Category: Featured

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Is Silverlight 2 catching up with Flash?

As Adobe and Microsoft come out with new releases of their respective multimedia platforms, the debate rages on among developers over which is the most viable. And Flash’s proponents are using Linux as their trump card. One indisputable fact for now is that, while Flash works across both Windows and Linux, the same really can’t be said for Silverlight. Moonlight, a free and open...

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Firefox 3 Performance Gets a Boost

Now that Firefox 3 is approaching the home stretch it is important that Mozilla starts to throw in performance improvements to really make the browser purr. Over in our forum xpgeek pointed out that a Profile-Guided Optimization (PGO) build of Firefox 3 had been created which greatly improved the performance of JavaScript in the browser. While PGO itself hasn’t yet landed in the nightly...

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Google Gets Into Web Sites Building Biz

Google, already the world’s most popular spot for finding Web sites, is aiming to become the go-to place for creating Web sites too. The Mountain View-based company is taking its first step toward that goal Thursday with the debut of a free service designed for high-tech neophytes looking for a simple way to share information with other people working in the same company or...

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Principled Technologies Tests Windows Vista SP1

When Windows Vista was originally released just over a year ago Microsoft commissioned Principled Technologies to compare the overall responsiveness of Windows Vista to Windows XP SP 2 for some common business and home tasks. With the release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) Principled has updated their results. Principled Technologies concluded the following when comparing business scenarios: Overall, Windows Vista SP1 and...

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Windows Live outage affected those not signed with Live ID

A widespread, international outage on February 26 affecting users of a number of Microsoft’s Windows Live services affected those not already logged into Microsoft’s Web services via Live ID, according to Microsoft. But exactly why so many of its services were inaccessible for most of Tuesday is still not something Microsoft is discussing. According to a statement attributed to Samantha McManus, Windows Live product...

Sun completes MySQL purchase, sets sights on Microsoft and Oracle

Sun completes MySQL purchase, sets sights on Microsoft and Oracle

Sun Microsystems today confirmed it has completed its acquisition of MySQL, and announced all MySQL products are now part of the Sun worldwide sales and support network. In addition, MySQL CEO Marten Mickos officially joined Sun as the new senior vice president of the company’s database group. Sun announced just six weeks ago it would spend $1 billion — $800 million in cash and...

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Microsoft’s latest interoperability pledge: How free is ‘open’ now?

No move by Microsoft to share information with its competitors will ever be taken at face value, and certainly yesterday’s new Interoperability Principle will come under very close scrutiny. Is this the opening of the floodgates the EC has been demanding? In incremental, measured, if slow steps, Microsoft has made some efforts to comply with directives from the European Commission to make its software...

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WGA: Taking the next step with Windows Vista SP1

Back in December, I mentioned some changes were coming with WGA in Windows Vista.  I want to say first that I’m excited about the step forward we’re taking with SP1 and proud of the work that has gone into it. I’m excited both about the changes we’ve made to the user experience that we talked about and also about what we’ve done in Windows...

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Will XP SP3 Slow Vista’s Adoption?

Analysts say that the more secure, stable and reliable Windows XP is, the less reason businesses have to upgrade to Vista in a hurry. The upcoming release of Windows XP Service Pack 3 will further slow the rate of business adoption of Windows Vista by extending the life of the older operating system, some analysts say. Microsoft quietly released Windows XP Service Pack 3...

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Microsoft Opens XP SP3 Test Build To Public

Microsoft on Tuesday continued its plodding march toward the long awaited release of Windows XP service pack 3 by opening the latest test build to the public. XP SP3 Release Candidate 2 is now available from the Microsoft Download Center to users running PCs with XP SP2 installed, a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email to ChannelWeb. Microsoft earlier this month released XP SP...