Posts Tagged ‘Windows’

After months of talking about Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft is announcing on Tuesday that the first crop of phones to carry the Windows Phone brand are ready to hit the market.

A host of new phones running the new operating system are expected to debut between now and the holidays, with many being announced later on Tuesday. AT&T has already announced two Windows Mobile 6.5-based phones–the Pure and the HTC Tilt 2. In all, Microsoft has said to expect more than 30 phones running the OS by year’s end.

(Credit: Microsoft)

With the new operating system, Microsoft hopes to make the case that the devices are not only worthy phones, but also the best option for those who want to take their Windows world with them. The operating system itself features Adobe Flash support, an improved browser, and menus that are easier to navigate with a finger, as opposed to a stylus. Perhaps more interesting are two new services that come along with Windows.

The first, the Windows Marketplace, is Microsoft’s answer to the iPhone‘s App Store. It’s somewhat interesting that Windows Mobile has long had more programs than the iPhone–none of which involved approval from Microsoft. But Microsoft has found itself in the position of having to insert itself as middleman to match Apple’s approach.

Users will still be able to buy and download applications directly from developers, but Microsoft apparently felt it had to mimic the iPhone’s App Store in order to help connect less technically savvy users with the thousands of programs that already exist for its phones.

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Could Intel’s new Moblin 2.1 OS make a dent against Windows in the mobile and desktop markets?

At this week’s Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, the chipmaker debuted a beta version of its Moblin 2.1 open-source operating system targeted to run on a variety of devices, including smartphones, Netbooks, nettops, Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), and in-car systems.

Moblin 2.1 will compete with other open-source operating systems like Google’s Android and bump up against Microsoft in the burgeoning nettop arena.

Originally developed for Netbooks, Moblin 2.1 (short for mobile Linux) will come in three flavors–one for handhelds, another for Netbooks, and a third for nettops.

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http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10361563-1.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

A security researcher has said there is a zero-day vulnerability affecting Windows 7 and Vista.

The flaw in Windows 7 could allow an attack which would cause a critical system error, or “blue screen of death,” according to researcher Laurent Gaffie.

Gaffie wrote in his blog that the flaw lies in a Server Message Block 2 (SMB2) driver.

“SRV2.SYS fails to handle malformed SMB headers for the NEGOTIATE PROTOCOL REQUEST functionality,” wrote Gaffie in a blog post Monday.

Gaffie said he had contacted Microsoft. Comments on his blog by other users said that the flaw could lead not only to denial of service, but could also lead to remote code execution.

Computer security publication “The H” wrote on Tuesday that its German sister publication had tested the proof-of-concept code, and that while the exploit had caused a reboot on Vista, the exploit had not worked on Windows 7.

Metasploit creator HD Moore said in a tweet on Tuesday that an SMB bug appeared to have been introduced into Vista SP1. Coder Josh Goebel said in a blog post that he had added the exploit code to Metasploit.

Microsoft had not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing.

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http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10346664-83.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

The Opera 10 browser is now ready to download for Windows, Linux, and Mac three months after the beta first emerged (hands-on Opera 10 beta review).

If you’ve been keeping up with the beta updates, the final build of the cross-platform browser shouldn’t surprise you. Opera Turbo, the browser’s much-publicized compression engine for slow-poke connections, remains a feature highlight. Opera claims that Opera Turbo runs the browser up to eight times faster on suffering connections than do competing browsers.

The refreshed user interface is also noteworthy. Joining the new default skin (changed from version 9.6), are changes to tab bar behavior. The conventional tabs double as thumbnail images. Double-click the thin gray bar below the tabs (indicated by dots) or click and drag to expand open tabs into preview windows that you can navigate by clicking among them.

Other enhancements include an expanded Speed Dial (a feature that has later been adopted and adapted in Google’s Chrome browser) that shows more commonly visited Web pages than in previous Opera browsers. You’re also able to customize it with a background picture. You’ll see that spell check will be applicable to any text field (for 51 languages), and that Opera’s incorporated e-mail client takes a page from Google’s books by threading e-mail conversations.

Developers get access to a newer version of Opera Dragonfly, the publisher’s online development tools, but everyone can benefit from the speedier rendering engine that, according to Opera, makes version 10 up to 40 percent faster than version 9.6–before switching on Turbo’s compression.

Despite all the additions that Opera hopes will keep Opera 10 competitive, there are still two notable omissions for this final release. The first is Opera Unite, which uses your browser as a Web server for sharing your content with others. The second is the Carakan JavaScript engine that promises to process JavaScript about 2.5 times as fast as the engine used in Opera 10 alpha.

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HTC’s Touch Pro2 is among the new phones expected to ship with Windows Mobile 6.5.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft is hoping that a new crop of phones this fall will help the company in its quest to stay relevant in the cell phone market.

