Back when Windows Vista came out it was said to be Microsoft’s baby. However many people were skeptical and therefore didn’t go with the system at launch. Consumers are now skeptical of Windows 7 and rightfully so in light of what happened with Vista. Microsoft has definitely shaped up Windows 7 a lot better than then did Vista in both performance and looks. However that doesn’t change the fact that many businesses still are reluctant to switch to Windows 7 anytime soon.

This was just found in a recent survey where 1,000 IT administrators were surveyed. Out of those 1,000 around 60 percent stated that they were not planning to move to Windows 7 at this point. Surprisingly only 5.4 percent of those surveyed actually plan to move to Windows 7 this year. While another third of those surveyed plan to move to it by the end of 2010. This is a surprise from the original survey that had been taken previous where 60 percent of those who were surveyed planed to move to Windows 7 in the first year. Microsoft is expected to finish Windows 7 officially by the end of the month.

One huge impact on many of the IT administrator’s decisions has been the economy. Many professionals have said that they’ve saved a good amount of money skipping upgrades and operating system changes. With the economy in the shape it is even businesses are looking to save as much money as possible. This is most likely the main reason that so many businesses that were going to upgrade are holding off, at least for the time being. With many companies having the lack of time and resources to upgrade it’s expected that Windows 7 along with the IT world in general will continue to suffer for the time being.

Source: CNET

Re-Tweet This Post

Microsoft officially announced Windows 7 prices. Most of the retail pricing is below what Windows Vista was when it came out. However the thing that’s really catching eyes is the upgrade pricing programs. From Friday June 26th until Friday July 11th users will be able to get a huge discount on Windows 7.

If you buy a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium you can get it for just $49! If you need Windows 7 Professional you can get that upgrade for just $99! This is good for anyone who uses Windows Vista or Windows XP. The amazing part is this discount. When Windows 7 goes on sale on October 22 it will be $119 for Home Premium, $199 for Professional, and $219 for Windows 7 Ultimate. This means that if you purchase it now you can save over half on the upgrade.

If you’re planning on buying a full version of Windows 7 you may want to consider just buying a new computer as the full versions are set to be expensive. For Home Premium you can expect to pay $199, for professional it will be $299, and for Windows 7 Ultimate it will be $319. These prices seem outrageous compared to the $49 that you can get it at right now. For anyone who’s considering buying a computer you can do it anytime after the 26th. After the 26th anyone who buys a computer is eligible for Microsoft’s upgrade program in which Vista PC buyers will get a free copy of Windows 7. This may be the better route if you need a new computer and you want Windows 7.

Linux is still free though. Many users are still moving towards Linux because of that. Microsoft may want to think of a new strategy if it plans to stay where it is within the next decade.

Source: CNET

Re-Tweet This Post

Google has received requests from many individuals to offer a boost in privacy. These requests came from over three dozen security, privacy, and research personnel. Google has deciding that it’s going to oblige to the requests.

Google has always allowed for you to encrypt your Gmail by using https:// however you have to manually set this as the default. Other applications such as Docs or Calendar don’t have this option. This means that the information can be acquired by malicious users. The document was signed by a top security expert and addressed to Eric Schmidt.

Many other sites have this problem as well and users are just as vulnerable to data theft or having their accounts stolen. However Google is able to start a trend in the right direction to fixing the problem.

The problem is that many people don’t understand the risks that are involved in using services that aren’t encrypted. Even though Gmail has the option to do so many people don’t know it exists. If people don’t know it exists then the option itself is basically useless.

Google officials want some time to experiment with putting all of the apps into a security mode so that they will know all of the effects on users’ experience. The biggest problem they’ve found is where users will experience the application slow down when doing certain actions.

Google has announced that it’s going to test the security encryption on a small basis to see what kinds of effects it has on email and other applications. Google plans to make the https:// address standard as long as there are no huge negative effects.

Those who contributed to the letter believe that Google and its engineers can create a low latency system for Gmail and other applications as they have done for AdWords, Health, Voice, and AdSense.

Source: CNET

Re-Tweet This Post

Microsoft’s new search engine Bing caused a huge up stir after its initial launch. The stir comes because of the video search feature of Bing. One of Bing’s most useful features is that it will allow you to view movies or clips from its search engine by just scrolling over this. However many parents find this troublesome as it works not only with normal videos but porn videos as well. While Bing does have a safe search feature, it warns the user that it’s on and asks if you would like to turn it off. This makes it very easy for a teenager to access porn.

