2007 June archive

« Older

Loading Newer »

Less

Excerpts Headlines Full Length

Archive for June, 2007

Windows Easy Transfer Companion (Beta) update

Published by nb June 29th, 2007 in Software. 2 Comments

The update version of Windows Easy Transfer Companion (Beta).

Windows Easy Transfer Companion enables you to automatically transfer your most important programs from your Windows XP-based PC to your new Windows Vista-based PC. The software will move more than 100 of the most popular programs, as well as many others that you may have installed. You have complete control over selecting which programs to transfer, so only the programs you care about will move. The software will alert you if some programs may not be able to transfer, or may not transfer with high confidence. Most security software is not able to transfer due to technical reasons.
Easy Transfer Companion is designed to be used in addition to Windows Easy Transfer?which is part of Windows Vista and automatically transfers your data and settings. Connecting your two computers can be done with either an Easy Transfer Cable (available online, from retailers, and from PC manufacturers), or a home or small business network. If using an Easy Transfer Cable, you must first install Windows Easy Transfer on your Windows XP-based PC. By using Easy Transfer and Easy Transfer Companion you will be able to quickly and easily setup your new PC with all the data, settings, and programs that matter to you, so you can be productive on your new PC right away.
Easy Transfer Companion only transfers programs from a Windows XP-based PC to a Windows Vista-based PC. Easy Transfer Companion is currently in Beta, and only available for the US market.

Download: Windows Easy Transfer Companion (Beta)

Silverlight Built For Linux In 21 Days

Published by nb June 28th, 2007 in Software. 0 Comments

Miguel de Icaza writes about the intense coding work done by his team, working 12-16 hours over the last 21 days to build a version of Microsoft?s Silverlight platform to run under Linux. Calling the project Moonlight, the project was prompted by Microsoft France?s Marc Jalabert, who invited them to do it for the ReMix conference, and the team built the whole thing to run in Firefox under Linux in just three weeks.

They wrote 24,373 lines of C++, 1,367 lines for the C# binding, and 13,207 lines of C# class libraries. It looks like it runs standard Silverlight apps well, which means Silverlight now runs under Windows, Mac and Linux, and under Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. What?s taking so long with the Opera version?

Source: InsideMicrosoft

2,600 sites running Windows Server 2008 on the Internet

Published by nb June 28th, 2007 in Server. 0 Comments

Microsoft has recently switched its main website, www.microsoft.com to Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft-IIS/7.0.

Although Windows Server 2008 is not yet released, Beta 3 is publicly available for early adopters to use. Internet Information Server 7 is already released, but will probably not see widespread use until Windows Server 2008 (formerly “Longhorn”) is released, since it only runs on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista.

There are already around 2,600 sites running Windows Server 2008 on the Internet. Whilst some of the servers running Windows Server 2008 are at Microsoft itself, the majority are not, with developers and hosting companies taking advantage of Windows Server 2008’s availability under a Go Live license which allows the beta to be used for testing or in a live environment without cost.

Once it is released, it could be expected to take a long time for large numbers of sites to move over to the latest version; it took several years for the installed base of Windows Server 2003 to overtake Windows 2000, and there are still some 5 million sites running on Windows 2000 even today.

Source: Bink.nu

Windows Live Photo Gallery beta

Published by nb June 27th, 2007 in Windows Live. 0 Comments

The first new service, Windows Live Photo Gallery beta, is essentially an upgraded version of the Windows Photo Gallery that is built into Windows Vista, though it will also work on Windows XP machines. The service expands upon the photo management program by allowing people to upload their photos to a Windows Live Spaces blog.

Microsoft’s second new service, tentatively dubbed Windows Live Folders, is essentially an online-storage tool that people can use to back up files, share them with friends or post them publicly. In the current beta program, testers are being given 500 megabytes of online storage. Though they can share files with anyone they wish, people who are invited to use a shared folder have to sign up for a Windows Live ID for authentication, said Brian Hall, general manager of the Windows Live business group.

The moves represent the first in a wave of new services that will roll out in the coming months, Hall said. While Microsoft has spent the past few months winnowing its list of services and updating its mainstay Hotmail, it is now looking to add new services and bring tighter integration of its differing products.

“This is the second generation” of Windows Live, said Hall.

Microsoft announced its Windows Live effort in November 2005 in what was seen as a response to free, Web-based services from Google and others.

In both photo sharing and online storage, Microsoft is catching up to rivals. Yahoo’s Flickr photo-sharing site is one of the most popular on the Web, and Yahoo Briefcase has been around for several years, for example.

Continue @ Source.

Windows Server 2008 Beta Adds IIS7 to Server Core

Published by nb June 27th, 2007 in Server. 0 Comments

Microsoft has released the June Community Technology Preview of Windows Server 2008, which serves as an interim release between Beta 3 and Release Candidate 1. The company says Beta 3 has already been downloaded over 200,000 times in the two months since its release.

While it may represent a minor update, the June CTP brings to the table a major new feature: the addition of IIS7 as part of the Server Core installation option. As previously reported by BetaNews, Microsoft disclosed at TechEd 2007 earlier this month that IIS would become the seventh ready-made “role” available for the operating system.

The change should make it tremendously easier for admins to provision and deploy low-overhead Web services very rapidly, even using the command line, and could finally close the similarities gap between itself and the world’s most deployed Web server software, Apache. (More information from Microsoft here.)

In a statement, Microsoft explained that, “IIS7 is a powerful Web server that allows IT administrators to increase Web site and application availability while lowering system administration costs. In addition, IIS7 gives Web-hosters a cost-effective, more scalable Web server for delivering reliable Web hosting to a broader set of customers.”

