The "Microsoft" Name Auctioned for $1 Million

The "Microsoft" Name Auctioned for $1 Million - on ebay

The "Microsoft" name is being auctioned for no less than $1 million on eBay. But, the Redmond company will not be left without a name. As improbable as this might sound, there are actually two Microsoft companies in the world. One was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen all the way back in 1975. The other is a Portuguese company that registered its name back in 1981. Of course, it is a coincidence, rather than a case of stolen identity. Since 1975, Microsoft has had a flawless trajectory becoming the largest software company worldwide and just half a year away from putting a Windows operating system on over 1 billion computers worldwide.

The Portuguese company also named Microsoft failed to amount to much and, as of December, both the brand and the business are up for grabs via eBay. The auctioning has debuted with the asking prize of $1 million, but there's no telling how high it could go, especially if Microsoft gets in on the deal. Ricardo Carvalho, the Chief Executive of the Portuguese Microsoft, confirmed that the company, including the name, were being auctioned and that $1 million was just the starting price.

Believe it or not, but the brand value of Microsoft is actually a lot more than $1 million. Of course, we are talking about Gates' Microsoft, and not a quasi-obscure Portuguese firm. According to a study put together by Interbrand in August 2007, Microsoft owns the second most valuable global brand, topped only by Coca Cola. Interbrand estimated Microsoft's brand value at no less than $59 million, with Coca Cola over $65 Million.

In this context, the Portuguese Microsoft is rather cheap at $1 million. Carvalho revealed that he did negotiate with Microsoft directly, but that the Redmond company did not manage to come with an answer or an offer in the time it had been available. The funny thing is that, in Portugal, Microsoft is not registered as Microsoft, but as MSFT.

Source: Softpedia.com

For more Microsoft and Windows news See: Keznews.com

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14-Review-Ashampoo Photo Commander

Ashampoo Photo Commander

Ashampoo Photo Commander:
Ashampoo Photo Commander 5 is an all-in-one application for organizing, editing, sharing and presenting photo collections. It also features additional creativity tools and audio and video management capabilities, making it a complete media management package.

Major new features and enhancements
Faster: The entire program has been optimized throughout for more speed. For example, thumbnail generation and display are now much faster than ever before.
Better tools: All editing tools have been improved for easier and even better editing quality.
Frame Style Center: This new creativity tool enables you to add artistic picture frames and vignettes to photos. In addition to this you can also create high-quality greeting cards. Includes a wide selection of vignette styles and greeting card templates. Greeting cards can be mailed from within the program.
Collage Tool: Select photos and generate artistic collages complete with background images with a couple of clicks.
Calendar Tool: Create and print 12-month photo calendars in three different styles as novel gifts.
Full-screen editing: A new mouse tool bar makes it possible to edit your photos in full screen mode for maximum detail.
New mouse tools: Callout tool for creating text bubbles, clone tool for retouching photos, eraser tool.
Canon RAW files: Improved support for Canon RAW files, including faster loading.
CD/DVD burning: Completely new burning technology for saving photos and slide shows to CD and DVD.
Batch processing: Now includes an option for adding drop shadows to multiple images at the same time.
Skins: Improved skinning system, now also supports user-created buttons, also with graphic images. Menu colors are skinnable.

Highlights:
· Optimized throughout for more speed
· Much faster thumbnail generation and display
· Add picture frames and vignettes
· Create greeting cards, collages and photo calendars
· All editing tools improved for easier use and higher quality
· New effects: Drop shadow, radial blur and sepia
· New mouse tools: Callouts (text bubbles), clone and eraser
· Image editing in full-screen mode
· Unlimited Undo/Redo
· Entire user interface overhauled for easier use

New version: Ashampoo Photo Commander 6.0

Organize! Manage even the largest collections of digital photos, audio and video files with ease. Lightning-fast thumbnails and previews, powerful organization tools. Enhance!Correct colors and contrast, straighten horizons, remove red eye and crop with just a couple of clicks. Powerful editing tools and stunning one-click effects. Create!Add picture frames, make slide shows on the web and CD/DVD, and turn your pictures into greeting cards and much more.

