Shadowrun, a game developed exclusively for Windows Vista, seems like it does not need Vista to function after all.

The infamous warez and hacking group 'Razor1911' has successfully hacked Shadowrun to be played under Windows XP, without any need for DirectX 10.

Apparently the crack just demands that you overwrite a few files in the installation folder with the ones provided by Razor and the game will run happily under XP.

Sapphire Launches "Go Vertical With Vista" Competition

Sapphire Technology are tantalizing consumers with the opportunity to win a prize bundle, combining a copy of Microsoft's Windows Vista Ultimate, an AMD Athlon X2 5000+ system processor and a CPU cooling solution courtesy of ZEROtherm's BTF90.

Click here to sign up for the competition.

Now that both Mac OS X and Windows Vista have widgets, or cool little gadgets you can spread around your desktop, ad companies have decided to try their hand at widgets. These ad-widgets would probably be put into a widget that actually does something, such as check facebook/myspace/sports statistics. Whether or not these advertisements would actually do anything would be hard to determine, considering tracking these widgets would be extremely illegal.

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of DRAM memory modules and flash storage solutions, today launched the new Exelerator family of ReadyBoost drives that use an internal 9-pin USB header on the motherboard.

Creative has released new drivers that provide Microsoft Windows Vista 64-bit and Windows Vista 32-bit support for Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic/XtremeGamer, X-Fi Platinum, X-Fi Fatal1ty and X-Fi Elite Pro series of audio devices. Click here for the full list of fixed issues.

Download: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series Vista Driver 2.15.0002 (51.09 MB)

Microsoft's new operating system, Windows Vista, sold 40 million copies in 100 days making it the fastest selling operating system in history. Premium Edition accounts for 78 percent of sales. Chairman Bill Gates credits an accelerated consumer shift to the digital lifestyle. Windows operating systems run on more than 95 percent of the world's computers.

According to many industry experts Windows Vista drains notebook battery life faster than Windows XP. The main culprit is said to be the new Aero Glass feature which may look nice but is a burden for many users on the go. While the Aero interface is disabled when switched to power-saving mode, many manufacturers like Hewlett Packard are seeking their own solution to this problem. Experts say that Microsoft will likely have to improve Vista battery life performance in the upcoming service packs to meet consumer pressure.

Despite reports of Microsoft only managing a feeble 244 sales of its new Windows Vista OS, the software giant is now denying that there is any truth in the story. "Recent speculation regarding sales data in China is inaccurate," said Microsoft. "We're pleased with the positive consumer response we've seen around the globe to the security and usability enhancements in Windows Vista--and China is no exception."Although Microsoft has not given any exact figures on sales, it has said that Vista sales in China during the first month after its release were double those that XP had in its first month. Microsoft has been facing some criticism for its new OS, with a big blow coming when PC manufacturer Dell decided to reintroduce XP.

It's no secret that many XP users are holding off any OS upgrades until they see the improvements that Vista's first service pack will have to offer, but Intel CEO Paul Otellini has given quite a firm indication of when that should be. During an earnings conference, Otellini let the release date slip when saying "…the [Vista] deployment [in enterprises] will actually happen when the Service Pack gets released in the fourth quarter time frame, probably the October-November time frame." Microsoft still refuses to give any details itself about when we can expect to see SP1 for Vista, but assuming there are no major delays in its production, it's looking very likely we could see it before next year. As of yet, there are no concrete details about what issues the service pack will deal with, but Microsoft has already hinted that Vista's service packs won't be nearly as major as those provided for Windows XP.

Microsoft spent millions of dollars advertising its next generation OS 'Windows Vista' in China, in fact the IT juggernaut threw up the biggest Vista Ad on the 421 meter high Jin Mao tower in Shanghai China. However after 2 weeks (Jan 19 to Feb 2) from launch Microsoft managed to sell a mere 244 copies of Windows Vista. Software piracy is rampant in the middle kingdom and a pirated version of Vista sells for a mere $1 on the streets.

In an MSDN blog, Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage Senior Product Manager Alex Kochis has admitted that the OEM activation hack for Windows Vista does work effectively. The hack involves either using a custom BIOS to trick Vista into believing it is running on a different computer model and therefore allows activation without connecting to the internet or using the phone, or using software to fool the OS in the same way. Windows XP also suffered from a similar hack, which also fools the Microsoft website into thinking the Windows install is genuine, however it received little attention because of the numerous other ways to bypass activation. Unsurprisingly, Kochis' blog is largely trying to deter people from using this method due to its risks (custom BIOSes can be dangerous) and claiming that the software equivalent will be easy to detect and respond to, but it would suggest that Microsoft more worried about this bypass than the others.Notice: techPowerUp! does not support the use off illegal software

Intel Corporation today announced the availability of new versions of its Intel Thread Checker, Intel Thread Profiler, Intel VTune Performance Analyzer and Intel Threading Building Blocks. These software development products enable developers to create more reliable, scalable applications, and have now been enhanced for the latest multi-core processors - Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800 and Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 - and newest operating systems - Microsoft Vista*, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise*, Red Hat Enterprise Linux* and Fedora Core*.

