Windows users who haven’t applied last month’s emergency security patch are falling victim to a worm exploiting the security gap. Hundreds of home users have been hit by the worm despite it being blockable by basic firewall protection.

Plenty of people have gained from Vista’s poor reception: Apple (if market share changes are anything to go by), the advertising world, Jerry Seinfeld, and of course tech writers looking for something to cover. Now it appears second-hand computer salesmen might also be among the winners.

A variety of rumors and reports indicate Microsoft could be working on its own smartphone. The most common theory is that it would be based around the company’s Zune media player.

It seems that Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool may actually work.  The most recent update removes software that poses as antivirus software but actually hijacks computers.

Microsoft’s purchase of a new domain name has prompted speculation that it will use it as a new home for its web-base software. Another theory has it that kumo.com will become the site for a revamped Microsoft search engine.

A newly-publicized flaw in Vista’s networking system could allow hackers to attack computers using Windows itself. Microsoft is aware of the problem but won’t be issuing a fix until the next Service Pack at the earliest.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, Microsoft has a small problem.  Not all manufacturers were happy about having Vista’s requirements lowered in order to support some lower end chips/chipsets from Intel.  Now a judge has ordered the head of Microsoft to testify in the case.

A Microsoft Vice President complained to colleagues that he’d been “burned” by a laptop marked as ‘Vista Capable.’ It’s just one embarrassing revelation in the latest batch of e-mails uncovered during ongoing legal action over the marketing campaign.

First of all it should be clear that it’s very doubtful that Microsoft would provide Windows 7 for free, ad-supported or not.  Even if not, it doesn’t hurt to think about.

While the bashing of Vista and parent company Microsoft continue over the whole “Vista capable” debacle it seem another issue has arisen.  Even before Vista was out of the gate and way back in 2005, the operating system was already in trouble.

If you’ve spent minutes on end waiting for Vista to start up or shutdown, you might think nothing could be more painful. But for some employees, the real pain comes when they look through their paychecks.

After my colleague, John Lister, published a post about Microsoft’s new free security suite some questions were raised about what this means for Symantec and McAfee.  The new software dubbed “Morro” by the company is replacing OneCare and will be free of charge.

Microsoft is claiming that Windows 7 will be everything Vista wasn’t.  Fast to boot, UAC that actually works and improved performance.  At least so far it is faster to boot, so the company isn’t lying on that front.  It even runs better than Vista with just 1GB of memory.  As better as Windows 7 may be than Vista, it received its first security update.

Microsoft is launching a free anti-virus service for Windows users. If it takes off, it could be a serious threat to commercial security products.

Windows 7 won’t be released until next year at the earliest, but that hasn’t stopped would-be pirates exploring ways to get around measures designed to stop people using illegal copies. The interest has been sparked by the first distribution of physical copies of the system to people outside of Microsoft.