Perhaps more importantly, however, is that the company has decided to put all of its weight behind IIS as a competitor in the Web server space; some Microsoft employees had previously suggested the Redmond company would replace the complex server with a minimum-overhead WS-* standards-compliant solution.

In an interview at TechEd 2007, product manager Brian Goldfarb told BetaNews’ Scott Fulton that Windows Communications Foundation — the end product of the Indigo project — is and may always be directly dependent on IIS, which he called “the glue” that fits all Web interactions together in the current Microsoft model. “You have to have port 80,” Goldfarb said.

The Windows Server 2008 June CTP is available today to MSDN and TechNET subscribers, as well as Microsoft Connect beta testers.

Source: BetaNews.

IE8 Trial Coming?

Published by nb June 26th, 2007 in Blogsphere. 0 Comments

Ok, I am a little skeptical of this information , but MSTN is reporting that a Microsoft source has told them that a trial version of IE 8 is coming soon. What is soon? Who knows.

The other info they are getting is there will be two versions of IE8 one for Windows XP and one for Windows Vista. This really isn’t news as the same exists today for IE7 and there would have to be two going forward due to the lack of User Account Control technologies. That much is just common sense.

All this this really tells me is that in absence of any tangible info from Microsoft , that anyone can make headlines with no real info at all claiming someone at Microsoft said it.

Wake up IE team, what has happened to that once awesome communication tool that was the IE Blog.

Source: Windows Connected.

Why Microsoft backtracked on its Vista virtualization plans

Published by nb June 26th, 2007 in Blogsphere. 0 Comments

Last week, Microsoft nixed at the last minute planned changes to its Windows Vista end-user license agreement (EULA) that would have broadened virtualization rights. Since then, speculation has been mounting as to why Microsoft did this.

Fear of Mac OS X and Linux on the desktop? A desire to thwart Parallels and VMWare? DRM concerns?

Queries to Microsoft regarding why company officials nixed the planned easing of Vista?s virtualiztion license were met with ?We have nothing further to say.? Period.

I realized over the weekend that none of us press/bloggers who was briefed by Microsoft on the planned changes had run the text of the EULA wording Microsoft officials provided to us. Maybe one of you out there will see some clues the rest of us missed as to why Microsoft decided to continue to ban users from running legally Vista Home Basic or Vista Home Premium in virtualized environments.

Here?s the EULA text the Softies sent me under non-disclosure on June 18:

Use with Virtualization Technologies (for all Vista SKUs)
?You may use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system on the licensed device. If you do so, the virtual hardware system is considered a separate device, and must have a separate license. Additionally IRM, DRM and BitLocker are now licensed to run in a virtual machine and that text has also been removed from the EULA. ?

On June 19, Microsoft officials sent this revised EULA wording, but still said the planned virtualization change was on. The revised wording read as follows:

Continue @ Source.

Vista SP1 delay won’t hurt enterprises

Published by nb June 26th, 2007 in Article/Analysis. 0 Comments

Many large enterprise customers have said they will wait for the first service pack for Vista to deploy the software across their companies. Some were expecting SP1 before the end of the year after Microsoft Senior Vice President Bob Muglia said in a published report last November it would be released with Windows Server, code-named Longhorn, due by the end of 2007.

However, rumors swirled last week that the release of the pack would be pushed into 2008 after Microsoft said in a court filing dated June 19 it would have only a test version of Vista SP1 out before the end of the year. According to the document, filed as part of the ongoing antitrust case with the U.S. Department of Justice, the software is to be released by then to answer a complaint by Google that the OS’s built-in desktop search capability interferes with the use of Google’s competing search technology.

The rumors caused investors to worry about enterprise adoption of Vista being pushed further out, and company stock declined 2.4 percent Friday, opening at $30.03 and closing at $29.54.

Continue @ Source.

Windows Vista Security at 180 Days

Published by nb June 22nd, 2007 in Windows and Blogsphere. 0 Comments

Windows Vista recently passed the 180 day mark since it was made available to business customers. Just as he did at the 90-day mark, Jeff Jones, a Microsoft Director from the Trustworthy Computing group and frequent blogger on security topics, has done a comparison of vulnerabilities discovered in Windows Vista versus other operating systems in their first 6 months of availability. Windows Vista holds up well in this comparison, showing a significantly improved vulnerability profile over its first 180 days of availability compared to Windows XP and the other operating systems that were examined. It?s interesting to note that Windows Vista is being subjected to a greater level of scrutiny than its predecessor, as tools used by security researchers have become significantly more sophisticated since Windows XP was released.

Of course, we?re always working harder to further reduce the number of vulnerabilities in our products. Windows Vista was our first client release to leverage the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) throughout the entire development cycle. As new techniques for finding vulnerabilities are discovered, we make updates to the SDL which will be used in the development of future products. A good example of how that process works is in Michael Howard?s entry on the SDL blog.

Jeff?s ?Windows Vista 6-month Vulnerability Report? is available here .

Source: Windows Vista Blog

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats

Published by nb June 19th, 2007 in Software and Office. 0 Comments

Users of the Microsoft Office XP and 2003 programs Word, Excel, or PowerPoint?please install all High-Priority updates from Microsoft Update before downloading the Compatibility Pack.
By installing the Compatibility Pack in addition to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able open, edit, and save files using the file formats new to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007. The Compatibility Pack can also be used in conjunction with the Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer 2003, and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 to view files saved in these new formats. For more information about the Compatibility Pack, see Knowledge Base article 924074.

Download: Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats