Brian Krebs from The Washington Post has been advising the average Windows user on various things. A while ago, people started asking him if they could trust a Service Pack for the .Net framework. While you probably are well aware about .Net, what it is and what it does, many people are not. So Brian took it upon himself to test the SP and after some time gave it a go.

However, it seems now that when installing this update, Microsoft is so friendly to add their own add-on for FireFox. While it is nice to see that MS is acknowledging FF as a major player in the browser world, it is not the normal way to install add-ons. One of the great features of FF has always been it extendability, but moreover the choice what & when to extend it.

No big deal right? Let’s just go and remove this unwanted extension. Right, this would work with any other developer, but we are dealing with Microsoft, which means the ‘Uninstall’ button is disabled, and removing the add-on is only possible through some obscure registry hacks, with which you don’t only risk in breaking the good operation of your favorite browser, but also your whole OS when you don’t really know what you’re doing.

Nobody really knows how this add-on behaves, but personally I don’t like this situation at all. Like Brian says in his article, it makes you wonder what else Microsoft’s installs behind your back… Maybe calling this malware is a bit over the top, but nevertheless I’m going to tag this post with it, since such behaviour is typical for malware, and it’s not because it’s coming from MS that we should keep one eye closed.

It’s already bad enough the Redmond company does not seem to be able to create a decent browser of their own, but now they seem to have to mess up the work of others as well. I for one am not very happy with this. In fact this makes me going to avoid Microsoft software even more than before, and I hope the same for you as well… Remember, it’s for your own good .

On the security side it’s probably a bit early to tell. It’s clear that Microsoft has plenty of experience creating relative insecure browsers and hopefully they have learned from earlier mistakes. Of course you have to look at this in perspective. IE still is the one with the biggest market share, so it only makes sense that more security issues and bugs are found faster. This in turn is also the main reason the browser is targeted the most by malware authors. On the other hand, being the leading software in your field, my opinion is that security should be top priority. I’m not saying it isn’t over at Redmond, but we can all agree it doesn’t always look that way. Surely problems will arise sooner or later, whether IE8 will live up to it’s expectation here, I guess only time will tell.

So what about the standards side? I for one can only be happy with the fact that finally Microsoft has decided to be more standards-compliant. This is definitely a step in the right direction. But let’s take a closer look… Over at the IE blog, there’s an interesting post about backwards-compatibility. To ensure that old(er) sites work seamlessly with this new version, IE8 is getting shipped with what is called Compatibility View. This mode is there to make sure IE7 code still runs on IE8, even if it’s not really adhering to the standards. And I think here is where the problems start. If you browse down on the blog-post to the comments, you can see a lot of people are concerned about this. In essence IE8 is providing 2 new ways of rendering pages. One of course using the native IE8 mode, using the provided standards, the other one implementing sometimes strange behaviour in handling code. This is surely going to cause quite some headaches with developers.

Last but not least, I’d like to share some Microsoft marketing trick I found lining out the different loading times of IE8, Firefox and Chrome. Personally I found the video quite funny, but what scares me is that a lot of end-users will walk right into this. I’m not saying the claims made are wrong or twisted, but I do wonder if people really think speed is THAT important. Let’s be honest here, who really cares if a site takes one of half a second longer to load in your browser of choice. Differences like this are really marginal. What should matter most is the overall performance of the application, on all domains. Such a campaign proves one thing for me: Microsoft is really feeling the heat from Firefox and Chrome breathing down it’s neck. They are afraid, and they should be!

Reason for all this was bad coding which didn’t incorporate a leap year. Since 2008 was of this kind, the software couldn’t handle an extra day after number 365. Numerous blogposts have been appearing on this topic. One of the possible workarounds first suggested was to hard-reset the player, wiping the updated firmware altogether. This however required getting the battery out, which in turn voided the warranty.

Meanwhile Microsoft has acknowledged the problem an posted their own workaround, being to let the Zune power down completely and only to charge/power on again in the afternoon on the 1st of January (GMT time). The fact stays however that this is a major fuck-up on their part. Things like this should have been tested, and one can only wonder how this ever got passed their QC-department. The proposed workaround doesn’t actually solve the issue, and next leap year this will happen again. Let’s hope Microsoft releases better firmware before that time!

This is very good news indeed, as it will enable Linux users to run Silverlight websites natively. Since the development is sponsored by Novell, and they have a partnership with Microsoft, they were even able to throw in the official Microsoft codecs, meaning even more compatibility.

While I’m personally a bit sceptic about this Novell/M$ marriage, in this case it’s clearly proving to be a good step. Who would have thought not so long ago that Linux users would ever get free software with official Microsoft licensed codecs in it? Right, nobody .

I think a lot of Linux people are eargerly waiting for this one. Microsoft themselves promised some time ago a plugin for Silverlight on Linux, but so far I haven’t seen one bit of that promise. And since they are able to provide one for Mac OS X, I find it quite strange that they leave the Linux community out in the cold. Maybe I’m wrong on this one as I haven’t really followed up on it so well, so please, if you know more then me, don’t be shy and leave a comment .

I can’t wait to check this thing out. Probably it won’t be working 100%, but hey it’s still a beta after all, and at least some compatibility is already appreciated. Big thanks to Novell & Microsoft for this one .

