Developages - Development and Technology Blog

ozmanjusri writes “Online market share of the dominant Windows operating system has taken its biggest monthly fall in years to drop below 90%, according to Net Applications Inc. Computerworld reports that Microsoft’s flagship product has been steadily losing ground to Mac OS X and Linux, and is at its lowest ebb in the market since 1995. ‘Mac OS X… [ended] the month at 8.9%. November was the third month running that Apple’s operating system remained above 8%.’ The stats show that while some customers are ‘upgrading’ from XP to Vista, many are jumping ship to Apple, while Linux is also steadily gaining ground. A Net Applications executive suggests the slide may be caused by many of the same factors that caused the fall in Internet Explorer use. ‘The more home users who are online, using Macs and Firefox and Safari, the more those shares go up,’ he said. November has more weekend days, as well Thanksgiving in the US, a result that emphasizes the importance of corporate sales to Microsoft.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by kdawson

Several readers pointed out a ComputerWorld UK blog piece on the expanding ripples of the Vista fiasco. Glyn Moody quotes an earlier Inquirer piece about Vista, which he notes “has been memorably described as DRM masquerading as an operating system″: “Studies carried out by both Gartner and IDC have found that because older software is often incompatible with Vista, many consumers are opting for used computers with XP installed as a default, rather than buying an expensive new PC with Vista and downgrading. Big business, which typically thinks nothing about splashing out for newer, more up-to-date PCs, is also having trouble with Vista, with even firms like Intel noting XP would remain the dominant OS within the company for the foreseeable future.” Moody continues: “What’s really important about this is not so much that Vista is manifestly such a dog, but that the myth of upgrade inevitability has been destroyed. Companies have realized that they do have a choice &mdash that they can simply say ‘no.’ From there, it’s but a small step to realizing that they can also walk away from Windows completely, provided the alternatives offer sufficient data compatibility to make that move realistic.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by kdawson

More documents are coming out in court proceedings over the Vista Capable debacle. Internetnews.com has good coverage of HP’s fury over Microsoft lowering the requirements for a Vista Capable sticker, at Intel’s request. “Intel officials may have been pleased that Microsoft lowered standards for obtaining the company’s Windows Vista Capable logo program sticker, but the same can’t be said about HP’s execs. ‘I can’t be more clear than to say you not only let us down by reneging on your commitment to stand behind the [device driver model] requirement, you have demonstrated a complete lack of commitment to HP as a strategic partner and cost us a lot of money in the process,’ said one e-mail from Richard Walker, the senior vice president of HP’s consumer business unit, to [Microsoft executives].” PCPro.co.uk follows the trail of accusatory emails inside Microsoft from there: “HP’s email prompted then Microsoft co-President, Jim Allchin, to send a furious email of his own to company CEO Steve Ballmer. Allchin’s email suggests the decision to lower the requirements was made in his absence by Ballmer, following ‘a call between you and Paul [Otellini, Intel CEO].’ ‘I am beyond being upset here,’ Allchin wrote to Ballmer. ‘What a mess. Now we have an upset partner, Microsoft destroyed credibility [sic], as well as my own credibility shot.’ Ballmer, in turn, blamed another Microsoft executive, Will Poole, in a rather erratically typed reply to Allchin.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by kdawson

arcticstoat writes “Asus’ budget motherboard wing, ASRock, claims that it’s found a way to load a clean boot of Windows from a full shut down in just four seconds, using its new Instant Boot technology. The technology takes advantage of the S3 and S4 features of ACPI, which normally enable the Sleep/Standby and Hibernation modes in Windows respectively. However, by calling them at different times in the boot-up and shutdown process, Instant Boot enables you to boot up to your Windows desktop in three to four seconds, even after a proper shut down. Two modes are available; Fast mode, which uses S3 and boots up in around four seconds, and Regular Mode, which uses S4 and apparently takes between 20 and 22 seconds to boot. The advantage of Instant Boot when compared with normal Sleep and Hibernation modes is that you get the advantage of a clean boot of Windows, without what ASRock calls ‘accumulated garbage data,’ and you also get the security of knowing that you won’t lose any data if there’s a power cut and you lose AC power. There’s also a video of it in action at the link above.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by timothy

secmartin writes “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.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by kdawson

