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Windows 7 tops Vista in early consumer sales by more than 200%

shopon — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:38:05 +0000

It wasn’t a high bar, but Windows 7 cleared it.

Consumer retail sales of Microsoft Corp.’s newest computer operating system topped those of Vista by 234% on a unit basis within the first few days of its Oct. 22 launch, according to a report released Friday by the market research company NPD Group. The report did not include sales to businesses and large organizations.

News that Windows 7 was outperforming Vista, the previous Windows OS version, in sales was not too surprising. The buzz for Windows 7 was relatively positive and largely void of the savage language that reviewers heaped on Vista when it was launched in January 2007.

This time, Microsoft also attempted to woo reluctant buyers with discounts and specials, such as a 50% discount on a copy of the software when buyers spring for a new PC, or a free upgrade from Vista for those who bought a PC after June 26.

“We definitely saw the results of aggressive pricing,” said Stephen Baker, NPD’s computer software analyst.

Though helpful in pushing volume, the discounts may have crimped Microsoft’s overall revenue from the product. The NPD report was mum on the sales impact on Microsoft’s top line.

It may be too early to say whether the software would help ignite sales of personal computers. With consumers making do with their old computers or opting for ultra-cheap netbooks, average PC prices have dropped around 20% since last year, Baker said.

Although unit sales of Windows 7 software were up in the first days of launch over those of Vista, sales of computers with Windows 7 were down 4% compared with sales of Vista-based computers when Vista launched.

But the comparison is not a fair one, Baker cautioned, because Vista launched in January, when PC sales tend to do better, and Windows 7 launched in October, one of the slowest months for PC sales.

Still, the slow economy may have helped Windows 7 sales in one respect, said Richard Shim, a PC analyst with the technology research company IDC.

“Usually upgrades are not very popular. People have tended to buy new PCs when new operating systems come out,” Shim said.

“Windows 7 seems to be an exception,” he said. “One reason is that it can work well with older computers because it’s designed to be streamlined.”

In other words, instead of spending $500 for a new computer, some consumers are springing the $120 to $220 for Windows 7 upgrades and souping up their old machines.

Microsoft Exec Backs Off Windows 7 ‘Hack’ Comment

shopon — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:30:17 +0000

A Microsoft executive whose pointed comments on Windows 7 upgrades have irked Microsoft bloggers has apologized. Well, in a roundabout sort of way, that is.

In a Monday blog post, Eric Ligman, global partner experience lead in Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Group, said his now-infamous blog post titled “Regardless of what any hack says, a Windows 7 upgrade is an upgrade” wasn’t aimed at Microsoft bloggers, but at technical workarounds that make it possible to clean install Windows 7 using upgrade media.

“So for anyone out there thinking my post was trying to ‘make an example’ of someone as a ‘hack’ or that I was calling someone specifically a ‘hack,’ sorry to disappoint you,” Ligman wrote in the blog post.

For the past several months, Windows 7 testers have been asking Microsoft for technical details on Windows 7 upgrades but the company hasn’t responded. So some Microsoft bloggers have developed workarounds for clean installing Windows 7 using upgrade media, something Microsoft says is illegal if a machine doesn’t have an existing version of Windows installed.

Ligman, as the public face of Microsoft’s Byzantine software licensing program, has been particularly vocal about the consequences of using improperly licensed software, often invoking the specter of Business Software Alliance audits and other legal troubles.

Some media reports have assumed Ligman’s “hack” reference was to Paul Thurrott of the Supersite For Windows blog, who published details on the Windows 7 upgrade workaround last week. Ed Bott, another noted Microsoft blogger, has also called out Microsoft over the issue. So have dozens of posters who’ve left comments on Ligman’s Microsoft SMB Community blog.

But Ligman insists he wasn’t using the term “hack” in a pejorative sense. “There appears to be a lot of reading through ‘pre-determined conclusion’ lenses,” Ligman wrote in the blog post.

Although Ligman is downplaying the issue, Thurrott sees it as an example of Microsoft’s heavy-handed approach to software licensing and its tendency to punish its body of customers for the actions of a few software pirates.

“This is very much about how Microsoft communicates with his customers, and while Ligman tries to make the case that Microsoft cares very much about its customers, this little episode is telling them otherwise,” Thurrott wrote in a Monday blog post .

