A recently produced Microsoft Research promotional video (via Bernard Oh) decorated with various snippets of new and upcoming research projects caught my eye when images of a Windows Vista-like search interface flashed for split seconds. Curious like a cat, I sourced a high-resolution copy of the video to take a closer look.

Even though the focal blur effect is quite ridiculous, you can make out enough visual elements to identify the Aero interface window frame and the address bar. The gray bar below that appears to be some sort of time/date filter with only enough clarity to make out “Last Month”, “This Year” and “Last Year”.

The files in the first screenshot appear stacked by file type, but not the file type you might be familiar with. Folders and programs also appear as a stack, and there are also stacks with multiple types (ex. feed & communication, picture & communication). I can only assume these are feeds or emails with pictures embedded inside them. And unlike the stacks in Windows Vista, these have icons which represent the file types instead of identical blue panels.

The second screenshot shows off the address bar with the search “place” expanded. The list includes “My Computer” and a network share called “MSW” but also external “places” such as Amazon or YouTube. In this screenshot is also a right pane which appear to list the specific files inside a particular stack. The picture stack appears selected, thus a list of PNGs appear.

The third screenshot shows off a very subtle preview overlay when you hover over these stacks. Whilst the picture doesn’t do it justice, the individual previews actually fade in and appear in the “deck” and moves down the deck until it eventually fades out.

In conclusion, I really don’t know what to make of this except it is super exciting. Bearing in mind Microsoft Research contributed to the Windows Vista desktop search functionality, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if these are ideas or prototypes for the next generation search interface. But to play devil’s advocate, this is Microsoft Research after all.

You can find the full video below and the shots above are from captured from timecode 1:36min or -3:04min.

Over two months since Windows Vista SP1 was released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, and almost a month since it became available to the general public on March 18, the first service pack for the latest Windows client is once again available for download.



This is of course Vista SP1 Wave 1 of downloads, following Wave 0 which contained a package of the service pack in only five languages, namely English, Spanish, German, French and Japanese. Now Microsoft has made available the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 All Language Standalone DVD ISO.

"Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) is an update to Windows Vista that addresses feedback from our customers. In addition to previously released updates, SP1 will contain changes focused on addressing specific reliability, performance, and compatibility issues; supporting new types of hardware; and adding support for several emerging standards. SP1 also will continue to make it easier for IT administrators to deploy and manage Windows Vista. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 All Language Standalone version can be installed on any language version," Microsoft explained.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 All Language Standalone DVD ISO download contains the entire lineup of x86 and x64 versions of the service pack. 6001.18000.080118-1840_iso_client_sp_wave1-FRMCSP1_DVD.iso is a 1418.1 MB download, and Microsoft stressed that end users that are updating just one edition of Vista RTM should turn to Windows Update, rather than use the ISO image of SP1.

In this context, Microsoft has lived up to its promise, to release to manufacturing the remaining language versions of Vista SP1 by mid-April. This month will also bring to the table the debut of Vista SP1's delivery through Automatic Updates. And although Microsoft has only pointed to mid-April without revealing a specific date, the all languages Vista SP1 RTM ISO is proof enough that AU distribution is just around the corner.


Windows Vista Service Pack 1 All Language Standalone DVD ISO is available for download here.

Forrester Research is advising its clients against skipping Windows Vista when planning their operating system deployments.


This paper analyzes the vulnerability disclosures and security updates for the first year of Windows Vista and looks at it in the context of its predecessor, Windows Xp, along with other modern workstation operating systems Red Hat, Ubuntu and Apple products. The results of the analysis show that Windows Vista has an improved security vulnerability profile over its predecessor. Analysis of security updates also shows that Microsoft improvements to the security update process and development process have reduced the impact of security updates to Windows administrators significantly compared to its predecessor, Windows XP

Note that this report is an update to the previously published Windows Vista 90-Day Vulnerability Report and Windows Vista 6-Month Vulnerability Report. However, since one year is a more informative time frame, this report contains the results of a deeper level of analysis.

Here are a few highlights :

Metric	Windows Vista (year 1)	Windows XP (year 1)
Vulnerabilities fixed	36	65
Security Updates	17	30
Patch Events	9	26
Weeks with at least 1 Patch Event	9	25

View: The Report (.PDF reader required)

The Windows expert who originally speculated that Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) deliberately included a 'trick' in Windows Vista that lets users install the OS from the upgrade version on Wednesday defended his position.


