Microsoft Vista conference call notes by ZDNet‘s David Berlind — Yesterday was my first conference call with Microsoft since finally installing Vista. In fact, since first installing Vista, I’ve reinstalled it about four times. As my testing continues and new builds are released, we’ll continue to do these calls in order to get whatever questions I have answered. During the process, I’m also giving
Another nice writeup from David is Microsoft: Improvements in Vista’s network performance may be frightening (fast).
Today on Vista, it asked me to turn on the automatic updates and I scheduled it for 3.00 AM everyday.
After few minutes got a notification that I have updates and asked to go ahead with express install. After the install is done, it popped up a dialog telling the updates were unsuccessful for my SoundMAX integrated Digital Audio. But it did not display any other info why the installation was unsuccessful. Anyway, I clicked on OK and the Automatic Updates dialog disappeared.
But again after few minutes got the same notification back that I have some updates for my system, and up on clicking on either express or custom install, the same process continues with failed update to the same SoundMax Audio.
I do not know why the above update failed as it is not giving any more info, and even after the failure not sure why it is keep asking me that I have the same updates for the system.
Thought of sharing the new misc bugs that I observed lately with the Internet Explorer 7.
- This is something that everyone might have noticed it. The screen flickers when you wanted to write/edit anything from Channel9 using IE7 on VISTA. But the same IE7 on XP works great.
In case if you wanted to see the bug in action, check this AVI video, 1.5 MB as I could not capture a screen shot image.
- In Vista, When I go to Full screen mode in IE 7, and when I come out of full-screen mode by pressing F11, after it came to the normal mode, I don’t see the address bar any more. But again this works fine on XP.
Check the following screen shot or the AVI video of 2.3 MB in action for the bug.
- Even though this is not a bug, in the same full-screen mode, when you move the cursor to the top, it does not display any menu. Means you must know the keyboard shortcut (F11) to come out of the full-screen mode or you need to click on the tiny full-screen icon at the top right most corner after MSN search.
- I observed a misc lines pattern when browsing a particular page from Microsoft. The IE 7 displays some garbage lines when I scrolled down or up using the mouse button. The page that caused the problem is this page from Microsoft. This also happens only on VISTA, but not from XP.
Here is the screen shot for the bug.
- Another bug that has been already posted on this blog is when installing IE Developer toolbar on IE7/Vista.
Also, in an un-related topic, when using Aero theme on Vista, and as the top bar for any window dialogs has the trasparent behavior, in the screen capture of the same dialog (alt + print screen) wouldn’t have the title bar at all. Check
this screen shot where in we can see that the header bar (Automatic Updates in this case) is not captured. I think it happens for most of the windows which has transparent background for the Window title, for example Control Panel Dialog. I am using BETA1, build 5112. But I dont see this transparent behavior on another system that I have. The trans behaviour seems to be based on Display adapter (One which does not have transparent behavior has Intel 910GL where as it does on ATI FireGL 3100, and I assume due to Aero Glass effect)
If you are wondering what made Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer to yell at Google that he will kill the Google during the legal battle regarding Microsoft Employee joining to Google. But no one had any idea what plans he had in mind.
According to the article from The Register, buying all or part of AOL may be the first part of the master plan from Steve. Here is the quote from the article:
One estimate suggested that Google would lose as much as $380m of advertising revenue if AOL dropped its search engine and took on MSN’s. That would cut Google’s profit by something like 25 per cent, potentially giving its huge share price something of a tumble. No wonder Google is thought to be entering the bidding to partner with Time Warner on AOL instead of Microsoft.
For more info, check the source article from The Register.
Last week when Opera announced the availability of its Opera browser for free without any adds, everyone surprised thinking what made Opera to take a decision like this. They might have taken this decision to compete with growing Firefox, so that they can take the second slot after IE. But where the revenue is going to come from ?
The answer is from Google. Yes, Google is funding for Opera. It is not direct funding, but Opera signed a search referral deal with Google; that funds everything similar to what Mozilla is doing.
Does this sound like “indirectly Google is trying to help other browsers to compete with Microsoft IE” ? 
Download Link: Opera Free Browser (already crossed more than a million downloads within 48 hrs).
I have three Yahoo!, two Gmail and zero hotmail accounts. I used to have one hotmail and one MSN account long back..but they do not exists any more due to in-activity.
I use Yahoo! mail everyday and it is my all time favorite online mail client at present; and desperately waiting for the new beta version to explore more features. Last week I asked Yahoo! mail team to send me access to the new beta version, and will get one very soon.
Anyway, coming to the point, Google Gmail sucks!. Want to know more, why it does ? check the following links:
Well, thats not my word, its from TechDirt. After the much talk spread about the same on the internet, I too tried on my XP box, and after playing a while decided not to keep the Google’s VPN any more as the question that raised in my mind several times is ..”Why do I need this ? Why do I need to secure when I use my system only for browsing ? “.
Anyway, read the TechDirt discussion for more info on what others are telling about the same.
Today, Firefox 1.0.7 is released with the security and stability updates that were floating around the web. Here is the fixes from the release announcement:
Fixes are included for the
international domain name (IDN) link buffer overflow vulnerability and the
Linux command line URL parsing flaw. There are also other security and stability changes, including a fix for a crash experienced when using certain Proxy Auto-Config scripts. In addition, some regressions introduced by previous 1.0.x security updates have been resolved.
The Mozilla Foundation previously issued a patch for Firefox 1.0.6 that protected users against the IDN link buffer overflow flaw at the expense of removing support for IDNs. Firefox 1.0.7 has a more permanent solution that does not involve disabling IDN functionality and any users who installed the patch will find that IDN support is restored when they upgrade
Download link: Firefox 1.0.7