The good news is that the Windows 7 upgrade kerfluffle has led to a great deal of feedback that Ligman says he has shared with higher-ups.

“I have submitted your various comments on this topic to the appropriate people for that topic and will be happy (believe me) to post the exact link to where you should go for this information as soon as I hear back,” Ligman wrote.

Happy Birthday Internet

shopon — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 07:27:53 +0000

On this day 40 years ago (wegathernews.com), the very first e-mail message (long before they called it e-mail, of course) was sent by UCLA’s Leonard Kleinrock over the ARPANET system from Los Angeles to the Stanford Research Institute, more than 400 miles away.

Kleinrock, while still a student at MIT, developed the principles of “packet switching,” which allows the basic data-transfer functions of the Internet. As a professor at UCLA, Kleinrock helped develop ARPANET, the interconnected computer network from which the Internet evolved. Today more than 1.6 billion people around the world are connected to the network.

What was that first momentous message, you may be wondering? It said simply “lo” — the message was meant to read “login,” but the computer crashed almost immediately.

Internet domain names displayed in their own languages

shopon — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:05:19 +0000

Finally, the World Wide Web will live up to its name. The decision by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers that Web sites written in Russian, Chinese, Arabic, and other non-ASCII character sets will be able to have their Internet domain names displayed in their own languages truly makes the Web a global worldwide network. For the past 40 years (the Internet turned 40 this week) the Internet and the Web have been the exclusive domain of English language addresses. For non-English speaking countries it has been the real world equivalent to forcing them to use English language stationary.

No longer will entire countries be forced to use Latin-based characters and their Web addresses and e-mail addresses will now be as recognizable as their telephone book. The move is being heralded by ICANN as the biggest technical change to the Internet since its birth.

A Truly Worldwide Wed

For that reason many around the world are cheering the move as a way of opening up Internet access to more people.

“The net result will be an expansion of the Internet in terms of resources and users. Small local businesses are likely to benefit as their Internet and e-mail address can now be in their own local language,” according to a writer for Asia Times Online.

The Korea Herald pointedly quoted ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom as saying the new Internet names are “very important not only for more than half of the current [Internet] users but also for half of the Internet users to come.”

More than 50 percent of the current total of 1.6 billion Internet users speak languages that aren’t Latin-based, according to widely used estimates.

World Wide Web of Babel

Yet on the other hand, the new names carry risks for new security concerns and general user confusion. Some fear the Web might grow increasingly fragmented into areas easily accessible only to those conversant in local languages.

There are certainly lots of languages in the world, a problem mythologized in the Biblical tale of the fall of the Tower of Babel, in which God punished people by scattering them across the face of the Earth and splitting the human language into many different tongues.

Google, the world’s leading search engine, now does support searches conducted with the use of Korean and Arabic character sets, for instance.

But ICANN’s actions, although well intended, also raise nuts-and-bolts questions that are yet to be answered.

How will you be able to type the domain names of international Web sites when your keyboard doesn’t support their character sets?

It would be logistically just about impossible for a PC maker to supply a keyboard supporting the Western “ABC” alphabet, along with the disparate character sets used in all of these tongues, for example: Japanese, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic, and the Central and European languages.

It’s true that you can download fonts used in these languages, along with “virtual keyboard layouts” that spare you the need to buy separate physical keyboards.

But things can get very dicey here. For instance, Russian keyboards are reportedly slightly different on Windows and Mac PCs.

And to handle the virtual keyboards with much efficiency, you need to put special stickers on your keys. Just how many virtual keyboards and sets of stickers is anyone supposed to have on hand in the house or office?

It looks as though we could see the development of a whole new class of Web domains that most people won’t be able to get to easily — even though they might be able to find those Web sites with a search engine.

Certainly language translation services and technology may be the biggest winners with today’s news. I predict both will flourish along with an international land grab for variations of the word “sex” dot-com.

The history of internet :40th anniversary

shopon — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:29:20 +0000

It is 40 years to the week since the first data packets were sent over the Arpanet.

That was the research network commissioned by the US Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Arpa) to see whether computer-to-computer communications could be made faster, more reliable and more robust by using the novel technique of packet switching instead of the more conventional circuit switched networks of the day.

