Vista123 News

Long story short, IPsec isn't just for VPNs anymore. While IPsec is popular when used in conjunction with virtual private networks, the technology has reached a level of maturity that now allows it to be used for basic packet filtering and other isolative security practices.Windows Server 2008 takes some steps forward when it comes to broadening the reach of IPsec. Let's look at the ways Windows Server 2008 takes steps to broaden the reach of IPsec.

Dimension Data hasn't wasted any time jumping on the Windows Vista SP1 bandwagon, rolling out the service pack to its Australian users after just a 10-day pilot of the final release.Roughly half of DiData's internal desktops are running onVista, with the service company one of the first to deploy the operating system after it was released to corporate users in late 2006. While Vista is DiData's recommended operating environment, half of its users are still running Windows XP.

Microsoft dropped its prohibition on running the most popular versions of Windows Vista in virtual machines because of a complaint filed with antitrust regulators, court documents show. According to a status report filed with U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly , Microsoft changed the EULA (end-user licensing agreements) of Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium under pressure from Phoenix Technologies. Phoenix, best known for the BIOS, or firmware, that it sells to PC makers, had filed a complaint with regulators sometime after early November 2007, arguing that Microsoft should open the less-expensive versions of Vista to virtualization.

Microsoft would dearly love the Vista Capable lawsuit to just go away, but once the wheels of justice start grinding, can any amount of grease stop the squeaky wheel?Microsoft’s Vista Capable class action lawsuit is in the news again, this time because Microsoft wants an appeals court to reverse the decision to have granted the case official ‘class action’ status.

In terms of applications, the mobile world still feels like a bit of a poor cousin where the Web giants are involved. How long til it shrugs off its rags like Cinderella and bursts into the daylight in all the finery it deserves? Take a couple of announcements that came out last week -- Microsoft bringing Silverlight to Nokia mobiles and Google Gears coming to Windows mobiles. Gears has been around for a long, long time -- well, in tech terms at least: it was launched last May, and Silverlight came out around the same time.

Let's face it, Windows machines get hacked, and in some environments it happens a lot. Fortunately, Microsoft has built numerous tools into Windows so administrators and power users can analyse a machine to determine whether it's been compromised. In this tip, which is the first of a two-part series, I'll cover five useful command-line tools built into Windows for such analysis.

IT has been more than two decades since Scotty tried to use a computer mouse as a microphone to control a Macintosh in “Star Trek IV.”Since then, personal computer users have continued to live under the tyranny of the mice, windows, icons and pull-down menus originally invented at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s and popularized by Apple and Microsoft in the next decade.Last year, however, the arrival of the Nintendo Wii and the Apple iPhone began to break down the logjam in technological innovation for the way humans interact with computers.

 Internet Explorer 8, the just-previewed browser from Microsoft Corp., blocks access to the company's Windows Update service, company representatives have confirmed. Users who try to reach Windows Update with Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Beta 1 are instead greeted with a message stating, "To use this site, you must be running Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 or later." IE8 Beta 1 was released Wednesday after an unveiling at MIX08, the Web developer conference Microsoft hosted last week in Las Vegas. The preliminary version runs on Windows XP, Vista , Server 2003 and Server 2008.

There's a new twist in the "Windows  Vista Capable" lawsuit that brought us all those behind-the-scenes e-mails last week: Microsoft has petitioned a federal appeals court in an attempt to overturn the judge's Feb. 22 decision granting the lawsuit class-action status. The company is also asking U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman to stop the case from proceeding while its appeal of the class certification is pending. Among other things, if that request were granted, the company wouldn't be required to produce additional internal documents to the plaintiffs' lawyers, until the appeal is resolved.

Since I joined the IE team at the beginning of 2007, it has become clear to me how important it is for web developers to predict how a given browser will work.  I’ve certainly heard and read how very important it is to web developers to minimize the cost of supporting each additional browser version.  In apparent contradiction to this, everyone needs continued innovation in the browser to create new online business opportunities.