People who would normally be forced to have Vista because of buying a new computer are now being given the option to "downgrade" to XP.
The article also says that the unpopular Vista operating system cost 6 Billion dollars to create. Ouch.
(H/T to slashdot for the link)
Tags: Windows
Microsoft is announcing new service packs for both operating systems soon, but urges people not to wait and to "upgrade" to Vista now.
Yeah right. Unless Vista SP1 addresses the DRM and spyware issues, I will continue to avoid it and recommend that other people do the same.
As for XP service pack 3, I'll be watching to see if they try to add some of the bad "features" of Vista or some other thing that makes XP less attractive. In other words, beware any attempts to break XP in order to force people forward.
Tags: Windows
This is actually pretty clever. This kid was making bomb threats to his school and was doing a pretty good job at hiding his tracks until the FBI got involved.
By sending a small program to his Myspace page, they somehow managed to infect his home PC with a monitoring program that collected evidence of his crime:
…if the Bureau could get the CIPAV installed on the user's machine, it would be able to collect the machine's IP address, MAC address, list of running programs, operating system, Internet browser used, language used, the registered computer name, the currently logged-in username, and more. All of this information would be relayed over the Internet back to an FBI computer in Virginia.
That sounds just like Windows Vista.
Tags: Big Brother, Windows
Apparently, a recent update to Vista has disabled program uninstall. That sounds like a big problem to me, but so far, no word from Microsoft on the issue.
Tags: Windows
Spyware: Any software that covertly gathers user information through the user's Internet connection without his or her knowledge, usually for advertising purposes. Spyware applications are typically bundled as a hidden component of freeware or shareware programs that can be downloaded from the Internet. Once installed, the spyware monitors user activity on the Internet and transmits that information in the background to someone else.
Because of the End User License Agreement of Vista, Microsoft arguably has the legal right to collect a large amount of data on you and report it back to their home servers. Some will say that they're not hidden, but is being buried in a giant EULA that most people don't have the expertise to understand really the same as full disclosure?
Microsoft says that users have the possibility to disable or not use the features and services altogether. But at the same time Windows update is crucial to the security of Windows Vista, so turning it off is not really an option, is it?
Not only that, but you have to know this a problem and then perform the immense amount of work required to identify all the various services and features that spy on you and disable them properly. By the time you're done, you won't really be using much of the software that came with Vista in the first place.
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Tags: If You Only Knew, Windows
Maybe this has been around a while, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it. There are utilities to unlock files that Windows won’t let you delete because they are “in use”.
The main suggestion in the article is a free utility called “unlocker” which will probably work well for normal users and I might add it to my list of tools for that reason. However, a commenter said that the Process Explorer utility will let you find the exact program that’s using that file so you can close just it instead of unlocking every process at once.
Once I’ve experimented with them, I’ll have one or the other on my tools page. Until then, feel free to go to the article and check it out yourself.
Tags: Windows
This is an iteresting article about how Vista, with it's poor security, lack of compatibility, high price, and integrated features that users hate (like DRM and security alerts) might make people start to seriously wonder why they're still using Windows.
I don't personally buy the argument that Linux will be the system they run to because I haven't yet seen a version of Linux that could match the user friendliness of Windows (with the possible exception of SUSE). But I'm no Linux expert. We'll have to see.
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And on that note, be sure to check out this link for an article comparing Ubuntu Linux VS MS Vista.
Tags: Microsoft, Windows
For it’s incessant prompts to “allow or continue”, it’s terrible compatibility with older software, and for Aero not working on most machines even though Microsoft marketing always shows the Aero experience (which so many people don’t actually get to see). PC World puts Vista as #8 on the top 20 most annoying tech products of all time.
Tags: Windows
It looks like there’s a legitimate working hack for Vista that kills their bogus activation scheme. Microsoft is saying that they’re not going to do anything about it yet because they don’t know if it will become a wide exploit. But I think this commentor (from the source article) has it more correct:
They didn’t think it through as a “hacker” (pirate more like it) would, and now they have a problem. Millions of legitimate users are out there with legitimate hardware sold with Vista. MS can’t simply pull the carpet out from under these users. They will need to devise a way that all users can continue using their systems without having to do something drastic like reinstall or update the BIOS because many users simply don’t know how to. Even locating the product key on the sticker would be difficult for some.
MS can’t simply pull the OEM keys and try again.
But on MS’s side, the number of users using this method is very low. And MS have said they’d prefer we pirate Windows than use MacOS or Linux.
Tags: Microsoft, Windows
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