Tag: Windows
October 20, 2008 by
Jason
Microsoft has been sending out surveys to selected Windows users. There’s nothing unusual in that. It does it all the time, but this one is seeking opinions on a feature dubbed the ‘Instant On Experience’. You may recall that this is something several mini laptop makers have been dabbling with. Asus are one of the first with a system called Splashtop. The idea is that if all you want to do is collect you emails, or surf the net, why should you have to wait ages for Windows (or Linux) to load? Instead, at startup you can opt to run a super-small Linux based operating system, which only takes a second or two to load and gives you more or less immediate access to the web. Microsoft is clearly taking an interest in the feature, possibly for the upcoming Windows 7 (rumoured now to be called ‘Stratus), which is due to make its public appearance next year. The survey also asks respondents what other applications they would like to see fire up in a just a few seconds, now they’re asking, how about Windows…?
Posted in Linux, Windows 7 | No Comments »
October 19, 2008 by
Jason The Visual Round Trip Analyzer was initially an internal Microsoft tool, which the Redmond company is now offering as a free download. Designed as a webpage performance visualizer and analyzer, according to the software company, Visual Round Trip Analyzer runs on top of Network Monitor 3.2 and is set up to offer a comprehensive perspective over the download of a specific webpage. The Redmond giant indicated that VRTA comes with support for Windows Vista RTM and SP1, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 SP1 and Windows Server 2008.
“The Visual Round Trip Analyzer tool helps web developers and testers visualize the download of their page, identify best practices and changes that improve performance. The Round-Trip between the client and server(s) is the single biggest impact to web page performance - much greater than server response time. VRTA examines the communications protocol, identifying the causes of excessive round-trips, and recommending solutions,” Microsoft informed. Read More»
Posted in Computer | No Comments »
October 14, 2008 by
Jason The pain…
If you’ve invested your hard earned cash on a Creative X-FI sound card and a copy of Vista, you may be feeling a bit underwhelmed right now. Some of your games may be sounding a bit flat and lifeless and you’ll have no doubt felt that sinking feeling when you edit the sound settings in your new game only to find that you can’t enable some of the fancy options. There is a good reason for this and you probably will have been told at great length about it by one of the many passengers on the anti-Microsoft bandwagon.
The Science…
If you’re an experienced PC gamer you’ll no doubt be aware of DirectX and the various functions that make up the DirectX standard, such as DirectDraw, Direct3d and DirectSound and DirectSound3D. You will probably be aware of the hype surrounding Direct3d already, given that it has now reached version 10, but that’s a story for another day. DirectSound is what we are interested in here and it is sadly missing in Vista. XP and DirectX9 featured a “Hardware Abstraction Layer” which was a piece of software that allowed Windows to talk directly to a soundcard such as the X-FI to provide hardware mixing and 3d effects for your games. Without this layer any sound you hear will be mixed using software, rendering much of your shiny new soundcard useless. Read More»
Posted in windows vista | 1 Comment »
October 14, 2008 by
Jason Network Access Protection is designed to permit a high degree of control over client computers across a network. A critical feature of Windows Server 2008, NAP is now also supported by Windows Vista
RTM and Service Pack 1 and Windows XP Service Pack 3. But deploying NAP is not exactly an effortless task. However, Microsoft is offering the necessary resources to help network administrators, infrastructure specialists and system architects. An illustrative example of this is the Network Access Protection Design Guide available via TechNet.
“The Network Access Protection Design Guide, authored by our very own technical writer and NAP Forum hero Greg Lindsay, is now live! The NAP Design Guide explains the advantages, disadvantages, requirements, recommendations, and design considerations for deploying NAP for the IPsec, 802.1X, VPN, and DHCP enforcement methods. (…) Huge thanks to Greg for his authoring efforts over the last year and to many NAP product team reviewers for helping to ensure that the content is technically accurate and complete,” revealed Joe Davies, NAP Senior Program Manager. Read More»
Posted in Windows XP, windows vista | 1 Comment »
October 12, 2008 by
Jason
Microsoft gave computer makers a six-month extension for offering Windows XP on newly-shipped PCs. While this doesn’t impact enterprise IT because volume licensing agreements will allow IT to keep installing Windows XP for many years to come the move is another symbolic nail in Vista’s coffin.
The public reputation of Windows Vista is in shambles, as Microsoft itself tacitly acknowledged in its Mojave ad campaign.
IT departments are largely ignoring Vista. In June (18 months after Vista’s launch), Forrester Research reported that just 8.8% of enterprise PCs worldwide were running Vista. Meanwhile, Microsoft appears to have put Windows 7 on an accelerated schedule that could see it released in 2010. That will provide IT departments with all the justification they need to simply skip Vista and wait to eventually standardize on Windows 7 as the next OS for business.
