Jul 18
Jul 10
Federal Aviation Administration made clear its plans to ban contractors who administer air traffic controller exam using Windows Vista, Apple OS, Linux, Unix and other operating systems. They are only allowing the use of Windows XP and Windows 2000.
In an excerpt:
The FAA has ruled out other operating systems as well. “Windows XP or Windows 2000 operating systems are acceptable for use. Microsoft Vista, Apple OS, Linux, Unix and other operating systems are not acceptable now, but may be acceptable with later versions of the test battery,” the FAA says in a draft version of a statement of work for the testing program, obtained by InformationWeek.
While it’s not surprising that the FAA plans to prohibit the use of the non-Microsoft operating systems — given that most of them are seldom used in business environments — the agency’s plan to bar Vista from the testing environment provides more evidence that organizations that in the past have marched steadily along Microsoft’s technology upgrade path are now stalled on XP and have little use for Vista.
I do not understand why FAA would want to ban contractors. They should at least have a set of guidelines and roadmap around Vista since they would be using and moving to this platform sooner than they think. Do they really want to push their exams in an operating system no longer supported?
Continue reading here.
Jul 10
This battery tracker software allows Vista users to retrieve information about their laptop battery like manufacturer and model, brightness control support status and others.
Please proceed cautiously in using this software as I have not yet tried it and can’t provide any guarantee.
You can download the software here.
Image and article source here.
Jul 10
I remember trying out speech recognition softwares back in College when I was doing a major project for my Artifical Intelligence class. That was around 9 years ago and all the software I tried was frustrating — lack in technical speech adaptability.
I am just reading this blog post from Dave Johnson who discuss how he had his hand placed in a cast and had to opt using Windows Vista Speech Recognition. The same as his experience, he had trouble with earlier speech recognition software; but was amazed upon trying out Vista speech recognition.
Overall, he was satisfied and it saved his job who required him for extensive hand jobs. 
In an excerpt:
I found the accuracy of Vista’s Speech Recognition to be nothing short of startling.
It takes about twenty minutes to set up and train
the software, and then you can start dictating directly into your
favorite programs. I created documents in Microsoft Word, e-mails in Outlook, and random notes in OneNote. If the software made a mistake, it was easy to correct.
Read his post here.
Tags: Microsoft, Vista, Windows
Jul 10
Small Business Assurance Program has announced during the Worldwide Partner Conference about the free coaching and support to be received by consumers who move to Windows Vista. These freebies also include the following:
1. Free hands-on, and personalized in-call help
2. The Windows Vista Small Business Assurance Web Site contain vast amount of tips, guidance, demos, tutorials and reference materials to help transition to Vista with ease
3. Thousands of drivers and applications now support Vista.
Now with XP almost completely out of the way, these materials and help from Microsoft should give businesses and consumers more reason to jump to Vista.
The Assurance website can be found here.
Jul 08
Ross McKillop has a comprehensive post on connecting to Windows Vista from MAC using Remote Desktop Protocol. He first shows you how to enable RDP settings in Vista followed by downloading a software for MAC to make this happen.
It’s an interesting read for MAC users out there.
Continue here.
Jul 06
It is just amazing how much support (consumer & media) has Microsoft Windows XP has received. I must say that 90% of my reader is all about saving XP. Some of these are:
Windows XP: the beginning of the end (Heise)
Microsoft denies XP a last-minute reprieve (ComputerWorld)
Microsoft says ‘hasta la vista XP’ - well, kinda (ChannelRegister)
Windows XPiration is at hand (MSNBC)
XP hooked users, but now it gets the hook (SFGate)
Windows XP to be phased out by 2008 (NDTVProfit)
Windows XP Deadline Approaches: June 30 (InfoPackets)
Inside Intel, It’s XP (CRN)
Jul 05
Download has a review of UltraExplorer which says it overhauls Windows explorer experience. Some features are similar (well, how could file-browsing be any different?) while others have very different work flows (it should be, otherwise it’s gonna be a waste of time trying it out) and overall, UltraExplorer combines the features of both Vista and XP.
Some screenshots of the software:
Read the rest of the review here and download the software here.
Jul 04
It’s not Vista: Windows Server 2008 gets the nod from IT (ComputerWorld)
VirtualLogix Expands Windows Support, Combines Windows Vista with … (Sys-con)
How do I adjust my autoplay settings in Windows Vista? (TechRepublic)
Five Ways to Make Vista and XP Work Your Way (PCWorld)
Idiot-proof backups with Windows’ built-in tools (PCWorld)
Jun 30
Analyst Evans Data Corporation has reported that only 8 percent of developers are targetting Windows Vista while 49 percent are still developing for Windows XP.
John Andrews, CEO & president of Evans Data, says developers are on a wait-and-see mode on Vista because of driver issues, software incompatibility and steep hardware requirements.
It’s pretty ironic since developer’s are on a wait and see mode expecting that software and driver compatibilities would vanish when in fact, 49% of these folks are contributing to delayed stability of Vista because of their continuous support for XP instead of targeting Vista right away.
The major item that Microsoft needs to solve is the high demand of hardware requirements, and given the current economic state, it would be harder for folks to spend a lot of money for it. If only they made the hardware minimum not as demanding as it is today, then army of developers would have long targeted the new OS.