New features at a glance:
Quick-Fix Tools: All common operations with a couple of clicks
Unlimited Undo/Redo: For all changes
Browser EXIF mode: Shows the entire photo’s EXIF/IPTC information directly under the picture
Quick 5-star ratings: Just click to rate photos with 1-5 stars, supports sorting by rating
Email to PDF: Mail multiple images in a single PDF file
Slide shows with audio: Add more than one audio track to your slide shows

Ratings: 4 1/2 Star- Average User's Rating by CNet.com Review.
Recommended by: bcdalai.blogspot.com
Software Publishers: Ashampoo GmbH & Co. KG
Current version 5.40. Downloaded more than 2.7 lakh times.

Go to Download Page

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Inside Windows Vista SP1

Inside Windows Vista SP1

Vista Service Pack 1 RTM (Final) Released on 18th March 2008
In the earlier post some of the features of the 1st service pack for Windows Vista if mentioned. Here you will find more detailed review of this SP.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 RC includes all previously released updates for the operating system. This update also includes a small number of new functionalities, and many updates, which change significantly change customers’ experience with the operating system. This service pack includes many performance fixes; those are complained by Vista users.

Changes on Vista SP1

>>Service Pack build number is 17051
>>Includes more than 479 updates/fixes
>>General availability 1st Quarter of 2008.

Hardware Ecosystem Support and Enhancements
· Adds support for new UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) industry standard PC firmware for 64-bit systems with functional parity with legacy BIOS firmware, which allows Windows Vista SP1 to install to GPT format disks, boot and resume from hibernate using UEFI firmware.
· Adds support for x64 EFI network boot.
· Adds support for the 64-bit version of MSDASQL, which acts as a “bridge” from OLEDB to a variety of ODBC drivers thus simplifying application migration from 32-bit platforms to 64-bit Windows Vista.
· Adds support for Direct3D® 10.1, an update to Direct3D 10 that extends the API to support new hardware features, enabling 3D application and game developers to make more complete and efficient use of the upcoming generations of graphics hardware.
· Adds support for exFAT, a new file system supporting larger overall capacity and larger files, which will be used in Flash memory storage and consumer devices.
· Adds support for SD Advanced DMA (ADMA) on compliant SD standard host controllers. This new transfer mechanism, which is expected to be supported in SD controllers soon, will improve transfer performance and decrease CPU utilization.
· Adds support for creating a single DVD media that boots on PCs with either BIOS or EFI.
· Enhances support for high density drives by adding new icons and labels that will identify HD-DVD and Blu-ray Drives as high density drives.
· Adds support to enable new types of Windows Media Center Extenders, such as digital televisions and networked DVD players, to connect to Windows Media Center PCs.
· Enhances the MPEG-2 decoder to support content protection across a user accessible bus on Media Center systems configured with Digital Cable Tuner hardware. This also effectively enables higher levels of hardware decoder acceleration for commercial DVD playback on some hardware.
· Enhances Netproj.exe to temporarily resize the desktop to accommodate custom projector resolutions when connecting to Windows Network Projectors.

