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Sponsor |  Thlayli | Jan 19, 2007 11:32am | | The current theory on blank threads is that it is partly caused by overlong posts. Keep it short and everything should be fine. |
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|  DaTechGuy | Jan 20, 2007 1:10am | Vista operating system available for download
via the Internet when it debuts at the end of this month. In addition, Microsoft will allow people to upgrade to any version of Vista when they wish at the Vista Anytime Upgrade web site. Finally Microsoft will give families the chance to license two additional copies of Windows Vista Home Premium for $49.99 each from the launch date of Jan. 30 to June 30. In other news, The Wall Street Journal says that Microsoft's Windows Vista is a worthy OS but it is largely unexciting. The author goes on to say that Vista is the best Windows yet but won't win any awards for 'ease of use' either.
Microsoft will make Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 available for direct download via Windows Marketplace starting January 30 at suggested retail prices (but without the discs, packaging and manuals of the retail version). Windows Vista editions offered through Windows Marketplace will be available in English only, in either 32-bit or 64-bit versions. Windows Marketplace visitors also can find a wide variety of Windows-compatible hardware and software, including products carrying the Certified for Windows Vista logo.
Microsoft also detailed its Windows Anytime Upgrade program, a new option that allows customers to upgrade their existing edition of Windows Vista to a higher-grade edition by way of an online transaction. For example, if a Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Business user decides he or she wants more capability -- perhaps to join his home PCs to secure domains at the office, or to experience the multimedia capabilities of Windows Vista on his work laptop -- the user can click on the Windows Anytime Upgrade option in the Start menu, select the desired upgrade edition, purchase it online to secure a new digital key, and then follow the on-screen instructions to complete the upgrade. It was previously revealed that Microsoft would be shipping all versions of Vista on a single DVD, meaning that those who purchase the operating system on DVD will not have to download additional parts of the operating system for the upgrade.
The manufacturer's suggested retail prices to upgrade to more premium editions of Windows Vista are as follows: Home Basic to Home Premium $79, Home Basic to Ultimate $199, Home Premium to Ultimate $159 and Business to Ultimate $139.
The third part of Microsoft's announcement today reveals a limited-time offer for customers who buy retail copies of Windows Vista Ultimate. From January 30 through June 30, the Windows Vista Family Discount will allow North American customers to license two additional copies of Windows Vista Home Premium for use on other PCs in the home at the reduced price of $49.99 each. Before completing the order online, customers will need to enter one valid full or upgrade Windows Vista Ultimate key from their retail boxed product. After eligibility is verified online, the customer can purchase licenses to install Windows Vista Home Premium on one or two additional Windows-based computers.
"With the consumer launch of Windows Vista so close, we're excited to announce three new ways to make the purchase and upgrade experience easier than ever," said Brad Brooks, general manager of Windows Client Marketing at Microsoft. "These new programs give our customers more flexibility and choice to ensure they get the edition that's right for them." |
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| |  480063 | Jan 23, 2007 10:44am | Toms Hardware:
Gameplay Stinks with RTM Vista and Current Drivers
tinyurl.com/2td3yw [tinyurl.com/2td3yw]
Darren E. Polkowski
Vista is coming, and if you are on the bleeding edge of the technology wave, then you had better be prepared for what's in store.
"Release to manufacturing (RTM) signifies the completion of our development work and the start of the next phase for Windows Vista," Sven Hallauer, Microsoft director of program management and release manager, said.
That next phase for Vista started November 8, 2006 and will end on the official launch date. The RTM version left Microsoft and went into the hands of independent hardware (IHV) and software vendors (ISV) to get their products ready for the January 30 launch date.
A month has passed since the RTM build hit the ISV and IHV, and I thought it would be interesting to see how well prepared the consumer graphics industry is for launch. I'll take a look at what Vista has to deliver as it is available today. I'll also show the graphical interface and talk about the current status of the new operating system (OS). Lastly, I'll present my findings on the performance differences between Windows XP Professional and Vista Ultimate.
Vista looks to be an interesting platform for multimedia, productivity and games. Microsoft has put a lot of resources into making Vista look its best. A lot hinges on the hardware vendors. Microsoft may have included basic hardware driver builds so the user experience on the desktop looks cool but it takes a robust driver to get your games right. AMD needs to work on its OpenGL performance as well as work out any kinks I noted along the way. Across the aisle, Nvidia needs to clean up the bugs, such as the driver installer, and places where performance takes the hardest hit. They both have until launch to fix the problems we're seeing now.
In its current state Vista is too unstable at least from a graphics perspective and cumbersome in a number of ways to be attractive to gamers and even professional consumers. I'm not too keen on some of the networking issues I had to deal with in transferring stored performance data and getting the test system ready. Some of the gadgets for the desktop looked cool but lost their pizzazz within 30 minutes of installing a new one. Pong and Tic-Tac-Toe tend to get boring after a while and some of the other gizmos are built into applications I currently use.
I do look forward to some of the games that are scheduled for this year such as Supreme Commander, which will make good use of geometry shaders, and the star of 2007, Crysis. Like other platform renewals, Vista will take a year to achieve reliability and stability and up to an additional year for data and infrastructure critical environments to move to it. |
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| | DaTechGuy | Jan 26, 2007 4:06am | Half of pirated Vista is malware
 About half of the downloads claiming to be free versions of Microsoft's Vista operating system are actually malicious Trojan horse software, security vendor DriveSentry warned Thursday.
