Microsoft

Microsoft on Monday briefly posted pricing for Windows Vista on its Canadian Web site, giving an eye into what the company will charge for the new operating system.

The posting indicates that the Home Basic edition of Windows Vista will be priced the same as Windows XP Home, at US$233 ($259 Canadian). The Home Premium version, which includes support for Media Centre and tablet PC abilities will sell for 13 percent higher rate, a price that translates to about US$269.

Microsoft's been up to several things in the past week or so. Not the least surprising was the company's invite to Mozilla developers to come up to Redmond and make sure that Firefox and Thunderbird run correctly on Vista. Microsoft also took Small Business Server 2003 R2 out of circulation with a sudden recall. But the company tossed a few new things out there for IT managers, too, just to balance the scales. Unfortunately, they both require some upgrade time.

I received a mail this morning from Microsoft Connect informing me that a new build of Windows Vista, has been released. The build is 5536 which is tagged as 'pre-RC1'. I've been using Vista Build 5472 on my Inspiron 6400 for the past couple of weeks as my MAIN OS and it's been working pretty well (still a few bugs here and there, but I believe that's mainly due to running the Lakeport WDDM driver on the GMA950). My 5536 build is downloading at the moment but initial reports on the net indicate that both the install and overall performance is better than the previous build.

Mozilla has accepted Microsoft's offer of help toward ensuring interoperability between Firefox and the upcoming Vista operating system.

Microsoft's offer to help came on Saturday when Sam Ramji, the director of the company's open-source lab, posted an open letter on a blog used by Mozilla developers. Microsoft offered to open up a new open-source facility at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, to Mozilla software engineers, including giving them one-on-one time with Microsoft workers. The offer includes help with Mozilla's Thunderbird e-mail client.

While not due for general release until this time next year, Microsoft's next-generation server platform, codenamed Longhorn, will be a more secure, manageable, and modular operating system, according to the company.

During his presentation at this year's Tech.Ed conference in Sydney yesterday, Microsoft server division senior product manager David Lowe said security, reliability and performance are the prime concern of people running servers and the company has focused its development efforts on those areas.

There's more trouble with Microsoft's latest Internet Explorer patch: It introduces a serious new security flaw on some Windows systems.

The vulnerability could let miscreants hijack a Windows PC running IE 6 with Service Pack 1 and the MS06-042 update installed, Microsoft said in a security advisory published on Tuesday in the US. The flaw lies in the way IE handles long Web addresses and could be exploited by luring users to specially crafted Web sites, according to the advisory.

Microsoft Corp. is considering discounts or other promotions during the holidays to entice consumers to upgrade their PCs with Windows Vista, even though the new operating system isn't due to hit store shelves until January at the earliest.

Any end-of-the-year effort to spur PC purchases would likely please many retailers and computer manufacturers, who fear disappointing sales during the crucial holiday as consumers wait for the highly anticipated and long-delayed software.

Antivirus veteran Vincent Gullotto will join industry newcomer Microsoft.

Gullotto, former head of McAfee's Antivirus and Vulnerability Emergency Response Team, AVERT, will be general manager of Security Research & Response at Microsoft, a representative for the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant said Wednesday.

"Microsoft is very excited that Vincent Gullotto will be joining Microsoft," the representative said. "We look forward to working with him in his new role." Microsoft did not provide any other details about Gullotto's hiring.

Microsoft confirmed Tuesday that two of the 12 security bulletins issued last week affect Windows Vista Beta 2, the widely-used preview, and posted download instructions for the first security updates to its next-generation operating system.

"We are committed to releas[ing] Windows Vista updates for all MSRC [Microsoft Security Response Center] critical class issues that may arise during the beta testing period," wrote Alex Heaton, product manager for the Windows Vista security team, on the group's blog.

Remember the last stage of Delirium hacking group?

In 2003, the group of four Polish security researchers discovered the vulnerability that would later be used by others to unleash the Blaster worm, but because of distrust over Microsoft's willingness to address software flaws at the time, members had to be coaxed into sharing their findings.

The group, known as LSD, is now on Microsoft's payroll working on what is being hailed as the "largest ever penetration test" of an operating system coming out of Redmond, Wash.