Analysis appears to be offering the first evidence for this thesis, at least for the consumer market.

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Apple is recommending that iTunes users stick with Windows XP for now. The iPod-maker is warning that its music store software might not be compatible with Vista, Microsoft ’s latest operating system.

Those who own iPods depend on the software to synch music stored on their computers with their MP3 players. Apple is suggesting that, although iTunes 7.0.2 might work with Windows Vista on many typical PCs, customers should wait to upgrade Windows until after the next release of iTunes. The company said the upgrade would be available in the next few weeks.

According to Tim Deal, a senior analyst with Pike & Fischer, Apple has a strong incentive to respond to the issue quickly: the possibility of losing revenue. “Apple has been relatively quick to respond to compatibility issues in the past,” he noted. “The quicker the better because if users get frustrated they could switch to another digital music player.”

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Windows Vista was officially launched on 30 January, 2007 after a five year gap between operating systems. Vista boasts several new features including the much-hyped “Aero” interface, enhanced parental controls and an integrated search tool.

As well as new features, Microsoft announced several new partnerships with media outlets, including Sanity Online for a new type of “music rental” service, and BigPond Movies for downloadable rental movies.

Windows Client Business group director of Microsoft Australia, Jeff Putt, said Sanity was chosen because it was a strong brand in Australia: “We’re really looking to do an Urge (the US online store) only in Australia, and I think we’ve really ‘knocked it out of the park’ so to speak. We went through quite an exhaustive tender process, and we were delighted they chose to respond and respond as well as they did.” He added that the service was due to go live in April.

The BigPond Movies service, however, is available now, with most movies costing AU$5.95 or less. While not all new movies are available on the service, Putt believes this method of content delivery is the way of the future.

“I’ve been playing with the BigPond service for the last couple of weeks. It’s just red-hot. You’re home on a Saturday night, there’s nothing on TV. You can’t be arsed going down the video store and when you do you never get it back on time”, Putt said.

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Microsoft is very excited to release Windows Vista, the next in the five-year cycle of new operating systems. We are seeing it coming installed on many new computers but you will have a decision to make if you are upgrading your operating system. That is if it will actually run on your system as many hardware manufactures are scrambling to release driver updates for their products.

The next decision will be of which version of Vista you are going to go with. That depends on your computer usage style. Are you just using your computer for word processing and email, business, surfing the web and downloading music and videos, or are you a hard-core gamer? Or maybe a combination of all of these kinds of users? Well there is a version of Vista that is right for you. You don’t have the simple choice of Home or Pro versions this time as you did with XP, but there is Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate and even Enterprise, usually sold to big companies.

Most will gravitate toward Home Basic or Premium. All versions will have the new and exciting Vista look, and all will have the security of Windows Defender and Windows Firewall and Instant Search and Windows Internet Explorer 7. Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate versions will share features such as Windows Flip 3D navigation, enhanced Windows Mobility Center and Tablet PC support, and Windows Meeting Space.

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You could save between $54 and $217 by mail-ordering Vista from the US rather than buying it here.I reached this depressing conclusion by analysing Vista’s pricing in detail, first comparing both the straight US dollar “estimated retail price” converted to Australian dollars, as well as an adjusted price, factoring in the profit margin Microsoft Australia previously applied to XP’s Australian pricing.

A few back-of-napkin calculations showed that while XP was 1.66 times more expensive in Australia than in the US, Vista is up to a whopping 1.91 times more expensive, depending on the version.

So what’s in it for Aussies to buy it locally, other than supporting our industry? And why is Australian Vista pricing jacked up so much compared to XP? I asked Microsoft Australia’s Windows boss, Jeff Putt.

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Microsoft is promoting Windows Vista as the most secure version of its operating system yet—but it’s still recommending outside help to shield against common cyberthreats.

All major security software makers, as well as many smaller ones, will have products available for Vista when the operating system is launched to consumers on January 30, Microsoft said Wednesday. That’s a different story from last November, when Vista was released for businesses. At that time, only one major security company, McAfee, was ready.

“Windows Vista is the most secure operating system we’ve ever built,” Ben Fathi, corporate vice president of the security technology unit at Microsoft, said in a statement. “Our security partners continue to play a vital role in adding layers of protection onto the Microsoft Windows platform.”

