We know you guys like to tweak and tune the hell out of everything, so why stop at Windows Vista’s user interface? Thanks to a shiny find by the lads at Lifehacker, we’re goin’ lockstep to make Ultimate Windows Tweaker our download of the day.
It’s 370KB, it’s portable, it has over 130 tweaks. That’s bloat-free music to our ears.
The Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 keyboard and mouse combo is designed with media centers in mind.
In a surprising move, Microsoft has decided to offer a free anti-virus solution in lieu of its OneCare service to be eliminated in 2009.
One has to wonder exactly what spurred Microsoft to move in this direction. We suspect that Microsoft may be looking to gain a valuable piece of good will with the free AV crowd.
Microsoft has launched an online store featuring its products from Age of Empires - Zune. Buyers are able to order hardware directly from Microsoft and download programs online. It’s just a shame you can’t get XP.
The Microsoft Arc mouse folds up for easy transport along with your laptop.
Keebler hates roundups. That’s okay. If he gives me my own gaming channel, we won’t have this argument anymore. Wrath of the Lich King is out. Traffic stopped, people called police, gamers were lined up for blocks. Nothing new to report.
At Icrontic, we are completely in favor of great hacks and cool tools. Today’s download of the day, Blue Badge, drops the hax on Windows 7 which we do not doubt is in the hands of selected readers (arrrrrrr).
Unlocked features include:
Backups are advised, but you’re not worried about borking anything if you’re running an alpha, are you?
We’re… Please, give me a moment to catch my breath and collect my thoughts. We’re holed up in the basement of ICHQ. I’m writing this on the last computer with power. Luckily the UPS has enough battery to power the router and computer long enough to let me write this.
I don’t have much time, so I’ll just say it: they’re everywhere. Everywhere. We don’t know what to do. I know we have to get out, but I’m afraid they’ve left us for dead…
After spending two years spurning Microsoft’s generous advances and, more recently, being rejected by Google, Yahoo! is falling on tremendously hard times. All snide comments about the skills of Yahoo! management aside, it seems the flagging search giant is turning back to Microsoft to save itself.
At a Web2.0 conference in San Francisco, Yahoo! founder and CEO Jerry Yang expressed interest in resuming talks with Microsoft while admitting that nothing was under way. Meanwhile, minority shareholder and recent board member Carl Icahn continues to suggest Yahoo! sell its search services to Redmond.
As the value of Yahoo! shares flirts with $14, it will be difficult to curry enough favor to land the $37 that Microsoft offered back in July.
As Microsoft loses traction to Linux in the clustered or big iron server space, the firm has tweaked the Vista kernel for Windows 7 to support 256 parallel CPUs.
In a feat of engineering, the Microsoft team has managed to break a developmental roadblock that even baffled David Cutler, father of the NT kernel. The roadblock, known as a dispatcher lock, describes how processing tasks in the pipeline for computation are queued and addressed.
The current dispatcher lock model describes two states for tasks known as “waiting” or “running.” The current model has struggled with scalability because an abundance of idle tasks has tended to gum up the works and consume memory space. By revamping the lock to add a third state dubbed “pre-waiting,” more tasks can be addressed in parallel without the computational traffic jam.
After more than a year of speculation, it has been confirmed that aspects of the Windows micro-kernel known as MinWin reside in Windows 7.
The confusion over MinWin began with an October 2007 demonstration by Microsoft employee Eric Traut. Traut showed a self-contained, Microsoft-engineered OS consisting of 100 files with a 25MB disk footprint and a 40MB memory impact. Pundits and enthusiasts alike were charmed by the potential of Microsoft’s love affair with efficient engineering.
Today’s download of the day is the very first beta for Windows Vista Service Pack 2. In traditional fashion, the new service pack will contain the updates previously provided by SP1 in addition to subsequent fixes. The Microsoft Windows development blog has outlined some new features that debut with today’s beta:
Complete instructions for obtaining the new beta and enjoying your life as a small, wheel-loving rodent can be found here.
It’s been a little more than 36 hours since the first semi-private pre-beta of Windows 7 has been in the wild. Luckily for users everywhere, the reviews are positive across the board. Performance, usability and stability are all reported to be top notch, indicating a product that is further along than anyone believed. Let’s take a look at what people are saying about all aspects of Microsoft’s next-generation operating system.
As Microsoft positions itself to deploy Windows 7 within the next 6-14 months, it has begun to demonstrate the features that it hopes will attract enterprise administrators to the new platform.
Amongst the features touched upon in Ars Technica’s time is a so-called in-place image which will deploy a fresh installation of Windows 7 around existing user data. Other features include a “problem recorder” which allows end-users to transparently log, screencap and highlight buttons in reproducing steps that resulted in an error; Microsoft intends these recordings to be used by administrators in troubleshooting software issues.
As we get ready for Icrontic Oktoberfest 2008, with arrivals from forum members Fatcat and Eggroll, it’s hard to sit down to write news, but this is what I dug up for evening gaming tidbits.
