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Microsoft and Ford bought a lot of advertisements on NFL football broadcasts over the four-day Thanksgiving weekend. The companies are pushing Sync, which is the latest outgrowth of Microsoft's decade-long effort to provide software for use in automobiles.

In this case, Microsoft might actually succeed. Simplicity is the key: unlike past scenarios floated for the Windows Automotive platform, Sync isn't intended to help control your car (leading to the inevitable blue screen jokes) or connect to the Internet or serve as the back-end for an in-car control panel. Instead, it gives you voice command over Bluetooth-enabled phones and … Read more

Remember the Fake Sun Roof? Now there's a pretend window you can put up on a blank wall too.

Designed by Mongoose, it's a potential solution for overworked, underpaid underlings who complain that they're stuck in a window-less room all day. To create that clever illusion of sunlight, Makoto Hirahara's Bright Blind uses electroluminescent sheets. If the fake sunlight gets a bit too bright, simply adjust the blind down just like the real thing.

According to gnr8, these are custom-made and available, though other gadget blogs state that it's still a concept. Whatever the case, … Read more

Let me preface this post with the fact that I have been a sworn Mac user since 1995. Let me add that a few weeks ago I tried to use Windows just for my trip to Japan, and I bailed out after one painful day. I even had our IT guy kill a perfectly good Thinkpad with Ubuntu I hated Vista so much.

When Leopard came out a few weeks ago (it was a Friday) I went to the Apple store in San Francisco to buy it immediately but got spiked until the 6 p.m. grand reveal. So, the next day I went downtown first thing and picked up both Leopard and the new iLife. Easy enough.

I expected a few bumps in the upgrade of the OS and the applications. Sure enough, that happened but it was nothing major.

It has only been after a few weeks of usage that I find myself experiencing both OS and application crashes reminiscent of the mid-'90s when you had to obsessively save your work since you knew your Mac was going to crash at some point. I was bred into a "save early, save often" Mac culture at my first job in NYC where people would occasionally lose hours worth of work.

That was then, this is now. Or so I thought. … Read more

Microsoft late last week released an updated test version of Windows XP Service Pack 3 to about 15,000 beta testers. The update, the third such service pack for the six-year-old operating system is due out in final form in the first half of next year. The company said before its final release it expects to issue a public test version of the service pack, though it did not provide more specificity than at "a later date."

"We are targeting (the first half of) 2008 for the release of XP SP3," Microsoft said, "though our … Read more

King Research has issued the results of a survey of IT executives that finds that 90% of IT workers have concerns with Vista, which piles on similar results from a Forrester study which found that more than 50% of IT executives have concerns with rolling out Vista (and that only 32% will do so in 2008).

In fact, the upgrade to Vista is painful enough that "44% have considered non-Windows operating systems, such as Linux and Macintosh, to avoid the Microsoft migration." (Interestingly, 9% of those saying they have considered non-Windows operating systems already in the process of switching and a further 25% expecting to switch within the next year. I can tell you that my own company went from being 100% Windows two years ago and is now 50-60% Mac.) If you're Windows, you're concerned at this point. Very concerned.

But not necessarily with these rival operating systems. As is the case in many open-source companies (where their own software working too well is their biggest competition to their for-fee products), the Microsoft's XP may well be its biggest competitor, as Dave Rosenberg writes:… Read more

Are you kidding me? ZDNet takes something that has been common knowledge for years and treats it as if it was news?

I'm speaking of the dog and pony show that Tom Espiner wrote about on November 13th with the eye catching headline Microsoft exec calls XP hack 'frightening'. Great headline, it got my attention.

The computer in question was running Windows XP with Service Pack 1 and was connected to an unsecured wireless network. Adding more vulnerabilities to the mix, "The machine was running no antivirus, firewall, or anti-spyware software..." according to Mr. Espiner.

I'd … Read more

While searching for new Windows themes, Saad finds an inauspicious link in a Web forum that leads to an invasion of unwanted software on his PC. Luckily, he follows the advice of CNET Download.com editors to restore his system to a healthy state.

Get advice for avoiding similar dangerous sites during your own Web browsing sessions. Read Saad's tale of Windows theme woes in this week's Spyware Horror Story.

>>See all Spyware Horror Stories