"Our Intel Core 2 processors have essential new profiling capabilities we're taking advantage of for the first time in our VTune Analyzer 9.0. Since nearly all systems shipping with Windows Vista will be multi-core systems, developers targeting Vista have been asking us for these parallelism tools," said James Reinders, director of marketing for Intel's Developer Products Division. "Developers on all operating systems want their move to parallelism well supported by development tools and we're committed to keeping up with our aggressive pace of supporting developers in as many ways as possible."

Despite all the whining over Windows Vista, the next version of Windows, it seems like Windows Vista is doing pretty well for itself. Figuratively speaking, of course. Windows Vista now accounts for 2.04% of all operating systems installed. This is more than double last month's figure, which was .93%. In direct contrast, despite all the pro-Macintosh advertisements and Macintosh "fanboys", Mac OS X has lost .3% of it's market share, and now accounts for 6.08% of all operating systems installed.

In related news, Mozilla Firefox is gaining market momentum. 15.1% of all internet users access it through Mozilla Firefox, while Internet Explorer users account for 78.6% of all internet users. Apple Safari usage dropped to around 4.51%

Hardcore Windows XP fans will claim that Vista is currently buggy and bloated. Hardcore Mac OS X fans will claim that at least half of Vista is inspired by Mac OS X. Hardcore Linux fans laugh at all of this, and simply install the free Beryl user interface on the latest free distro of Ubuntu (or some other *nix distro). However, The Register has found some compelling reasons to move from whatever you're using to Windows Vista. The following is a shortened list, please click the source link for the full version of the list.

• UAC- It really makes the OS more secure, and despite how annoyed you may get with it, you have to admit it's a step in the right direction.
• Windows Aero- It's pretty and easy. Enough said.
• It comes with better bundled software- All the programs that come pre-loaded with Windows are either old favorites, or very new programs with great features.
• Vista Live = Xbox Live for the PC. Really.
• Halo 2- What Halo fans have been waiting for over the years is finally coming to the PC. And it looks better than most of us imagined.
• DirectX10 API- All new games/ graphics cards will eventually be exclusively for DX10 and Vista, so we better get used to it.
• Windows Vista search functions- Windows indexing the everything really helps when you misplace something.
• Windows Firewall- It's pretty good this time around, if you need a firewall.
• Lots of pretty hardware/laptops are coming out that are designed just for Vista.
• Microsoft is pushing for a complete move to Windows Vista, hence, they'll drop support for everything older just like they did for Windows 9x and ME.

Forum users at Broadband Reports have posted some problems with Microsoft's new patch for Vista. The KB925902 patch, which was supposed to fix vulnerabilities including the cursor exploit, is reportedly creating issues including stopping antivirus software such as AVG and F-Secure loading correctly, causing false positives of a Trojan, and even preventing users booting entirely. Although this isn't yet a widely documented problem, it may be best to delay patching Vista until the matter becomes a little clearer. Apparently the news poster at neowin.net also experienced this problem, with one of the two computers he installed the patch on failing to boot.

Plextor LLC today announced the availability of the TurboPlex PX-800A DVD Super Multi Drive, which is compatible with the Windows Vista operating system. The Plextor PX-800A drive features an E-IDE ATAPI interface for easy connectivity with personal computers running the Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista operating systems. The PX-800A internal multi-drive delivers fast DVD recording speeds of 18X DVD±R on single-layer media, 8X DVD±R on Double-Layer and Dual-Layer (DL) media, and 12X DVD-RAM. The drive also supports 8X DVD+RW, 6X DVD-RW, 16X max DVD-ROM, 48X CD-R/RW/ROM, 12X DVD-RAM. The PX-800A multi-drive features a 2MB buffer and Buffer Underrun Proof Technology to prevent buffer underrun errors and allow multi-tasking. Plextor's PX-800A drive ships to distributors in North and South America in April 2007, with a MSRP of $79.00 USD. All retail packages include one-year full warranty and unlimited toll-free technical support.

It looks like Microsoft has decided against the major service packs given to Windows XP, instead deciding to stick with much smaller fixes where necessary. According to a senior Microsoft official, one of the reasons for this is because Vista is "high quality right out of the gate" (is that an admission that XP wasn't?), but the more likely reasons include the improved automatic updates and the improved bug-reporting technology. Although there will be 'lite' service packs for Vista, they won't be on the same scale as those that were released for XP. Dropping the large service packs is likely to be welcomed by many IT managers after SP1 for XP caused problems including slow-downs and crashes. There is still no date for the first service pack for Vista, but users on slower internet connections will certainly prefer the changes.

