João Saramago » Microsoft

Windows 7 Phone Gets Jailbreak Tool

js — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 15:51:03 +0000

An anonymous reader writes “Developers have released a ‘jailbreak’ tool for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7, allowing the handsets to run any application, not just those approved for distribution through Microsoft’s Marketplace. Although reminiscent of jailbreak tools for the iPhone, this …

Microsoft Builds JavaScript Malware Detection Tool

js — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 15:44:02 +0000

Trailrunner7 writes “As browser-based exploits and specifically JavaScript malware have shouldered their way to the top of the list of threats, browser vendors have been scrambling to find effective defenses to protect users. Few have been forthcoming, but Microsoft Research …

10 things Microsoft did wrong in 2009

js — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:13:59 +0000

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews Earlier today, I posted “10 things Microsoft did right in 2009.” I originally planned to post the did-wrong list tomorrow. But in view of today’s news about Microsoft’s out-going chief financial officer, Chris Liddell, I changed …

Microsoft Says Upgrade To IE8, Even Though It’s Vulnerable

js — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:47:30 +0000

Barence writes “Microsoft has issued a statement urging people to upgrade their browser to IE8, after the zero-day exploit that was used to attack companies such as Google went public. According to Microsoft’s security advisory: ‘the vulnerability exists as an …

Microsoft To Ship Emergency IE Patch

js — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:45:33 +0000

Grotendo writes “Microsoft plans to release an emergency patch for Internet Explorer very soon to counter targeted attacks and the publication of exploit code for a ‘browse and you’re owned’ vulnerability in its flagship Web browser. The out-of-band update will …

Microsoft Finally Open Sources Windows 7 Tool

js — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 01:09:36 +0000

Jan writes “Microsoft has open sourced the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool by releasing it under the GPLv2 license. The code is now available on CodePlex, Microsoft’s Open Source software project hosting repository, over at wudt.codeplex.com. The actual installer for …

Microsoft To Open C#, VB.Net Compilers

js — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:19:33 +0000

“Microsoft, which has been pursuing concurrent improvements for its Visual Basic and C# programming languages, plans to open up compilers for the languages and add capabilities for asynchronous programming and immutability. Discussed at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los …

Microsoft Releases SQL Server 2008 R2 November Preview

js — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:01:37 +0000

The November CTP is “feature complete,” but developers will still have to wait for the PowerPivot-enabled business intelligence with Excel and SharePoint. Link to the original site

Microsoft Kernel Engineers Talk About Windows 7′s Kernel

js — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:52:31 +0000

Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference is currently under way, and as usual, the technical fellows at Microsoft gave speeches about the deep architecture of Windows – in this case, Windows 7 of course. As it turns out, quite some seriously impressive …

Microsoft Open Sources .NET Micro Framework

js — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:51:59 +0000

An anonymous reader writes “Back in July, Microsoft announced it was making .NET available under its Community Promise, which in theory allowed free software developers to use the technology without fear of patent lawsuits. Not surprisingly, many free software geeks …

Exchange Server 2010 goes live, will extend rights-managed e-mail to browsers

js — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:23:14 +0000

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews One of the more important features of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 (or Exchange 2010, depending upon whom you’re talking to), officially launched for sale this morning during a TechEd conference in Berlin, is a …

Windows 7 Endless Reboot Answer Evades Microsoft

js — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:15:27 +0000

Users remained stymied today by endless reboots after trying to upgrade their PCs to Windows 7, according to messages posted on Microsoft’s support forum. An answer has yet to be found for all users, who began reporting the problem last …

Bad Vista-to-Windows 7 upgrade experiences #2: No TV in Media Center

js — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:14:40 +0000

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews Typically when you upgrade a computer from one operating system to the very next level up, you don’t want the new system replacing or deleting anything without your knowledge and approval. Windows 7 thus …

Microsoft Opens Windows to Eclipse Developers

js — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:14:18 +0000

Microsoft will let developers who use Eclipse-based IDEs integrate their Java and PHP applications with the latest versions of Windows, Silverlight and the forthcoming Azure cloud platform. Link to the original site

