vista

Microsoft is hoping that with some of Vista's wrinkles ironed out, customers will start noticing more of the advantages the year-old operating system has over its predecessor.

In an interview Wednesday morning, Corporate Vice President Mike Nash acknowledged that the initial experience for many consumers was a frustrating one as they found their old software might not work right or that their hardware lacked the proper driver.

But, he insists, the situation is much better now. Not only are the hardware drivers out there, they are readily available.

"You don't have to go on a scavenger hunt,&… Read more

Now that Mac OS X Leopard has arrived, and Microsoft's Windows Vista slowly gains more acceptance, it's time for another battle of the heavyweight operating systems. Tom Merritt counts down the five biggest differences between Mac and Windows in another edition of CNET TV Top 5.

Microsoft plans to release a trio of updates for Windows Vista this week, a move the company said should help ease some of the top complaints leveled against the operating system.

The patches, expected to be issued Tuesday, address core issues like performance, reliability, and stability of the nearly year-old operating system.

One update aims to improve battery life on mobile devices, boost stability of wireless connections, and improve the operating system's response time following a period of inactivity.

A second patch deals with the operating system's interactions with USB ports, in particular when systems wake from sleep … Read more

Now that Crave UK has gone on record saying that it believes an Apple tablet is not only in the works, but sitting atop the list of Steve Jobs' future announcements, will it be capable of turning the tablet industry around?

Some may say that the future of tablets are bright because they are quite practical when you come right down to it. And while I agree that some of them can be useful, they haven't caught on because no one has any idea of how to get them to work. But if a company that has sold us on a new way of using a cell phone is getting in the business, it's difficult for me to count this tablet out.… Read more

Sony customers like different, but not too different.

Though Sony now offers midrange notebooks, the higher-end Vaios are selling much faster, according to Mike Abary, senior vice president of Sony's IT products division.

The options for colors and limited-edition designs from artists helped push a lot of Vaios out the door in the last quarter. Those artsy laptops also come with higher price tags, and for that reason, don't expect Sony to get into the low-end laptop race any time soon, Abary added.

The personalization trend in PCs that Sony has latched onto has overall been successful, but … Read more

For a brief time Friday, it looked as if developers were going to be able to get their hands on a test version of the first Vista service pack, which is due for final release next year.

Enthusiast site Neowin noticed a posting on Microsoft's MSDN developer site that promised developers could "Get the latest preview of Windows Vista SP1 on MSDN Subscriber Downloads." The site also said, "This new release of SP1 addresses reliability and performance issues, and provides support for new hardware and several emerging standards," according to Neowin.

That would have been … Read more

Every time Adrian Kingsley-Hughes blogs about Apple, a kitten dies.

Well, on the inside anyway.

This time out, AKH starts by noting how similar Leopard and Vista are.

Like Vista is [sic] long awaited...

Yeah. Six years, two and a half. What's the difference?

Oh, that's right. Four Three [Gar! Antlers must be growing into the Macalope's brain!] and a half years.

...like Vista the launch was delayed...

The Macalope will just point out that Bill Gates originally stated that Vista would ship in 2005 and it didn't ship until this year. Leopard was delayed six … Read more

Yesterday, Microsoft's program manager for sound in Windows Vista (what a great title!), Steve Ball, posted a blog entry explaining why audio playback sometimes gets glitchy in Windows.

There's an air of post-facto justification about the posting--it basically reminds us that a PC is doing a lot more things simultaneously than, say, a $20 CD player--but toward the end of the post, he notes that it's common for certain older device drivers to lock out the CPU for 10 milliseconds to 50ms, causing an obvious problem.

I'd be curious to know what some of those devices … Read more

About 9 percent of the Mac OS X installed base upgraded to Mac OS X Leopard over the weekend, according to figures released by Apple and estimates supplied by financial analysts.

Apple sold 2 million copies of Leopard between Friday and Sunday night, which includes sales of boxed copies, online sales, and new Macs with Leopard preinstalled. When Apple launched Tiger, it took the company 39 days to hit the 2 million mark on a much smaller installed base.

Piper Jaffray released a research note Tuesday estimating that the Mac OS X installed base is around 23 million users at … Read more