Vista123 News

Believe it or not, but Windows Vista is one of the requirements, and a small step to winning 5,000 gallons of free gas from Microsoft.This provided that you are running a small business. The Redmond company has debuted a new initiative designed to help small businesses, Bump the Slump. The website and the adjacent project are designed to give small business owners guidance through a series of five steps on how they can save money in what Microsoft is referring to as a down economy and enter a contest that could permit them to win no less than 5,000 gallons of free gas.

Even though the processor market is dominated by Intel, with AMD struggling to expand its elbow room, new players are able to find a little room to breathe.
VIA Technologies is an illustrative example in this respect, with its products embraced even by Microsoft. However, the marriage between Windows client and server operating systems and VIA chips is not necessarily a match made in heaven. Case in point: computers with Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 RTM/SP1 have problems recognizing the new 64-bit CPU from VIA Technologies.

Windows XP users are urged to fire up Windows Update and install these if you don't already allow for "Automatic Updates".

Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP/Vista/2000/Server 2003/Server 2008 (KB950759)
Security issues have been identified that could allow an attacker to compromise a system that is running Microsoft Internet Explorer and gain control over it. You can help protect your system by installing this update from Microsoft. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

Microsoft has started pressing the acceleration pedal of the marketing of Windows Vista, now complete with Service Pack 1. At the debut of June, Mike Nash, Corporate Vice President, Windows Product Management, revealed that Vista SP1 was ready for wide business adoption, and the software giant even launched a Vista experience initiative built around the operating system plus its first service pack.

Microsoft has thrown Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 deep into tree hugging mode, along with its predecessor, Internet Explorer 7, on the Carbon Grove website. So deep in fact, that the Redmond company is willing to put its money where the carbon reduction promises of its two browsers are.

In January 2007, Microsoft made available Windows Vista and the Office 2007 System in tandem, in an effort to emphasize the intimate connection between its flagship products. And it appears that the Redmond company will attempt similar marketing tactics with the releases of the next iterations of the Windows client and the Office System.

Microsoft may be sunsetting XP, but you'll still be able to buy it on some new systems--and support isn't going away for several years.Windows XP is dead ... long live Windows XP. You may have heard that as of June 30, you're no longer able to buy the operating system or obtain support for it. But that isn't quite the case.

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The "official" OEM and retail end date from Microsoft is June 30, 2008, just a few weeks away. There has been much talk of whether Microsoft would bow to the demand of the consumers to keep XP alive, and with this it is still hard to tell if Dell bought a years stock of licenses ahead of time, or if this is the precursor to an announcement from Microsoft.

This one is for all you IT professionals out there. A lot of you are probably having discussions inside your company about when to deploy Windows Vista, or you've deployed it and want to know which of the new capabilities can have the biggest impact on your business.