With Vista's consumer launch just days away, hackers have been bombarding discussion boards with offers of "cracked" versions of Windows Vista, which are typically being distributed on peer-to-peer networks, said John Lynch, vice president of sales and marketing for DriveSentry.
These posts offer downloads of the operating system that skip Vista's activation process, created by Microsoft to prevent users from running illegal copies. Users who fall for the scam can end up with some pretty nasty problems, according to Lynch. DriveSentry researchers have found malicious key-logging software and spyware on about half of the downloads it has examined recently, he said. Pirated versions of Vista have been in circulation for several months now, and one Vista "crack," called "Windows Vista All Versions Activation 21.11.06," has already been identified as a Trojan. Trojan horses are malicious programs that present themselves as harmless or useful software. DriveSentry has also seen criminals disguise Trojans as free versions of Windows XP in the past, Lynch said. It's an effective technique, he added. "Someone that's stealing the software to begin with is not going to raise a fuss if the software turns out to be malicious."
infoworld.com/article/07/01/25/HNpiratedvista_1.html [infoworld.com/article/07/01/25/HNpiratedvista_1.html] |
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| | CrazyBastard | Jan 26, 2007 5:54am | 10+ tweaks, tricks, and hacks to make Windows Vista fly
articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10877_11-6153509.html [articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10877_11-6153509.html]
Takeaway: No matter how well designed an operating system purports to be, there are always to tweak it for performance. Here are 10+ tweaks, tricks, and hacks you can apply to Microsoft Windows Vista to make it run like a champion and perform to your particular specifications.
This article is also available as a TechRepublic download. Every operating system could stand some tweaking.
No matter how many developers you throw at an OS as complicated as Windows Vista, power users will always find something they can modify or hack to make it run faster, or better, or just differently. Here are just a few of the Windows Vista tweaks, tricks, and hacks we have discovered so far.
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| | TheBlackHawk | Jan 27, 2007 4:17am | Newegg has started selling the OEM versions of Windows Vista,
which are designed to be sold only to system builders (and come with some transfer limitations), and the prices are hopefully low enough to quiet some complainers:
- Windows Vista Home Basic OEM - $99.99
- Windows Vista Home Premium OEM - $119.99
- Windows Vista Business OEM - $149.99
- Windows Vista Ultimate OEM - $199.99
Also: - Windows Vista Home Basic OEM 3-pack - $279.99
- Windows Vista Home Premium OEM 3-pack - $349.99
- Windows Vista Business OEM 3-pack - $449.99
- Windows Vista Ultimate OEM 3-pack - $599.99
Ed Bott notesthat Provantage.com has similar prices. Now, these are full versions, so in the case of Ultimate, you are talking about a savings of $200, which makes it a might tempting and affordable purchase. Ed does note that while XP Home > Vista Basic and XP Media > Vista Premium prices have remained mostly the same, Vista Business costs at least ten dollars more than XP Professional, a price increase business buyers will be forced to bear. If you want to see what the unboxing experience is for Windows Vista,
Engadget has a gallery of Home Premium being opened up. The new packaging is so cool, there's a part of me that wants to pay full price for it. Instead, I might actually buy the packaging on eBay, or off a friend, in a month or two. Also, IntelliAdmin has a story on "The 5 sins of Vista", the first two of which seem to be genuine bugs. Definitely worth reading, especially if you work at Microsoft, since some of these just have to be fixed for Service Pack 1. Next: Microsoft has released a new version of Vista Upgrade Advisor, which you can download to your XP machine. Run it, and it will tell you if programs you already use will be incompatible with Vista, a great way to know about problems before they happen.
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| | DaTechGuy | Jan 27, 2007 4:23am | VISTA Already Looking for Beta Testers for Service Pack 1
Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Testing Already God, Microsoft is changing! Windows Vista is coming out in seven days, and
they're already looking for beta testers for Service Pack 1, which they plan to release in the second half of this year. You won't be able to get in (trust me, I already emailed them, and they wanted my company's Enterprise contact info) just yet, but I love the idea that Vista SP1 is going to get the same intensive, long-term beta testing Vista itself benefited from. The Technology Adoption Program (TAP) is looking for customers and partners actively test and provide feedback on Windows Vista SP1 to help us prepare for its release in the second half of CY07. Customers must be willing to provide feedback and deploy pre-release builds into production environments. According to Robert McLaws, the reason we'll see it in this timeframe is because it'll test in tandem with Windows Server 2007, and as a result, Windows Vista SP1 will be as reliable and secure as Server 2007. This is significant, because Microsoft's Server operating systems are very secure, and making Vista as secure as a server is a huge benefit for everyone who owns Vista. Microsoft is doing some great things with Windows development, making decisions that are improving the Windows platform with every step. So why will they have SP1 ready this year? Because Windows Vista and Windows Server 2007 share the same codebase, which means both operating systems use many of the same binaries. While Windows Vista has gone through more reliability testing than any previous consumer OS, Windows Server 2007 will have an extra 6-10 months of testing. So Microsoft gets a two-fold benefit for the extra WS2007 testing this year. The end result is that Windows Vista SP1 will have the same stability, security, and reliability as a server OS. This cannot be understated: Microsoft has never had server reliability on the desktop before. Windows Server 2003 has been a rock-solid OS from day one, and the number of vulnerabilities have been far fewer than previous releases. Since Windows Vista started from that codebase, you already have a really stable OS. But to have the same bits running on both desktops and servers can only mean good things for consumers moving forward. |
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