Vista News

Andre DaCosta prepared a quick guide with side-by-side image comparisons -

[Posted by Mary Jo Foley] Microsoft has rolled out a number of new test and final builds of all kinds of products in the past day or two. Rather than do individual posts on each, I’m providing a few pointers where you can get more on these various new deliverables: Read more below - Microsoft rolls out a refreshed Security Essentials, new SQL test builds and more | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

Microsoft has put the Office.com domain name it acquired earlier this month to work: as a redirect to office.microsoft.com. Full Story: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/officecom-now-working-for-microsoft-as-a-simple-redirect.ars

Microsoft is looking for employees to work at its retail stores and has set up a webpage just for the job postings. Full Story: Microsoft Retail Stores are hiring - Ars Technica

If you downloaded the Windows 7 RC before downloads were shut off this morning, you can still grab a key for activation at the download page: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/download.aspx Keys will be available until October 21, 2009 (day before Windows 7 hits the shelves). Cheers,

After a lengthy development, Windows Live Movie Maker 14 has finally moved out of beta and is now available for Windows Vista and Windows 7. Full Story: Windows Live Movie Maker 14 finally comes out of beta - Ars Technica

Following complaints from Opera and Mozilla, the European Union has applied pressure to Microsoft and has compelled the company to present users with alternative browser options. Microsoft has proposed a browser ballot system that will give users the ability to choose which Web browser they use with Windows. Mozilla vice president and general counsel Harvey Anderson has responded to Microsoft's proposal and has expressed concern about several aspects. Anderson's primary concern is that various mechanisms in the operating system that are controlled by Microsoft could create conditions that encourage users to unintentionally reset their default browser to Internet Explorer. Read article - Mozilla makes much ado about nothing over...

Microsoft has updated some of the applications in Windows Live Essentials to slightly new builds. You can go ahead and download the updated suite now. Full Story: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/windows-live-essentials-wave-3-updated-again.ars See Also: http://www.vistax64.com/windows-live/92348-windows-live-suite-downloads.html

Microsoft has disclosed that Office Web Applications will run on mobile browsers but testers won't likely be able to test them very soon in such a scenario. Full Story: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/office-web-applications-will-support-mobile-browsers.ars

Thousands of Australian students have been able to use the release of Windows 7 since early August 2009, almost concomitantly with MSDN and TechNet subscribers. The New South government has been distributing approximately 5000 Lenovo netbooks each week, each preloaded with the RTM Build 7600 development milestone of Windows 7, according to AustralianIT. A few schools in NSW have been testing Windows 7 since the availability of Release Candidate Build 7100 in May 2009, including students at the Arthur Phillip High School. Full article below. Windows 7 RTM Already Used by Australian Students since Early August - In New South Wales - Softpedia

Who wants a free copy of Windows 7? You probably just instinctively raised your hand or yell out "me!" without thinking twice. Well, we've got good news for you. Microsoft is hosting The New Efficiency launch events in 25 cities between September 28, 2009 and November 9, 2009 for Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Exchange 2010. All attendees will be receive a free copy of Windows 7 Professional. The events are targeted at IT professionals (Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Exchange Server 2010) and developers (Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2). More here - Free: Windows 7 Professional at upcoming launch events (US-only) - Ars Technica

Microsoft is getting ready to make another push of Office 2007 Service Pack 2, which consists of a slew of general product fixes and updates, including improvements to charting functionality in Excel as well as better stability and performance for Outlook. The service pack also contains security and performance enhancements targeted at IT departments and makes sure Office 2007 finally delivers on Microsoft's promise to natively support Open Document Format used by other office products such as Openoffice.org. Office 2007 SP2 will be hitting Automatic Updates next month, according to the Office Sustained Engineering blog: More below - Office 2007 SP2 to hit Automatic Updates on September 21 - Ars Technica

Microsoft has started giving more details on Exchange Server 2010, starting with a Release Candidate build. Full Story: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/exchange-server-2010-release-candidate-arrives.ars

