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Monday, July 31, 2006

Upgrading to Windows Vista may not be that easy

If you are planning on upgrading to Vista you will need to make sure it is possible first. Only certain versions of Windows can be upgraded and then you may not be able to upgrade to the version of Vista you want even if you can upgrade.

For example, Windows 2000 can't be upgraded at all and Windows XP Professional can be upgraded only to the Business and Ultimate editions of Vista.

Many people will be stuck formatting their systems in order to upgrade to Windows Vista and that’s assuming you can meet the hardware requirements. Microsoft is providing a beta version of its Upgrade Advisor tool that will evaluate whether your computer can run Windows Vista.

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Friday, July 28, 2006

Verizon prepares for its next generation of broadband

Verizon is taking steps to upgrade its network to the next generation of technology called gigabit passive optical network (GPON), which will quadruple the amount of bandwidth capacity available to homes.


This technology lets multiple homes or businesses in a neighborhood share fiber from a service provider's central office.

GPON allows Verizon to split 2.4Gbps of bandwidth downstream and 1.2Gbps of capacity upstream among 32 homes or busines eventually offering consumers up to 100Mbps downloas.

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Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Microsoft tries to compete with iPod with their Zune Player

Microsoft's new Zune brand will deliver a family of hardware and software products to consumers.

The player will have Wi-Fi capabilities and use a hard drive to store music and may use wireless connectivity to share music with other Zune devices.

Until now Microsoft has largely relied on partners to make the players and software that use its Windows Media digital rights technology and tie into the Windows Media Player software built into its Windows operating system.

Apple has maintained a dominant share of both the music player and downloadable music businesses, selling more than 58 million iPods and more than a billion songs.

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Sunday, July 23, 2006

Myspace spyware infection

MySpace users who clicked on an ad for DeckOutYourDeck.com got a nasty surprize when the ad installed a file called exp.wmf which could install up to five adware programs.

Any user that was browsing with Internet Explorer and had not installed the latest Microsoft patches was vulnerable to this attack.

The ad was posted on MySpace, Webshots, and maybe Facebook, potentially installing the spyware on 1.07 million computers.

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Friday, July 21, 2006

Portable MP3 player may cause deafness

UK researchers found that regularly listening to loud music on MP3 players could make you deaf 30 years earlier than their parents.

Reports show that 14% of people listened to personal music players up to 28 hours a week.

One third of users surved had experienced ringing in their ears after listening to loud music which is a sign of hearing damage and the accumulation of short-term impairment eventually turned into long-term damage.


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Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Microsoft buys Winternals

Microsoft stated Tuesday that it has bouught Winternals, the maker of Windows utility programs hoping to add technical talent to its operating system development team.

In buying Winternals, Microsoft is getting the company's free tools, its Sysinternals community website as well as several paid-for software products for businesses.

A key factor in Microsofts decsision to make the deal was to hire the company's two co-founders.

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Monday, July 17, 2006

Updated Build of MS Windows Vista Released

Microsoft released an build of Vista that improves its overall performance and makes specific tweaks recommended by beta testers and is now available to Windows Vista Technical Beta program participants.

It improves such things as setting up and controlling a user accounts and the Windows Media Center feature.

Microsoft is shooting for a final release of Windows Vista for business customers in November, with general availability of the OS on PCs in January 2007.

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Friday, July 14, 2006

Inel takes a performance lead over AMD with it new Core 2 Duo processors

Intel's latest offerings include the Core 2 Duo chip for desktop PCs, Montecito chip for high-end servers and Merom chip for mobile notebooks.

These new processors are more of a shift towards mobile computing for Intel.

AMD is developing a new multicore processor itself due to come out this year.

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Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Microsoft allows you to prolong the life of your old PC

Microsoft has come up with software that allows older PCs to be turned into more modern and secure systems but takes away some of the individuality of the computer at the same time.

Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs gives old PCs some of the security benefits of XP, but turns them into thin clients, able to run only a few programs locally, with most software needing to run remotely from a server.

Windows Fundamentals is being made available as part of Microsoft's Software Assurance licensing program.



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Sunday, July 09, 2006

Firefox 2.0 Beta released

The latest version of the increasingly popular web browser will be released on July 11th.

Among the new features included in the browser will be an integrated spell checker and an anti phishing tool.

Firefox 2.0 should also work fine on Mac Mini and every Mac or Linux computer.


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Friday, July 07, 2006

July is the month of the Browser Bug

A well known hacker is planning to disclose the details of at least one browser bug every day in July as part of a project called the Month of Bugs which is designed to draw attention to unpatched security vulnerabilities.

This information is being disclosed to create awareness about the types of bugs that plague todays web browsers.

Software companies argue that it would be more responsible to alert the companies first so they have time to patch the software before hackers can develop exploits that take advantage of the flaws.

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Monday, July 03, 2006

Bugs delay new Microsoft Office 2007 launch

Office 2007 was to be released in October but will now be delayed but should still come out before the end of the year.

By not releasing it before Christmas it may have an impact on Office sales.

Over 2.5 million people are using the second test version of Office 2007 and Microsoft has decided to take extra time to fix some of the top features that aren't running as quickly as they should.

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