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The evolution of Windows in parallel with computing architectures can be mapped out in accordance to the following marks: 32-bit, 64-bit, 128-bit and even further along. But while milestones have the potential to offer a consistent growth in terms of performance, they also come with inherent setbacks when it comes down to compatibility. According to Christopher Flores, Director Windows Communications, over the past three months Microsoft has noticed an increasing trend in the adoption of 64-bit editions of Windows Vista to outpace the 32-bit variant of the Windows operating system.

The translation is simple. The Windows client is at a juncture, a point marked by the transition from x86 to x64. And 64-bit Windows is starting to become mainstream with 32-bit versions of the platform beginning to fade into the background. This scenario is possible mainly through the new direction adopted by Original Equipment Manufacturers. While end users have failed to crowd to the new 64-bit technologies and software by themselves, OEMs are offering the necessary catalyst, by adjusting their offerings to reflect the fact that x64 is the future.

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Popularity: 23% [?]

A court of law has found Carolyn M. Gudmundson, a former employee of industry giant Microsoft, guilty of embezzling approximately $1 million. Consequently, she was sentenced to 22 months incarceration time but, after she is done serving her time, she will continue to be closely supervised for a period of three years. Microsoft has been awarded monetary restitution to the amount of $923,000.

“Other employees who have similar opportunities to place their hands in the corporate till need to understand that society takes this sort of crime very seriously,” said Judge Ricardo
Martinez.

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Popularity: 22% [?]

There is a time for translucency, and there is also a time for transparency. The under promise and overachieve policy set in place at Microsoft for the Windows and Office projects by Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President, Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group has impacted both Windows 7 and Office 14. Microsoft is essentially ensuring that by promising nothing at all, Windows 7 will
not be a repeat of , but while, for the next iteration of Windows the silence is an item of novelty, for the Office platform, gagged details are nothing more than a tradition. Still, slowly, the company prepares to increasingly open up on both Office 14 and Windows 7.

“You’ll see a range of announcements over the next six months about the directions we’re taking with Microsoft Office,” promised Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer at the Worldwide Partner Conference 2008, on July 10. Office 14 is the next version of the Office productivity suite and the successor of the Office 2007 System.

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Popularity: 28% [?]

Now that Opera 9.5 and Firefox 3.0 are available to end users, the focus is bound to shift on Microsoft. The Redmond company has been cooking Internet Explorer 8 for over a year now, and is approximately one month away from releasing the second Beta build to the public. Since Beta 1 was set up to give web developers and designers a taste of what’s coming mainly in terms of standards support, Beta 2 is built to wow end users and, in this context, will deliver features beyond what is available in the first public development milestone, WebSlices and Activities.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is scheduled to hit sometime in August, but although the IE team
is still hammering at the release, the fact is that as early as mid June 2008, features were no longer added to the milestone. On June 19, Chris Wilson, the Platform Architect for IE revealed that: “we’re still improving quality by fixing bugs in Beta 2, but we’re not implementing new features at this point for the Beta 2 release”.

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Popularity: 34% [?]

On Wednesday, Microsoft announced new security features within the upcoming release of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2. The features are designed to combat the rising tide of drive-by downloads and malicious scripts contained within carefully crafted links embedded in e-mail and Web pages. Most of the new features require systems to be running Windows Vista SP1 or Windows XP SP3.

Perhaps the most anticipated addition is Internet Explorer’s new antimalware protection.  Opera 9.5 and Firefox 3 both recently added antimalware protection. Safari has so far not announced plans for similar protection. Using mostly its own antimalware technology, Microsoft will block emerging threats by masking the entire IE 8 browser screen with a warning to users. The addition of malware protection to the existing antiphishing protection will be re-branded as the Microsoft SmartScreen filter.

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Popularity: 33% [?]

A fresh look at Yahoo’s search results Thursday by Hitwise Intelligence raises the question of whether Yahoo could survive just fine without its search engine.

Such a question is rather important to Yahoo investors, given the Internet search pioneer has given a cold shoulder to Microsoft, which has previously expressed interest in buying Yahoo’s search assets. Yahoo, however, rebuffed the offer, noting in its investor presentation that selling its search assets, including its algorithmic search, would:

Jeopardize the Yahoo user experience and make it difficult for Yahoo to maintain search and display volume.

But Heather Hopkins, vice president of research for Hitwise, noted in her blog that Yahoo’s valuable sites would not necessarily fair poorly without Yahoo’s search engine.

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Popularity: 28% [?]

In the past couple of weeks we have seen a serious increase in SQL injection attacks. Although Microsoft and HP have provided ample guidance and tools to solve the problem with, there are still sites out there that get infected. The latest web page to be attacked is the ATP site (short for Association for Tennis Professionals). With the Wimbledon tournament at full throttle, a growing amount of people is expected to visit the ATP web page and potentially get infected.

Fraser Howard, main virus researcher with Sophos (company that specializes in providing antispam and antivirus software solutions) comments: “With the Wimbledon tournament taking place at the moment, the ATP website will be receiving a spike in visitors - but any tennis fan visiting the infected pages on the site risks being served straight into a crook’s criminal racket.” (more…)

Popularity: 17% [?]