Back in February, when Vista was just starting to gain momentum in the PC world, people got a nasty surprise when installing Vista Home Premium or higher on a 'Vista Capable' PC (instead of a 'Vista Premium Ready' PC): if it installed at all, it ran as slow as molasses, and features that people paid for such as Aero and Windows Media Center did not work, due to higher system requirements. This misconstrued marketing angered consumers over time, and now Microsoft is facing a class action lawsuit. Microsoft asked for the case to be thrown out, but a Federal judge agreed to hear the case just last Tuesday. The trial is scheduled for October, but we should see Microsoft settling this case long before then.

When Google was sued by pornographers for letting anyone who typed in "porn" at the Google Image Search prompt peek at pay-per-view porn, the courts upheld Google's rights to do just that. Now, Perfect 10 recently accused Microsoft's MSN search engine finding and posting porno that was hosted by an illegal distributer of Perfect 10's porn. Perfect 10 also is also accusing Microsoft of letting people successfully find passwords to their pay-per-view materials using MSN search. Perfect 10 has tried to sue both Google and Amazon with similar cases, and both cases were thrown out. Perfect 10 is appealing the court's decision while waiting for the results of this suit.

The current version of Windows XP Service Pack 2.0b is currently running very low on product keys, due to piracy the surprising longevity of the product. And so, to combat the lack of product keys, Microsoft is creating a fresh batch by releasing Windows XP Service Pack 2.0c. There should be no major differences, other than the latest patches built in and the new abundance of keys.

This version of XP will only be available to OEM system builders, and will only be in the market until Windows XP's official EoL date: January 31st 2009. Retail copies of Windows XP will stop shipping on the January 31st 2008.

Things are still a little cloudy, so take this with a pinch of salt, but a number of Microsoft's software testers claim to have received an early version of the first service pack for Windows Vista. Apparently a few testers have given ZDNet a tipoff, although each tester has come forward with a different build number, which suggests that Microsoft could even be using them to track down anyone who gives away information about new features, but it's equally possible each tester is just running a different build. The screenshots below are from WinBeta and supposedly show a version of Vista with the service pack installed, although there is still very little which will be of interest to most people. The private beta had been rumoured for mid-July, with a public beta following soon afterwards and a final version coming as soon as November this year, although Microsoft has not given any official confirmation of this. Hopefully more information will become available soon, but it looks like the first service pack could be here soon.

Given the relatively high failure rate for Xbox 360s, it's no surprise that Microsoft has taken steps to make the repairs process a little easier. Anyone with a defective Xbox 360 living in the USA can now "speed things along" by visiting service.xbox.com to register your console and setup a repair, as well as being able to track the progress of your repair online. And to sweeten the deal a little bit, Microsoft is even offering a $5 discount for repairs on out-of-warranty consoles if you use the new website, with any machines still inside the warranty period receiving free repairs. Apparently there is also a European equivalent on the way (and possibly a similar site for other areas) but there is no indication of when this is expected to go live yet. You will need a Windows Live ID to use the service, although this is free and relatively easy to setup - anyone who uses Windows Live Messenger or other Windows Live services should already have one.

Despite there once being rumours of Microsoft dropping service pack three for Windows XP, the software giant has now confirmed that it still intends to keep its old operating system up-to-date with at least one more service pack. Although no information about major changes has yet been leaked, a Microsoft spokesperson said the following:

We're currently planning to deliver SP3 for Windows XP in the first half of calendar year 2008. This date is preliminary, and we don't have any more details to share at this time.

By that time, service pack two (which was quite a huge security update) will have been around for about four years, and given the slow start for Windows Vista, Microsoft may have no choice but to continue supporting its larger consumer market for a few years yet if it doesn't want to upset millions of customers. However, considering that Windows XP is now very secure and stable, the next service pack could turn out to be little more than a bundle of Windows Update patches - unless Microsoft intends to integrate features from Vista such as user account control, which is very unlikely.

Microsoft has released two beta hotfix's for windows vista which are recommended to all gamers and desktop users. However they are not recommended to companies since they are in a beta state.

938194 Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack
This update resolves a number of individual issues which may be affecting some computers running Windows Vista. These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support, or other means. Installing this update will improve the reliability and hardware compatibility of Windows Vista in a variety of scenarios. Some examples of the improvements contained in this update are:

It's no secret that as of late, Microsoft's Windows Vista isn't doing very well. Despite Microsoft claiming record sales figures, buyers have all too much negative feedback, which is severely affecting investors confidence in Microsoft. Steve Balmer, the CEO of Microsoft, recently had a figurative pep rally (Microsoft's annual financial analyst meeting)to regain investor confidence. Balmer first addressed investor confidence in Vista. "Vista doesn't get done by three people in a garage in three days," said Steve Ballmer. The company is making big bets, and some of them will take time to develop. "A great misconception in the tech industry is that most successes happen overnight," he said.

