Vista SP1 is on its way

Jul 15, 2007 09:31 GMT  ·  By

The Live Earth concerts powered by Microsoft and meant to fight against the global warming managed to make MSN an important part of the history after no less than 8 million people watched live content on Monday. As the Redmond company reports, there were approximately 15 million streams bundled with 237.000 simultaneously views. Microsoft proudly announced this is the biggest audience in history but it revealed that it wants even more in the upcoming weeks. Although the concerts brought several stars to the Wembley Stadium such as Kelly Clarkson, Metallica, Rihanna and Shakira, the biggest number of viewers was recorded when Madonna appeared on the stage.

"July 7, 2007, was the greatest day in the history of MSN. Our exclusive Live Earth offering has delivered more than 30 million video streams and reached more than 8 million people around the world, a milestone in online history," said Joanne Bradford, corporate vice president and chief media officer of MSN. "We are proud that MSN connected a global audience together for this important issue, and invite people to explore the in-depth experience available exclusively on MSN, which millions are continuing to enjoy."

On Tuesday, the long-awaited Microsoft Vista SP1 was brought in the spotlights because Mary Jo Foley from ZDNet revealed that the Redmond based company might release the pack of updates in mid-July. It's been only six months since Microsoft released the Vista operating system but it seems that, for several reasons, Microsoft might be in a hurry to launch the service pack. "Word (from various sources who asked not to be named) is Microsoft is gearing up to drop Vista SP1 some time the week of July 16. And despite what Microsoft seemingly led Google, the U.S. Department of Justice and other company watchers to believe, the final version of Vista SP1 is sounding like November 2007," the ZDNet editor wrote on Tuesday.

As you surely know, Microsoft is continuously under pressure to release the service pack because it has been accused of unfair competition for months. The most important case concerns the Mountain View rival Google that accused Microsoft of not allowing customers to install third-party search solutions on the latest Windows platform released by the company. Vista has its own in-built search technology that enables consumers to search their computer in a matter of minutes. However, Google owns Google Desktop, an innovative search application that can provide even better results, searching for all types of content. The search giant accused Microsoft for not allowing the users to set Google Desktop as the default search technology and urges the Redmond company to release a service pack to correct the issue.

The Microsoft Games department is continuously struggling to build new titles able to challenge the market and it seems that they managed to reach their goal. On Wednesday, the officials proudly announced that Microsoft prepares more than 60 game titles to be released in the near future. Among the most attractive names, I can mention "Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties" (Microsoft Game Studios), "Empire Earth 3" (Sierra Entertainment), "Fallout 3" (Bethesda Softworks), "Gears of War" (Microsoft Game Studios), "Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights" (THQ), "Spider-Man: Friend or Foe" (Activision) and "Viva Pi?ata" (Microsoft Game Studios).

"Windows gaming is set to see one of its best years ever," said Peter Moore, corporate vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business in the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft. "With an incredible range of phenomenal titles, amazing hardware and the rapid adoption of Windows Vista, Windows gamers will remember holiday 2007 as a landmark year for PC gaming."

On Thursday, Gina Narkunas, lead product manager for Windows Live OneCare talked with the folks from PressPass about the revolutionary, or at least innovative security tool powered by the Redmond software company. Speaking about Windows Live OneCare 2.0, the Microsoft employee said that the security application will soon include tune-up utilities that will help users increase their computers' performance. Recently, Microsoft rolled out Windows LiveOnecare 2.0 beta, a new version of the security application that includes well-developed functions able to protect the data stored on our systems.

"Windows Live OneCare 2.0 will include several new features that deliver PC tune-ups to help maintain computer performance and reliability, and that ease management in a multiple-PC environment. For example, a new 'proactive fixes and recommendations' feature will look at the specific configuration of the user's system and make proactive fixes and recommendations to improve the computing experience," Gina Narkunas said.

On Friday, Microsoft announced that it prepares several new updates, as part of the monthly update pack meant to patch the latest discovered vulnerabilities. As it is mentioned in the update notification, Microsoft cooks no less than 3 critical updates, 2 important patches and 1 moderate fix for several applications powered by the software giant. Windows Vista, Microsoft Office, .NET Framework and Windows XP are just some of the applications that must be patched. As usual, the updates can be manually installed or automatically downloaded using the auto-update feature included in most of the software solutions.

"This moderate security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability. This vulnerability could allow incoming unsolicited network traffic to access a network interface. An attacker could potentially gather information about the affected host. This is a moderate security update for all supported editions of Windows Vista," the description of the "Vulnerability in Windows Vista Firewall Could Allow Information Disclosure" patch reads.

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The Wembley Stadium that held the Live Earth concerts
Age of Empires III - A Microsoft market hitWindows Vista update
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