April 10, 2008
Outages cast doubts on MS online services
With the recent public betas of Office Live Workspace and Microsoft Online Services, the Redmond company is ratcheting up its efforts to deliver the power of MS Office — or at least a portion of it — to the Internet. But Microsoft's ability to offer software as a service (SaaS) has come under fire due to server outages and bugs that have plagued the company's online services in the last several months. Read more »
Article on Vista upgrade trick rattles the cages
The lead story in Windows Secrets on Apr. 3 revealed that Vista Service Pack 1 allows the "upgrade edition" of the OS to be clean-installed, something that supposedly requires Vista's more-costly "full edition." The same trick was present in the original release of Vista, as I reported more than one year ago, but the fact that Microsoft executives have allowed the procedure to remain in SP1 sparked yet another round of thrills on the Web. Read more »
A new approach for handling telemarketers
Telemarketers. They have an uncanny knack of calling right when you don't want them to. Whether you're just sitting down to dinner, forced to interupt a relaxing shower, or deep in R.E.M., they generally find you at the most inconvenient moment — all so they can try to subscribe you to a magazine you've never heard of. Read more »
Beware disk cleaners that can make things worse
My search for the best disk-cleanup program has uncovered some that aren't worth the time and effort, let alone paying a registration fee. One of the utilities I tried even left more unnecessary files on my drive than were there before I ran the program! Read more »
Disabling AutoRun still leaves you open to attack
The worst kind of security bug is one that Microsoft probably won't be fixing any time soon. This week, I tell you about an annoying security problem in which Windows Vista fails to disable its AutoRun and AutoPlay features, even though you think you've got these two security risks under control. Read more »
Patches for IE should be top priority this week
Patches for IE should be our first priority this month, with several vulnerabilities that are ripe for malicious attacks facing us. There's still no sign of Windows XP SP3 in the near future, but Windows Server 2008 is receiving its first patches, and Vista SP1 is subject to a much-needed patch for an earlier patch that's proved troublesome. Read more »