The new software, codenamed ‘Morro’ is supposed to be a light version of OneCare.  The program will be used to detect viruses and other types of malware. Other features that are present on OneCare, like the defragmentation and backup tool, will not be included in Morro.

This is probably a good thing for the consumer market, but don’t get too enthusiastic. After all, we’re still talking about Microsoft here. While I don’t have any experience with their current suite, I doubt it is as good as other commercial or even free alternatives. On the other hand, they know the Windows system better than anyone else, so if they take this thing serious enough, this might just become something all Windows-users want!

Surely to be followed…

This new hardware is developed by the Redmond company and is supposed to combine the power of optical and the precision of laser, providing a superior mousing experience.

It’s easy to recharge with the accompanied docking station and also has a whole new design & style, as the mouse emits a cool blue light when you pull it out of its docking.

It works as following, the mouse makes use of a proprietary chip which houses advanced algorithms and pixel architecture for even better tracking. The blue optics used provide superior navigational accuracy just like laser mice. This light also is emitted in a wider and more diffuse beam to aid it earlier mentioned accuracy, while also it’s more incoherent, providing the same experience in a dusty environment as it would on a clean surface. This new toy is available from this month, and priced around $100 (about €75).

While above is all presented very nice, I don’t think the majority of people will really notice the difference. Nowadays mice, especially the laser type, already provide a very good accuracy. Maybe some die-hard gamers will run to the stores to get this goody, but the average Joe is already well served with the existing technologies.

Does this really matter? No! In the end, the existing hardware will have to be replaced sooner or later, it’s just a matter of time before we all have a Bluetrack. On the other hand, since Microsoft has probably patented this technology, this leaves very little possibility for competitors to create their own variant. Either they have to take a licence with MS, or develop their own new technology. I don’t see a company like Logitech eager to use this technology, as they most likely have the resources to come up with something of their own.

I hope this is not going to be another ‘Microsoft-only’ thing, like we had with the Office document standards. Okay, you can in no way compare these to each other, but I wouldn’t be surprised if in the end it’ll be exactly the same deal…

I’d like to express my many thanks to my wonderful girlfriend for all the moral support and testing me with questions . Also thanks to my employer for giving me this opportunity!

Now 3 more to go…

This new version, which is supposed to be an even more fierceful competitor for Adobe’s popular Flash player, looks very promising. Among one of the most eye-catching improvements is the promise that this new version will be shipped with cross-platform and cross-browser support.

Supported platforms are Microsoft Windows (duh ), Mac OS X, but surprisingly, also Linux. For the browser world, you can use Internet Explorer (another big duh of course), but also Firefox and Safari.

I’m glad too see Microsoft has gotten the message from the community and is releasing this functionality also for Mac & Linux users. With version 1 so closely tied to their own Windows platform, they have had a lot of criticism to endure. Of course Mono (2) promised to partly cover these platforms, but it’s nice to see that our Redmond friends took a closer look at some other popular operating systems.

On the browser side, I’m a bit disappointed to not see any Opera support. Probably in the next few weeks we’ll see some workarounds and community patches surfacing for this, but nevertheless, I’m surprised it’s not natively supported. However I’m sure this is only a matter of time.

Whether this newest Silverlight release will be nibbling at the market share of Flash is still to be seen. So far, I haven’t really seen much use of it myself, apart from during the Beijing Olympics, where Microsoft had cleverly set up some partnerships in an attempt to boost their software use. The main drawback at the time was of course the lack of support for other browsers and platforms. Now that this has been solved (however yet to be proven), Silverlight can finally really take off. Probably more partnerships with big content providers are coming, but now at least it has a good chance of breaking through to the mainstream.

I’m sure that we’ll hear and mostly see more about this the coming weeks/months. For the time being, I’m going to take a look how Silverlight performs on my Ubuntu/Firefox setup . To be continued …

Update 15/10: Tried to download it yesterday for Linux, but currently the runtime for this platform is not yet available… Only Windows & Mac are to be found.

Many fellow bloggers on the Net are of course flaming Microsoft for this decision. Personally, I don’t care so much, but one has to scratch his head at the following statement:

Simply put, this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore “Windows 7″ just makes sense.

Now, in my opinion, however you look at previous Windows releases, there is no way that this counts up to the seventh release…

Yet again, Microsoft techs seem to be intimidated, owned, bitchslapped, whatever you want to call it, by their marketing department. Or not? Let’s face it, nobody really cares about what they name it, as long as it functions. I see a lot of discussion about kernel version numbers here & there, release dates, versions, all the mumbo jumbo, but what the heck, let’s cut them some slack…

Now people who know me will attest to this, I’m not the biggest Microsoft-fan on the globe. Hell, if I’d get it my way, they’d probably have a lot less market-share. But ever since they released Vista, I’ve been seeing light at the end of the tunnel.

Yes I know, Vista is not perfect, but what OS is (and no Linux isn’t either )?? In the end, it all depends on preference, just with about anything else in life. Let’s just hope the Microsoft-boys will have learned from their mistakes with Vista. If so, I think we can expect a hell of a good release with this new version.

Anyway, the beast is out . Seems they will be handing out pre-beta versions to some developers soon, so now the wait for the rest of us to find them on torrent-sites begins!