VISTA Takes This Long In Creation “Why There Is Such a Shortage Of Drivers!!?”

Vista

More and more controversy on Vista!! According to online reports, Microsoft dropped the hardware specs for its Vista platform just to raise Intel profits.

One e-mail states that the software giant lowered Windows Vista’s minimum hardware requirements to ridiculous levels just because Intel needed to sell more graphics chipsets.

Intel has since told The Wall Street Journal that the comment about its earnings was simply not true and pointed out that Kalkman “is not qualified in any shape or form to have knowledge about Intel’s internal financial forecasts related to chipsets, motherboards or any other product”.

The email has been released as part of the mounting evidence against Microsoft in a case in which it has been accused of misleading the public with the “Windows Vista Capable” logos it put on new PCs in the run-up to the operating system’s debut.

The logos appeared on system more than nine month before Vista did, but consumers have complained that their PCs were only Vista Home Basic capable and didn’t run the full version.

Microsoft seems to be denying all by informing the paper that it included the Intel 915 chipset in the Windows Vista Capable program “based on successful testing of beta versions of Windows Vista on the chip set and the broad availability of the chip set in the market.”

And the emails? These simply showed how its execs “were trying to make the marketing program better for Microsoft partners and consumers”.

But an impotent thing:

In another email which has been presented in court, a Microsoft board member tells Steve Ballmer he’s decided against “upgrading” one of his machines to Vista. “I cannot understand with a product this long in creation why there is such a shortage of drivers,” he says.

source:pocket-lint

Google’s New Product “Voice mail for Homeless”

 Google

The company’s philanthropic efforts right alongside its new technologies, including a plan called Project CARE to provide phone numbers to the homeless. Another piece of that plan came to fruition on Wednesday, when the mayor of San Francisco announced that Google would use GrandCentral to provide phone numbers and voicemail to homeless citizens across the entire city.

Since potential employers usually require telephone contact information, not having a home phone number can be a major barrier to employment for many homeless people, along with making them inaccessible to family, friends, social workers, health care providers. With Project CARE, those without home phone numbers will be able to visit homeless shelters and set up and accounts for free, receiving both a dedicated phone number and a voicemail account.

Google partnered with Project Homeless Connect to make the program happen. Although only San Francisco homeless shelters are currently able to set up accounts, the company eventually hopes to push the service nationwide.

Hop all world will get this facility soon.

source:digitaltrends 

AOL will no longer support Netscape Navigator

Netscape AOL

Netscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, will no longer be supported after 1 March 2008, the company has said.

In the mid-1990s, as the commercial web began to take off, the browser was used by more than 90% of people online.

Its market share has since slipped to just 0.6% as other browsers such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox have eroded its user base.

The company recommends that users upgrade their browser to either Firefox or Flock, which are both built on the same underlying technologies as Navigator.

“I think we represent the hope that was of Netscape,” Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation which coordinates development of Firefox

source:BBC News

Vista prices reduces

 Vista

Microsoft has announced that it is going to reduce the price of several standalone versions of Windows Vista.

The release has been published stateside and we don’t yet have confirmation as to whether prices are going to drop in all contres.

In the release, Brad Brooks, corporate vice president for Windows Consumer Product Marketing at Microsoft, explained that the reductions are just going to be on standalone versions of the package sold through retailers.

“In emerging markets, we are combining full and upgrade Home Basic and Home Premium versions into full versions of these editions and instituting price changes to meet the demand we see among first-time Windows customers who want more functionality than is available in current Windows XP editions.”

He added that Microsoft is also lowering pricing on Windows Vista Ultimate in emerging markets.

The price changes will come in at the same time as the retail release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 later this year.

source:pocket-lint 

FreeBSD 7.0 Now Available

FreeBSD7

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE. This is the first release from the 7-STABLE branch which introduces many new features along with many improvements to functionality present in the earlier branches Like support for ZFS, journaled filesystems, and SCTP, as well as dramatic improvements in performance and SMP scalability.

FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE is now available for the amd64, i386, ia64, pc98, and powerpc architectures. The version for the sparc64 architecture will become available in a few days. Some of the package builds are still in progress.

FreeBSD 7.0 can be installed from bootable ISO images or over the network; the required files can be downloaded via FTP or BitTorrent as described in the sections below. While some of the smaller FTP mirrors may not carry all architectures, they will all generally contain the more common ones, such as i386 and amd64.

For more information about FreeBSD release engineering activities

Google with Web site publishing service

Google Sites

Google Inc said on Wednesday it is offering a simple Web site publishing tool for office workers to set up and run their team collaboration sites, taking aim at Microsoft Corp’s rival SharePoint franchise.

Google Sites, as the new site publishing service is known, is a scaled back version of JotSpot, an easy-to-edit service for organizations and individuals to set up and edit Web sites that Google had acquired 16 months ago for undisclosed terms.

