With Vista, Microsoft decided that the default power down option available on the Start menu should put your computer into sleep mode. Personally, I liked the XP method better whereby the Shutdown menu gave you several options to Shutdown, Sleep or Hibernate, pretty simple. Vista went and made it more complicated.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has announced that Microsoft will offer a “Student Innovation Suite” software package for just US$3 to government-funded computer education programs around the world, particularly in developing nations.

Microsoft has said Vista is a failure, not in words but in action. A popular IT blog, The Inquirer says a couple events have sparked this speculation with them calling Vista, “Windows ME two (II).” I wouldn’t go that far, Vista is not full of bugs, doesn’t crash on a daily basis and doesn’t corrupt its own file system like Windows ME just loved to do. Vista does have bugs but not as many as Windows ME did, and driver support is ever increasing.

Dell dumped its Windows Vista-only policy by adding Windows XP again as an option for four models of its Inspiron notebooks and two models of its Dimension desktop PCs despite Microsoft is sabotaging XP to make roads for Vista.

Microsoft has been fairly, okay, completely silent about pinning a firm release date for Vista SP1. As my friend Ruben said, many analysts are placing the release date close to the end of the year around the October/November time frame or whenever Longhorn server ships. Intel CEO Paul Otellini did not have a problem naming a rough time frame during a conference call on Tuesday. ComputerWorld has the details of what transpired.

Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer said that Citigroup plans to upgrade 500,000 PCs to Vista in the next 13 to 14 months according to a report coming out of ComputerWorld. He could certainly use the good news right about now what with Vista’s failure in both the US where it isn’t selling well and in China where Microsoft sold only 244 genuine copies.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has stated that he expects to sell 90 million Windows Vista licenses this year, dampened some overly optimistic sales projection made by some analysts.

Rumors about the coming release of Windows Vista’s first service pack are getting stronger. Many analysts and commentators are saying that the service pack will come out around October/November, but at the moment there is no service pack listed on Microsoft’s service pack roadmap.

Microsoft has been advertising Vista like crazy with the “Wow Starts Now” campaign, while they like to tout sales of 20 million copies, actual installations and copies in the hands of consumers are far less than that. I’m not going to rehash that here as it has been discussed before.

Microsoft yesterday began accepting applications from individuals interested in beta testing the next upgrade to the Windows Media Center functionality within Windows Vista, code-name Fiji.

Well, does that really come as a surprise? There really is no advantage to running a 64-bit (Windows) operating system yet. Driver support is horrible, some programs don’t work and generally it just makes life worse. And that friends, extends to the 64-bit version of Vista.

GRISOFT, the developer of AVG Internet security software, today announced an update to its AVG Internet Security solution, which offers comprehensive protection for Windows Vista.

Some in the great wide world of computing seem to think that DirectX 10 on Vista is a complete and total ripoff. The complaints mainly center on Microsoft not wanting to port DirectX 10 to XP and claiming that the pretty graphics are solely the responsibility of DirectX 10. Some of this is true, some of it could be considered misleading and some of it is just a flat out lie.

The NSW Department of Eduction and Training (DET), one of the largest IT infrastructures in Australia with 250,000 devices of which 160,000 are PCs spread across 2,500 locations, has put on hold the mass adoption of Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate in a bid to get a licensing better deal.

I am not talking about the flaws that were present in iTunes 7 under Vista. With version 7.1 Apple fixed most of the problems there were present in iTunes, I do not guarantee that all of them were fixed but iTunes is now at least, usable under Vista, including music store purchases. Videos are another story entirely.