Vista and XP users will have to start giving up some of their habits, this would include using MSN Messenger, I’m sure at least one person still uses it.  Once again, a forced upgrade, courtesy of your friends in Redmond (though, a forced upgrade is not always a BAD thing).

Way back in January, there was a preview version of Messenger that was Vista optimized and claimed that a public beta would be released by the end of the second quarter which ended in June.

There’s a lot of material on the Internet that no child should ever be exposed to, which is why parental guidance and filtering control are more important than ever.

After users complained that their installations of Vista and XP had been updated without notification or permissions, Microsoft is taking a stance by saying these updates were “normal” and that “there is no cause for alarm.”  The so-called “secret” updates are claimed to be part of Windows Update.

If hacking means unauthorized use of someone else’s PC, then Microsoft, as reported by Computer World in its article entitled “Researchers: Microsoft Changes PC Files Without Permission”, is guilty of hacking.

Users of pirated copies of Vista can now expect something entirely new from Redmond.  Microsoft has activated a function which is an extension of “reduced functionality mode” but is just every so slightly worse.

People are always looking for a way to spruce up their desktop, be it a home computer or work computer, who wants to look at bland blue or gray backgrounds all day, not me.  If your monitor is big enough then you can have applications open and still see the desktop so it pays to have something that looks good.  What could be better than a 3D environment where you can place things anywhere you want?  Nothing.

There are those people who enjoy going into the registry to get every little ounce of performance out of Windows, I’m not one to delve into the registry unless it’s a life or death situation.  Someone out there realized this and developed a relatively easy to use program to tweak Vista and make it run better with some increases in speed.

A new research report by Gartner advises IT decision makers planning to deploy Windows Vista that they should not wait for Microsoft to release Vista’s first service pack (SP1), which is due in early 2008.

Vista likes rating everything and telling you what you can and can’t run on your system, it’s very good at doing that.  When you boot Vista for the first time, you get something called the “Welcome Center” which displays information about your computer, hardware installed and the rating of the installed hardware.  You really only need to see this once, so I recommend turning it off but some may be wondering what all those numbers mean.

The total cost of ownership (TCO) of Windows Vista mobile PCs is 14% lower than that of Windows XP, a Microsoft sponsored study said.

Those of you who have upgraded to Vista and that rely on your iPod/iTunes have been disappointed because up until this point, iTunes and the iPod were pretty buggy under Vista due to one or the other and most times iTunes was the culprit.  All the issues are now extinct because Apple has released a new version of iTunes.

I’d be the first to admit that there aren’t a whole lot of people using a 64-bit operating system but those that do see some speed increases in the system.  What should never be expected is for a company to release a product and then not support it on one of their own operating systems but that’s exactly what happened.

In an effort to placate Google, Microsoft has submitted a test version of Vista to the Justice Department with features that make it easier to use non-Microsoft programs to search local PC hard drives.