Microsoft is increasingly encroaching on the terrain of traditional security companies such as Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro. Included in Vista are two of the three protection technologies that security experts typically recommend for any Windows PC: a firewall and a spyware shield. The new operating system lacks the third: virus protection, but Microsoft now sells that as Windows Live OneCare.

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Windows are best kept transparent, Microsoft appears to have decided. This is one of the most obvious new twists to the freshly released Windows Vista operating system. But the software also has lots of other snazzy surprises in store for users. While hardly a revolution, users can look forward to a collection of more-or-less helpful utilities for their computers.

Vista customers can actually expect several thousand new functions, Microsoft claims. Most of them are hidden underneath the hood, so to speak. One eye-catching element is the new graphical interface, dubbed Aero. It is remarkable first for its semi- transparent windows. Open several windows at once, and you can still see which other folders and documents are open beneath them. This is not exactly trailblazing in the world of operating systems, though. Transparent windows are also available in Apple’s Mac OS X and with various Linux versions.

Microsoft went one step further, however, with its Flip 3D function. This positions all opened windows one behind another, slightly offset. Switching between the individual windows is somewhat easier than with XP, because the windows can be paged through using the scroll wheel, for example.

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Some people testing Microsoft’s Windows Vista got an unexpected holiday surprise: their TVs stopped working.

Media Center, which is included in the Home Premium and Ultimate versions of the Vista operating system, allows remote-control access to a variety of entertainment options, including television, for machines that have a TV tuner.

However, for those running the “release candidate 1” version of the software—the most broadly distributed of the Vista test versions—the TV feature stopped working on December 31.

Microsoft blamed the issue on the fact that it has a paid license for the video decoder and Dolby sound technology, and it only licensed those through December 31. The overall RC1 software is not scheduled to expire until June.

“As of December 31, 2006, users running Windows Vista RC1 beta code will no longer have access to the Media Center functionality, due to the expiration of the MPEG 2 decoder and Dolby Digital components built into Windows Vista and used by the Media Center experience,” Microsoft said in a statement in response to inquiries by CNET News.com. “Because these technologies are licensed and royalty bearing, they will expire within a certain time period, according to our license agreements.”

A Microsoft representative declined to comment on whether the company could have extended its license, saying it doesn’t comment on the terms of such licensing deals.

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Despite recently reported security  issues with Windows Vista, Microsoft has expressed confidence that its new operating system is secure and reliable.
The Vista vulnerability that was reported by Microsoft just before the Christmas holidays has the capacity for letting a malicious hacker gain access to change user privileges.

Although proof-of-concept code has been posted online, the company has not seen any malware that takes advantage of the flaw, noted Mike Reavey, operations manager at Microsoft’s Security Response Center (MSRC), in a blog posting.

Reavey stated that even though the vulnerability impacts Windows Vista, he still believes that Vista is the company’s most secure platform to date. The MSRC encourages all users to enable a firewall, and apply all security updates.

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Microsoft is facing an early crisis of confidence in the quality of its Windows Vista operating system as computer security researchers and hackers have begun to find potentially serious flaws in the system that was released to corporate customers late last month.

On Dec. 15, a Russian programmer posted a description of a flaw that makes it possible to increase a user’s privileges on all of the company’s recent operating systems, including Vista. And over the weekend a Silicon Valley computer security firm said it had notified Microsoft that it had also found that flaw, as well as five other vulnerabilities, including one serious error in the software code underlying the company’s new Internet Explorer 7 browser.

The browser flaw is particularly troubling because it potentially means that Web users could become infected with malicious software simply by visiting a booby-trapped site. That would make it possible for an attacker to inject rogue software into the Vista-based computer, according to executives at Determina, a company based in Redwood City, Calif., that sells software intended to protect against operating system and other vulnerabilities.

Determina is part of a small industry of companies that routinely pore over the technical details of software applications and operating systems looking for flaws. When flaws in Microsoft products are found they are reported to the software maker, which then produces fixes called patches. Microsoft has built technology into its recent operating systems that makes it possible for the company to fix its software automatically via the Internet.

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