Vista News

Nvidia had some very good news for customers planning to deploying Windows 7. The company says that as of today, it will be releasing regular driver updates for Windows 7. Dwight Diercks, vice president of software engineering at NVIDIA, explained where this is coming from: "We expect that all of our hard work teaming with Microsoft over the past two years will pay off for GeForce GPU owners when Windows 7 officially launches. Our customers are demanding an experience that is faster and more visual, and with the addition of many new GPU-accelerated features, including DirectX Compute, we believe Windows 7 will be well positioned to meet those needs." In other words, Microsoft is cracking down on driver testing early for Vista's...

The popular technology website Slashdot plumbed new depths on Tuesday with a post about the terrible DRM situation in Windows 7. Proving that some sites will publish just about anything as long as it's anti-Microsoft, the post enumerated the DRM restrictions that Windows 7 apparently inflicts on the honest and upstanding computer user. What was claimed? Well, some guy decided that he wanted to crack his (legally purchased, no doubt) copy of Photoshop on his Windows 7 install. Windows 7 then sprung into life to break his crack, defend Photoshop's virtue against his unwelcome advances, protect a load of random DLLs from deletion, and open up the firewall so that Adobe could see that he was up to no good. Yup yup. To add insult to...

After leaking Windows 7 build 7032 screenshots last month, WinFuture.de has posted a screenshot clearly showing a 32-bit Enterprise edition of build 7048. We have already heard of a build 7041, but this is significant because there have been no screenshots or any other tangible proof of any of the 704x builds. The first screenshot (full size) shows the following build string: "7048.0.x86fre.winmain.090219-1845," meaning that the build was compiled on February 19, 2009 at 6:45PM. Since it is an interim build, it's not surprising that the screenshot shows the build expiring on July 2, 2009 (a date that seems to be a typical expiration date for many builds). Other than the new build number, the screenshot does not show too much. A date...

Microsoft recently announced the final editions of windows 7. more at this link

Just had this in my RSS Feed, thought it would be interesting. Announcing the Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 RC - Windows Vista Team Blog - The Windows Blog

Rumor smash: Windows 7 build 7048 does not yet exist I have confirmed with a Microsoft employee that build 7048 does not yet exist, and that development on the RC branch has not yet started. Speculation on a new build keeps mounting as testers still have not received anything beyond build 7000. The original story is below. Full Story: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/02/build-7048-confirmed-windows-7-rc1-build-on-february-27.ars

I'll wait for M$ to say they will upgrade me. Seattle PC builder beats Microsoft with free Windows 7 upgrade offer

Microsoft hasn't made any significant changes to the Microsoft Download Center since February 2003. Five years later, the company has quietly made a full-fledged revamp to most parts of the site. Towards the end of this week, users have been seeing a completely new website when downloading something from Microsoft. Over the years, Microsoft has been tweaking the site by adding new categories and adding banners here and there. However, the homepage of that site is now gone, and has been replaced by the site pictured above. What is curious about this update is that the actual download pages for downloads have not been revamped; it's not clear if this is on purpose (I hope not) or if the change still hasn't been applied everywhere. Full...

Other sites may have been compromised. From Websense, read the full article here: eWeek Web Site Leads Users to Rogue Anti-Virus (AV) Application - Security Labs Alert SIW2

Silverlight is still facing a very uphill battle against a Flash-saturated market, despite various milestones. Last month, the official Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC) chose Silverlight for Obama's inauguration. Last week Microsoft announced a $5,000 Silverlight game developer contest, and two days later, Moonlight 1.0 was released. Microsoft's new Silverlight-only website for IT Pros, Microsoft Thrive, also recently launched. Today, Microsoft quietly updated Silverlight to build 2.0.40115.0. The previous Silverlight build was 2.0.31005.00, released in October 2008. You can grab the latest build from Microsoft.com, or just wait until it trickles out through Microsoft Update. This is a bug fix release; here's what's new: Full...

