Archives for October 2006

Pirates Already Cranking on Windows Vista

It’s confirmed: internal build 5840 was leaked to the Internet through a Chinese web link and distributed via eMule and bittorrent. This build does not have the build watermark on the desktop anymore and does not accept beta keys. We are getting closer to RTM! Interestingly enough, this build still does not require a product [...]

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Technet Direct Plus

Microsoft recently offered Technet Direct Plus as one of their Technet service offers. Under this program, a single user can download any full version of any of Microsoft’s offerings for evaluation purposes right from Microsoft’s web site. The first year is $349; after that it’s $249 per year. I just signed up tonight. As an [...]

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Vista Release Date Part Deux

According to Mary Jo Foley, Jim Allchin (big cheese of Windows development) said Windows Vista won’t RTM on October 25th, 2006. There’s also another interesting article showing that the general availability release date is set to January 30th, 2007 and also shows Vista pricing for each SKU. I still predict October 25th as RTM or [...]

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Vista Release Date?

Here’s an interesting snippet from Winbeta.org: A Microsoft executive has leaked a general release date for Vista, Exchange 2007 and Office 2007. Speaking to IT professionals, parliamentarians and senior law-enforcement officers at the Parliament and Internet conference in London on Thursday, Microsoft revealed its release plans. “We will officially launch Vista, Microsoft Office 2007 and [...]

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Windows Vista News You Can Use

After giving Microsoft a tongue lashing, I decided to post about some of the things I like about Vista. Here’s a real nifty one: Reliability Monitor. You can track, over time, the reliability of your PC. Here’s a chart to see what I mean: This is a chart of my work PC. As you can [...]

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Microsoft Software Protection Platform

The Microsoft PR department is gearing up for the software pirates. Released on 10/3/06, this document describes Microsoft’s new anti-piracy efforts. BSA is quoted in the document stating “35% of all software installed worldwide is pirated or unlicensed“. Exactly how that it determined is beyond me (that’s liking quoting population numbers without taking a census). [...]

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Windows Vista – Build 5728

We are only a month away from Microsoft finalizing the Windows Vista bits. Consumers won’t see it until Janurary 2007, but I will be running before then to get a jump on everyone. For the first time, I attempted in-place upgrades with Windows Vista Ultimate over Windows XP Pro. The first experience was very horrible: [...]

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