Windows

IBM is releasing an update today to its free Lotus Symphony productivity suite, which remains in beta testing.

The three desktop applications, Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations, are counterparts to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The latest iteration of Symphony is supposed to be faster than its predecessor, which debuted less than two months ago.

The package is one of several low-cost or free alternatives to Microsoft Office. Unlike products such as ThinkFree, Zoho and Google Docs & Spreadsheets, there is no online component to Symphony.

Like its close competitor, the $79 Sun StarOffice, Symphony works on Windows and Linux computers … Read more

Microsoft plans to release a trio of updates for Windows Vista this week, a move the company said should help ease some of the top complaints leveled against the operating system.

The patches, expected to be issued Tuesday, address core issues like performance, reliability, and stability of the nearly year-old operating system.

One update aims to improve battery life on mobile devices, boost stability of wireless connections, and improve the operating system's response time following a period of inactivity.

A second patch deals with the operating system's interactions with USB ports, in particular when systems wake from sleep … Read more

Under a new program announced Friday, large companies that sell refurbished PCs can get a brand spanking new copy of Windows to put on the machines--provided they pay Microsoft for the privilege.

The initiative, which provides refurbishers with a special version of Windows XP, could help save more machines from heading to the landfill. In many cases, though, it means Microsoft will be getting paid twice for putting Windows on the same PC.

That's because, to properly resell a refurbished PC using its original copy of Windows, Microsoft requires that resellers have either the "certificate of authenticity" … Read more

Back in August I wrote about a free security program for Windows XP called DropMyRights. It comes from a trusted source, requires no maintenance, and incurs no overhead.

DropMyRights works by front-ending an application. To use it with Internet Explorer for example, you make a shortcut to DropMyRights and modify the shortcut to include the full path to the IE executable. When DropMyRights runs, it, in turn, invokes Internet Explorer. But, as the name implies, it first lowers the "rights" for IE. Thus, even if you are logged onto Windows XP as an Administrator, IE will run with … Read more

The wait for Microsoft's Live.com e-mail addresses is over.

Microsoft is now taking sign-ups (or at least it was a few minutes ago) at get.live.com. The company released the final version of Windows Live Hotmail a little while back, but has held off on releasing the Live.com domain for a while, though some folks did manage to snag a few addresses before now.

What worked for me was going to that Web site (make sure you are logged out of Windows Live), clicking Hotmail, and then signing up. Some people in the newsroom have reported … Read more

In my recent interview with Windows Live VP Chris Jones, I also got his take on whether Microsoft might take part in Google's just-announced OpenSocial platform as well as his thoughts on where the Mac fits into the Windows Live strategy. Here's what he had to say.

On OpenSocial: "I think on OpenSocial we're honestly just still looking at it. It's more of a gadget platform than a social-networking approach. It's a way to add gadgets to pages with a couple of extensions to it. That's been a very interesting thing for Facebook … Read more

A few days ago in The Wall Street Journal someone with a 5-year-old PC asked Walter Mossberg how to determine when to buy a new PC. The response in the paper was short. Fortunately, this blog lets me offer a longer, more detailed answer.

The first thing Mossberg said in his response was "There's no universal answer to your question." I disagree. The simple answer is that a computer needs to be replaced only when it no longer does something you want or need it to do. This has nothing to do with the age of the … Read more

Bill Gates announced Windows Home Server to much fanfare at January's Consumer Electronics Show.

The energy seems to have dwindled some during the product's elongated path to market over the past year. Microsoft finalized the code back in July, but HP said it would wait for an update to the software before releasing its MediaSmart server, in what was seen as the biggest endorsement of the product.

On Monday, Microsoft announced "general availability" for the software, although HP's product will not be shipping to consumers until later this month. Some servers from smaller computer makers … Read more

For a brief time Friday, it looked as if developers were going to be able to get their hands on a test version of the first Vista service pack, which is due for final release next year.

Enthusiast site Neowin noticed a posting on Microsoft's MSDN developer site that promised developers could "Get the latest preview of Windows Vista SP1 on MSDN Subscriber Downloads." The site also said, "This new release of SP1 addresses reliability and performance issues, and provides support for new hardware and several emerging standards," according to Neowin.

That would have been … Read more