Instead of connecting computers rather as telephone exchanges work, using switches to set up an electric circuit over which data could be sent, packet switching breaks a message into chunks and sends each chunk – or packet – separately, reassembling them at the receiving end.

Late on October 29 1969 Charley Kline sat down at a computer in the computer laboratory at UCLA, where he was a student, and established a link to a system at the nearby Stanford Research Institute, sending the first data packets over the nascent Arpanet.

Later in the year permanent links were made between four sites in the US, and over the following years the ARPANET grew into a worldwide research network.

Arpanet was one of the computer networks that coalesced into today’s internet, and the influence of the standards and protocols established there can still be seen today, making this anniversary as important for historians of the network society as July’s celebration of the 1969 Apollo 11 landing is for those who study space science.

Technology does not stand still, and over the years the way computers communicate with each other has changed enormously. Early Arpanet computers used the Network Control Protocol to talk to each other, but in 1983 this was replaced with the more powerful and flexible TCP/IP – the transmission control protocol and internet protocol.

Today we are in the process of migrating our networks from IP version 4 to IP version 6, which allows for more devices to be connected to the network and is more secure and robust, but work continues to improve and refine all aspects of the network architecture.

One area that is changing is the domain name system, DNS. This links the unique number that identifies every device on the internet with one or more names, making it possible to type in “www.bbc.co.uk” and go to the right web server without having to remember its number.

Designed by engineer Paul Mockapetris in 1983, DNS is a vital component of the network as well as the web, including e-mail and instant messaging. Every time a programme uses a name for a computer instead of a number, DNS is involved.

However DNS, like so much of the network’s architecture, was developed by English-speaking westerners, and its original design only allowed standard ASCII characters to be used in names.

ASCII, the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a way of representing letters, numbers and punctuation in the binary code used by computers, and was originally based on old telegraphic codes.

It works really well for English, but had to be extended and updated to cope with other alphabets, and has now been replaced by the much more powerful and capable Unicode standard, able to represent non-Latin languages as well as those based on the Latin alphabet.

Being able to write in your own language is one thing, but it’s also important to be able to have e-mail or website addresses that use it. Unfortunately the design of DNS meant that key aspects would not work with anything other than ASCII, making it impossible to simply add in Chinese or Arabic characters to domain.

Work has been going on since the mid 90′s to change this and provide what are called “internationalized domain names”, and many organisations are now able to have websites and email addresses that include Chinese, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic and many other alphabets.

The process took a significant step forward this week when Icann, the international body that looks after domain names, fast-tracked a proposal to provide internationalised versions of two letter country domains, such as .uk and .jp.

This will finally allow users of these domains to have a domain name that is entirely in characters based on their native language, and marks an important point in the internationalisation of the whole internet.

It has taken a long time to make this happen, but the problems of re-engineering such a key part of the network infrastructure without breaking anything are enormous, and anyone who reads through the technical documentation will see just how complex the process has been.

And it was definitely necessary to do it properly – the fuss over the recent retuning of Freeview boxes in the UK was bad enough, but trying to persuade a billion internet users to update their software to support a new form of DNS would have been impossible.

Over the next five years the majority of new internet users will come from the non English-speaking world. It’s good to see that those of us who have helped build the network so far are making it more welcoming for them.

without Wi-Fi high price Apple’s iPhone

shopon — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:44:22 +0000

The iPhone saw its formal debut in China Friday on carrier China Unicom, with the Wi-Fi-less hardware sold via 2,000 stores at a starting price of 4,999 yuan, or $730.

That high price was cited by The Wall Street Journal as the “buzz-killer” over the handset’s debut. The high-end iPhone 3GS sells for 6,999 yuan ($1,024) without a service contract, which is how most people in China purchase their phones. The same handset can be bought for about $800 in Hong Kong.

“When wrapped together with a service plan, as is generally done in the U.S., the phone will cost Chinese subscribers at least $3,120 over two years, compared with the roughly $2,600 cost for the same period for customers in the U.S.,” the report said.

The average cost of a smartphone in China is $350. And Apple must also compete with an estimated 2 million imported iPhones that were already in China as of the summer of 2009.