Reliability Improvements
Reliability improvements vary from PC to PC based on hardware, environment, and usage. Customers will experience varying levels of benefit.
· SP1 addresses issues many of the most common causes of crashes and hangs in Windows Vista, as reported by Windows Error Reporting. These include issues relating to Windows Calendar, Windows Media Player, and a number of drivers included with Windows Vista.
· Improves reliability by preventing data-loss while ejecting NTFS-formatted removable-media.
· Improves reliability of IPSec connections over IPv6 by ensuring by ensuring that all Neighbor Discovery RFC traffic is IPsec exempted.
· Improves certain problem scenarios where a driver goes to sleep with incomplete packet transmissions by ensuring the driver is given enough time to transmit or discard any outstanding packets before going to sleep.
· Improves wireless ad-hoc connection (computer-to-computer wireless connections) success rate
· Improves the success of peer-to-peer connections, such as Windows Meeting Space or Remote Assistance applications, when both PCs are behind symmetric firewalls.
· Improves Windows Vista’s built-in file backup solution to include EFS encrypted files in the backup.
· An improved SRT (Startup Repair Tool), which is part of the Windows Recovery environment (WinRE), can now fix PCs unbootable due to certain missing OS files.
· Users who did not opt-in to the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) will be prompted again to join after installing SP1. The experience will remain the same and the default will continue to be opt-out.

Performance and Power Consumption Improvements
Performance improvements vary from PC to PC based on hardware, environment, scenarios, and usage, so different customers will experience varying levels of benefits. About 20-25% of these improvements will be released separately via Windows update, prior to Windows Vista SP1.
· Improves the performance of browsing network file shares by consuming less bandwidth.
· Improves power consumption when the display is not changing by allowing the processor to remain in its sleep state which consumes less energy.
· Addresses the problem of the Video chipset (VSync interrupt) not allowing the system to stay asleep.
· Improves power consumption and battery life by addressing an issue that causes a hard disk to continue spinning when it should spin down, in certain circumstances.
· Improves the speed of adding and extracting files to and from a compressed (zipped) folder.
· Significantly improves the speed of moving a directory with many files underneath.
· Improves performance while copying files using BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service).
· Improves performance over Windows Vista’s current performance across the following scenarios1:
· 25% faster when copying files locally on the same disk on the same machine
· 45% faster when copying files from a remote non-Windows Vista system to a SP1 system
· 50% faster when copying files from a remote SP1 system to a local SP1 system
· Improves responsiveness when doing many kinds of file or media manipulations. For example, with Windows Vista today, copying files after deleting a different set of files can make the copy operation take longer than needed. In SP1, the file copy time is the same as if no files were initially deleted.
· Improves the copy progress estimation when copying files within Windows Explorer to about two seconds.
· Improves the time to read large images by approximately 50%.
· Improves IE performance on certain Jscript intensive websites, bringing performance in line with previous IE releases.
· Addresses a problem that caused a delay of up to 5 minutes after boot with specific ReadyDrive capable hard drives.
· Improves the effectiveness of a Windows ReadyBoost™ device in reducing the time to resume from standby and hibernate by increasing the amount of data stored in the ReadyBoost device that can be used during a resume cycle.
· Includes improvements to Windows Superfetch™ that help to further improve resume times, in many environments.
· In specific scenarios, SP1 reduces the shutdown time by a few seconds by improving the Windows Vista utility designed to sync a mobile device.
· Improves the time to resume from standby for a certain class of USB Hubs by approximately 18%.
· Improves network connection scenarios by updating the logic that auto selects which network interface to use (e.g., should a laptop use wireless or wired networking when both are available).
· Improves the performance of the user login experience on corporate PCs outside of corporate environments (e.g., a corporate laptop taken home for the evening), making it comparable with PCs within the corporate environment.
· Reduces the time it takes to return to the user’s session when using the Photo screensaver, making it comparable to other screensavers.
· Removes the delay that sometimes occurs when a user unlocks their PC.
· Improves overall media performance by reducing many glitches.
· In SP1, PC administrators are able to modify the network throttling index value for the MMCSS (Multimedia Class Scheduling Service), allowing them to determine the appropriate balance between network performance and audio/video playback quality.
· Windows Vista SP1 includes a new compression algorithm for the RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) that helps reduce network bandwidth required to send bitmaps or images via RDP. The compression, which can be selected by administrators via Group Policy settings, is transparent to all RDP traffic, and typically reduces the size of the RDP stream by as much as 25-60%, based on preliminary test results.
· The Windows Vista SP1 install process clears the user-specific data that is used by Windows to optimize performance, which may make the system feel less responsive immediately after install. As the customer uses their SP1 PC, the system will be retrained over the course of a few hours or days and will return to the previous level of responsiveness.
· SP1 addresses a number of customer performance concerns with new print driver technologies, including XPS-based printing.

