Windows Archive

"For the second time in a week, Microsoft acknowledged that its initial estimation of a software flaw underrated the true threat posed by the vulnerability. The Redmond, Wash., giant said Thursday it plans to change the severity of a vulnerability in software common to Internet Explorer and other Windows applications from "important" to "critical." The move was prompted by an in-depth analysis written by the security researchers who found the flaw." Read the rest at ZDNet.

PC Vendors that ship Windows-ready machine can currently offer two Windows flavors preloaded onto a hard-drive. New users can simply select the version they want, and then boot directly into that OS. But Microsoft is about to pull that option, and require PC vendors to only install a single Windows flavor on each PC they sell. Read the report at ExtremeTech here and here.

A survey recently released by IDC finds that large networks of Windows servers are cheaper to run and maintain than Linux servers, even taking into account the higher software licensing costs for Windows. The catch? That survey was commissioned by Microsoft. A Reuters article about the study covers mostly how this study indicates a shift in Microsoft's marketing strategy toward Linux -- moving away from criticizing open source toward focusing on Windows' benefits.

Windows .NET Server 2003 Release Candidate 2 is released to beta testers. Upgrade or join the Customer Preview Program today and see what's new. Update: An anonymous sent us a link on Microsoft's site which describes at a high level how they migrated the entire site to .NET Server RC1. According to the article they are experiencing high levels of uptime and significant performance increase that they may even reduce the size of their cluster.

"The next version of the world's most popular desktop operating system, code-named "Longhorn," is due out in test form next year and in final form in 2004. It will have a new look and feel, very different from Windows XP's. Its guts will also be radically different from Windows XP's, because they're based on XML -- extensible markup language, the emerging lingua franca of the Internet. And it will be the first version that won't function fully without new hardware." Read the report at Seattle PI.

"For this preview, I had originally written a long-winded backgrounder about the history of Longhorn, and the ways in which this project has changed over time. I'll save the lengthy exposition for a future review, however, and get right to the point: Longhorn is now considered a major Windows release by Microsoft, and early alpha builds are now testing at the company's Redmond campus. Last month, some of those builds leaked to the Internet, causing a stir in the Windows enthusiast community. I take a look at one of those builds here." Read the preview and view screenshots at WinSuperSite.

Microsoft has for the third time delayed the launch of its Windows .Net Server 2003 high-end operating system. During his Comdex keynote address on Sunday, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates revealed that the company would launch Windows .Net Server 2003 in April, marking the third delay for the server counterpart to the company’s Windows XP OS. Read the report at News.com and the press release.

Microsoft has scratched plans for a major overhaul to an upcoming version of its Windows operating system for servers, the company confirmed Tuesday.

"Windows offers more than the Linux platform, which is just an operating system, Gates said at a news conference during his four-day tour of India, during which he said Microsoft would invest $400 million in expanding operations here. "The Windows system is far ahead of its competition and its market share is increasing both on the server side and the desktops," Gates said. He said Linux was gaining popularity in some areas and its market share was improving, but only at the expense of the operating system UNIX and others - not Windows." Read the report at IndiaTimes.

"The Grand Old Duke of York is clearly in charge of Microsoft's operating systems roadmaps for, having marched Longhorn up to the top of a distant (2005, said his Billness) hill earlier this year, he has now marched it straight back down again. Longhorn, the next version of Windows XP, will not after all be a 2005 product, but will quite possibly be a next year product after all." Read the article at TheRegister.

PowerToys are additional programs that developers work on after a product has been released to manufacturing. They'll add fun and functionality to your Tablet PC experience. Microsoft also released the Office XP Pack for Tablet PC. In the meantime, ZDNet published a 3-page article regarding Tablet PC: "What will it do for you"?

"Microsoft has decided to skip a Windows server release to coincide with the Longhorn client and instead jump directly to Blackcomb, company officials confirmed Friday. Until recently, Microsoft has been talking up plans to synchronize its Windows server and client releases, starting with the next major version of Windows, code-named Longhorn." Read the report at eWeek.

Microsoft late Wednesday issued patches for three security holes affecting its Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP), Windows 2000 platform and versions of the Internet Information Server (IIS). The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant warned that the most critical of the three bugs was an unchecked buffer in PPTP (define) implementation that could enable denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

WindowsForDevices.com has obtained an exclusive copy of the powerpoint slides used in the keynote presentation at Microsoft's 3rd annual Windows Embedded Developer Conference at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Also, according to data recently compiled by Evans Data Corp (EDC), Windows and Linux are running neck-and-neck in terms of developer use for future projects.