Windows Vista Service Pack 2

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Written on 12:31 AM by Unknown

vistaService Pack 2 for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista now out!

Service Pack 2, the latest service pack for both Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista, is now available for public download. SP2 supports new types of hardware and emerging hardware standards, includes all of the updates that have been delivered since SP1, and simplifies deployment for consumers, developers, and IT professionals. For more details, see the TechNet page for Service Pack 2 for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista.

Microsoft also announced that within 30 days of the May 11 release of Windows Server 2008 RC revealed at Tech·Ed, the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 Release Candidate would be available. VMM 2008 R2 RC builds on the new platform enhancements in Windows Server 2008 R2 such as Live Migration, Clustered Shared Volumes (CSV), hot addition and removal of storage, network optimization, and remote desktop services (RDS).

And for you app developers, Microsoft has released Beta 1 of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET FX 4.

I'm more curious about how Vista SP2 truns out. Windows XP SP2 had solveda lot of problems. Lets hope for the smae from Vista.

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Vista Trick: You Talk, Vista Listens

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Written on 5:32 AM by Unknown

Windows Vista offers speech recognition tools for those who would rather speak than type when communicating with their computers. After it has been set up, Vista’s speech recognition offers you yet another input method, one that is ultimately better than other methods if you have difficulty typing or mousing due to an injury or disability or if you simply lack the typing skills necessary to input data quickly. You can find the Speech Recognition options in Control Panel, but better than that, you can find it by typing Speech in the Start Search window. When you open Speech Recognition, you’ll see the options show in the figure below:


Configuring your Speech Recognition experience

The order in which the items are listed isn’t necessarily the order you should take when you first start using speech recognition. However, to start, you should click Start Speech Recognition. Vista will walk you through the setup process.

Starting Speech Recognition
When you click Start Speech Recognition, a wizard starts to help you through the process. You’ll need to have your microphone or headset installed prior to starting for the easiest setup. As you’re working through the wizard, you’ll be prompted to select your input method (microphone, headset, other), properly position the microphone, and speak a few words in your natural speaking voice. With that done, you’ll see the option to enable document review. By enabling document review, you can improve the computer’s capability to understand what you say, by allowing the computer to learn words and phrases you use when you speak.

Start Listening
After setting up Speech Recognition, you’ll see the listening window shown in the figure below. It continues to say Sleeping until you tell it to Start Listening. After you say the words Start Listening, the speech recognition interface changes to denote what you’re doing. That can be talking, clicking the taskbar (as shown in the following figure), or performing some other task. The Listening option shows what you’ll see if the Speech Recognition tool is waiting for you to say something. The following figure shows what you’ll see after you say “Start listening.”


Sleeping, Switched to taskbar, Listening

Opening the Speech Reference Card
Obviously, “Start listening” is a command Speech Recognition knows. But what else does it understand? To find out, open the Speech Reference Card. A Help and Support page opens with all kinds of information regarding speech tools. Click Common Speech Recognition Commands (see figure below)


Frequently used Speech Recognition commands

Here’s how this works: First, with the Speech Recognition tool running, say, “Start listening.” Follow that with “Move speech recognition.” Now, open Internet Explorer or any other window that can be scrolled up or down. Say, “Scroll down;” then say, “Scroll up.” You’ll get the idea how these commands work after playing with them a bit.

Taking the Speech Tutorial
Although you’ll be able to start communicating with Speech Recognition immediately, it’s best to take the Speech Tutorial as soon as you can. You can access the Speech Tutorial by selecting Control Panel, Speech Recognition Options. The speech tutorial will help you understand how speech recognition works and how to customize it to suit your needs and preferences.

In this particular page of the tutorial, you’re asked to say, “Show speech options.” If your computer understands the command then you are doing fine. If it does not, you’ll see “What was that?” in the Speech Recognition window.

Training Your Computer to Better Understand You
Finally, you can continue to train your PC to better understand you by completing the Voice Recognition Training, available by selecting Control Panel, Speech Recognition
Options, Train Your Computer to Understand You Better. During this training, you’ll be prompted to read the text on the screen and Vista will learn how you speak, what nuances are included in your voice or accent, and more. It’s recommended you work through the Speech Tutorial before doing this training.

Advanced Speech Options
You’ll probably want to visit the advanced speech options, available from the left pane of Control Panel, Speech Recognition Options. You’ll see the options in the following figure.


Configuring advanced Speech Properties

As you can see here, you can create additional speech profiles, which is useful if more than one person uses the SpeechRecognition program on this PC. In that case,you can select to run Speech Recognition at startup and configure microphones and audio input levels. If you’re interested in Text to Speech capabilities, notice there’s a tab for that, too.

For some excellent information on the Microsoft development of speech technology over the past decade, check out this link:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/01/speechinWindowsVista/

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Security Flaws in Windows Vista

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Written on 12:11 PM by Unknown

Serious flaws were found in Microsoft's latest operating system offering Windows Vista which was released to corporate customers late last month, according to media reports on Tuesday.


Among the flaws - one discovered by a Russian programmer allows hackers to increase a user’s privileges on all of the company’s recent operating systems, including Vista. Another major flaw was found by the Silicon Valley firm Determina in the new Internet Explorer 7, which could be a gateway for infecting user machines with malware if they visit certain sites.

Determina also discovered a bug that would make it possible for an attacker to repeatedly disable a Microsoft Exchange mail server simply by sending the program an infected e-mail message.

Microsoft said that it was investigating the threats but found so far that a hacker must already have access to the vulnerable computer in order to execute an attack.

With few days left for the much touted Operating Sytem's launch, it will be a worrying trend for Microsoft if more such vulnerabilities are discovered too soon. Here's hoping that Vista turns out better than its hackers think.

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Microsoft: Windows Vista still Requires Antivrus

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Written on 9:51 AM by Unknown

Windows Vista does require antivirus software after all, Windows chief Jim Allchin wrote on a company blog (windowsvistablog.com).

“I want to be clear, most users will use some form of antivirus software, and that will be appropriate for their scenarios,”
Allchin wrote.



The co-president of platform and services responded to media reports recently that quoted him as saying that the forthcoming operating system didn’t need any antivirus software because of it’s enhanced security. Allchin countered that the remarks were taken out of context.

“I made a comment about how attacks on the Internet are getting more and more sophisticated, and some of the security features in Windows Vista really help our customers. This somehow morphed into people thinking I said customers shouldn’t use antivirus software with Windows Vista.”

The intended point, said Allchin, was that in certain situations, Vista would provide much better security for users.

The initial reports stemmed from a comment Allchin made during a conference call recently, when the company announced that Windows Vista had been released to manufacturing and would be launched on 30 January.

“Even if there is a remote exploit on one machine, and a worm tries to jump from one machine to another, the probability of that actually succeeding is very small. My seven year-old runs Windows Vista and, honestly, he doesn’t have an antivirus system on his machine,” Allchin was quoted as saying.

Allston was talking about his home computer, on which his seven-year-old son runs a Vista machine without antivirus software.

Allchin also said that the machine used strict parental controls that limited access. Allchin recommends that users do have antivirus software on their Vista machines, and that the example he listed was an extreme and very specific situation.

Source: Computer Active

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