Category: Windows

Everything About Windows

Leopard vs. Vista: feature chart showdown

Paul

There’s no doubt, Vista and Leopard are both extremely advanced, feature rich consumer operating systems. But way back in January when Vista launched knew we had little choice but pit the two in a head to head chartngraph Thunderdome competition. We know we’re not even going to be able to stop the epic fanboy arguments about break out over this one, so we just ask that you try to keep it fair. Leopard vs. Vista: it’s on.

NOTE: This chart is only for out of box features, and does not take into account 3rd party software. We realize that with a few choice apps this chart would look completely different — but that’s not what we’re after here.

  • Green indicates a category with more and/or better features, and generally a better user experience.
  • Red indicates that a category not quite up to snuff. Either it doesn’t yet exist in the OS or it just sucks more than the alternative.
  • † (dagger) indicates a category we think are too subjective or not similar enough to judge. These do not have any clear winner.
  • ‡ (double dagger) indicates a category that is in many ways subjective, but that we feel one category is still ahead. Your own tastes may vary.
  • Notes help out with a little background, where appropriate.

A great article on the differences and Similarity of Vista and Leopard!!

Share a Firefox Profile Between Ubuntu and Windows

Paul

The CyberNet weblog details how to seamlessly share a Firefox profile between a dual boot Ubuntu Linux and Windows installation by sharing the same profile folder in both OSes. It’s a very simple trick that involves the Firefox Profile Manager, and it only takes a few steps to complete. On the other hand, if your goal is to share profiles between different computers, we’ve got you covered there, too.

Share a Firefox Profile Between Ubuntu and Windows [CyberNet]

I will have to try this in my Kubuntu settings!!

Instantbird 0.1 is Like Firefox for Chat

Paul


Windows/Mac/Linux (All platforms): There are tons of great instant messaging applications available, but one nagging problem in the IM world is that there’s no great, fully cross-platform chat app (unless you count Meebo). Free, open source application Instantbird aims to do for chat what Firefox does for the browser. Based on the same tools used to create Firefox and Thunderbird, Instantbird should ultimately be just as extensible as the former—which means IM customization will be as simple as installing a Firefox extension. Right now Instantbird connects to virtually any IM network and supports a tabbed chat interface. Beyond that, the application is still very barebones, but its upcoming features are very exciting.

Aside from the basics you’d expect from any chat app (like status notifications, contact management, and IM notifications), the ultimate roadmap for Instantbird includes video and voice support. What’s most exciting, though, is the possibility that the chat application will be subject to the same community of creative extension developers that make Firefox such a killer browser—so that Instantbird can easily be customized to deliver exactly what you want from it. Instantbird is free, works with Windows, Mac, and Linux. It’s still a very young app, so this one’s for the early adopters.

Instantbird [via CyberNet]

More very cool programs for people to use for everyday use. Integrate in Firefox.

Core of “Windows 7” taking shape: meet the “MinWin” kernel

Paul

Eric Traut, one of Microsoft’s chief operating system design engineers, gave a fascinating demo (WMV) recently at the University of Illinois, where he talked about where the Windows core is going and ended with a sneak peek at the kernel of the next version of Windows, known by the exciting codename of “Windows 7.” The demo showed what Windows would look like if it was literally stripped down to the core, showing the kind of work that is going on to optimize the aging NT kernel.

Traut runs a team of about 200 software engineers at Microsoft that is responsible for the core kernel scheduling, memory management, boot sequence, and virtualization technology such as Virtual PC and Virtual Server. The latter technologies are becoming more and more important as servers get more powerful and gain more and more CPU cores, and it was clear from the demonstration that Microsoft is placing significant effort into integrating virtual machine technology into everything that they do. The release of Virtual PC as a free download last year was just the beginning: Windows Server 2008 will ship with significant VM enhancements, and Windows 7 will only carry on from there.

Windows 7

Why “Windows 7”? The number is based on Microsoft’s internal operating system numbers: the first version of Windows NT, 3.1, was given the same number as the “Classic” Windows when it was released in 1992. Since then there has been NT 4, Windows 2000 (NT 5), Windows XP (NT 5.1), and Windows Vista (NT 6). You can check these numbers by typing “ver” at a command prompt on any of these operating systems.

Very nice article from Arstechnica story on Windows 7 which will be changed to something internal soon I wonder what the next name it will be!!

In millions of Windows, the perfect Storm is gathering

Paul

A spectre is haunting the net but, outside of techie circles, nobody seems to be talking about it. The threat it represents to our security and wellbeing may be less dramatic than anything posed by global terrorism, but it has the potential to wreak much more havoc. And so far, nobody has come up with a good idea on how to counter it.

It’s called the Storm worm. It first appeared at the beginning of the year, hidden in email attachments with the subject line: ‘230 dead as storm batters Europe’. The PC of anyone who opened the attachment became infected and was secretly enrolled in an ever-growing network of compromised machines called a ‘botnet’. The term ‘bot’ is a derivation of ‘software robot’, which is another way of saying that an infected machine effectively becomes the obedient slave of its – illicit – owner. If your PC is compromised in this way then, while you may own the machine, someone else controls it. And they can use it to send spam, to participate in distributed denial-of-service attacks on banks, e-commerce or government websites, or for other even more sinister purposes.

This is for computers who are not legal computers. They aren’t being updated by Microsoft. Some hackers are using several Zero Day exploits.