Apple has updated its Boot Camp software, adding official support for booting Windows Vista.

There's support only for 32-bit Vista, not 64-bit, but there are a few other things added into the release. There are numerous driver fixes, including added support for the iSight webcam and Apple Remote, Apple TV and Apple HiFi.

There are also driver updates for the graphics chips (including Intel integrated) and audio drivers.

Additionally, there is now a 'Boot Camp Tools' icon in the system tray, to allow quick access to fiddle with the cross-platform functions.

REDMOND, Wash., March 26, 2007 - Initial sales figures from Microsoft show its new operating system Windows Vista made a splash in its debut. In the first month of Windows Vista's general availability, sales exceeded 20 million licenses, more than doubling the initial pace of sales for its predecessor, Windows XP. These initial figures reflect the broad interest in the security and usability enhancements in Windows Vista.

"We are encouraged to see such a positive consumer response to Windows Vista right out of the gate," said Bill Veghte, corporate vice president of the Windows Business Group at Microsoft. "While it's very early in the product lifecycle, we are setting a foundation for Windows Vista to become the fastest-adopted version of Windows ever. Working with our partners, we are helping our customers leverage new tools and programs to accelerate the transition and provide a great user experience."

Although Apple's new Leopard operating system was expected to be released in April, industry sources are indicating that the new OS could be pushed back to October to allow Apple time to improve support for Windows Vista. As strange as it may sound that Apple is building its OS to work with Vista, it needs to be remembered that Apple isn't only interested in selling the OS, it wants to sell Macs as well, which it can do by allowing Windows users to move over to Mac hardware. Because Boot Camp is to be integrated into Leopard, this should allow Windows users to easily install XP, but there are some issues with it that will create problems when installing Vista - if Leopard supports only Windows XP, then the chance of the new OS attracting Windows users to buy an Apple computer will decrease, meaning Apple misses out on sales. So Mac fans will have to wait a little longer for the next OSX.

The March 2007 Windows Vista Application Compatibility Update is a package of software updates that address common application compatibility issues in Windows Vista. When you try to install and run certain legacy games or applications in Windows Vista, you may experience one or more of the following symptoms: The game, the application, or the firmware may not be installed correctly, may cause system instability, or may not work correctly.

Download: Windows Vista Application Compatibility Update March 2007

Windows Vista can be run for at least a year without being activated, a serious end run around one of Microsoft Corp.'s key antipiracy measures, Windows expert Brian Livingston said today. Livingston, who publishes the Windows Secrets newsletter, said that a single change to Vista's registry lets users put off the operating system's product activation requirement an additional eight times beyond the three disclosed last month. With more research, said Livingston, it may even be possible to find a way to postpone activation indefinitely. Microsoft promptly labeled the registry change a "hack," a loaded word that is usually synonymous with "illegal." Click here to read the full story.

SiS, announced today that it will unveil the most advanced chipsets supporting Windows Vista at CeBIT 2007. The SiS672FX series, SiS671FX series, and SiS771 series chipsets are SiS special innovations. They are designed for optimum compatibility with Windows Vista, and support mobile PCs and desktop PCs platforms. For Intel platform, SiS presents SiS672FX, SiS672, SiSM672MX, SiS671FX, SiS671, SiS671DX, and SiSM671MX chipsets; for AMD platform, SiS unveils the SiS771 chipset.

Windows Vista brags that it is one of the most efficient operating systems ever. AMD brags about how their Cool N Quiet technology helps save power. In the age of ROHS and Energy Star compliance, it sure seems like saving energy is a very important feature in computers. However, AMD has left out this little feature of just about every one of their recent processors in Windows Vista. There have been over 100 posts in a thread dedicated to begging AMD for Cool N Quiet support on Vista. We have yet to see anything from AMD on this issue. The Inquirer has been asking AMD for a comment for quite some time, but it seems that AMD is being cool and very quiet on this subject.

The US DOT (United States Department of Transportation) has decided that they will not upgrade their office computer to the latest software available from Microsoft. Their reason is very simple.

There appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading.

Alternate motives appear to be cost, which is considerable, even for the average upgrader (full Office 2007 retails for around $330, Windows Vista Business retails for about $300 full). And so, instead of upgrading all of their Windows XP computers, the US DOT will instead be considering PC's based on Novell's Suse Linux, and may also use Apple Macintosh computers. The US DOT may also not have the hardware to support the full version of Windows Vista.