microsoft

On Thursday, Microsoft announced that it will have seven patches available on Patch Tuesday, December 11. Three of these will be ranked by Microsoft as critical. One critical patch concerns DirectX versions 7.0 through 10.0. Another affects Microsoft Media Format. The third appears to be a cumulative update for Internet Explorer.

The important patches include two for Windows Vista, one for Windows 2000 and Windows XP, and one for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

Update: I clarified the caption of the illustration to better indicate what editing had gone on to produce the side-by-side images.

Microsoft has taken the beta tag off a plug-in to let Photoshop read and write files in the HD Photo format, which Microsoft is standardizing as JPEG XR.

The free plug-in is available for download for Windows and Mac OS X systems. The plug-ins work on Windows XP and Vista, Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, and Photoshop CS2 or CS3, Bill Crow, who's overseen the HD Photo and JPEG XR effort, wrote on his blog … Read more

Microsoft has a busy conference schedule for next fall.

The company, which canceled this year's Professional Developer Conference, confirmed that it does plan to hold the event next year, October 27 through 30, in Los Angeles.

Microsoft also plans to hold its WinHEC (Windows Hardware Engineering Conference) at some point in the fall at a West Coast location still to be determined. Microsoft said those details still haven't been worked out, but a company representative said the two events are not planned to run concurrently.

Perhaps having both events in the fall means that Microsoft will be ready … Read more

What am I, nuts?

Removing the antivirus software from your PC goes against conventional wisdom, but a lot of conventional wisdom is bunk, especially when it comes to technology.

Two of the five PCs on my home network have been without AV software for six months, ever since I made the mistake of loading the beta of Windows Live OneCare 2 on my home network. This stellar example of the programming art brought my entire network to its knees in a matter of minutes. After three days of repairs, my network was working again, but I realized that two of … Read more

While Microsoft's Silverlight recently went 1.0 for Mac and Windows users, the last time we got a progress report on the version for Linux called "Moonlight" was early September. In a report by eWeek, who was covering today's XML Conference in Boston, Novell's vice president of developer platforms, Miguel de Icaza, noted that not only is Moonlight set to release within the next six months, but they're working on getting support for all major Linux distributions. De Icaza is also quoted as saying he didn't want Moonlight to lag behind Silverlight in … Read more

Microsoft is serious about getting Windows XP to work on One Laptop Per Child's low-cost laptop, but the company still isn't sure it will be able to make a go of it.

In an interview, James Utzschneider, the general manager of Microsoft's emerging market unit, says Microsoft has devoted about 40 employees and contractors to work on its effort.

However, there are plenty of technical hurdles, he said. One of the biggest is the fact that the XO has no hard drive and only 1GB of built-in memory. The company concluded it needed at least 2GB of … Read more

Bill Gates confirmed that Microsoft will call its next browser Internet Explorer 8, though Microsoft isn't sharing much else, such as the obvious questions: When will it arrive and what features will it have?

The confirmation came during his speech at the "Mix and Mash" conference taking place this week in Redmond, Wash. In a posting on the IE blog, Microsoft general manager Dean Hachamovitch jokes about some of the names Microsoft ruled out, such as "IE 7+1" and "IEVIII."

But, seriously, folks don't care about the name. They care about … Read more

Microsoft said Wednesday that it is working to develop a version of XP that can run on computers without a hard drive, including the XO computer from One Laptop Per Child.

In a statement, Microsoft said that it will start "limited field trials" of XP running on the OLPC computer in January. If all goes well, Microsoft said it could have XP running on the XO by the second half of next year. However, it cautioned folks in North America, particularly those taking part in the Give One, Get One program, that it has no plans to offer … Read more