Vista to drive PC upgrades

Computers & Internet Forum

Kelly Mills
OCTOBER 10, 2006

MICROSOFT has released local pricing for its next-generation operating system, which resellers hope will prompt an upgrade rush by home users.

Rather than counting on strong sales of the full package or upgrade versions of Windows Vista, most resellers expect consumers to surge ahead with held-off hardware purchases.
Harvey Norman computers and communications general manager Rutland Smith said there had been a "high level" of interest in the much delayed software package.

Microsoft is expected to ship the Windows upgrade for business users in November and for home users by late January.

Last week it announced, the final test version, Windows Vista Release Candidate 2, and forecast on-schedule delivery.






Windows Visa, which has been five years in the making, has been postponed by Microsoft several times.

"Vista has an enormous amount of value for consumers and they have recognised the value," Mr Smith said.

"It is giving them a lot of reasons to upgrade."

Prices for Vista will start at $385 for the basic home edition. The premium version for consumers comes in at $455.

For businesses looking to upgrade, the normal edition will cost $565 per user. Comparatively, a full version of XP Professional, which is aimed at business users, costs about $497.

Microsoft has priced the Ultimate version at $751 per licence.

Pricing for the cheaper upgrade versions of Vista, which require an existing XP licence, has not been released.

Domayne computers and electrical franchisee Gary Wheelhouse said the prices of Vista were pretty much comparable with Windows XP versions but questioned how many consumers would buy the full version.

"A huge number of people will take the opportunity to upgrade their PC and laptop, which will come with the new operating system."

Mr Wheelhouse said the retailer had noted a "bit of interest" from customers in Vista, but expected the significance of the changes in the software would be similar to that for the Windows 95 release.

"Vista is as much a revolution as Windows 95. The past versions 98 and XP have just been steps," Mr Wheelhouse said.

"There is good pent-up demand for Vista, which will be coupled with hardware sales."

The Australian

The only way I'm getting this over priced crap is if I purchase another laptop. I'm NOT forking out that dough. Bill Gates... another rich person getting richer, while the poor struggle. What a surprise.

The rich bastard!

I would use Windows 98 forever if I could. F that. I don't like XP, it's lame.

Screw it, I am plugging in my Commodore 64 and playing M.U.L.E.

-HECK!

Doing that will save you about 400 smackers.

Windows 3.11 is where it's at.

Windows Xena 2.35 is where it's at, yo!

Well, they spent 5 years making it, and I'm sure it will be levels above XP, but for almost 400 dollars, Bill Gates can stick it.

When I buy a new computer 4 years down the road, I will see what the hype is all about. Until then, XP will do me fine.

Yeah, and I'm kind of more weary of getting a bootleg copy this time around because you just KNOW they've stuck every kind of protection tool they need that'll send your details hurtling through the internet to the Microsoft database


Not that I'd ever bootleg Vista, or even Windows

I'm almost ready to start using a Mac. Almost. I have not reached that level of nerdom yet.

Macs are pretty cool, and very smooth to use... but just expensive, I reckons. And you can't pull them apart and install new hardware and stuff like you could on a PC. That's a bit of a downer to me.

Minor issues surface after IE 7 launch
Reports of a security bug are flawed, Microsoft says. However, there are some compatibility woes and Microsoft servers are buckling under high IE 7 demand.
By Joris Evers
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Published: October 19, 2006, 5:35 PM PDT
Last modified: October 20, 2006, 12:43 PM PDT
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update


A day after its release, some minor issues with Internet Explorer 7 have materialized, but overall the new Microsoft browser appears to be well received.

Microsoft has defused what would be the most serious issue: a first security hole in the browser since its official release. There is a vulnerability, but in Outlook Express, not IE, Christopher Budd, a Microsoft security response representative, wrote on a corporate Microsoft blog Thursday. Security firms, including Secunia, had reported a flaw in IE 7.

Web browsers, including IE 7, can be used as the vector in an attack that exploits the Outlook Express flaw, Budd wrote. Microsoft is investigating the issue and may issue a fix at a later date, he wrote. The problem has not yet been used in active attacks, the software maker said.

IE 7 users are reporting problems with some Web sites that won't display or display incorrectly. Some of these sites use technology from Autodesk that doesn't work with the new browser and causes errors, people report in the Autodesk support forum.

"Our homepage does not run with IE 7," one Autodesk customer writes. "I am looking forward to a fix either from Microsoft or from Autodesk. We rely on DWF and HTTP. Therefore a solution is needed for sure." DWF viewer is an Autodesk tool for viewing and printing 2D and 3D designs in the Autodesk Design Web Format.

Autodesk plans to include IE 7 support in the next major release of DWF viewer, Scott Sheppard, an Autodesk employee, wrote in the support forum. "In the mean time…our customers need to be prepared to disable the automatic update of IE7 which is scheduled for October," Sheppard wrote. Microsoft, however, said the automatic update is planned for November.

Microsoft has warned of compatibility issues and released several trial versions of IE 7 prior to the final versions so Web administrators and software companies could prepare, a company representative said in an e-mail.

