Tag Archive for 'Windows'

Unseemly haste in Vista SP1 a sign of desperation?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 9/7/2007
in Vista and Windows
. 1 Comment

I came across two Vista related stories on Techmeme this morning.

The first from Ken Fisher on Ars Technica, talks about how Microsoft’s OEM partners are struggling with the number of customers who want to downgrade their computers from Vista to XP. Ken goes on to state

the “must wait for Service Pack 1″ meme is also so firmly established that Vista uptake will continue to be soft among businesses for quite some time, certainly into early 2008 when we expect to see Vista’s first service pack

Then I read Mary Jo Foley’s story about how Vista’s first service pack (SP1) will be released in Beta next week and released to the public in November after an unusually short testing time of four months (previous service packs have taken up to a year in Beta before being released).

According to Mary Jo,

here’s a list of other fixes likely to make it in:

* Performance tweaks lessening the amount of time it takes to copy files and shut down Vista machines (Yeah, I know Microsoft said Viista shutdown speed wasn’t an issue. Guess users weren’t so crazy, after all.)
* Improved transfer performance and decreased CPU utilization via support for SD Advanced Direct Memory Access (DMA)
* Support for ExFat, the Windows file format for flash memory storage and other consumer devices
* Improvements to BitLocker Drive Encryption to allow not just encryption of the whole Vista volume, but also locally created data volumes
* The ability to boot Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) on an x64 machine
* Improved success rate for firewalled MeetingSpace and Remote Assistance connections

Two things occur to me
1. The haste to get SP1 out the door seems to speak to nervousness on Microsoft’s part about Vista sales. No surprise there. Vista is still quite buggy and
2. If SP1 is rushed out the door, there is the possibility that bugs will be introduced by SP1 which will further erode confidence in Vista!

Microsoft need to tread quite carefully on this one.

Security Patched Safari for Windows released

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 15/6/2007
in Browsers and Windows
. 2 Comments

Apple have released a Security Patched version of Safari for Windows (v 3.0.1). The patch fixes security vulnerabilities in Safari I wrote about earlier this week.

There is still no fix for the bug I highlighted earlier this week (clicking on the x to close a window with multiple tabs doesn’t alert you and goes ahead and closes all tabs).

It is still beta software and should be used with extreme care for the moment.

The download links are on the Safari Download page.

via infoworld

Don’t install Safari on Windows!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 12/6/2007
in Browsers and Windows
. 5 Comments

Wow that was fast!

Apple released a beta of their Safari browser last night to run on Windows and a few short hours later, vulnerabilities which allow remote code execution have been published already!

It looks like Safari for Windows was released a little early. Whatever about the small functionality bug I found, the ability to run code remotely on your Windows machine is a critical vulnerability. Don’t use Safari on a Windows machine until these exploits have been fixed.

Hard to know where the blame lies for this - Thor Larholm blames Apple’s ignorance of Windows:

On the OS X platform Apple has enjoyed the same luxury and the same curse as Internet Explorer has had on the Windows platform, namely intimate operating system knowledge. The integration with the originally intended operating system is tightly defined, but the breadth of knowledge is crippled when the software is released on other systems and mistakes and mishaps occur.

While some commenters on his site blame Microsoft:
I don’t know, the way you described it seems more like a hole in the way Windows handles things than a Safari hole. Does a Windows API call launch a shell process, or does Safari manually go and run a command line program? If it’s the Windows API for URL handling, then it’s clearly broken. Every program that needs to grab a URL should not be responsible for patching holes in Windows.

Safari 3 for Windows. New OS, same missing features!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 11/6/2007
in Browsers, Vista and Windows
. 18 Comments

I saw from Engadget that Apple have released a new beta version of their browser, Safari, which will run on Windows. There are versions for Windows XP and Windows Vista.

I downloaded it and installed on an XP machine and it does appear to run quite quickly.

However, Apple still haven’t addressed Safari’s biggest bug - it is far too easy to close a window in accidentally Safari closing all its tabs. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer give you a warning if you try to close a window with multiple tabs open. How hard would it be for Safari to implement this feature?

Safari 3 running on Windows

Having said that, if you load the Acid2 test on IE7, Firefox and Safari for Windows, only Safari displays it correctly.

Opera also passes the Acid2 test (not displayed). However, Opera also allows you to close multi-tab windows without warning!

So as well as being fast, Safari for Windows is, along with Opera, the most standards compliant browser available. Just don’t close any multi-tab windows accidentally!

Safari passes Acid2 test

You can download the beta from the Safari download page.

Update 1: Apple’s official announcement is now up

Update 2:  As Conall notes in the comments of this post, the multi-tab warning is working in the new Mac version of Safari.

Microsoft Vista Service Pack 2?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 7/6/2007
in Microsoft, Vista and Windows
. 140 Comments

Microsoft’s Windows Vista is a buggy product. Heck, even I found an unreported bug in it after playing with it for less than ten minutes!

I was talking to Microsoft folk in Madrid last week and I said to them that I couldn’t wait for Service Pack 2 for Vista to be released. Their response was - “You mean Service Pack 1?”

Nope, I meant Service Pack 2. Vista is so buggy that I don’t think Microsoft will address all the problems in their first Service Pack release. Like Windows XP, Vista will not be reliable until SP2.

The Microsoft guys weren’t impressed with my opinions of Vista!

It looks like SP1 is getting closer though. According to istartedsomething.com the Microsoft Downloads site had links to documentation for SP1 for OEMs - as of this writing the docs are still available.

Vista SP1 docs

Cool, now has anyone seen any sign of Vista Service Pack 2?

OS X to Vista networking help needed

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 18/5/2007
in Mac, Windows, networking and wifi
. 19 Comments

Anyone know of any good resources for networking a Mac (running OS X) and a PC (running Vista) on a peer-to-peer lan network?

I’m asking because I have a 4.75gb file on my Vista machine which I want to transfer to the Mac and it is too big to burn to DVD.

I have turned on File Sharing for Windows on the Mac but although the two machines are on the same subnet (192.168.2.x), and both can ping the router (192.168.2.254) neither can ping the other!

I have tried both wireless and wired networks, to no avail!

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