"The popular virus scanner AVG released an update yesterday that caused their software to mark user32.dll as a virus. Since this is a rather critical file, AVG's suggestion to remove it caused problems for users around the world who are now advised to restore the file through the Windows Recovery Console. AVG just posted an update about this (FAQ item 1574) in the support section of their site. Their forums are full of complaints." View article...

After rumors sprang up across the blogosphere of a Windows 7 build 7048, we debunked them and along with all the other Windows 7 users, we looked hungrily for information on new builds. Microsoft is currently compiling pre-RC builds of Windows 7, the latest build being 7046. Many beta testers are frustrated that they have not received a build since build 7000, which was released to everyone on January 9, 2009. Unfortunately, Ars has learned that this trend will continue. When I asked Sinofsky if Microsoft Connect testers as well as MSDN and TechNet subscribers will get the RC before the public, Sinofsky told me no: "The build will be available broadly." Full Story...

more: neowin.net Tech ARP

I'm one of those users who has been using Vista with no problems ever since Microsoft gave out RTM copies to beta testers. However, as a writer, I've watched the media completely destroy the public opinion of Vista, leading many to stick with Windows XP or to look for alternatives, even before they had tried Vista. Even with SP1 out, many have not bothered trying Vista on recent hardware and therefore could not realize the fact that it really is worthy of being XP's successor. If I had to lay the blame on one party for Vista's poor public opinion, I wouldn't lay it on Microsoft, I wouldn't lay it on hardware companies incapable of producing good drivers, I wouldn't lay it on the fact that XP is so good, I would lay it on the media for...

Microsoft today released the Release Candidate build of Service Pack 2 (6002.16670.090130) for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 to Microsoft Connect testers. The company is letting testers grab it via Windows Update (in 48 hours, all languages), as a standalone installer package, or as a slipstreamed version in English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese. The public beta release is not yet available Microsoft is recommending for the average customer to "wait until the final release prior to installing this service pack" and for testers to remember that "a Service Pack is not a feature release—we are not looking for new feature suggestions, only SP2 regressions, Crashes, and confirmation of fixes we've made will be considered for...

We've speculated before that the final version of Internet Explorer 8 will arrive no later than April 2009, but Tech ARP claims it has found out that "Microsoft is ready to release Internet Explorer 8 to manufacturing (RTM) in the next few weeks." This is in line with what Microsoft has said: after the Release Candidate build is released to the public, the RTM will be the next one to go live. Tech ARP also notes that Microsoft will be promoting the following features that IE8 offers over IE7: Extensive improvements in the areas of performance and reliability. Monetization opportunities (for OEMs). Visual Search Suggestions, which offers the ability to configure a search provider and additional services into the IE8 search box to...

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As was widely rumored, leaked, and predicted, Microsoft made a series of announcements regarding its Windows Mobile platform at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2009 in Barcelona on Monday. CEO Steve Ballmer proclaimed that smartphones would soon comprise 50 percent of worldwide mobile phones and that Windows would be the platform that would continue to be adopted not only on the PC but on mobile devices as well. As part of the various announcements relating to devices, software, and services, Ballmer unveiled Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft My Phone, and Windows Marketplace for Mobile. To simplify things, the new Windows Mobile phones would start to be marketed as "Windows phones" in the fall, which is when the new devices from Microsoft...

Just picked this up from my RSS Feeds. Microsoft sued over Vista-to-XP downgrade policy | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

Microsoft has released a "Technology Preview" of its new Microsoft Recite application, which will officially be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona tomorrow (though the site went live early). Recite is an application for Windows Mobile that uses voice search technology to let users record notes for themselves and then later find those notes by speaking back to the application. Here's an example. You could first tell Microsoft Recite: "Emil's birthday is February 23" as well as "Emil wants a 16GB Zune for his birthday." When you later want to figure out what to get me for my birthday and when it is, you can simply say "Emil's birthday" into the search function. Saying "Zune" would also bring up the second message, as...