Bill Lindner

A report entitled 'Top ten terrible tech products' released by CNET recently ranked Windows Vista number 10. As if Vista needed any more bad publicity, the report cited numerous reasons for the dubious distinction. Some of the reasons given for ... Windows Vista making the list include: Provoking a campaign for its predecessor's reintroduction (i.e. quietly introducing a downgrade-to-previous-edition option for PC makers due to increasing customer demands) deserves to be classified as terrible technology. An operating system that took six years at an ungodly cost to develop that is instantly ... (view more)

An article from Computer World says the Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) beta, recently released to about 15,000 testers, runs Microsoft's Office Suite 10% faster than Windows XP SP2. Performance testing was done by Devil Mountain Software, with the ... results leading to further speculation that Windows XP is going absolutely nowhere. The tests were also performed with Windows Vista and Windows Vista SP1. Benchmarks from the tests show Windows XP SP3 to be more than two times faster than Vista SP1, which doesn't bode well for Windows Vista. Craig Barth, Devil Mountain's chief technology officer, ... (view more)

In a recent article written by Bruce Schneier, noted cryptographer from e-media mag Wired.com, the author examines the research (PDF) of security experts Niels Ferguson and Dan Shumow, presenters at the CRYPTO 2007 conference this past August. ... Ferguson and Shumow suggest that an algorithm for generating random numbers included in an official standard document (PDF) by the National Institute of Standards and Technology ( NIST ) contains a weakness that can only be described as a backdoor . Earlier this year the U.S. government released a new official standard for random-number generators that ... (view more)

A question-and-answer period held during a recent Microsoft shareholders meeting resulted in executives being asked to address recent stock sales by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, board member Jon Shirley, and other executives following a sharp ... increase in the stock a few weeks ago. (Source: Seattle PI ) One shareholder, Peter Schroeder of Seattle, said the talk out of Wall Street is that this showed a certain lack of confidence in the future of where the company is going, also noting that the stock has been slipping in recent days. Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer retorted that there' ... (view more)

One year after the release to manufacturing, Windows Vista has increased Microsoft's bottom line and, according to Microsoft, shipped 88 million copies. Unfortunately, it isn't meeting larger expectations and reportedly hasn't made the kind of ... progress that was anticipated in the enterprise world. A survey on Windows Vista adoption taken last month by Gartner Inc. compared to the exact same survey taken in October 2006 concluded that enterprises are 9-12 months behind their original expectations. "The uptake is much lower than expected" said Michael Silver, an analyst with Gartner Inc. ... (view more)

Citing concerns over Microsoft's Office 2007 and Windows Vista licensing terms, Becta , the UK government's agency for education technology has reportedly warned schools against signing licensing agreements, and filed a complaint with the UK's ... Office of Fair Trading, alleging that Microsoft engages in anticompetitive practices in the academic software license marketplace. ArsTechnica is reporting that Becta and Microsoft have been in talks over the issue but have not reached an agreement. In the meantime, Becta is recommending that schools avoid Microsoft's School Agreement subscription ... (view more)

The Microsoft Windows Updates fiasco now includes several IT administrators after Microsoft reportedly began installing (without user permission) a resource-hogging search application company-wide, despite administrators having systems configured ... not to use the program. It all resulted in slowing several systems to a crawl. Originally, Microsoft tried to refute reports from frustrated bloggers that Enterprise customers were being forced to install the Windows XP desktop search tool whether they wanted it or not. Later that same day Microsoft finally admitted they had screwed up. Bobbie Harder ... (view more)

Microsoft has withdrawn the last two challenges to a European Union (EU) antitrust order, closing the books on its past legal fights and instead focusing on avoiding future trouble with European regulators. The lengthy, brutal war between Microsoft ... and the European Commission has cost hundreds of millions of dollars in fines. Exhausted, Microsoft has reportedly yielded and pledged to comply with key parts of a 2004 antitrust decision upheld by an appeals court last month. Microsoft dropped a challenge to the 280.5 million euros ($357 million) fine imposed by regulators in July 2006 for not ... (view more)

In my opinion, people don't need any more reason to avoid Windows Vista like the plague, but now APC Magazine is reporting that swapping out a video card or updating a device driver can end up triggering a complete Vista deactivation. What does it ... mean? The results could lead to Reduced Functionality Mode (RFM), until one can obtain a new activation code from Microsoft. A few days after swapping out a video card on a computer running Windows Vista Ultimate the APC author started receiving a Windows Activation prompt telling him he had three days to activate Windows or he'd end up going into ... (view more)

While Windows XP continues to thrive and Windows Vista fizzles, Microsoft has been busy redesigning Vista's successor, currently named Windows 7. The new operating system is scheduled for release sometime in 2010. ZDNet is reporting that Microsoft ... has created a stripped-down version of the Windows kernel named 'MinWin' for Windows 7, in attempts to reduce dependencies in Windows that have made the operating system bloated and difficult to maintain and upgrade. Recently, Microsoft was able to create a new separate, usable core. MinWin will be at the heart of future versions of Windows Media ... (view more)