Security Improvements
· Windows Vista SP1 includes all previously released Security Bulletin fixes which affect Windows Vista.
· SP1 includes Secure Development Lifecycle process updates, where Microsoft identifies the root cause of each security bulletin and improves our internal tools to eliminate code patterns that could lead to future vulnerabilities.
· Service Pack 1 includes supported APIs by which third-party security and malicious software detection applications can work alongside Kernel Patch Protection on 64-bit versions of Windows Vista. These APIs have been designed to help security and non-security ISVs develop software that extends the functionality of the Windows kernel on 64-bit systems, in a documented and supported manner, and without disabling or weakening the protection offered by Kernel Patch Protection.
· Improves the security of running RemoteApp™ programs and desktops by allowing RDP files to be signed. Administrators now have the control to differentiate the user experience based on the publisher's identity.
· Data Execution Protection (DEP) is a memory-protection feature available beginning with Windows XP and Server 2003. SP1 improves security with a new set of Win32 APIs to allow programmatic control over a process’s DEP policy. This will provide application developers with finer control on a process’s DEP settings for security, testability, compatibility, and reliability.
· Improves the trustworthiness of data presented in Windows Security Center (WSC) by ensuring that only authenticated security applications can communicate with WSC.
· Improves security on wired networks by enabling single sign on (SSO) for authenticated wired networks. The single sign on experience presents the user with a single point of credential entry rather than being double prompted for local and network logon.
· For customers upgrading from Windows XP to Windows Vista SP1, the MSRT (Malicious Software Removal Tool) will not run as part of the upgrade. Rather the up-to-date MSRT offered monthly by Windows Update will help protect PCs. · The cryptographic random number generation is improved to gather seed entropy from more sources, including a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) when available, and replaces the general purpose pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) with an AES-256 counter mode PRNG for both user and kernel mode.
· Improves security in smart card scenarios: o Introduction of a new PIN channel to securely collect smart card PINs via a PC. This new capability mitigates a number of attacks that today would require using an external PIN reader to prevent. o Enables smart cards that use biometric authentication instead of a PIN.
· Improves security over Teredo interface by blocking unsolicited traffic by default. This has already been addressed in a Security Update for Windows Vista (KB935807).
· Improves BitLocker Drive Encryption by offering an additional multi-factor authentication method that combines a key protected by the TPM (Trusted Platform Module) with a Startup Key stored on a USB storage device and a user-generated Personal Identification Number (PIN).
· Enhanced the BitLocker encryption support to volumes other than bootable volumes in Windows Vista (for Enterprise and Ultimate SKUs).
· Improves the OCSP (Online Certificate Status Protocol) implementation such that it can be configured to work with OCSP responses that are signed by trusted OCSP signers, separate from the issuer of the certificate being validated.
· Enables a standard user to invoke the CompletePC Backup application, provided that user can supply administrator credentials. Previously, only administrators could launch the application.
· The Remote Desktop client in Windows Vista SP1 provides user interface improvements for user and server authentication. The RDP client streamlines the multiple steps end users must follow to providing their credentials to Windows Server 2003 (or earlier) Terminal Servers, and simplifies the management of previously saved credentials.