As promised, Microsoft has made the final Windows Server 2008 R2 bits available on August 14 for download by Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) and TechNet subscribers. Microsoft released the final Windows Server 2008 R2 bits to manufacturing at the end of July, the same day the company RTM’d Windows 7. OEMs got the server-side complement to Windows 7 on July 29. Microsoft posted the final Windows Server 2008 R2 code to MSDN and TechNet around 1 p.m. ET on Friday. The English, French, German, Japanese, Italian and Spanish versions are slated to be live today, with remaining languages going live on August 21. Full story below - Microsoft starts rolling out final Windows Server 2008 R2 bits | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

Best Windows Website 2009; Poll Voting Closes 26 August 2009. Attention Vista Forum Members, and Guests. The Poll for the Best Windows Website 2009 is due to close on 26 August 2009. Obviously, it would be great if we can all get our sister website - Windows 7 Forums past the post first, so the more who cast their vote for sevenforums.com, the better the chances for it's success. The Poll and Voting Form are here; Poll : Vote for the Best Windows Website 2009. | The Windows Club Warning for FF3 Users:...... Anyone linking to the Poll and Voting Website, and using FireFox 3 with the NoScript Add-On Extension, needs to select "Temporarily allow polldaddy.com" when the NoScript 'Options' button appears on screen. Failure to do so will...

Computerworld - Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer 8 again trounced rival browsers in a test of their malware-blocking abilities, catching 81% of attack code-infected sites, according to a testing company. IE8's skills at sniffing out malware sites improved by 17% since March, said Rick Moy, president of NSS Labs, the firm that conducted the benchmarks. The testing was sponsored by Microsoft's security team. IE8's improvement, and its dominance over competitors, could make some users reconsider their decision to abandon Microsoft's browser for one of its challengers. "Should people rethink that decision?" Moy asked. "By [this] data, absolutely." While IE8 blocked eight of 10 of the malware-distributing sites that NSS included in...

By Brian Chen. Good news, everyone! If you’ve been stuck in a time loop using Windows XP, which is nearing eight years old, or Windows Vista, which is just annoying, you can finally break free: Windows 7 is almost here. Microsoft delivers a slickly designed, vastly improved OS that will warp you to the world of today. This upgrade is big, and it’s hugely recommended for Microsoft users. When we say big, we mean really BIG — so we’re not going to bombard you with an epic overview covering every single aspect. Rather, today we’ll guide you through an early look at some major new features and enhancements we tested in the almost-final version released last week. And in the weeks leading up to the Oct. 22 launch of Windows 7, we’ll continue...

Microsoft has released the Windows Management Framework Release Candidate for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 on Microsoft Connect. This RC includes Windows Remote Management (WinRM) 2.0, Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) 4.0, and Windows PowerShell 2.0. While packages for Windows XP and Window Server 2003 are not included in this RC, Microsoft says they will be made available in future. Full article below - Windows Management Framework RC for Vista and Server 2008 - Ars Technica

I thought some of you might enjoy the different Zune HD news posts that came out today. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/08/nvidia-tegra-is-ready-for-its-close-up-with-zune-hd-launch.ars NVIDIA has released details on the Tegra processor that forms the brains of Microsoft's Zune HD. The company also talked about its plans for Tegra in both the netbook and mobile phone segments. We take a look at Tegra, and suggest that NVIDA quit flogging the "3D interface" line and just admit that "3D" means "games." http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/zune-hd-16gb-is-220-32gb-is-290-coming-on-september-15.ars Microsoft has finally confirmed that the Zune HD 16GB will cost $220 and that the 32GB version will cost $290. The...

Despite being leaked to torrent sites earlier, the Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM has finally arrived for MSDN and TechNet subscribers, as well as ISVs and IHVs. Build 7600 will be available to the public on October 22, 2009. Full Story: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/windows-server-2008-r2-rtm-arrives-on-msdn-and-technet.ars