Security fixes, JavaScript update bog down Internet Explorer 8

js — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:11:47 +0000

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews The final test editions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8, released while Windows 7 was still in the technical preview phase, suggested that its performance could very well triple that of its predecessor, the venerable …

At long last, Microsoft to release Outlook .PST file specifications

js — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:09:36 +0000

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews Three weeks ago, the European Commission signaled its approval of Microsoft’s revised plan for a more vendor-neutral Web browser selection screen for European Windows users. But that revised plan was buffered with a big …

Take a Look at the Windows API Code Pack for the Microsoft .NET Framework

js — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:09:19 +0000

The Windows API Code Pack for the Microsoft .NET Framework provides a source code library that can be used to access some new Windows 7 features (and some existing features of older versions of the Windows operating system) from managed …

Android / Windows 7 Dual Boot Netbook Disappoints

js — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:04:14 +0000

Barence writes “PC Pro has got its hands on Acer’s Aspire One D250 with both Windows 7 and Google Android installed. Anyone who’s played with an Android phone had better get ready for a let-down: Android is far from ready …

The Windows 7 launch: The cultural event of the entire afternoon

js — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:03:01 +0000

By Carmi Levy, Betanews Have you reserved your copy of Windows 7 yet? Did you book off work? Get a babysitter for the kids? Stock up on Red Bull and Doritos?…No? If you’re one of the dozens who pine for …

Windows 7 Released Early In UK

js — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:02:19 +0000

CNETNate writes “UK customers have been reporting that they received their copies of Windows 7 in the mail today. Currently the British postal service is threatening industrial action over pay, and planned walkouts may result in Windows 7 not being …

Windows 7 Enterprise 90 Day Free Trial

js — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:01:31 +0000

Can’t wait two more days? Microsoft Technet has a free 90 day trial of Windows 7 Enterprise for your evaluation pleasure. If you’ve been using the Windows 7 RC, this one is likely to have a bunch of bug fixes, …

Some Users Say Win7 Wants To Remove iTunes, Google Toolbar

js — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:56:09 +0000

Foofoobar writes “Due to a strike with the UK’s postal system, people in Great Britain are getting copies of Windows 7 early and have already posted their experiences about the install process. Some have an easy time but others post …

Mac Boot Camp to support Windows 7 by year’s end

js — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:55:49 +0000

By Tim Conneally, Betanews Apple today promised to update its Boot Camp partitioning tool to support Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate before the end of the year. In a support article posted to Apple’s site today, it says …

Live from the NYC Windows 7 press event

js — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:55:44 +0000

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews The world pretty much knows what Windows 7 contains, thanks to technology previews and early releases to developers. So what’s left for anyone to be surprised about? Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave a hint as to …

Windows 7: Vista without the crap

js — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:55:09 +0000

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews Download Microsoft Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor 2.0 from Fileforum now. Here is the essential information you need to know if you’re a Windows Vista user considering whether to upgrade to Windows 7: Yes. Up …

Windows 7 Ad Campaign Kicks Off, Focuses on Features

js — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:54:52 +0000

I never thought it was possible, but as it turns out, Microsoft has managed to produce some pretty good commercials for its brand new operating system, Windows 7. They are quite product-oriented, and carry the slogan “I’m a PC and …

Microsoft and Mozilla leave Web users tangled over ‘variant’ vulnerability

js — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:04:46 +0000

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews In what is now indisputably the most important vulnerability addressed during last Tuesday’s record round of Windows patches, the two companies most affected by the problem — Microsoft and, to a lesser extent, Mozilla …

Office 2010, SharePoint public betas for November, VS 2010 Beta 2 Wednesday

js — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:02:48 +0000

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews During an industry event whose original purpose was to concentrate on SharePoint 2010, Microsoft’s collaborative server product, CEO Steve Ballmer revealed that his company is making ready an official “public beta” of Office 2010, …

Comparing Performance and Power Use For Vista vs. Windows 7 WIth Clarksfield Chip

js — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:52:26 +0000

crazipper writes “Back when Intel launched its Core i5/i7 ‘Lynnfield’ CPUs, Tom’s Hardware ran some tests in Windows 7 versus Vista to gauge the benefits of the core parking and ideal core optimizations, said to cut power consumption in the …