"Microsoft has released six beta versions of the product along with extensive guidance on how to get compatible with the new version," the representative said. "We've seen incredible support…and believe that our customers should upgrade with confidence that the majority of the sites and applications will work."

Aside from the vulnerability report, there was another security alarm. At least one person reported that the IE 7 download page was infected with a virus. Microsoft investigated the claim, but found that it was the result of a "false positive" by the AVAST anti-virus scanner. "A thorough analysis of our site has shown that the page is not infected by the VBS:ZULU virus or any other malicious code," a Microsoft representative said.

Video: Security Bites: Microsoft's most secure Web browser
Perhaps the most significant problem is the apparent popularity of IE 7. Microsoft's servers are buckling under the number of downloads and new installations of the program. As a result, some people who install IE 7 get an error when viewing the IE 7 start page after firing up the browser for the first time.

"We’re seeing such an incredible response to IE 7, that the 'runonce' page is being overloaded at times," the Microsoft representative said. "Microsoft is currently adding server capacity. We expect the majority of people who are downloading IE 7 to have a seamless experience, but will continue to monitor and adjust our capacity as needed."

IE 7 is the first major update to Microsoft's ubiquitous Web browser in five years. The update includes many features, such as tabbed browsing and RSS support, already found in competing software, such as Firefox and Opera.

Security was the No. 1 investment for the update, Microsoft has said. Critics have likened predecessor IE 6 to "Swiss cheese" because of the many security vulnerabilities in it. Microsoft plans to push IE 7 out as a "high priority" update via Automatic Updates in Windows XP in November.

I downloaded IE 7 yesterday, and it is a little nicer. Looks smoother. But it's so infested with all these security features, it wouldn't even let me use Inreview commands like the bold, or italic, or size, or font's.

Threw up alarms and said no scripting allowed. I hunted and hunted for hours, and finally found a setting I could use to turn that part of it off.

Also, I hit some button by accident, next to the shift key, and it went into full screen mode, and I had no tool bar and that really sucked. I did some more research and found a fix and set it back to normal. It takes so long to hunt these minor problems down, because they have 90 trillion setting options, and you have to read through them all, I had to give up and read the help file for a long time.

So far, despite my complaints, I'm happy with it.

The security in the new operating systems has improved so much that Windows co-president Jim Allchin lets his son run a PC without anti-virus software.

By Gregg Keizer
InformationWeek

Nov 10, 2006 03:57 PM

Windows co-president Jim Allchin has said that Windows Vista, which met its release to manufacturing milestone earlier this week, is so superior to Window XP on security that he feels safe letting his own son run a PC without anti-virus software.

A prominent security analyst countered that that attitude would be fine as long as everyone using Vista was a seven-year-old.

During the Q&A portion of a telephone briefing with reporters Wednesday, Allchin said he was proud of Windows XP SP2, another operating system effort he led. "[But] there were things that we couldn't put in that product," he said.

"Don't misunderstand me, this is an escalating situation. The hackers are getting smarter, there's more at stake, and so there's just no way for us to say that some perfection has been achieved. But I can say, knowing what I know now, I feel very confident."

So confident, in fact, that his seven-year-old son's Vista PC lacks anti-virus software.

"Honestly, he doesn't have an antivirus system on his machine. His machine is locked down with parental controls, he can't download things unless it's to the places that I've said that he could do, and I'm feeling totally confident about that," Allchin said. "That is quite a statement. I couldn't say that in Windows XP SP2."

"Sure, if everyone treated their employees like seven-year-olds, and locked down their PCs 100 percent, how could a virus load?" said John Pescatore, a Gartner analyst and the research firm's resident security expert, on Friday.

But that's not going to happen. And in the real world, Windows Vista does need anti-virus software.

"As soon as you allow users to load anything, and everyone will allow that in Vista, then you need AV [anti-virus]. For two reasons, one small and one big," said Pescatore. "The small reason is the hope that it will block viruses and worms. But the big reason is so that you run an AV scan once a week and remove viruses before they can cause too much damage."

Another Vista opinion that Allchin put forward on Wednesday got better reception from Pescatore.

"It's my opinion that the severity of the [security] bulletins will be less [in Vista than in XP], as well as the number will be less," predicted Allchin. "That's to be proven, so we'll see about that. Vista will have issues in security because the bar is being raised over time, [but Vista] is the most secure system that's available, and it's certainly the most secure system that we've shipped. So I feel very confident that customers are far better off by using Windows Vista than they are with anything that we've released before."

Pescatore agreed. "Since Windows Server 2003 came out, it has had many fewer vulnerabilities than Windows 2000 Server," he said. "It was their first server OS since they began to take security seriously. Vista is their first desktop OS.

"We expect that Vista will be to Windows XP as Windows Server 2003 was to Windows 2000 Server."

Allchin, who has been with Microsoft since 1990, will retire at the end of January, after Vista ships. Earlier this year, 17-year veteran Steve Sinofsky was appointed to succeed Allchin as the head of the company's Windows division.

Windows Vista will reach corporate volume license customers this month, and consumers on Jan. 30, 2007.