Windows XP Still Beating Windows Vista Sales


Windows XP still outselling Windows Vista. Most Business PC user are still overwhelmingly opting for XP, computer giant HP has revealed.

MS-Windows Vista was Released on November 8, 2006 (RTM version) but Windows XP still outselling Windows Vista. Most Business PC user are still overwhelmingly opting for XP, computer giant HP has revealed. From the article:

“From the 30th of June, we have no longer been able to ship a PC with a XP licence,” said Jane Bradburn, Market Development Manager, Commercial Notebooks for HP Australia.

“However, what we have been able to do with Microsoft is ship PCs with a Vista Business licence but with XP pre-loaded. That is still the majority of business computers we are selling today.”

So, in other words, Microsoft counts a sale for Vista, even though the computer manufacturer has really sold XP.

Does this even matter? I don’t think so, as Microsoft still gets share, no matter what OS sells more.

Windows XP Home Gets An Extension to Year 2010

Most people are not switching to Windows Vista so Microsoft is setting up deadline for Windows XP support. From the press release:

Today Microsoft announced the worldwide extension of the availability of Windows XP Home for an emerging, new class of mobile personal computers commonly known as ultra-low-cost PCs, or ULCPCs. Windows XP Home for ULCPCs will be available until the later of June 30, 2010, or one year after general availability of the next version of Windows.

This is not extension for normal XP or XP business version. This is for computer such as Asus EEE Pc.

Download of the day: Internet Explorer 8 Beta ( MSIE 8 )

Internet Explorer 8 (MSIE 8) has been in development since August 2007. In March 2008, a public beta (Beta 1) was released to the general public. Microsoft has revealed a list of the new features in IE8, including two interesting new additions called Activities and WebSlices:

Activities are contextual services to quickly access a service from any webpage. Users typically copy and paste from one webpage to another. Internet Explorer 8 Activities make this common pattern easier to do.

WebSlices is a new feature for websites to connect to their users by subscribing to content directly within a webpage. WebSlices behave just like feeds where clients can subscribe to get updates and notify the user of changes.

Download MSIE 8

Windows XP SP3 will bring a 10 % Speed Boost

Who needs Windows Vista? According to Yahoo news, Windows Service Pack 3 will offer substantial performance gains:

Running an Office productivity test suite on a preview version of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP, Devil Mountain discovered a 10 percent performance boost over the current version of Windows XP, the company reported on its blog. So Vista’s biggest competition isn’t Apple or Novell or Red Hat; it’s Microsoft itself, it’s XP.

=> Read more: Windows XP Speed Boost Coming with SP3

XBOX 360 to hit india before the Diwali

Finally, some good news for all gamers out there, Microsoft plans to launch its Xbox 360 gaming console in India, where an economic boom has boosted incomes and spurred spending.

According to Zdnet story, “…The U.S. software firm aims to hit the market before the Indian festival of lights, or Diwali, when many companies pay annual bonuses to workers. This year, festival falls on Oct. 21…“.

Microsoft hopes to offer the Xbox 360 console, its controller and one game for about Rs. 20,000 ($450 approx).

The price seems to be little high as compare to US market.

Microsoft AntiSpyware Program Removes Norton Anti-Virus

Welcome to wild wild world of Microsoft. New beta Anti-Spyware program detect Norton Anti-Virus program as a password-stealing program and prompts users to remove it :/? It detects Symantec Antivirus files as PWS.Bancos.A

The lesson is simple do not install beta products in production environment. More information available at washingtonpost, Slashdot and Microsoft support forum.

Microsoft to update it anti-spyware software to remove Sony Anti-Piracy rootkit

Microsoft said that it is goona update it anti-spyware software to remove Sony rootkit. It will remove the file-hiding capabilities of the anti-piracy software installed by some Sony BMG music CDs. Get more here

Microsoft to introduce Dynamics with MS-Office

It is new solution for small and home business under band new name called
Microsoft Dynamics, which tightly integrated with MS-Office. According
to MS it is a simplified version of ERP, SCM and CRP applications. The
idea is to integrate it with Excel and Word so that small and medium
business can use an Excel or a word application toi interact with their
back-end servers such as Office, SQL Server, Sharepoint server etc. It
is believed that first fully integrated version of Dynamics will be
shipped by year-end of 2007. MS also plans to introduce an enhanced
version of Dynamics by the end of 2008.

In short, you will have an Excel or Outlook interface with ERP, SCM and
CRM capabilities.