Steve Balmer then reminded investors of recent company successes that Microsoft intends to build on, which includes advertising and devices. "We are hell bent and determined to allocate the talent, resources, money, and innovation to become a powerhouse in the advertising business."

A certain number of KB articles from Microsoft offer a hotfix which can be obtained by calling Microsoft Support to authenticate your version of Windows and to check whether you need that hotfix or not. Microsoft now offers a new way with which you can now download a hotfix without having to call a Microsoft representative. With this way you will receive a form mail in response, and in it will be a link to the http site where you can download the fix from.

NEW YORK - July 25, 2007 - Massive Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corp. and a leading network for video game advertising, and Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) today announced the incorporation of five premier titles from EA. All the titles will be live in the Massive Network this year. The EA titles joining the Massive Network include the year's most anticipated new releases and perennial best-sellers in their respective categories:
•"Madden NFL 08" (Xbox 360 and PC)
•"NASCAR 08" (Xbox 360)
•"NHL 08" (Xbox 360)
•"Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 08" (Xbox 360 and PC)
•"SKATE" (Xbox 360)

Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity. It combines the features of two legacy Sysinternals utilities, Filemon and Regmon, and adds an extensive list of enhancements including rich and non-destructive filtering, comprehensive event properties such session IDs and user names, reliable process information, full thread stacks with integrated symbol support for each operation, simultaneous logging to a file, and much more. Its uniquely powerful features will make Process Monitor a core utility in your system troubleshooting and malware hunting toolkit.Process Monitor runs on Windows 2000 SP4 with Update Rollup 1, Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP1, and Windows Vista as well as x64 versions of Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 SP1 and Windows Vista.

Microsoft today announced that it will deliver via RubyForge a core set of features of IronRuby, the company's implementation of the Ruby language, to solicit community feedback. RubyForge is a collaborative software development management system dedicated to projects related to the Ruby programming language. John Lam, creator of RubyCLR and a member of Microsoft's DLR (Dynamic Runtime Language) team, said:

I'm happy to announce today the first drop of the IronRuby source code. IronRuby is licensed under very liberal terms as set out by the Microsoft Permissive License. We're also happy to announce that we will be accepting source code contributions into the IronRuby libraries. Right now we have a lot of logistical work that we still need to do, but we fully intend on getting IronRuby onto RubyForge by the end of August.

Consider the following scenario:

• You have a Windows Vista-based computer that uses a high-performance video card.
• This video card uses multiple graphics processing units (GPUs).

In this scenario, the computer's graphics performance seems to indicate that only a single GPU is being used. This problem occurs because the operating system does not forward driver-render requests to the secondary GPU. Microsoft issued today this hotfix (KB936710) which is strongly recomended for systems that are experiencing this specific problem. The patch applies to all Windows Vista 32/64-bit versions.


Hotfix KB936710 Microsoft SLI and CrossFire Windows Vista 32/64-bit

When Windows Vista was released, Microsoft touted it as the most advanced, best version of Windows yet. And so far, it has lived up to it's word. Unfortunately, Windows Vista has an enemy that even the brightest engineers at Microsoft could not combat: utter incompatibility with XP programs that developers can not move to Windows Vista, for reasons unknown. This incompatibility has recently brought XP back from the grave Microsoft might want to imagine XP falling into. Windows XP is now available in product lines from such powerful OEMs as HP, Dell, Lenovo, and Toshiba.

Microsoft faces a second class action lawsuit in California similar to the lawsuit in Florida last week.
The suit alleges that

Microsoft improperly and/or negligently manufactured the Xbox 360 console in a manner that causes the expensive game discs ... to be scratched, rendering the games unusable

The complaint was filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for Southern California by Christine Moskowitz and Dan Wood. The suit is seeking not less than $5 million in damages for Xbox 360 buyers affected by the alleged glitch.

European retailers HMV, Play and GAME are taking pre-orders for Xbox 360 Elite at the price of £330. Xbox 360 Elite, which features a black casing, 120GB hard disk and HDMI output is due to launch in Europe on August 24 although Microsoft denied to comment on the price-tag these 3 retailers have. The Xbox 360 Elite is already on sale in the US for the price of $479 while the lesser equipped Xbox 360 Premium sells for $399 in the US and £279 in the UK.