Support for New Technologies and Standards
· Adds support for new strong cryptographic algorithms used in IPsec. SHA-256, AES-GCM, and AES-GMAC for ESP and AH, ECDSA, SHA-256, and SHA-384 for IKE and AuthIP.
· Adds the NIST SP 800-90 Elliptical Curve Cryptography (ECC) pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) to the list of available PRNG in Windows Vista.
· Adds support for SSTP (Secure Sockets Tunnel Protocol), a remote access VPN tunneling protocol that will be part of Microsoft’s RRAS (Routing and Remote Access Service) platform. SSTP helps provide full-network VPN remote access connections over SSL, removing some of the VPN connectivity challenges that other VPN tunnels face traversing NAT, web proxies, and firewalls.
· Adds full support for the latest IEEE draft of 802.11n wireless networking.
· Adds support for obtaining identity and invoke identity UI from an inner method via a new EAPHost runtime API as well as a configuration UI for tunnel methods. These APIs are useful for developers working on tunneling/multi-phased EAP authentication methods as well as those who implement networking supplicants which consume EAP authentications.
· Adds support for Windows Smartcard Framework to enable compliance with the EU
· Digital Signature Directive and National ID / eID.
· Adds support for the Parental Controls Games Restrictions for ratings from the Korean Game Rating Board (GRB).
· Enhances TCP Chimney network card support so that a TCP Chimney network card can also support Compound TCP.
· Adds support in the Wireless Client for a new FIPS (Federal Information Processing) compliant mode. This mode is FIPS 140-2 compliant because it moves the cryptographic processing from the wireless network card to an existing FIPS-approved cryptographic library.
· Enhances Windows Firewall and IPsec to use the new cryptographic algorithms that are Suite B compliant.
· Updated drivers are delivered primarily via Windows Update and directly from hardware vendors, not as part of a service pack. However, a small number of critical drivers are included as part of Windows Vista (e.g., display drivers, audio drivers) and some of these have been updated.

Download Windows Vista Service Pack 1 RTM below:

Windows Vista SP1 RTM x86: [Click "Download Now" button to download]

Or
Direct Link

Windows Vista SP1 RTM x64: [Click "Download Now" button to download]

Or
Direct Link

Note:
Download Page x86

Download Page x64

Review by: bcdalai
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Inside Windows XP SP3

Inside Windows XP SP3

Last Updated on: 30th April 2008.

Windows XP SP3 Final RTM Released

As in the earlier post all the features of the last service pack is described. Here you will find more detailed review of this SP3.

Windows® XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) includes all previously released updates for the operating system. This update also includes a small number of new features and many updates, which change significantly change customers’ experience with the operating system.

Download Now:

Windows XP Service Pack 3 Final RTM build 5512 (English):
File Size: 316.4 mb.

Other Languages:

French

German

Greek

Italian

Japanese

Korean

Russian

Spanish

For downloading Windows XP SP3 in other languages visit: Download Page.

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XP Service Pack 3 - ISO-9660 CD Image File (CD version)

Download English version now (544.9mb)

Download

For downloading XP Service Pack 3 - ISO-9660 CD Image File in other languages visit: Download Page.

Note: If you are facing problems in downloading this big file then use a Download Manager to download this Service Pack. Use a Download Manager such as: Internet Download Manager (IDM). Get it from here.
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Posted by: bcdalai

Known-Unknown Facts on Windows

Known/Unknown Facts on Windows

Last updated on: 8th July 2008

Here are some common facts about Windows and Microsoft software product and technology. If you have more facts then tell me or add those in this blog.

1. Dynamic disks are not supported on portable computers or on Windows XP Home Edition-based computers.

2. In windows XP Home Edition you can’t find gpedit.msc or ntbackup.exe commands because Group Policy and Windows Backup utility are not available.

3. In Windows XP Home Edition “Remote Desktop” Feature is not available.

4. Automated System Recovery is not a supported feature in Windows XP Home Edition using Backup, but Backup is provided on the CD-ROM as additional value to help back up critical system data. To Manually Install the Backup Utility: Double-click the Ntbackup.msi file from the Windows XP Home Edition CD-ROM to start a wizard that installs Backup: CD-ROM Drive:\VALUEADD\MSFT\NTBACKUP. Follow the wizard. When the wizard is complete, click Finish.

