Windows 7 E-Book
May 30th, 2009
Archive
Archive for May, 2009
Vista SP2 available
May 26th, 2009
According to WinInsider, the SP2 update for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 is now available.
Psystar woes
May 26th, 2009
Apparently, Psystar has filed for bankruptcy. Psystar originally made headlines when they offered a low cost mac clone for sale to the public.
Office 2010 details
May 21st, 2009
Here is a news article, from Windows IT Pro, regarding details of Office 2010:
http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/102140/office-2010-details-emerge.html
Microsoft patent news
May 21st, 2009
Here is a news article from WindowsItPro.com:
Microsoft Handed $200 Million Patent Defeat
by Paul Thurrott
A jury in a US District Court in Tyler, Texas, has ordered Microsoft to pay $200 million to Canadian software firm i4i LP for willfully infringing on i4i’s electronic document processing patent. The award is the fourth-largest jury verdict so far this year, but it could actually be increased by the judge overseeing the case.
“We feel quite vindicated,” said i4i President Karen Heater. Her company claims that Microsoft knew about i4i’s patent and willfully infringed it in Word 2007 and 2003. Those products use XML technology to encode and customize documents, and Microsoft’s customization of XML, i4i says, violates its patent.
Microsoft says it will appeal the verdict.
“We believe the evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid,” a Microsoft spokesperson said. “We believe this award of damages is legally and factually unsupported, so we will ask the court to overturn the verdict.”
This is the second patent-related award against Microsoft this year, and it’s not even the most expensive. In April, the software giant was ordered to pay $388 million for infringing a Uniloc patent. Microsoft is also appealing that verdict. Not coincidentally, perhaps, Microsoft also announced last month that it supports the patent-reform legislation that is currently under consideration by the US Senate.
Vonage service issue
May 14th, 2009
I noticed that, about 1 1/2 hours ago, I was unable to connect to my Vonage dashboard. I tried connecting on both my laptop (Wi-Fi) as well as my Desktop (Wired) yet I was still unable to connect. I decided to call Vonage to ask about this: The first time I called, I was transferred to a Technical Support agent who hung up on me as I was talking to her. The second time I called, I was told that they (Vonage) were performing an emergency upgrade and to try back in 2 hours. The third time I called (to verify what the 2nd Rep told me) I was once again told that they (Vonage) were performing an emergency upgrade and to try again in 1 hour.
By this time, I knew I was getting the royal runaround so I decided to put my 20+ years of I.T. expereince to work for me: I called Vonage one last time and, when the Rep came on the line, I told him that I not only work in the I.T. Industry but that I also know that Call Center Rep’s routinely use pre-generated scripts, given to them by their Supervisors, and are told never to deviate from them no matter what the circumstances. I then proceeded to tell him that I knew the “emergency upgrade” excuse was a standard answer used by the Vonage Rep’s whenever any part of the Vonage service was not working. I finally asked him directly if the “emergency upgrade” answer I had been given by the last 3 Reps was legitimate or was it an excuse ie. a blatant lie on Vonage’s part?
I noticed immediately that this particular Vonage Rep had become quite uncomfortable in talking to me because he then started to stammer and fumble his words while he was responding to me, he coudn’t even complete a sentence without uttering “um” several times. After he had gained a bit of his composure back, he stated that the Vonage Rep’s are initially told to “dumb down” their technical support responses so that their “non-technical” customers will be able to understand what is going on. It was clearly obvious to me that, during the phone call, he (the Vonage Rep) was caught completely off guard by the fact that he was speaking with someone (me) who knew the “tricks of the trade” and was not willing to accept his script responses at face value.
While I certainly don’t take any pleasure in other people’s discomfort, it did give me a certain sense of satisfaction knowing that I was finally able to get a straight answer out of Vonage about this.
OS X 10.5.7 news
May 14th, 2009
According to theappleblog.com, there is more reason to rejoice concerning the release of OS X 10.5.7.
http://theappleblog.com/2009/05/14/os-x-10-5-7-dramatically-increases-netbook-battery-life/
Windows 7 release news
May 11th, 2009
According to Bloomberg, Microsoft may start selling Windows 7 by this holiday season.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aFs.Pb8zCAiI
IE 8 update issue
May 7th, 2009
If you use a laptop with an integrated virtual scroll slider on your touchpad be warned that, after installing the IE 8 compatibility update dated today (5/7), your virtual scroll slider may stop working – it happened to me this afternooon. To resolve the issue, I simply uninstalled the update and my virtual scroll slider started working again.
OS X 10.5.7 Upgrade
May 6th, 2009
The 10.5.7 upgrade for Mac OS X will apparently be released on Friday, it is slated to fix several issues.
http://www.maclife.com/article/news/1057_hitting_your_macs_friday