Earlier this month, the Windows Secrets newsletter reiterated claims it made last year that Microsoft is aware that users can clean install the fully functional, but cheaper upgrade edition of Vista on any machine, but doesn't want to actually stop them.

Microsoft denied this, and last week, Eric Ligman, Microsoft's senior manager of community engagement for small business in the U.S., railed against unnamed sources he accused of spreading misinformation and promoting software piracy.

But Brian Livingston, editorial director of WindowsSecrets.com, doesn't think that speculating on the reasons why Microsoft included the loophole in Vista, and why Microsoft didn't eliminate it in Vista SP1, is tantamount to supporting illegal behavior.

"No one is encouraging people to try to 'rip off' Windows for zero dollars," Livingston said. "One or two people might buy Vista without having any prior copy of Windows, but that would be a fraction of the people who are using this documented feature."

On Tuesday, Ligman clarified his comments and said his references to "clueless people" weren't directed at the customers or readers of the Microsoft Small Business Community blog. "They are directed at those trying to confuse the customers by telling them that it is OK to do this 'just because it physically installs,'" he wrote.

However, Livingston didn't back off his earlier claims that Microsoft is aware that it's possible for users to install Vista in this manner.

"Microsoft developers obviously included the clean install trick because security experts say you should not install one OS over another, but wipe out the old one and install the new one cleanly," said Livingston.

Livingston notes that Microsoft documents the procedure in its Knowledge Base through several "well thought-out" dialogue boxes. "If this is so bad, why didn't Microsoft eliminate it from Vista SP1?

So I guess this is what you call teaching an old dog new tricks. A couple of days ago Microsoft released a new update for Windows Vista that adds additional wireless support and functionality to the operating system through a “feature pack”. Specifically it adds support for Bluetooth 2.1, a new “Unified Pairing” interface as well as “Windows Connect Now” updates and can only be installed on Vista SP1.

This is interesting to me not because any of the features above, but because up until now, the client version of Windows has never had “feature packs”. We have hotfixes, security patches, service packs and rollups, but not feature packs. What are they?

Upon a little investigation (Google Search, first search), it’s apparent feature packs are quite abundant for Windows Server. To be exact, there are 16 feature packs for Windows Server 2003 which adds a variety of functionality to the server. In essence, they provide new features to an existing operating system as a standalone update. Someone smarter than me might have came to that conclusion just by looking at the name and I envy you.

Nevertheless I ponder if this is just a one-off solution or a sign of things to come. Traditionally these sort of updates would have been included in service packs, probably because they don’t want users waking up one day finding all sorts of major changes have been silently installed via the automatic update systems. On the other hand, service packs are becoming less frequent and that results in new technology support to fall behind between (long) Windows releases.

This update in particular in itself is something out-of-the-ordinary. For example I’ve never known a Windows update in the past to change user interface, maybe even as far as to say it’s not “allowed”.

As a geek who lives on the bleeding edge of technology, this is exciting for Windows. How much of a role will feature packs play? We’ll have to wait and see I guess.

Update: The Microsoft terminology page describes feature packs as “new product functionality that is first distributed outside the context of a product release and that is typically included in the next full product release.”

In the previous part of this article I looked at using the built in text recovery features in MS Word. But, what can be done if this doesn’t work? One way to try to recover text from a corrupted file is to open it in Notepad.

To open Notepad click on the Start button, go to ‘App Programs’, then ‘Accessories’ and click on its icon. You can then drag and drop the corrupt file into Notepad.

You will then see something that looks like this.

As you can see Notepad is showing some garbage as well as the text of the Word document. The garbage is an attempt by Notepad to display binary (non-textual) information such as images and the like.

Switch on word wrapping, making Notepad remove the scroll bar from the bottom and spread long pieces of text over more than one line. To do this pull down the ‘Format’ menu and click on ‘Word Wrap’ if it is not already ticked. This will make the file easier to search through for the text you wish to recover.

You can now either just browse through the file copying and pasting the text you want into a new Word document, or you can use the ‘Find…’ facility in Notepad to locate the lost text (it is in the ‘Edit’ menu). Searching for frequently used words like ‘the’ or ‘is’ should enable you to quickly find the actual text among all the garbage.

For details on how to quickly select, copy and paste text, see this post.