The cheapest iPhone runs 4,999 yuan, or $630, according to The Associated Press. And all of the officially sanctioned models come without Wi-Fi. But an imported iPhone 3GS with Wi-Fi can be bought from Chinese street markets for 5,700 yuan, or $835.

China Unicom said it hopes to have Wi-Fi in the next batch of iPhones it intends to release by the end of the year. The feature was left out of the hardware because the government’s regulations temporarily banned the system in favor of a rival Chinese offering known as BDA. That ban, however, was relaxed in May, after manufacturing of the new iPhone model began.

The iPhone’s debut in China has been delayed not only by Chinese government regulations, but also talks with the nation’s carriers. The country of over 1 billion is the largest cell phone market in the world, and one that Apple has been eager to take a crack at, despite a number of setbacks.

The agreement between Apple and China Unicom was made official in August. The non-exclusive agreement has left the door open for Apple to turn to competitor China Mobile, the world’s largest wireless operator. Apple has been in negotiations with China Mobile for some time. China Mobile has 508 million wireless subscribers, while China Unicom has 143 million mobile accounts.

Microsoft selling crapware-free PCs in its stores

shopon — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:00:45 +0000

The computers at Microsoft Stores don’t have the crapware that Windows PCs typically come with, but they still have an assortment of Microsoft and Adobe software. Most controversially, they include Windows Live Essentials and Microsoft Security Essentials.

By Emil Protalinski | Last updated October 28, 2009 8:15 AM CT


Not only is Microsoft reselling select Windows 7 PCs normally sold by its hardware partners, but the company is making sure they come only with the software it wants. Yes, that means that if you buy a PC from Microsoft, it won't come with the usual "crapware," though it won't be a clean install either. Microsoft is still bundling its own software, including Windows Live Essentials and Microsoft Security Essentials, as well as Adobe software.
Last Thursday when Windows 7 officially arrived, Microsoft opened up its first store in Scottsdale, Arizona (a second store is to follow in Mission Viejo, California). As expected, the store was stocked with Windows 7 PCs from various OEMs, and Microsoft even went the extra mile by selling them at its online store, though only in the US. It didn't become clear until recently, however, that Microsoft was doing more to these PCs than just picking them up and putting them on display.
The new "Microsoft Signature PCs" initiative means the software giant is removing all preinstalled software from the computers it is selling, and loading them instead with full versions of programs of its own choosing. We decided to check for ourselves, and there are indeed Microsoft Signature PCs from every PC maker Microsoft's stores sell: Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba. They're all crapware-free.
For the uninitiated, "crapware" is the term used to describe bundled software, usually trial versions or unwanted programs, which other companies pay computer makers to preinstall on their PCs. This keeps PC prices competitive, but it also clogs up computers with useless… well, crap. A typical PC from an OEM can come with any number of third-party applications, many of which are a pain to remove.
Our favorite way to deal with such software is PC Decrapifier, a freeware program designed to remove or uninstall a specific list of unwanted software in an unattended fashion. It currently can remove a total of 63 applications (though this spans different versions) that it labels as crapware, eight of which are Microsoft's own software (most are Office trials). None of those, however, are being installed on Microsoft Signature PCs.
According to the Microsoft Store, Redmond is bundling the following applications on the PCs it is reselling: Microsoft Security Essentials, Bing 3D Maps, Zune 4.0, Playready PC Runtime (for WMC), Adobe Flash Player for IE, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Windows Live Sync, and Windows Live Essentials (which includes Windows Live versions of Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Writer, Family Safety, Toolbar, as well as the Office Live Add-In and Silverlight). Of that list, the first and the last are the ones most worth noting.
Microsoft announced in September 2008 that Windows Mail, Photo Gallery, and Movie Maker would be stripped away from Windows 7 and the company would instead be offering Windows Live versions of the products as part of Windows Live Essentials. The company said it would not force (but would encourage) OEMs to include the suite on new PCs, and it would be including links in Windows 7 to download it. Microsoft Security Essentials, on the other hand, does not have its own download link in Windows 7, and the company said the software was being specifically targeted at users who did not already have an antivirus. Microsoft also said it was perfectly happy with consumers choosing other security software, as long as they were protected.
While slightly different decisions were made for the two Essential suites, Microsoft's reasoning for both has been quite clear: no deals regarding bundling in order to avoid antitrust issues at all costs. It looks like Microsoft has found a loophole for its own rule. The company's lawyers have apparently come to the conclusion that Microsoft as a retailer won't have to worry about antitrust issues when including its own software on PCs that it sells.
Most Windows PCs will of course not be purchased from Microsoft stores, so the initiative will only really be successful if users see real value in the software Redmond is preinstalling. We personally prefer the software that is being offered on Microsoft Signature PCs compared to the usual crapware, as there are no trial versions and most of it we install on the Windows PCs we encounter anyway. That said, we would still end up uninstalling some of the applications Microsoft is listing.
In March 2008, Sony decided to offer consumers the opportunity to pay $50 to get a PC without all the useless software installed. The test didn't get very far though; the company killed it after the move raised the question as to whether or not crapware is acceptable at all. Microsoft has been angered by crapware on machines for ages, but it particularly got annoyed in January 2007, at the start of the Vista age.

