The ad, which has just aired for the first time in the US, shows Microsoft founder Bill Gates and comedian Jerry Seinfeld trying to “reconnect with real people” by moving in with a “normal” family.
It features Gates doing the robot dance and reading bedtime stories while Seinfeld - who was paid $US10 million for his part in the campaign - becomes embroiled in family politics.
The ad has been interpreted as a metaphor for what Microsoft is trying to achieve with the campaign. Whereas Apple’s “I’m a Mac” ads have been interpreted as an elitist Mac user bashing an ordinary PC user, the Microsoft ad positions the company as connecting with ordinary people…
The latest Windows packs a lot of code — more than any version of Windows ever — and some of it is just plain unnecessary. All of that excess code has a way of slowing down an operating system. You can regain some PC performance by removing unneeded features.
Computeruser identified a dozen Vista features that you can turn off right now. Some are shiny baubles that slow down graphics performance, while others are optional utilities that hog memory when they shouldn’t. A few can actually be quite useful, though they play a major role in bogging down your PC…
Lifehacker has written a tutorial for stripping your Vista installation down to the bare essentials and copying files over to a USB drive which has much faster transfer rates. This tutorial is especially useful for Administrators who are constantly installing Vista on multiple systems.
Evidently spurred on by the reception it got at Thursday’s financial analysts meeting, Microsoft has decided to move ahead with plans to turn the Mojave project into a full-fledged Windows Vista marketing effort.
As first reported by CNET News, Microsoft last week interviewed XP users who were skeptical of Vista and showed them what it called a secret new version of Windows, “Mojave.” It was in fact Vista. The results, according to Microsoft executives, were almost universally positive, with participants expressing surprise when told it was actually Vista they had been using.
For now, Microsoft has put up a teaser site, with plans to show the actual video footage next week…
Microsoft claims that 180 million Vista licenses has been sold since the operating system’s launch in January 2007, but the critics are doubtful whether the demand for Vista is increasing, or it’s stable or even decreasing.
According to the report, Microsoft said, it sold 20 million copies in the first month, 40 million copies in its first 100 days and 60 million in 6 months. But these numbers include Express Upgrade Sales for Vista, under which customers were given free upgrade option from Windows XP operating system.
Microsoft rarely gives out sales numbers, but it seems that the company just wants to create a healthy picture of Vista in the minds of consumers, after recent criticism about the software…
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has a unique sales pitch for the company’s Windows Vista operating system — if you don’t like it, you can turn it into Windows XP.
Referring to Microsoft licensing policies that allow customers who purchase an operating system to legally install predecessor versions on their PCs, Ballmer noted that the program allows customers who aren’t satisfied with Vista to use XP.
“Customers get both,” said Ballmer, during a brief interview at an event Tuesday in Washington, D.C.
Ballmer was responding to a question about whether Microsoft would extend Window’s XP’s shelf life beyond its scheduled June 30 expiration for the broader PC market. The company earlier this week said it would give XP a reprieve for installations on ultra-low cost desktops.
Ballmer implied that an extension for mainstream PCs isn’t in the cards because customers who want XP past June 30 can simply purchase Vista and exercise the downgrade option. “I don’t know how you can do better than getting both,” he said…
Microsoft’s Windows Vista is 37% more secure than its Windows XP ancestor, a security vendor claimed today, a rate it hinted was disappointing.
Using different data collection techniques, Microsoft has recently asserted that Vista is 60% more secure than XP.
For every 1,000 machines running Vista, security company PC Tools counted 639 unique threats over a six-month period, said Michael Greene, the firm’s vice president of product strategy, on Friday. “A threat is actually when malicious code has penetrated the machine,” Greene said. “The malware has to be on the machine to be counted by our ThreatFire community.”
Vista’s number is lower than the one for Windows XP. Users of PC Tool’s ThreatFire behavioral-based anti-malware software who run the nearly seven-year-old XP reported 1,021 unique threats per 1,000 machines in the same six-month period…
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Friday indicated that Windows 7, the next major version of Windows, could come within the next year, far ahead of the development schedule previously indicated by the software maker.
In response to a question about Windows Vista, Gates, speaking before the Inter-American Development Bank here, said: “Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version.” Referring to Windows 7, the code name for the next full release of Windows client software, Gates said: “I’m super-enthused about what it will do in lots of ways.”
In a decision that highlights Windows Vista’s hefty system requirements, Microsoft said Thursday that it would allow computer makers to continue to sell the older Windows XP operating system on “ultra low-cost PCs” for an extended period.
Microsoft said it would allow system vendors to preload the Home edition of Windows XP on ULCPCs through June 2010, or one year after the next version of Windows becomes generally available.
Microsoft defines ULCPCs as, among other things, systems that use discount-line processors and lack a separate graphics card. An example of such as system is the Asus Eee PC, which runs Windows XP or Linux and sells for less than $400.
Such low-spec machines would be incapable of running Vista…
Free Windows Vista/XP themes, icons, screensavers and wallpapers available to give your pc the most unique look available.
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