Microsoft

Unlike in baseball, when it comes to operating systems, it's two strikes and you're out. Given that Microsoft missed with Vista, if Windows 7 isn't a big hit, Microsoft is in for serious trouble.

Microsoft has released a tool that lets netbook owners install Windows 7 on their machines using a USB flash drive, sidestepping the usual requirement of a DVD drive.

The utility, Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool, creates a bootable flash drive from a downloaded .iso file, or disk image, of Windows 7, and can be purchased from Microsoft's online store.

Under certain circumstances, Microsoft's recently launched Security Essentials (MSE) security solution fails to download updates for several days, despite new anti-virus signatures being available on the server. As a result, the software no longer offers adequate protection against new malware. These are the results found in tests run by The H's associates at heise Security for the latest edition of the computer magazine c't.

With Apple reporting another record quarter and releasing new products, pressure was high for Microsoft's results. Microsoft just announced its earnings on Friday and at first glance they aren't pretty, representing another quarter of declining revenue.

Microsoft has confirmed a problem that hundreds of users have reported with downloading Windows 7, according to its support forum.

The company is currently investigating the reports, but has not yet come up with a solution.

Computers on the Internet address each other with numbers. What appears as computerworld.com to a human being is 65.221.110.98 to a computer. The system that translates between names and the underlying numbers (really IP addresses) is called DNS and it works very well. Too well, for some bad guys.

With much fanfare typical of Microsoft, the hotly anticipated Windows 7 finally launched yesterday. Of course, Windows 7 would not be completely foreign to those of you who are administrators or IT managers at this point, what with the beta release and subsequent availability on MSDN as an RTM.

Following a year of hype mostly centered on the fact that it's not its predecessor (Vista), Windows 7 has finally been released to the world today, to mostly positive notices. Of course, it's been available in various forms since about the beginning of the year, but today is the first day you can officially buy it.

If consumers like the new Windows 7 operating system, they'll have the much-maligned Windows Vista to thank. In part, that's because Windows 7 actually builds on the under-the-hood changes that came with Vista. But, it also turns out that the vast headaches created by Vista were just what the PC industry needed to improve their cooperation.

With consumers lukewarm to Vista and many businesses shunning it entirely, both Microsoft and the computer makers realized that the standard way of business just wasn't cutting it, particularly with Apple coming on strong.

Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system is receiving raves in its pre-release testing. While much of the kernel that lies at the heart of the operating system is based on Vista code, several key advances have been made that get rid of Vista annoyances and greatly improve the user experience. Inside the kernel, one important change centers on how multithreaded applications are run. The threading advances provide benefits in energy reduction, scalability, and, in theory, performance.