A few days back Microsoft's Peter Moore attacked Sony's PS3...Today Sony's marketing VP Peter Dille does the same about Microsoft's console the Xbox 360.

I don't want to be argumentative, but I take issue with Microsoft either having a long tail, or being profitable, because they've never done either. They've never made a dime in this business. With the Xbox 360 you've got an inconsistent design, some have a hard drive, some don't, and none of them have Blu-ray, and the HD DVD will be out of business in a matter of months. Is this a 10 year product? And by the way it doesn't even work. Do they want to be selling it for 10 years and refurbishing them all for 10 more years? I don't think that's a 10 year product. You could disagree with me, or they could disagree with me, but I'd put that up against the PS3 any day

Microsoft today made an official announcement regarding the upcoming Windows Vista Sp1. Main reason was a typo mistake in a email send out by the Windows Driver Kit team who stated that their beta software version would be released the same time as the Windows Vista Sp1 Beta.

There will be a Windows Vista service pack and our current expectation is that a beta will be made available sometime this year. Service packs are part of the traditional software lifecycle - they're something we do for all Microsoft products as part of our commitment to continuous improvement, and providing early test builds is a standard practice that helps us incorporate customer feedback and improve the overall quality of the product. Service packs are just one example of the work we do to constantly improve the Windows experience. We also deliver improvements to Windows via Windows Update, which is an excellent channel for providing our customers with the most significant updates as they happen. And, since Windows Vista launched, we have continued working with partners to improve overall device coverage and application compatibility. There are now more than 2.1 million supported devices and more than 2,000 logoed applications for Windows Vista. We think customers will have a great experience using Windows Vista today.

Xbox 360 Hacked

A Hacker under the nickname SeventhSon has discovered a method to alter both the DVD key and game region code on Microsoft's Xbox 360, at least for the Hypervisor exploitable 4532 and 4548 kernels. A great part of this hack also involves desoldering your Xbox flash chip something that only the technologically handy will try.

Microsoft's Xbox chief Peter Moore has abruptly resigned from Microsoft just a few hours after passing judgement to SONY about its failure with PS3 in the Japanese market. Moore will become president of EA's Sports division. Moore's replacement at Microsoft will be Don Mattrick, who was a former president of game development Electronic Arts. Mattrick will become senior vice president of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business, which includes the Xbox and Games for Windows.
Microsoft stated that Moore was about to leave the company because of personal reasons although industry watchers speculate that Microsoft struggles in the gaming market and the incredible pressure facing Moore specifically were partly to blame for his departure.

It seems that Microsoft is on a patent spree lately..After already filing two patents in the past month another patent filed by Microsoft just surfaced , this one however is for an "advertising framework" that uses "context data" from your computer's hard drive to pop up advertisements and "apportion and credit advertising revenue" to ad suppliers in real time.
"Applications, tools, or utilities may use an application program interface to report context data tags such as key words or other information that may be used to target advertisements. The advertising framework may host several components for receiving and processing the context data, refining the data, requesting advertisements from an advertising supplier, for receiving and forwarding advertisements to a display client for presentation, and for providing data back to the advertising supplier."

The European Court of First Instance will give its long-awaited verdict in Microsoft's antitrust appeal on Sept. 17, people involved in the matter said Tuesday.
It is by far the biggest antitrust case ever referred to the European Union's second highest court. The outcome of the appeal, which will have taken more than three years, will influence the future shape of the software industry and be a reference point for future antitrust cases, especially those in the fast-changing world of information technology.
The European Commission ruled in 2004 that Microsoft had abused the dominant position of its Windows OS to muscle in on other sectors of the software market.

Seems that some people who have signed up about the WDK ( Windows Driver Kit ) Beta received the following email stating that there will infact be a Windows Vista SP1 Beta really soon. Yes this was more or less expected but we didnt have confirmation up until now. Email :

Microsoft announced the release of its latest home software to manufacturers. Windows Home Server is a stripped down version of Windows Server 2008 that will allow users to share and organize music and movies with up to 10 XP or Vista based computers, as well as game consoles and other digital devices. Six hardware vendors have signed on to create products for the OS. Most notably Iomega, which is developing a user-expandable product for consumers with up to four hot-swappable drives.

Looks like Vista's SP1 is coming a lot sooner than expected since Mary Jo Foley's reports that a Vista SP1 beta may already be tested among Microsoft's beta testing members around the globe thus we may be seeing SP1 at around November, or as vaguely described by Microsoft PR "sometime this year".
Chances are that we may get an even earlier gaze at SP1 on August 8th at Microsoft Australia's TechEd conference on the Gold Coast this year.