While you can find the porn on almost any search engine it’s the preview feature that has brought Bing into the light. There are several filtering programs that blog porn sites however it’s uncertain if they will block Bing’s previews. This is because Bing is a search engine and not an actual porn site so such programs may have trouble dealing with Bing.

When it comes to Norton it’s one of the programs that can’t prevent the videos on Bing. Most other search engines are covered by the software however since Bing is still new the company hasn’t had time to integrate it yet. Symantec, the company who creates Norton is currently recommending that parents that are worried about Bing’s video search and that use Norton should just block all access to Bing. For Microsoft this is not a very good thing especially after the launch of their best search engine yet. The OnlineFamily software of Symantec’s is free so many parents do use it and it could hurt Microsoft’s search engine for a little while until the program incorporates it. It seems Microsoft has outdone itself with its new search engine and has also caused itself a few problems.

Source: CNET

Re-Tweet This Post

Most people know by now that the Pirate Bay case concluded and found the defendants guilty. The main goal of the governments is to stop pirating and force people to purchase movies, music, and software. While this small victory scored a point for the Swedish government it is causing havoc for their lawyer.

Peter Danowsky was the lawyer for the plaintiffs in the Pirate Bay case. The attack that has been devised could potentially cause his firm to have a lot extra fees and bookkeeping work. The attack is called the DDo$ or Distributed Denial of Dollars. A site located at internetavgift.se is asking people to send 1Krona, which is about 13 cents, to the account. You might speculate this to be a good thing. They’re asking people to send them money. However the truth is that it could end up costing the firm a substantial amount of money.

This is because the bank has rules in which companies can only receive 1,000 payments a year for free. If there are payments made after that then they get charged 1.7 kronor, which is about 21 cents, for each extra transaction. That means after the 1,000 payment mark that the company would have to pay 8 cents for each payment. If that isn’t bad enough his firm might have to actually refund all of the payments because the law states that inaccurate payments must be returned if the person that sent the money claims it.

On top of the funds scheme the fact that every transaction has to be logged into the law firm books means that they will need someone to spend the time doing so.

While the site says that it has nothing to do with the case and the ruling the lawyer believes it’s the reason he’s under this attack.

Source: CNET

Re-Tweet This Post

When Microsoft originally announced Bing (which was initially named Kumo) many people thought that it was going to be a complete failure. No one believed that it would be able to compete with Google. Even though Bing has not officially hit the market yet, users that got to test it said that not only will it compete with Google but that it may be in fact better in some aspects.

Bing is supposed to go Live on June 3rd and replace the Live Search that currently exists. Microsoft is trying to reclaim some of its consumers that it lost to the Google technology years ago.

The new Bing is powered by a special technology that Microsoft acquired when it acquired Powerset. This allows for Bing to give users an extra side bar on the left side that shows refined versions of your search. For example if you search for a game you will most likely get a walkthrough displayed in the refined search area.

While Bing maybe a competitor for Google it’s by no means 100% better. When tested with real world searches, Google still found better results than Bing. However it wasn’t by much. Even when searching for product reviews this was true. This could still be a problem for Google though as “not by much” could turn into “better than”.

If you’re searching for news then you may want to consider trying Bing as the results were more current with news without having to sort and search through all of the news. Equally good is Bing’s video results. You would expect that Google would do a lot better than Bing in this area however Bing’s results are easier to search through than Google’s. While the actual results are approximately the same many people may prefer the better presentation that Bing has to offer in some categories. Ultimately Google will have to step up their game to keep their full market share.

Source: CNET

Re-Tweet This Post

It took two reports of batteries causing flames for Hewlett Packard to recall the batteries. The company is taking back 70,000 batteries on its laptops. The laptop models that were affected were in both the HP and the Compaq laptop lines. There’s a total of 18 models that were affected with 9 being HP and 9 begin Compaq models.
So what happened? There were two different cases where the batteries overheated and ruptured. Now overheating just came from normal use of the laptop and battery so there’s no reason that it should have happened if it had been manufactured properly.
The fires caused some minor property damage but no one was injured luckily. Which is surprising because you would think someone would possibly have the laptop on their lap when the overheating occurred. If they didn’t have it on their laps then the real question is where was the laptop? Is it possible that they put the laptop on a blanket or something that contained heat that lead to the overheating? I guess we may never know however you would think that they would have any battery problems solved after all this time. We’ve been using batteries for several years now and laptops have been around for over a decade. So why are we still having such basic problems with things that have been around?
In any case this isn’t the first time HP has been in a battery recall and it probably won’t be the last. While HP sold 32,000 laptops containing the batteries that’s a small number compared to when Sony had their massive battery recall back in 2006. If you’re worried that you may have one of these batteries or laptops you can get a full list of model numbers at the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s website.
Source: CNET

Re-Tweet This Post

AMD and Intel are at it again but this time it’s not on the chip market it’s in court. The ruling of which was surprising and in AMD’s favor. The European Commission decided that Intel had taken part in illegal actions to hurt its rival’s sales. The result was the largest fine in regards to antitrust laws. The fine for breaking these laws was a whopping 1.45 billion dollars.