Windows Embedded Enterprise: Introducing Windows 7 for Embedded Systems

js — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:16:13 +0000

In this webcast, learn about how the same technologies and features that are in the Windows 7 desktop operating systems are available for embedded OEMs to deliver a wide variety of reliable, high performance, market-differentiated products that meet the demands …

No, Windows 7 isn’t slower than Vista, even at booting up

js — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:35:12 +0000

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews The manufacturer of a Windows maintenance toolkit featured on our Fileforum told CNET’s Ina Fried last week that it believes boot times for Windows 7 are typically slower than boot times for Windows Vista. …

Windows Server Trusts Samba4 Active Directory

js — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:07:22 +0000

Darren Ginter writes “A group of Samba v4 developers recently spent a week in Redmond to work with Microsoft on Active Directory interoperability(?!). The result? Windows Server will now join, trust and replicate a Samba-based Active Directory using Microsoft-native protocols. …

Apple vs. Microsoft: Top 20 Stolen OS Ideas

js — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:07:14 +0000

InfoWorld’s John Rizzo chronicles the 20 most significant ideas and features Microsoft and Apple have stolen from each other in the lead up to Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard. ‘Some features were stolen so long ago that …

Should you trust Microsoft with your data?

js — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:05:42 +0000

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews That’s probably not a hard question for many Sidekick users to answer, given recent events. If you’re a Sidekick user, please offer your answer — or your experience during the week-long data crisis — in comments. …

128-Bit Support in Windows 8, 9?

js — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:49:28 +0000

Microsoft has been thinking about Windows 8 for a while now even through the production of Windows 7. Some information has been gathered by our friends over at Ars, and all of this said information points to possible 128-bit versions …

Microsoft Leaks Details of 128-bit Windows 8

js — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:48:56 +0000

Barence writes “Microsoft is planning to make Windows 8 a 128-bit operating system, according to details leaked from the software giant’s Research department. The discovery came to light after Microsoft Research employee Robert Morgan carelessly left details of his work …

The roots of all evil: Apple, Google, Intel, and Microsoft

js — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:40:50 +0000

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews Americans love a winner, and will not tolerate a loser. - General George S. Patton (as portrayed by George C. Scott) Throughout the information technology industry, there has been a certain pathology that somehow …

Windows Mobile 6.5 Launched, Panned

js — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 20:19:46 +0000

Barence writes “It’s not Windows Mobile 7, but at least it’s here. PC Pro has posted its full review of Windows Mobile 6.5, as found on the new HTC Touch2 handset, which is also reviewed. If you’re expecting something to …

Internet Explorer 8 Developer Series Overview

js — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 20:18:39 +0000

In this video, Matt Hester describes the main topics covered in the video series, including CSS 2.1 and 3.0 features, HTML 5, native JSON, selectors, AJAX navigation and developer tools. Link to the original site

The ‘Windows Phone’ era officially starts today

js — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 20:18:24 +0000

By Tim Conneally, Betanews Today, we finally welcome Windows Mobile 6.5 and the “Windows Phone” platform from Microsoft. As a part of today’s Windows Mobile 6.5 debut, the new Windows Mobile Marketplace app store has opened for business, the new …

Hidden Fees Discovered For “Free” Windows 7 Upgrade

js — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 20:17:41 +0000

An anonymous reader writes ‘Thousands of recent computer purchasers who are expecting to receive free upgrades to Windows 7 when it is released on October 22 may be surprised to learn that some big computer makers are quietly tacking on …

Windows Mobile to Lose Marketshare, but Continue Growing

js — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 20:16:52 +0000

Acer is the latest smartphone handset maker to shift its resources from Windows Mobile to Android. And with competing OSes grabbing marketshare and attention daily, an observer couldn’t be faulted for assuming that Microsoft’s mobile OS initiative is in terminal …

Windows Mobile 5 and 6 get a new interface

js — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:40:31 +0000

By Tim Conneally, Betanews As smartphones gained popularity outside of the business world, a division formed between devices made for consumers (lifestyle smartphones) and those made for enterprise deployments (professional smartphones). Professional devices tend to be more integrable into bigger …

Windows 7 OEM Prices Revealed

js — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:37:50 +0000

Windows 7 will be released October 22, and the pricing information for both the full and upgrade versions have been known for a while. However, as most of us geeks will know, there’s a third variant you can buy, apart …

