Techspot has released an article that the second service pack for Windows Vista will be released before Windows 7. There are no details about the release date or the expected features but the article notes that beta versions may have been shipped to some hardware and software partners by Microsoft.

There is speculation that the new service pack may include some aspects of Windows 7’s functionality. The public Beta 1 of Windows 7 is expected to be released this year.

Source: TechSpot

An interview with Steve Ballmer has been posted at Gartner.com. He says that the next Windows operating system, Windows 7, will be like Vista but a lot better.

“Windows Vista is good, Windows 7 is Windows Vista with clean-up in user interface [and] improvements in performance. Look, I’m not encouraging anybody to wait, I’d go ahead and deploy it right away. We didn’t have to go in an incompatible direction to make big strides forward,” he said.

“There’s no reason to do just, quote, a minor release, in two-and-a-half years,” he added.

Source: COMPUTERWORLD

Microsoft has released a batch of patches yesterday which fixes a total of 20 bugs.

11 of the 20 flaws were rated as ‘critical’ and eight are ‘important’. The other one is listed as ‘moderate’. The patches are for Windows, Office Suite, web browser Internet Explorer, Host Integration Server, and Active Directory.

The article at Computerworld notes that this is the largest batch since August. In that month, the company issued a total of 26 patches.

“Today’s patches really continue to hammer the idea that the newer [Microsoft] software is more secure. If there was ever a reason to update to newer software, this is it. There’s no reason not to update, for example, to IE7,” said Andrew Storms of nCircle Network Security Inc.

Source: COMPUTERWORLD

The name for the next Windows operating system has been revealed by Microsoft. It will be called Windows 7 which is the due to the fact that this is the seventh version of Windows.

“Simply put, this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore Windows 7 just makes sense,” said the Corporate Vice President of Windows Product Management, Mike Nash.

Pre-beta versions will be handed out at PDC and WinHEC events.

There is no definite date yet on the release of this product.

Source: Guardian.co.uk

Microsoft is planning to improve the UAC, which stands for user account control, in the next Windows operating system.

“UAC was created with the intention of putting you in control of your system, reducing cost of ownership over time and improving the software ecosystem. What we’ve learned is that we only got part of the way there in Vista and some folks think we accomplished the opposite,” according to a post from Ben Fathi who is the corporate vice president of development for Microsoft’s Windows Core Operating System Division.

According to Network World, in Vista, the UAC can prevent authorized users to access applications on a network although they should have access to it.

Source: Network World

The details of the patches that will be released this month by Microsoft has been released.

Various sites posted that there will be 11 security patches and four of them were given a rating of ‘critical’.

The softwares that will be patched include Windows Active Directory, Microsoft’s web browser Internet Explorer, and their spreadsheet program Excel.

Six out of the eleven patches are rated as ‘important’ while the other one is ‘moderate’. The moderate patch is for Office. These patches are scheduled to be released on Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time.

Source: Network World

Apcmag.com reports that the next Windows operating system will fix two minor features in Vista. They are the overcrowded taskbar and the shut-down menu.

Chaitanya Sareen of Microsoft wrote, “We did encounter some challenges with the power options in Vista’s Start Menu. The goal was to bubble-up and advertise the sleep option so that customers enjoy a faster resume. However, we now know despite our good intentions, customers are opening that fly-out menu and selecting other options. We’re looking into improving this experience.”

There are three things that are planned for the taskbar area which are:
1. Getting rid of pop-up notifications.
2. Tidying up the taskbar.
3. Changing the way of how the Desktop Toolbars work.

Source: Apcmag.com

The alpha version of Windows 7 will ship on October 27, about a month away from today. The date is based on the report that was posted at nbr.co.nz.

“There is a feeling in the industry that Microsoft has lost ground against our competitors. We’ve been taking a few punches recently without fighting back,” said Scott Wylie of Microsoft. He is local development lead for that company.

The October 27 date will coincide with their conference in LA. It will be the first major event of the post-Bill Gates era for Microsoft and Ray Ozzie, inventor of Lotus Notes will take the lead role.

Source: The National Business Review

Four updates are scheduled to be released during the Patch Tuesday of this month according to The Register. This batch will include fixes for Windows Media Player, Media Encoder, Office, and for various Windows operating systems including Vista.

The malicious software removal tool will also be updated. The fix for Media Player was supposed to be released last month but there were last minute quality issues.

Microsoft will post more details about these patches when they released it on Tuesday, Septermber 9. This batch is much smaller than last month’s updates since there were 11 updates that were released last month.

Source: The Register

Computerworld has reported that Microsoft made an announcement regarding the compatibility of Windows Live Mail with Internet Explorer version 8 beta 2. The company said it made a mistake when they labeled their email software as incompatible with the latest beta version of their web browser.

“This was actually an inaccuracy on our end that has since been fixed. Live Mail will work just fine for IE8 Beta 2 users,” said a spokeswoman for Microsoft.

The other incompatibility warnings are correct including problems with Hotmail, Netflix, and Skype. The article at Computerworld describes what will happen when these programs are used with IE8 beta 2.

Source: COMPUTERWORLD