It seems that enterprise customers are indeed interested in Vista not for its fancy new interface, new search abilities or anything else it brings to the table except for the enhanced security or rather, enhanced for the time being.

The WinFuture.de folks managed to grab a quick snapshot of a PC they thought running a build of Vista SP1 during one of the Rally talks at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Los Angeles recently.

Another of Vista’s features has been relegated to the side lines. The SideShow feature which was supposed to be made available on laptops is almost nowhere to be found. This feature was to allow users to view such information as unread emails, weather reports and a calendar. All of this could be viewed without actually booting the laptop.

A web application developer has found a way to hack Windows Vista through its User Account Control (UAC) feature. The two-step attack allows malicious code to infect Vista systems even from accounts running under the limited privileges afforded by UAC.

ReadyBoost was a technology set up in Vista to allow only but the fastest USB flash drives to be used as a substitute for the swap space on your hard drive. Microsoft claims that ReadyBoost will make your PC “feel” faster as it is supposed to reduce program load times and generally make the lot run faster. This is truer on low memory systems with only 512MB to 1GB of RAM. Systems with 1.5GB to 2GB will see little to no performance boost.

Microsoft is all set to release its ‘Origami’ version 2.0 specifications for Ultra-Mobile PCs (UMPC) based on the Vista operating system.

Microsoft is working on fine tuning its next generation of FlexGo initiative for developing world PCs. Speaking at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), the company said the next release of FlexGo will be designed for Vista, with enhancements to allow users to live on “borrowed time” until their next payment.

It was only a matter of time before Vista was even more effectively hacked. Hacks to get Vista activated have been cropping up ever since it released, there have been a number of hacks to this point, one of the most famous being the BIOS crack but now something more insidious has come along.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates thinks the feature and functionality gap between PCs and mobile devices will close. He predicts the distinction between personal computers, smart phones and other intelligent appliances will vanish, and that they will be replaced by a common platform on which users can communicate, work and play games.

If you aren’t familiar with the term “patch Tuesday” it refers to the one Tuesday of every month where Microsoft releases updates for their software, Windows and other alike. It seems that after the May 8^th update last week some users are experiencing crashing or unusable IE7 sessions.  Both IE7 on Windows XP and Vista are affected.

In responding to constant user complaints that a number of peripheral devices won’t work with Windows Vista, Microsoft has disclosed that its newest operating system now supports 1.9 million devices, up by 300,000 since Vista was launched.

Credit it to what you will; Microsoft is now claiming that Vista, its newest operating system has sold over 40 million copies. Let’s take a step back here, this wouldn’t be the first time Microsoft has inflated figures to look good on paper as the claim of 20 million copies sold did not occur too long ago.

The launch of a new version of Max OS, codenamed Leopard, off the back of average Vista sales, looked like an opportunity for Apple to finally attract more consumers and businesses to the Mac world. Unfortunately, it now seems that by delaying the release of Leopard release, Apple may have squandered any potential advantage offered by Vista ’s struggle to gain momentum.

It seems that Microsoft lacks a cult following or a cult of any kind for that matter. There is real no excitement around Windows products, Office or any of their other products except for the XBOX 360 which seems to have a rather devout following but all consoles do so that’s nothing new.

Microsoft has on a number of occasions reported that Vista sales are strong, higher than expected, and that Vista is doing much better than XP did when it was launched. What it never talks about is how Vista is affecting the Apple Mac OS market. There certainly seems to be evidence that the Macintosh is only getting more popular, despite the launch of Vista.