The new service, the latest stage in the Internet leader’s push into the market for business and educational users, allows non-technical users to organize and share digital information such as Web links, calendars, photos, videos, presentations, attachments and other documents in an easy-to-maintain site.

Google Sites is a stripped-down version of Microsoft’s SharePoint collaboration software, which lets users inside an organization share documents and maintain calendars on secure Web sites, but is far more complex to set up and maintain.

Unlike SharePoint, which typically requires organizations to buy and maintain their own hardware and software at costs that can run from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to serve one hundred users, Google Sites is hosted on Google computers and is free to users of Google Apps, which the company offers at a fraction of the cost of Microsoft tools.

source:reuters

AMD launches First dual-core Sempron Processors in China

AMD-Sempron

AMD has recently launched the first dual-core Sempron processors in China in a bid to counter Intel’s dual-core Celeron product line in the entry-level market, according to sources at motherboard makers.

AMD Sempron 2100+ processors adopt a 65nm process, and have a core frequency of 1.8GHz. Due to the cheap price and potential of AMD’s own-brand RS780 and 690G IGP chipsets, the CPU has been popular with consumers in China prompting them support AMD’s platform.

In order to hit back, channel vendors predict Intel will drop its dual-core Celeron processor pricing. However, they pointed out that even if the two processors are equal in price, AMD’s strong IGP chipsets still give the company an advantage.

Pricing in the China market is set at RMB 399 (US$55).

 source:digitimes

A New Critical Hole In Windows Vista

Vista

Just in time for spring, Microsoft has been busy tending to a new swarm of bugs, including a critical hole in Windows Vista and XP that could expose you to an early-season bite without your doing anything other than being online.

In an attack, a cracker could broadcast rogue TCP/IP packets to a range of addresses on the Internet, possibly including your PC’s. Sounds all too common, right? These rogue packets, however, are designed to trick their way past Windows’ security and hijack your PC, making your machine part of a botnet for sending out spam–or worse, a self-copying worm.

So far, no attacks have occurred. But proof-of-concept code is floating around, so don’t put off applying the patch. If you’ve enabled automatic updates, Microsoft will push the patch to you. Otherwise, you can grab it from Microsoft and install it yourself (Download).

 

source:pcworld 

New Lenovo ThinkPad X300

Lenovo

Lenovo has officially unveiled the ThinkPad X300 notebook PC, designed for most demanding “road warriors” with the asterisked claim of being the thinnest and lightest full-function notebook.

“Compared to major vendors offering 13-inch widescreen notebook PCs: Sony, Dell, Apple, Asus and Fujitus Siemens. Full featured defined as including technologies such as built-in DVD burner, selection of USB ports, Ethernet connection, replaceable battery and more”. Dig at Apple wethinks.

The ultra-thin, ultraportable has a 13.3-inch WXGA+ display, measures less than 1.85cm at its thinnest point and has a starting weight of 1.33kg.

The ThinkPad X300 combines a “number of leading technologies” such as solid-state drive storage, a LED backlit display, ultra-long battery life (up to 10 hours) and enhanced wireless connectivity.

Depending on what model users opt for, the ThinkPad X300 can offer an optional built-in 7mm DVD burner. It also includes stereo speakers, digital microphone and an integrated camera.

It offers “roll-cage” durability, integrated fingerprint reader, and comes equipped with a 1.8-inch 64GB SSD that provides more than twice the performance of a regular 2.5-inch hard drive – and with no moving parts – four times greater shock resistance than hard disk drives.

The notebook also comes with the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processor technology, up to 4GB memory and Lenovo’s ThinkVantage Technologies.

ThinkPad X300 notebook price starts from £1700.

source:pocket-lint

PC-World’s Windows Server 2008 Revue

win Server 2008

Microsoft’s long-awaited Windows Server 2008 delivers advancements in speed, security, and management, but its virtualization and network-access control features come up short.

In Network World testing of Windows Server 2008 gold code — the product officially launches on Wednesday. Microsoft has made a number of improvements to its flagship server operating system.

For example, new server administrative role schemes boost security, the Server Manager program improves manageability, Internet Information Server (IIS) Web management functionality is revamped, Active Directory is easier to control, and Windows Terminal Services has been redesigned. Windows Server 2008 is also significantly faster than Windows Server 2003, especially when client machines are running Vista.

Unfortunately, a highly anticipated feature of Windows Server 2008, the Hyper-V server virtualization tool, is missing also compatibility between non-Windows (and older Windows) clients and Microsoft’s Network Access Protection (NAP) scheme, Microsoft’s version of NAC. Microsoft includes a beta version of Hyper-V with Windows Server 2008 editions, but it will not release final code until the third quarter of this year.

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