By Russ Colburn

 

Over the past year or so, our industry has seen many changes in the way home entertainment is provided. With the addition of Internet TV services such as Hulu©, movie streaming services such as Netflix, and digital movie rentals and purchasing services such as Best Buy’s CinemaNow© and Amazon, our ability to view what we want, when we want it, and on the devices of our choice, has developed so quickly that few companies are in a position to capitalize on all of it. One such company is Microsoft.

 

Although Apple TV© and Google TV©, as well as a number of smaller products like the Boxee© Box, the Roku© Box and Western Digital’s line of products, have gotten most of the press, Microsoft, with its Media Center feature included in many of the Windows versions, has been in this market for almost 10 years. They have overcome or avoided many of the limitations that other products suffer from. You can surf the internet with your choice of browser, you can stream media across your network in any format, and you can even use an external storage device. It’s a pc! Unfortunately, Windows Media Center© is also one of Microsoft’s best kept secrets.

Microsoft has released a hotfix for a serious issue in Windows  7 that is affecting users with hard drives that have a larger storage capacity than 2 Terabytes. While that may only be a minority of users, the impact of the bug can be fatal on affected systems.

Hewlett-Packard will ship a tablet-style computer based on the company's WebOS operating system in the first part of next year. The computer maker also plans to release a tablet that runs Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system, according to a company executive.

Windows XP Mode was introduced in Windows 7 as one of mitigation which would allow users to run legacy applications on Windows 7 as of one Compatibility  solutions.  This method looks cool and easy. Its suited for individuals or small scale companies. However, when the size of the organization is high, this solution is not advised. It is not easily manageable and thats exactly where MED-V comes to help!

As we approach the expected release of Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system for smartphones, we still know relatively little about the devices that will be running it. A new video gives us a glimpse of the upcoming Windows Phone 7 device from HTC.

By Edward Berridge

SOFTWARE COBBLER Microsoft plans to send out a record batch of 14 security updates next week to patch 34 vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer (IE), Office and Silverlight.

Eight of the 14 software updates are ranked as "critical" while the remaining six are marked as "important".

The count of 34 individual patches equals the monthly record, which was first set last October and repeated in June 2010. Since eight of these are called critical that matches the previous record that the Vole set in October 2009.

It seems that the larger Microsoft updates are landing in even-numbered months and the smaller ones in odd numbered months. Thus we have the impression that patches are being sent out in numbers and on schedules that suit Microsoft's spinners in its PR department rather than its developers or customers.

Microsoft as expected has just released an out of band security update for the Windows operating system that fixes a critical security vulnerable. The vulnerability affects all Microsoft operating systems that have been released in the past years, including Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and the Windows Server product line.

The severity of the issue and the fact that the security vulnerability was already exploited actively made the out of band release a necessity.

Posted by Brier Dudley

Steve Ballmer's trying to set the record straight on Microsoft's maligned consumer businesses.

"We're pretty focused in a set of areas we think have big potential," the Microsoft chief executive said to 180 or so financial analysts meeting in Redmond today.

During his presentation, it was disclosed that Microsoft's expecting Windows 7 tablets to spread in early 2011 after new Intel hardware emerges.

The company's also preparing to offer a "personal cloud" to Windows 7 users, including a set of online services for managing and synchronizing files that will come with Windows 7 PCs starting in the third quarter.

The personal clouds include Windows Live services such as the SkyDrive online storage system and online Office applications, with the addition of new sync features for synchronizing and sharing content across various devices.

During a demonstration on a prototype Windows slate computer, an upcoming version of Messenger was used for a video chat by Brad Brooks, vice president of Windows marketing . During a chat session, a user can call up files such as photos from their devices or cloud storage site and share them with the other person.

Another demo featured an application for moving media content across various networked devices. On the top of the screen was a menu of connected devices for outputting the content, including a networked stereo receiver, an Xbox and a TV adapter. Songs and videos could be pulled from a personal cloud to the devices by tapping and dragging the file onto the menu.

The personal clouds extend the "personal hub" concept that debuted on Microsoft's short-lived Kin phones, which automatically synchronize photos and messages with a companion personal Web site. These hubs will be a key feature of phones running the upcoming Windows Phone 7 software. (Here's one of Ballmer's slides from the presentation)

A Windows Phone 7 demo showed how the device draws on both work and personal calendars stored online, displaying both on its calendar. It showed a conflict - a meeting during a Sounders game, so the device was used to adjust the meeting, map travel to the game and find and choose a Chinese restaurant for the post-game celebration. In true Microsoft style, a shopping list for a pre-game party was managed on OneNote and the to-do list was shared with other participants via SharePoint.

One of the new features in Windows 7 is that it contains a new version of Windows Virtual PC which can be used to publish applications from the virtual guest system to the host system.

To showcase what can be done with published applications on Windows Virtual PC, I was trying to install AX 2009 on the Virtual XP guest and to run it afterwards as a published application on my Windows 7 RC host system.

This press release was announced today around significant new functionality that is being added to Dynamics NAV (Navision) soon.

As part of Microsoft Corp.’s commitment to providing leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions to midrange organizations worldwide, the company today unveiled Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 R2 at Directions EMEA 2010. Because of the investment in architecture for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009, customers are able to take advantage of the benefits of the software-plus-services vision through the R2 release more quickly than scheduled, including built-in integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM and online Payment Service.

If you're planning on buying or upgrading more than one Microsoft product in a year's time, consider a TechNet Standard subscription. For $200, you get, essentially, 100 installations of Windows, Office, and other Microsoft apps.

• By Charlie Sorrel   - July 2, 2010