What Windows 8 perhaps should be: Microsoft’s multi-kernel OS project

js — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:35:59 +0000

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews Perhaps you’ve read an article this week purporting to offer new details on “Windows 8,” or whatever Microsoft’s next client operating system will be called, only to be perturbed at discovering at the end …

Top 10 Windows Server 2008 R2 Features #9: Processor core parking

js — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:35:36 +0000

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews When you think of kids on the playground playing Star Trek make-believe, you see the guy who plays Scotty inevitably being shouted at to increase or decrease the power, and then the guy putting …

Microsoft Releases Code for ‘Multikernel’ Research OS ‘Barrelfish’

js — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:35:19 +0000

Most of us are probably aware of Singularity, a research operating system out of Microsoft Research which explored a number of new ideas, which is available as open source software. Singularity isn’t the only research OS out of Microsoft; they …

Microsoft Security Essentials Released

js — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:33:56 +0000

Microsoft have released their free anti-virus and anti-malware software (codenamed ‘Morro’) to the public, under the name of ‘Microsoft Security Essentials’. Link to the original site

Ballmer Admits “We Screwed Up Windows Mobile”

js — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:31:29 +0000

Barence writes “Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer has blasted the company’s own mobile operating system at the firm’s Venture Capital Summit. One tweet from an attendee claims Ballmer said the company had ‘screwed up with Windows Mobile. Wishes they had already …

Google Barks Back At Microsoft Over Chrome Frame Security

js — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:31:04 +0000

CWmike writes “Google hit back at Microsoft on Friday, defending the security of its new Chrome Frame plug-in and claiming that the software actually makes Internet Explorer safer and more secure. ‘Accessing sites using Google Chrome Frame brings Google Chrome’s …

Windows 7 ‘Not Much Faster’ Than Vista

js — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:59:35 +0000

PLSQL Guy writes “Tests of the Windows 7 Release Candidate in a PC World Test Center found that while Windows 7 was slightly faster on our WorldBench 6 suite, the differences may be barely noticeable to users. The PCs tested …

Microsoft Releases Prototype of Research OS “Barrelfish”

js — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:23:10 +0000

Julie188 writes “You’ve likely heard of Microsoft’s next-gen operating system projects Midori and Singularity, but earlier this month researchers released a prototype for another OS, code-named Barrelfish. Barrelfish is an OS written specifically for multicore environments. It hopes to improve …

Virtual Lab: Windows Forms Security

js — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:22:42 +0000

This lab is intended to show experienced .NET Windows Forms developers how to secure Windows Forms applications. In this lab, you will work with cryptography, implement custom authentication and authorization, work with permissions and code access security, and partially secure …

Microsoft Launches ‘Spark’ Program for Web Developer and Server Products

js — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:22:26 +0000

The WebsiteSpark program offers a way for Web professionals and smaller companies to consider Microsoft technologies in addition to open source platforms. Link to the original site

Microsoft Says Google Chrome Frame Makes IE Less Secure

js — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:18:54 +0000

Mark writes “The release of Google Chrome Frame, a new open source plugin that injects Chrome’s renderer and JavaScript engine into Microsoft’s browser, earlier this week had many web developers happily dancing long through the night. Finally, someone had found …

Google Frame Benchmarks 9x Faster than IE8

js — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:17:37 +0000

ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes “Early tests with Google’s Chrome Frame found IE8 runs 9.6 times faster than usual. The testers ran the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark suite.” The other question is what is the performance hit of using the frame plug-in instead of …

Review: Microsoft Windows 7 RTM

js — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:02:29 +0000

ActiveWin has published their usual in-depth review of the new Windows release, in this case, Windows 7. It’s 70 pages long, and divided up into 26 sections. “Should you upgrade? Most certainly, there is no on the fence, ifâ€™s or …

Using .net assemblies inside SQL Server: Quick start guide

js — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:01:25 +0000

Are you are an experienced .net programmer and you are too lazy to learn TSQL stored procedures, triggers or functions? Yes? Then read on this quick start guide on using .net assemblies inside SQL Server using SQLCLR. SQLCLR (or SQL …