This is funny and informative. I didn't know that the total number of Vista machines is near the same number of Macs out there. What's that? Under 5% market pentatration? Ouch.
Tags: Microsoft, Windows
A guy in Italy managed to get a refund from HP for Windows XP and Works 8 which were preinstalled on his system. Apparently, the license agreement states that if the customer doesn't accept the agreement, the vendor will refund the money.
This could be the start of a disturbing trend as far as computer retailers are concerned.
Tags: Microsoft, Windows, Your Rights
Microsoft slipped another bomb into their "critical updates" in the form of a Windows Desktop Search. The reports say that besides being an unwanted feature, it has been slowing machines down considerably.
The worst part is that somehow Microsoft thinks they can change the way our machines work without our consent. But this wouldn't be the first time.
Tags: Microsoft, Windows Update
Hellgate, a soon-to-be-released video game includes a license agreement that forces players to accept the harvesting of identifying information from their machine. This is part of an in-game advertising scheme that, so far, doesn't quite reach the level of what the Penny Arcade cartoonists prophesied, but it's getting closer.
Tags: adware, Gaming, Microsoft
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.
Tags: Microsoft, Voluntarily Downgrade, Windows, Windows XPIn some slightly overblown reporting online, Microsoft has been caught downloading updates to its software without user knowledge or consent. In this case, they were just updating the Windows Updater, but the key complaint here is that the users didn't get to choose.
In the past many people delay updating (or avoid it altogether) because the updates can sometimes cause less security or add features that we don't want.
Tags: Microsoft, Windows
Rather than try to prevent people from copying or sharing music with drm, Microsoft has patented a watermarking procedure that will allow them to tag music with IDs that are very hard to remove.
First take: this is bad, bad news. While Ars Technica believes that this could help to get rid of the much hated DRM, I believe the replacement is far worse. Now instead of merely being annoying in preventing you from copying a CD, the RIAA will be able to track music by ID to see where (and who) it came from. If your son shares a song online that's from your CD collection, you will be much easier to find and prosecute.
Tags: Big Business, DRM, Microsoft, TrackingAfter one hour of use, a Vista machine that thinks it's illegitimate will go to a black screen with no functionality of any kind.
Remember the article about the activation servers failing and disabling thousands of computers a week or two ago? Combine that with this new policy and things should get pretty interesting. Does it seem to anyone that Microsoft is starting to go a little crazy in the head? It's like a paranoid king who starts killing off the subjects thinking they're going to turn on him.
The scary thing (if I hadn't seen it coming) is that this "feature" was built in to Vista and just needed to be remotely activated by Microsoft. Right now it's an hour then a black screen, but I wonder how far it can go? 10 minutes then self destruction?
Tags: Customer Abuse, Microsoft, Vista
It has long been suspected that there is a silent policy that makes Hotmail automatically delete the majority of attachments to save on bandwidth and internal disk space. Therefore it really doesn't matter if every client has access to 2GB of storage since they don't deliver the attachments to fill that space up anyway. If that truly is the case, then Microsoft may be liable for several hundred million cases of conspiracy and mail fraudIf you want to learn more about my professional background, click here to learn more.
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