Barence writes “The Windows 7 unveiling garnered largely positive coverage, with many hands-on testers praising it for being faster than Vista. But is it actually? To find out, this blogger ran a suite of benchmarks to see just how much quicker Windows 7 really is — and the results weren’t quite what he expected. ‘the actual performance gap between Vista and Windows 7 is… nada. Absolutely nothing. Our Office benchmarks and video encoding tests complete in precisely the same time regardless of which OS in installed. […] It’s tempting to see this as a bit of a con. They’ve sped up the front end so it feels like you’re getting more done, but in terms of real productivity it’s no better than Vista.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by ScuttleMonkey

rugatero writes “The BBC reports that, as of last Saturday, Microsoft is no longer issuing licenses for the 18-year-old Windows 3.x. Many here may well be surprised to learn that anyone still has use for the antiquated software, but it seems to have found a home in a number of embedded systems &mdash including cash registers and the in-flight entertainment systems on some long-haul passenger jets (Virgin and Qantas are cited). Considering Linux’s credentials as an embedded OS, this news could very well indicate the possibility of more migrations in the pipeline.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by kdawson

unassimilatible writes “As new features of Windows 7 continue to trickle out, ZDNet is now reporting that it will scale to 256 processors. While one has to wonder, like with Vista, how many of the teased features will actually make it into the final OS, I think we can all agree, 256 cores is enough for anybody.” This Mark Russinovich interview has some technical details (Silverlight required).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by kdawson

So you come out with a new ad, in response to your competitor’s attempts to change perceptions over a much-maligned product. Do you concentrate on your strengths, re-highlight your competitor’s weaknesses, or simply go with a cleverly-worded lie?

Reportedly, Apple decided to go for the latter. In a recent ad, they implied that Microsoft spent more money on marketing their products, rather than improving them. According to WinGeek: “…since Apple brought it up, they spend only .7 cents less per sales $1 on Advertising than Microsoft and spend a fraction of what Microsoft spends on improving its products.” For every dollar Microsoft makes, it spends 13.9% on R&D, compared to Apple’s 3.3%.

The full dirt—as well as the sources of WinGeek’s research—are available here.

Tags: Advertising, apple, Mac OS X, Mac vs. PC, Mac vs. Windows, Microsoft, Windows, WinGeek

Share This

Original post by Rico

CWmike writes “Just a day after downplaying the vulnerability that caused it to issue an out-of-cycle patch last week, Microsoft warned customers late yesterday that exploit code had gone public and was being used in additional attacks. ‘We′ve identified the public availability of exploit code that now shows code execution for the vulnerability addressed by M⁴-067,’ said Mike Reavey, operations manager of Microsoft’s Security Response Center, in a post to the MSRC blog. ‘This exploit code has been shown to result in remote code execution on Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows 2000.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by Soulskill

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Microsoft’s Windows 7 announcement earlier today was followed up by an extensive demo of the new features during the PDC keynote, and since then even more info about the new OS has flooded out, so we thought we’d try to wrap up some of the more important bits here for you. Microsoft seems to have done an impressive job at this early pre-beta stage, folding in next-gen interface ideas like multitouch into the same OS that apparently runs fine on a 1GHz netbook with 1GB of RAM, but we’ll see how development goes — there’s still a ways to go. Some notes:

• Obviously, the big news is the new taskbar, which forgoes text for icons and has new “jump lists” of app controls and options you can access with a right-click. You can select playlists in Media Player, for example. Super cool: when you scrub over the icons, all the other app windows go transparent so you can “peek” at the windows you′re pointing at.
• Gadgets now appear on the desktop — the sidebar has been killed. That makes more sense for all those laptop owners out there with limited screen space, and you can still see gadgets anytime by peeking at the desktop, rendering all other windows transparent.
• Window resizing and management now happens semi-automatically: dragging a window to the top of the screen maximizes it, pulling it down restores; dragging a window to the edges auto-resizes it to 50% for quick tiling. Nifty.
• The system tray now only displays what you explicitly say it should — everything else is hidden, and the controls have been streamlined.
• User Account Control settings are now much more fine-grained — you can set them by app and by level of access.
• They demoed multitouch features on an HP TouchSmart PC — it was pretty cool, although the usual nagging “what is this good for / that’ll get old fast” concerns weren’t really addressed. The Start menu gets 25 percent bigger when using touch to make it easier to handle, and apps will all get scroll support automatically. There’s also a giant on-screen predictive keyboard. Again — could be amazing, but we won’t know until it’s out in the wild.
• We’ve always known Microsoft intends Windows 7 to run on netbooks, and we got a small taste during the PDC keynote: Windows SVP Steve Sinofsky held up his “personal” laptop running Windows 7, an unnamed 1GHz netbook with 1GB of RAM that looked a lot like an Eee PC, and said that it still had about half its memory free after boot. (We’re guessing it was running a VIA Nano, since most Atoms run at 1.6GHz.)
• At the other end of the scale, Windows 7 supports machines with up to 256 CPUs.
• Multiple-monitor management is much-improved, as is setting up projectors — it’s a hotkey away. Remote Desktop now works with multiple monitors as well.
• Media Center has been tweaked as well — it looks a lot more like the Zune interface. There’s also a new Mini Guide when watching video, and a new Music Wall album artwork screensaver that kicks in when you’re playing music.
• Devs got a pre-beta today a “pretty good” feature complete beta is due early next year. No word at all on when it’ll be released to market apart from that “three years from Vista” date we′ve known forever.

That’s just the good bits — hit the read links for piles of more info and screenshots, and we’ll keep our eyes out for anything else interesting. Exciting times!