So how did Vista get left holding the bag?
Let’s look at the five most important reasons why Vista failed. Read More»
Posted in windows vista | 2 Comments »
October 10, 2008 by
Jason The maturity of the ecosystem of software and hardware products built around Windows Vista contributed not only to the evolution of the operating system’s level of performance, along with Service Pack 1, but also to making irrelevant the vast majority of incompatibility problems which affected the RTM build of the platform. With the introduction of the Windows Vista Compatibility Center, Microsoft revealed that in excess of 9,000 products are fully compatible with the client, including over 5,500 devices and more than 3,500 software programs. In addition to the center, the Redmond company has also made available for download the “Windows Vista Application Compatibility Downloadable List for IT Professionals”.
The resource features a list of approximately 4,000 applications that are either compatible with or certified for Windows Vista. The document is offered under the Open XML file format for Office Excel 2007, but it can be accessed via Office Live Workspace or through OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 in the absence of the Redmond company’s productivity suite. Read More»
Posted in Software, windows vista | 3 Comments »
October 10, 2008 by
Jason Ever thought of becoming an actual “hacker”? This article shows how to change a computer password and do other things using a command prompt. A command prompt is a command using the special built-in program that comes with every computer which allows you to do almost anything on a computer.
1. Open Command Prompt. If you don’t know how, open the Start menu, go to Programs (or on Windows 2000 and up, all programs), go to Accessories, then you’ll see Command Prompt, click it.
2. You’ll see a black screen pop up.
3. Type in: “Net User”
4. It will then show you a detailed little chart of all the User Accounts on the computer.
5. Choose which account you want to hack.
6. Say it says the user accounts are: Owner, Administrator, John, Alice, Christopher, and Guest. Read More»
Posted in Computer | No Comments »
October 09, 2008 by
Jason Microsoft has made a new release of the Windows operating system available for download for free. The Redmond company is offering the gold bits of the next iteration of its Windows embedded platform via the Download Center as of October 8, 2008. Windows Embedded Standard 2009 was packaged as WES2009Eval.iso, an offering aimed exclusively for test driving. The evaluation edition of Windows Embedded Standard 2009 is designed to offer a taste of what the embedded version of the Windows platform has to offer for a total of 120 days.
“Windows Embedded Standard 2009 delivers the power, familiarity, and reliability of the Windows operating system in componentized form, helping device makers easily create smart connected devices requiring rich applications, services, and end-user experiences,” Microsoft revealed in the product’s description.
The first Community Technology Preview of Windows Embedded Standard 2009 went live on Microsoft Connect at the start of June 2008. At that time, the Redmond giant pointed to the third quarter of this year for the general availability of the RTM version of Windows Embedded Standard 2009. Read More»
Posted in Windows XP | No Comments »
October 07, 2008 by
Jason The evolution of IE from Internet Explorer 7 to Internet Explorer 8 spans from the graphical user interface on the surface of the browser to the underlying rendering engine. Among the various improvements delivered to Internet Explorer, enhancing AJAX in the browser is an illustrative example of Microsoft’s efforts to take its proprietary browser to the next level. In this regard, Sunava Dutta, IE Program Manager, revealed that the Redmond giant focused on improving AJAX for IE8, on top of what was made available with the Beta 1 release in March. The AJAX updates are already available as of the release of IE8 Beta 2.
“The good news is our team has been working since Beta 1 to tweak and update our implementations based on feedback from developers and ongoing updates to the W3C standards drafts on which most of these implementations are based or have been submitted for consideration. Not content with doing just that, we also added a few new features for developers. The AJAX updates we’ve chosen for Beta 2 focus on maintaining cross-browser compatibility and the feature sets that developers have thought would be the most useful,” Dutta explained. Read More»
Posted in Internet | No Comments »
October 06, 2008 by
Jason
If you’re upgrading a computer running Windows XP, you can save money by opting for an upgrade rather than the full version of Windows Vista.
However, you can’t necessarily perform an ‘in-place’ or ‘over-the-top’ upgrade; sometimes you have to perform a clean installation of Windows Vista, which means backing up and reinstalling all your current programs, folders and files. The table shows where an over-the-top upgrade is possible.
In practice, a clean install means a fresh start; anything short of this can carry over problems from your old, cluttered version of Windows XP. Strictly speaking, when Windows Vista installs itself over Windows XP, it actually does perform a clean install and then imports all the old settings.
This should help prevent problems and can even, in principle, carry through hardware drivers that can’t be installed under Windows Vista itself, thereby preserving the working life of older devices. However, we’d recommend a truly clean install whenever possible. Read More»
Posted in Windows XP | No Comments »