The company made a lot of changes in the development of Windows 7 and marketing of Windows 7; now it appears the company is trying to change the software that comes with Windows 7. It's a shame that OEMs are unlikely follow suit.

Verizon Droid Smartphone Could Give iPhone a ‘Jab in the Ribs`

shopon — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:17:10 +0000

Elgato’s EyeTV 1.0.1 for the iPhone finally appeared on Apple’s App store on Tuesday with the promised fix that prevents live TV streaming over 3G. The update also fixed bugs and improved overall performance.

The 1.0.1 update fixed an issue where audio continued to play after leaving Live TV mode, fixed crashes related to changing channels and zooming, added DVB and ATSC programming guides, accepts iPod Best variants when streaming to the iPhone, and more.

The EyeTV app temporarily disappeared from the App Store over the weekend because it included code that let users stream live TV shows over 3G.

“Some test code that enabled live TV streaming over the cellular network was accidentally left in the the EyeTV App,” David Fanning, Elgato’s press contact, told The Mac Observer. “Apple requested that we remove the code since their agreement with AT&T does not allow redirecting TV signals over the cellular network.”

Elgato submitted a version 1.0.1 update to Apple without the test code on Saturday, and by Sunday EyeTV was available at the App Store again. The version number for the app, however, was still listed at 1.0. The application was available at the App Store for about a month before it was pulled.

EyeTV 1.0.1 Plugs 3G Streaming Hole, More

shopon — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:17:46 +0000

The EyeTV app temporarily disappeared from the App Store over the weekend because it included code that let users stream live TV shows over 3G.

Mozilla Blocking Microsoft Plug-Ins

shopon — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:53:28 +0000

Firefox users on Windows may see the nearby window pop up on Firefox soon. Mozilla has begun to use its blocklisting mechanism to block these add-ons.

Among the vulnerabilities disclosed by Microsoft last Tuesday was MS09-054, a Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer. As Microsoft explains in an entry on their Security Research & Defense blog, the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 installs a “Windows Presentation Foundation” plug-in in Firefox. The vulnerability in this component opens up a browse-and-get-owned attack in Firefox.

There are two confusing parts to this issue as I see it: first, the same Microsoft SRD blog entry states unequivocally that “…any customers that have applied the update associated with MS09-054 are protected, regardless of the attack vector.” I did this Tuesday, and yet Firefox just blocked it for me anyway. In fact, the blocklist says clearly that all versions of the add-on are blocked. The other thing is that Mozilla is blocking the “Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant” add-on too. I don’t see this code implicated anywhere in the Microsoft documentation.

Microsoft definitely lost whatever good will they might have had with the Firefox people by setting these add-ons to install without permission from users and for making them (initially) difficult to uninstall. Perhaps this had some impact on Mozilla’s decisions here.

[Edited to add:] If the idea is that the unpatched add-on is really dangerous, or perhaps to pre-empt future vulnerabilities, then Mozilla certainly should also be blocking Acrobat and Flash, both of which have a far more dubious security history than .NET. The blocklist page indicates that Mozilla can discriminate with respect to version numbers, so blocking all versions of these add-ons makes no sense.

Originally posted to the PCMag.com security blog, Security Watch.