Read - Keynote videos on the PDC site
Read - Technologizer Windows 7 hands-on
Read - Ars Technica Windows 7 interface walkthrough
Read - Laptop Windows 7 hands-on
Read - Windows 7 Media Center revealed

Windows 7 details galore: interface tweaks, netbook builds, Media Center enhancements originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink&nbsp|&nbspEmail this | Comments

Original post by Nilay Patel

Barence writes “Microsoft has released the first pre-beta code of Windows 7, and PC Pro has a series of in-depth, hands-on examinations of all the new features. The revamped user interface has clearly gleaned more than a little inspiration from the Mac OS X Dock, but it goes further than the Apple concept with ‘jumplists,’ new gadgets and an updated system tray. The much-vaunted multi-touch controls were there to play with, and it seemd to work well. Networking has been given the full treatment, with new features HomeGroup and Libraries. Windows 7 debuts a new feature called Device Stage that has the potential to be unbelievably handy … or a complete disaster. Finally, several new features could make PCs easier to manage and secure for IT departments, such as BitLocker To Go and Branch Cache.” All in all, these features together lead some people to the conclusion that Windows 7 will “suck less than Vista″ — that last link from reader ThinSkin, who also points to a related sampling of screenshots from the current iteration of Windows 7.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by timothy

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

We knew good and well Microsoft was gearing up to drop a pre-beta release of Windows 7 in developers’ laps at its Professional Developers Conference, but now we’re being treated to a host of details from Redmond itself. For starters, it’s showing off (for the first time, mind you) its new Web applications for Office. As you’d expect, said apps are “lightweight versions of Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote that are used from within standard web browsers.” According to Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft, it’s aiming to bring “the best of the web to Windows, and the best of Windows to the web.” ‘Course, we’re also told about improved navigation, a new taskbar (preview shown), support for multi-touch gestures, Device Stage and enhanced AV integration — all things that have our interest decidedly piqued. Hit the read link for the full spill direct from the horse’s mouth.

Microsoft details pre-beta release of Windows 7 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

It is the black hole of the digital age — the three minutes it can take for your computer to boot up, when there is nothing to do but wait, and wait, and wait some more before you can log on and begin doing anything at all.

Now the computer industry says it wants to give back some of those precious seconds. In coming months, the world’s major PC makers plan to introduce a new generation of quick-start computers, spotting a marketing opportunity in society’s short attention span.

Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Lenovo are rolling out machines that give people access to basic functions like e-mail and a Web browser in 30 seconds or less.

Now, can you remember back when you’d boot up the PC and then head to make a pot of coffee … 

Asus, a Taiwanese company that is the world’s largest maker of the circuit boards at the center of every PC, has begun building faster-booting software into its entire product line.

Even Microsoft, whose bloated Windows software is often blamed for sluggish start times, has pledged to do its part in the next version of the operating system, saying on a company blog that “a very good system is one that boots in under 15 seconds.”

Today only 35% of machines running Windows Vista, boot in 30 seconds or less, the blog notes.

Apple Macs tend to boot more quickly than comparable Windows machines, but still feel glacially slow to most users.

Now, if we could just solve global warming …

More at the New York Times.

Tags: apple, dell, hp, lenovo, macintosh, microsoft, quick-start computers, windows vista

Related Entries
• Apple Takes Lead in $1K+ Computer Market -
  May 19, 2008
• HP Says Touch Me Now! -
  Oct 16, 2008
• Microsoft Vista; Horizon Now Stretches Further … -
  Mar 22, 2006
• Gates Does Windows Again and Again (New Vista Unveiled at CES) -
  Jan 05, 2006
• Why Pay Twice as Much for a Mac? -
  Aug 06, 2008
• Microsoft plays nice with Apple iPod - no more corruption -
  May 09, 2007
• A Dell by Any Other Name? -
  Jan 31, 2007
• Vista Launch: Midnight Madness All Over Again? -
  Jan 29, 2007
• HP Using Voodoo (No, Not in the Leak Probe) -
  Sep 29, 2006
• More Sony Battery Woes — As in 7 Million … and Counting -
  Sep 29, 2006

TrackBacks
| Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | VoIP & Gadgets Blog Home | Permalink: Wow! A Quick Boot PC — About Time!

Copyright VoIP &amp Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Networking

Steve Ballmer himself first dropped word of this one earlier this month, but Microsoft has now finally gotten official about its new cloud computing operating system, and its name: Windows Azure. What’s more, the OS is apparently just one component of Microsoft’s larger Azure cloud computing platform, which will eventually be fully rolled out alongside Windows 7, and will encompass Microsoft’s existing Live services, SQL services, and .NET services, among other things. If that’s got you excited, you can find plenty more details at the link below, and even a few SDKs ready for downloading.

[Via Pocket-lint]

Microsoft gets official with Windows Azure cloud OS, platform originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read&nbsp|&nbspPermalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Donald Melanson