5. You cannot format/create a partition more than 32GB as fat 32 file system.

6. You cannot see or access NTFS partitions in Windows 95/98/ME because these operating systems don’t support NTFS file system.

7. You cannot run two Operating System simultaneously from one drive/partition; if you will do this the last operating system you installed on that drive will only run.

8. If you install and run MSN Explorer version 6, your MSN POP3 e-mail account will be migrated to an MSN Hotmail account. If you have Outlook and Outlook Express configured for POP3, you will no longer receive your new MSN e-mail messages.

9. Deleting or reformatting any dynamic disk volume using the Recovery console's DISKPART or FORMAT command or during Windows 2000 text-mode Setup, could result in permanent data loss.

10. You cannot install Windows Vista on FAT/FAT32 file system. Installation of Windows Vista in FAT/FAT32 file system is not supported except NTFS file system.

11. There is no Boot.ini file in Windows Vista. The Boot.ini file is used for legacy Windows versions when dual-booting only.

12. You can’t run two or more instances of Windows Installer in Windows XP/2003 Server or lower version of windows. Because running of two or more instances of Windows Installer in Windows Installer v3.1 or lower is not supported. This feature is supported in Windows Installer v4.0 i.e. in Windows Vista or later versions.

13. NetMeeting 3.02 (in Vista) does not support remote desktop sharing. Therefore, the Remote Desktop Sharing option is not available on the Tools menu in NetMeeting 3.02.

14. The default workgroup name in windows XP Home Edition is “MSHome” and in XP Pro, Windows Server 2003 and in Windows Vista it is “WORKGROUP”.

15. The former name of “Microsoft Dynamics products” is “Microsoft Business Solutions”.

16. Windows Server 2008 is the last 32-bit OS from Microsoft. All future operating systems for server hardware from Microsoft beyond Windows Server 2008 will be 64-bit

17. The Fast Saves feature in Word 2003 no longer functions after you install Office 2003 Service Pack 3. The Allow fast saves check box still exists in the Save options in Word 2003. However, the functionality of the option has been disabled. The Fast Saves feature speeds up the saving of a document by saving only the changes that are made to the document. Additionally, documents that are saved when the Fast Saves feature is enabled may contain content that you may not want to share with other people when you distribute the document electronically. This information is known as metadata. Metadata is used for a variety of purposes to improve the editing, the viewing, the filing, and the retrieval of Office files. Because of the design of the Fast Saves feature, text or comments that you delete from a document may remain in the document even after you save the document. Therefore, Microsoft has disabled the functionality of the Fast Saves feature in Office 2003 SP3 to increase the security of Word 2003 documents.

18. Office files that are saved in (e.g. html, mht, rtf, xml) no longer contain the version number of Office after you install Office 2003 Service Pack 3. This is because this behavior was changed in Office 2003 SP3 to improve the security of Office 2003 documents.

19. Upgrading from the following language versions of Windows XP to the matching language of Windows Vista is not supported:
a. Windows XP with the following Language Interface Packs installed: Bulgarian, Croatian, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Serbian-Latin, Slovak, Slovenian, Thai, or Ukrainian.
b. Windows XP Media Center Edition: Traditional Chinese (Hong Kong), Traditional Chinese (Taiwan), Czech, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, or Turkish.
c. Windows XP Tablet PC Edition: Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.
If you have one of these operating systems, you will need to perform a clean installation of Windows Vista.

20. The following features are not available in Windows Vista:
a. Active Desktop
b. HyperTerminal
c. Luna visual theme
d. MSN Explorer
e. NetMeeting (replaced with “Windows Meeting Space”)
f. Telnet.exe is no longer installed by default, but is installable feature through “Programs and Features”
g. The network Messenger Service (Winchat.exe)
h. Windows Messenger
i. WinHlp32.exe, used to display 32-bit .hlp files (help pages)

Download PDF version of this article from the link below:

http://www.box.net/shared/i4uuvmar5a

Author: bcdalai
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