Vista, VoIP and load of old Polonium
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To subscribe to The Register's weekly newsletter - seven days of IT in a single hit - click here Yes, thereâs only been story in the news this week. Rogue Russian agents have apparently been racing around the UK, knocking off ex-KGB spies, and endangering sushi chefs, flight attendants and Italian Academics, using rare radioactive isotopes. The fact that it was Polonium 210 that was used to permanently shut-up former KGB man Alexander Litvinenko was taken as proof of Russian state involvement. Only past poison experts such as the KGB had access to such a devastating material, it was reasoned. Well, only them and anyone with a web connection, a credit card and the web address for United Nuclear. So, beware come office party season. If the cocktails look a little more lurid than usual, someone may well be settling scores.â¦
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Resistance to Vista was expected among the large companies that have leverage with large PC vendors, but even in the consumer and SMB ranks, the clamor for XP is significant. The beneficiaries? Possibly, "white-box" system builders and direct-sales channels.
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Malware blocking credentials questioned Windows Vista has only just left the starting blocks but security watchers have wasted no time in challenging claims that it provides improved security defences.â¦
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The basic technology is called voice-over-IP and it is referred to as VOIP. Free! Sign up here to receive our SiteWatcher e-Newsletter!
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Windows Vista is causing problems for those trying to hook up a PC to a broadband net connection.
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SEATTLE/SAN FRANCISCO  - Computer hackers are off  and running trying to find vulnerabilities in Microsoft Corp.'s   new Windows Vista operating system, putting to test  the software maker's claim that it is the most secure Windows  program ever.
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Vista's first service pack addresses performance and reliability. Also on tap: a beta of the third and final service pack for Windows XP.
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Blog: Researcher finds a basic cookie-handling error that could compromise Windows PCs.
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Vista expert Jonathan Hassell explains how you can now manage everything from LAN settings to network security modes to wireless capabilities to quality of service through familiar tools.
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Windows XP users interested in trying out the release candidate of Service Pack 3 for the operating system should be able to download the software later today. Be forewarned, it weighs in at 580MB.
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A Croatian college student has created a utility that installs a seriously stripped-down Windows Vista, saying the heft of Microsoft's biggest desktop operating system is just too big to believe."Who can justify a 15GB operating system?" asked Dino Nuhagic, a fifth-year student from Split, a Croatian city on the Adriatic. Not Nuhagic, or the uncounted users who have turned to his creation, vLite.The free program lets users pick and choose which Vista components, hot fixes, drivers, and even language packs are installed, then builds a disk image that can be burned to a DVD for unattended installation of the operating system."Why did I do it? Well, it's performance and work environment," Nuhagic said when asked why he came up with vLite. "Performance, that's easy to explain. The less things running, the more responsive the OS. But the environment part is where it gets down to personal preference."Those preferences include options for leaving out virtually every component of Windows Vista, from the minor -- such as the bundled screensavers -- to the major, such as the firewall or Universal Plug and Play.Some vLite users, in fact, have made it a contest of sorts to come up with the puniest-possible installation package for the operating system. While Microsoft recommends that users set aside 15GB of hard-disk space to install its pride and joy, Nuhagic's fans boast of squeezing it into an image file as small as 515MB that takes up just 1.4GB on the hard drive.One user reported condensing Windows Vista Home Basic into a 526MB .iso file and installing it in a virtual machine that used just 1.3GB of drive space. "It worked well inside the virtual machine and since I have 1GB of RAM on the host I guess the little Vista would work well," said amocanu.Nuhagic didn't come right out and say it, but he hinted that he -- like more critical users and pundits -- thought Vista was bloated and could use some reducing. "To be frank, I don't need 90 percent of Windows. But that 10 percent, which guarantees that you can run [the] majority of games out there, is what is worth isolating."Crafting vLite wasn't easy, he said. But the time Nuhagic spent on its predecessor, nLite, which similarly squeezes Windows 2000 and Windows XP, paid off in spades. "Since I had four years of experience with tampering [with] older Windows, it was a lot easier than nLite," Nuhagic said of the development of vLite. "Also, it was easier than in XP because Vista does not have the old-style installation. It doesn't install components one by one, but simply extracts the image. Where XP would fail during install because a certain file was missing, that issue is not present in Vista."Even though vLite features a simple graphical interface that lets users remove a component with a click, Nuhagic warned that the utility isn't designed for the average user: "Because of certain possible compatibility issues with the programs out there [that] expect full Windows, I'd recommend [it] only to users [that] want exactly that kind of tool. In other words, I would not recommend it to someone who installs their OS once every few years. But if you do it every few months, then it's a must."Nuhagic couldn't say how many people use vLite, or even the number of times it's been downloaded from his Web site. "I don't have counters installed because the FTP mirrors were donated, and I would have to upgrade my hosting for some extra script processing," he said of his shoestring operation. It shouldn't be a surprise, however, that nLite, the Windows XP miniaturizer, remains four to five times more popular than vLite, based on the number of visitors to the different nLite and vLite Web sites.Microsoft knows of the tools -- Nuhagic said the company has contacted him in the past about possible employment -- but it's done little to quash the condensing. When asked whether it had any thoughts on vLite, a company spokeswoman e-mailed a lukewarm warning."Microsoft does not recommend using any tool to strip out applications from Windows Vista prior to installing it on your system, as it may affect your ability to download future Windows Updates and Service Packs, and may cause your system to become unstable," she said.But vLite's users praised Nuhagic's efforts with blunter language. "Thanks for spending your time making our OS less bloated," said one.VLite 1.1 can be downloaded from Nuhagic's Web site.
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A small group of testers is now putting Windows Vista Service Pack 1 through its paces.
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Microsoft's operating system from 1.0 to Vista.
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If I buy a new PC with Windows Vista, can I move my iTunes music over to it and still have it work reliably?
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Back in February, Ralph Green asked me to speak at the North Texas Linux Users' Group. I discussed Linux administration and then took questions. Some one in the audience asked me about Mono. I gave a cavalier answer having a bias against it. Then someone else in the audience said that I needed to get my facts straight.
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Flip it over and you have a VoIP phone.
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Virtual circle EMC Corporation has announced new data deduplication capabilities in EMC Avamar version 3.7, which now also supports VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) for the protection and reduction of backup times within and across virtual machines.â¦