The case came because Intel was accused, and found guilty, two separate crimes. The first crime was that Intel gave manufacturers special rebates for buying the majority if not all of the x86 type processors from Intel. There were allegations that Intel also made payments to retailers so that they would only stock the Intel version of the x86 chips.

The second crime that the European Commission found Intel guilty of was paying manufacturers to delay the release of competitor’s computers containing the other x86 chips or delay releasing the chips themselves. This occurred from October of ‘02 until December of ‘07!

You may ask yourself how this is harmful to the market. Well besides being a highly unethical practice, the smaller chip makers such as AMD are unable to compete with Intel as their computers are not being sold in the same stores and the manufacturers are being paid to put the Intel chips in rather than a mix of chips.

There were some computer manufacturers that were named as accepting payments from Intel to follow these practices. The larger manufacturers were Acer, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard. There were some less known companies as well that were also named.

In one instance the rebates caused AMD to not even be able to give their CPUs away. The manufacturer (who was unnamed) only took 160,000 x86 chips from AMD because they would have lost their rebate from Intel if they had taken more.  Hopefully Intel will learn a lesson from this and not hurt the consumers further.

Source: CNET

Re-Tweet This Post

Every computer needs some type of security software if the computer is to remain safe. In most cases a computer user can get by with an anti-virus program, an anti-spyware program, and a firewall. However Macs seem to be lacking in security software.

While many people use non-Mac computers there are many people who enjoy the Macs. Many people don’t consider a Mac a PC however since a Mac is a type of personal computer it then would be a type of PC. With all of the people that do use Macs you would think they would have better security measures.

In terms of numbers, the Mac OS X operating system ranks in with 14.3 percent of the most vulnerabilities in 2008. Since there are more non-Mac users you would think that they would lead in the race with vulnerabilities. However, Linux ranks in with 10.9 percent and Windows XP only has 5.5 percent. Thats a huge difference between disclosed vulnerabilities from Windows XP to Mac OS X.

The numbers don’t focus on how big of a problem each vulnerabilty can cause but rather the number of them. This means that Windows vulerabilties could be more critical than the other operating systems we don’t know.

No operating system is perfect however many Mac users under-rate the possibility of an attack happening to them when they don’t realize that they are more vulnerable than many others. If you are a Mac user and you don’t have any type of security software installed then you should tred very lightly as you may be attacked.

This isn’t to say that non-Mac users shouldn’t have any type of security software or that they need it any less. Every person that has a computer should have some type of security software. If you haven’t already you should invest in a security program or two to ensure the saftey of your personal information.

Source: CNET

Re-Tweet This Post

As of May 1st AMD was 40. AMD has setup contests so that users can win various products from the company. There are to be multiple contests that will have a total of 80 prizes over the next year. Many users will be able to win graphics cards or processors through the contests.

The first contest for example, will allow users to compete to win an ATI Radeon HD 4650 graphics card by simply creating a creative video that wishes the company a happy birthday. Some of the other contests later in the year include competitors winning notebooks!

AMD’s 40th birthday comes at a very crucial time. AMD is not only struggling from the economy like so many other businesses, but the company is trying to regain lost ground against Intel. Currently Intel has 78.6 percent of the market in processor chips. While AMD now owns 20.9 percent which is higher than the 20.6 percent that it held at this time last year, the real question is will AMD be able to make a comeback and regain even more of the market share?

The x86 chip has done wonders in helping AMD regain its ground against Intel. However, AMD is still suffering and has 21 percent in revenue compared to the same time as last year. So while the company has gained a higher percent in the market share they’ve lost 1/5th of their revenue.

It’s amazing that AMD only accounts for roughly 21 percent of the market for processors. In my opinion more people should buy AMD as they are usually a lot cheaper than Intel products. This is especially true if you’re looking to build your own computer as you can often find a quad core processor by AMD for the price of a dual core Intel Processor.

Source: Eweek

Re-Tweet This Post