The software maker said on Tuesday that the first phones running Windows Mobile 6.5 will launch worldwide on October 6 and will include phones running on AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless.

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http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10322007-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

OS X 10.6 includes Boot Camp 3.0, a new collection of software drivers that make Windows run much better on Mac hardware.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

Every time I see the “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” ads on TV, I can’t help but wonder, “Why not both?” And it has never been a better time for that.

It’s been a three weeks since I first got my hands on Apple’s new Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. (If anything, this means lots of hard work benchmark testing the product while trying to keep my mouth shut about it till now, which was even harder.)

Overall, personally, I found that while the new Mac OS doesn’t warrant a “wow,” it’s still definitely worth the $29 upgrade price.Mac users can read more about Snow Leopard in my colleague Jason Parker’s full review. On the other hand, for Windows users, especially Windows 7, the release of Snow Leopard is straight-on great news.

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When you want to listen to music from your computer or your friends’ collections on your iPhone, Simplify Music is one solution. On Wednesday, Simplify Media introduced a similar iPhone application called Simplify Photo, which provides the same service for pictures rather than songs.

After logging in, Simplify Photo for iPhone ($0.99) talks to the Simplify Media application on your desktop (download for Windows | Mac | Ubuntu). So long as you have the newest version installed (2.5), and the photo-sharing element selected (configure in the Options menu), you’ll be able to view the photos in your network. Networked images can include pictures from your multiple computers, and those that friend son your Simlify network have given permission to see.

The initial syncing will take a few minutes. After that, you’ll see a list of shared computers. Tap to see options and tap again to view photos by timeline, places (geotagged images show on a Google map), folders, events, albums, and faces, when available. You can also search for a specific photo in a search field.

Simplify Photo’s media is view-only for now; though ideally the app would also open up iPhone photos for computer viewing and friends. You can swipe through images in the viewer or can play a slideshow. As a perk, you can also save the picture locally to the iPhone. Unfortunately, and unlike the desktop viewer, Simplify Photo doesn’t yet rotate images by 90 degrees. The interface could also use some prettying up.

However, Simplify Photo is functional for existing Simplify Media users looking to view friends’ pictures, or their own, remotely.

Source :

http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-10312526-12.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Microsoft’s efforts to regain lost ground in the mobile phone business will see the company offering two different versions of its operating system next year.

The company will continue to broadly sell Windows Mobile 6.5 to a large variety of handset makers, while working more closely with several handset makers to sell phones built on a new version of Windows Mobile that has been several years in the making, according to a source familiar with the company’s plans.

While Windows Mobile 6.5 is a fairly interim update to the mobile operating system that Microsoft has been selling, Microsoft has also been working on more radical efforts to overhaul the operating system. Both its plans for Windows Mobile 7 and its long-running “Pink” project aim to match the kinds of experiences seen on the iPhone and Android, using more advanced voice and touch interfaces and higher-end hardware.

Microsoft demonstrated Windows Mobile 6.5 at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. That interim update to Windows Mobile will start arriving on phones this fall, while a more radical overhaul of Redmond’s cell phone OS is due next year.

(Credit: Marguerite Reardon/CNET News)

A Digitimes report this week called the effort a “dual-platform” strategy, although I’m not sure I’d use that term to describe two versions of Windows Mobile being sold at the same time.

What is clear is that Microsoft needs to do something serious if it hopes to live up to its mobile ambitions. For years now, the company has made rather modest updates to the Windows Mobile operating system, which dates back to the days of code powered PDAs and other organizers that were neither phones nor, in some cases, even connected to the Internet.

In that same time, Palm has gone back to the drawing board and reinvented itself with the WebOS-based Pre, while the iPhone and Android have entered the market and even Research In Motion has arguably done more to capture consumer interest than has Microsoft.

Internally, Redmond has shifted a number of its people into the mobile unit. In addition to former server executive Andy Lees, who now runs the phone business, former Mac Business unit chief Roz Ho has been leading a top secret “premium mobile experiences” team responsible for some of the “Pink” work. The company purchased Danger, known for creating the teen-centered T-Mobile Sidekick, and Ho heads that unit as well.

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CNETNews Microsoft’s plan to get back in the phone game http://bit.ly/iAn8H

Microsoft said on Wednesday that it is looking into reports of a potential bug in the final version of Windows 7. However, Microsoft’s top Windows executive said in a blog posting that the issue appears to be neither widespread, nor the “showstopper” that some are claiming it to be.

(Credit: Microsoft)

The issue, noted on several enthusiast sites this week, involves a fairly arcane process used to check for problems in a particular disk. Under certain scenarios, the site suggested Windows 7 would siphon off all the available memory to perform the scan, potentially crashing the system.

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CNETNewsWindows 7 bug likely not a ‘showstopper’ http://bit.ly/3SidC