Seems like TechNet and MSDN subscribers are lucky yet again! March 1, 2008

Well earlier on in February, full subscribers to TechNet [£300+] and/or MSDN [£600+] were able to get their hand on the first service pack for Vista [SP1] before any other Vista users. Unless you count in all those who got an accidental release from Microsoft or the ones who hacked Windows Update in order to get it.

 Well anyways, it seems as though these rich subscribers yet again get the upper hand as now not only can they get the Update, but they can get the SlipStream version allowing them to make their very own Vista SP1 DVD’s.

For those of you who do not know what this is, let me explain.
When updating to a new SP, some people prefer reinstalling the whole of their OS and then installing the SP as it seems to be a much ‘cleaner’ process. However, it is a little bit long winded if they have to reinstall their OS [clean install] and then download the update and then install that. What slipstreaming allows people to do is rip their Vista DVD onto their computer and then with the Slipstream download, they can install the upgrade into the folder where they ripped Vista in the first place. Once this is done, they can burn the patched version of the ripped vista onto another DVD and there you have it, your very own slipstreamed Vista SP1.

Coming back to the initial point, we regular folks have to wait until the public slipstreamed image is available, which might me another couple weeks or so. =[

Vista RTM & SP1 put to the Office Test February 27, 2008

Adrian Kingsley-hughes of ZDNet blogged a benchmarking test of bothe Vista RTM and SP1 when trying to run various tasks in Office 2007 Professional using scripts [from OfficeBench].

He used a pretty good computer with high specs:
 - Phenom 9700, Radeon 3850 graphics card, 2GB of RAM
which shows that the machine is not incapable of running Vista or Office.

The results are as follows:

	Time to execute test scripts (sec) -No load	Time to execute test scripts (sec) -Load
Vista RTM	265.83	271.06
Vista SP1	273.76	273.97

It seems as though SP1 has brought quite a significant slow down when using Office with no-load as there is an 8 second delay, but Adrian assures us that this will not affect the everyday user of Office. We also see that SP1 remians fairly consistent as it takes roughly 273 secs both times which isnt a bad thing.

So, for those of you who were scared SP1 may slow down your Office running times, dont worry and for those of you who had hoped for a better performance, tough luck.

N.B. In the second set of results for both RTM and SP1, the ‘load’ was just a small video running in the background by the script.

 

Hotmail/Windows Live Mail not working in UK February 26, 2008

Surprisingly, today the 26th of Feb, Hotmail ceased to work. I only discovered this as someone was frantically trying to get a document sent to themselves via email.

I searched online and found out that M$ is apparently upgrading it to Windows Live Mail 8.1 and therefore a lot of the services are down.

Windows Live Messenger seems to be working though so at least all is not at an end hehe

But on a serious note I feel that M$ should have warned us or at least sent out a message entailing why they have had to shut hotmail down etc…

 – UPDATE –

I guess that my original source of Information was wrong. The problem was caused to Windows LiveID failing meaning that the login process could not succeed.

ZDNet reported that people already logged into the system prior to the failure had difficulties logging out.

Also, the reason why it could not have been an update was due to M$ ‘rolling out’ upgrades meaning that they go through enthusiasts, avid beta users etc.. then finally on to the general public.

 

M$ seem to be working hard to get this under control, but seems a little slow to me :S 

M$ Cracking down on Cracks February 23, 2008

Well its only taken them a year to finally realize that their latest OS, Vista, has been cracked in a numerous amount of ways and are deciding to release an update which will cease all the machines running a cracked version of Vista.

However, they are only going to be stopping two cracks:

1. “Grace Timer,” which extends Vista’s activation grace period, which is normally 30 days, until the year 2099.
2. “OEM BIOS”, modifies system files and the PC’s BIOS to mimic the product activation done by computer-makers at the factory.

So for those of you out there working your illegitimate OS’s and using any of the above 2 cracks, then i suggest there’s a little panicking to do. Although sooner or later some nerd out there will find a way to crack Vista, even with SP1 and this latest update – w00t – i would think

— UPDATE —

I mentioned before that the update would cripple your machines, I was wrong!!

KezNews.com reports:

“February’s Vista update, however, will only detect cracks, notify the user and offer up a solution, said Alex Kochis, senior product manager for Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage program, in a post to the team’s blog. It will not disable, block or cripple the cracks.”