Microsoft ist noch einmal unter Feuer für angebliches Antikonkurrenzverhalten gekommen. Diese Zeit Oper Software, Hersteller der Kreuzplattform Datenbanksuchroutine mit dem gleichen Namen, hat eine Beanstandung eingeordnet wenn die Europäische Kommission bittet, lösen sie, Microsoft entweder zu zu bestellen Internet Explorer von Windows oder schließen eine alternative Datenbanksuchroutine auf dem Betriebssystem ein.



Aber Microsoft behält bei, daß Computerbenutzer in der Lage sind, jede mögliche Datenbanksuchroutine als Rückstellung, einschließlich Oper zu wählen und einzustellen und daß PC Hersteller pre-install auch irgendeine Datenbanksuchroutine können, wie eine Rückstellung auf irgendeiner Windows Maschine, die sie verkaufen.



Diese Beanstandung ist die erste gegen Microsoft seit dem EU unterstützte das Anordnen im September, daß Microsoft EU-Monopolgesetze durchgebrochen hatte und wurde gezwungen, um seine Mittel-Spieler-Software von Windows zu lösen und Interoperabilität Informationen zu den Rivalen zu verbreiten.

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The bits are available here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=8F22F69E-D1AF-49F0-8236-2B742B354919&displaylang=en

There has been a lot of progress made on Hyper-V since the Tech Preview that shipped with Server RC0 and RC1. The entire system is much more stable and performant. Even better, installing Hyper-V is now a great deal easier. You no longer need to apply any hotfixes (those pesky .MSU files from RC0 and RC1) before you install Hyper-V - it's now fully integrated into the Role Management tool from the start.

Secondly, installing Windows Server 2008 in a Hyper-V VM is now a much better experience. The Integration Components are now part of Windows Server 2008 and are installed automatically in a Hyper-V VM.

Last, but certainly not least, installation of the Hyper-V role is now available on Server Core.

I'll post more information about the new Beta release later on, so stay tuned!

[Mike is on vacation, so posts and responses will likely be delayed.]

This week, Christmas came early in a big black box code-named the “Spider“. It has a (engineering sample) quad-core Phenom 9700 2.4GHz processor, AMD 790FX chipset and an 256MB ATI Radeon HD 3850 graphics card.

Hector Ruiz could very well be Santa and his PR people, elves.

Needless to say it’s been a pretty tough year for Advanced Micro Devices. Starting from August, chief of sales and marketing officer Henri Richards announced to leave the company. Then came the fourth consecutive quarter net loss of nearly $400 million, total net loss of over $2 billion. More recently, AMD became less valued then what it paid for ATI last year. To the company and its many loyalists, all bets were on Phenom and the next-generation ATI Radeon graphics card.

Shortly after the announcement of Spider and Pheom, benchmarks started trickling out with not-so-good news. At least early-production Phenom review samples suffered problems with stability in what is now known as the TLB errata. If that wasn’t enough, the only workaround resulted in dramatic performance loses. As an outsider at the time, it seemed like quite the tragedy.

Having exhaustively used Spider for two day now, I see no reason why AMD will “fall”, in fact I believe AMD’s on the right path to reclaiming its former Athlon64 glory. It’s not there yet, with Intel’s Core 2 Extreme and Nvidia’s Geforce 8800-series delivering marginally better performance, but there’s room for improvement

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This is just a quick note. Microsoft has just announced that the Release Candidate for Vista SP1 has been released to the general public.

Download and install from here

Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday withdrew an offer of free copies of Windows Vista Ultimate and Office 2007 in exchange for consumers agreeing to install monitoring software, saying it had exhausted the supply of software.

Until mid-afternoon Tuesday, the company's Windows Feedback Program was handing out copies of Vista Ultimate, Office Ultimate 2007 and other software to users who agreed to complete regular surveys and to install a program that tracked Windows and Office use for three months. The program transmitted the information to Microsoft's servers daily.



Under a section titled "What about the free product?", the program's Web site spelled out the freebie. "If you are a Windows Vista or Windows XP user and decide to join and participate in both programs, we will send you a free Microsoft product when you participate in the program. Limit one gift per person. This offer is nontransferable. This offer expires on 12/31/07, while supplies last and is not redeemable for cash. Taxes, if any, are your sole responsibility."



Although the free offer remains viewable in a version of the page cached by Google Inc.'s search engine, the paragraph was removed from the live site Tuesday afternoon.



References to the Windows Feedback Program and the free offer go back to at least early November, but Microsoft did not publicize the deal.

Source: Windows portal