Windows Archive

Windows Vista won't be released until the end of 2006, a Microsoft exec let slip in a presentation on Microsoft's campus yesterday. The next version of Windows was expected in the second half of 2006, but at a financial analyst conference in Washington, Microsoft senior VP Will Poole revealed it would not appear until the 2006 US holiday season. In related news, a senior Microsoft executive has identified Apple as an obstacle to Redmond's success.

Since we haven't posted anything about the new Windows Vista beta release lately... Stardock's Brad Wardell writes "I've put together a first look at the first beta of Windows Vista. In the coming days I hope to delve deep into the guts of Microsoft's new OS but I've tried to put together a decent overview of what Windows Vista is all about."

Today, Microsoft released the first beta of Windows Vista. PC Mag reviews it. "After several years of waiting to see the successor to Windows XP, code-named Longhorn, we've finally gotten our hands on Beta 1 of what now will be called Windows Vista." They also have 40 screenshots. Elsewhere, MS has announced the official names for Avalon and Indigo.

While Vista Beta 1 is stealing most of the headlines this week, Microsoft also is delivering simultaneously on wednesday to a group of private testers the first beta of its Longhorn Server product.

Beta 1 of Windows Vista, formerly known as Longhorn, will be released coming wednesday. The download will be available to beta testers an hour after the official announcement.

Microsoft is tightening the noose for those people running illegal or pirated copies of its Windows XP/2000 software on their systems. Starting Tuesday, it will be mandatory for users of this Windows software to certify that their software is a genuine and legal copy before they will be able to receive any updates except security patches.

Windows Vista beta 1 is due out by August 3. So what can we expect to see? What are Microsoft's goals? Wincustomise's Frogboy shares his views.

In recent months, Microsoft has purchased numerous security companies. Is this a sign that Microsoft has decided to try and secure its Operating Systems from out side threats? Or just trying to increase its revenue through an ever growing portfolio of products?

With the announcement of Longhorn's official name, Microsoft has left many users asking: why Windows Vista? Company representatives told BetaNews that Microsoft felt the new version of Windows "deserved a name that was more representative of what it specifically brings to customers."

Some third-party applications are encountering problems introduced by the cumulative Windows 2000 Update Rollup that Microsoft introduced in late June.

Running a background process on the Windows platform requires running a Windows Service. To run a Windows Service, you must have an application that is Windows Service aware. A Bash script is not Windows Service aware and neither are many console applications. XYNTService allows an administrator to define a console program and its options to execute. The XYNTService application is a Windows Service that reads a configuration file to know which applications to run. Read more...

Microsft has made hard statements about perfomance improvements in Longhorn. They claim that applications will load 15% faster than in XP, while boot time is decreased by 50%. They also claimed that Longhorn will be able to wake up from sleep in 2 seconds. Users should also expect half as many reboots during patching. Time to dust of those trustworthy stopwatches.

Time to throw out the old Pentium I/MMX computers? Not yet... read this guide on how to install Windows 2000 on a very old computer with only 32MB RAM and tweak it to run very fast.

Sunday night saw the release of several screenshots of Longhorn Build 5203. Many questions arose, in particular on Microsoft's Longhorn newsgroups. Mike Brannigan from Microsoft has taken the liberty to have tried to answer everyone's questions, questions often repeatedly asked.