Lexica

It is official now! The long wait for SQL Server 2008 is over! At the Worldwide Partner Conference held in Houston on July 9, Bob Kelly, Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Infrastructure Server Marketing, told the invited guests that SQL Server 2008 will be part of the price list for August 2008. Regarding pricing, he said that the new release will be priced the same as that of its earlier version SQL Server 2005. Microsoft had released the near-final Release Candidate (RC) 0 test build of SQL Server 2008 in early June this year.

Microsoft had actually ‘launched’ SQL Server 2008 in February 2008 itself, alongside Windows Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008, but they have not released it to the market yet. If no further delays occur, the SQL Server 2008 should be up for sale this August middle.

Microsoft has released XP SP3 (Service Pack 3) through it automatic updates starting July 10, 2008. Earlier company official were quite vague in their responses, when asked about the possible date of release of SP3 to XP users worldwide. Also, the release was stalled a couple of times earlier owing to compatibility issues and performance glitches.

However, not all users might get to download XP SP3 straightaway as Microsoft opens it to select users only initially. According to Microsoft spokeswoman, ‘As with all service pack releases, Microsoft will carefully monitor the release to ensure that all customers have a good experience’. But for the existing users of Windows XP, who doesn’t want SP3 to be downloaded into their computers now, need to deploy the Microsoft Service Pack blocker toolkit (or modify the update settings) to delay the pushed-delivery of SP3.

Over the recent past, there have been hundreds of thousands of people that have signed petitions requesting Microsoft to not dump Windows XP. This has come in the wake of fears that retailers may stop selling Windows XP once the end of June 2008 has come and gone which is enough time, Microsoft thinks to fix whatever problems may crop up with its new operating system – Windows Vista.

The trouble with phasing out Windows XP operating system is that many of the hardware that work with XP will not be of much use when your install Windows Vista on your computer since many of the drivers involved won’t be geared to work with XP. It would mean that if you go the Vista route, and then you would need to spend extra cash on buying products compatible with this operating system. In addition, you may also be saddled with an old system that just cannot handle the unique graphics as well as programs that come with Windows Vista.

However, some experts also believe that most users are not so keen on switching over to Windows Vista overnight or in the immediate time frame since there is also not enough Microsoft support for the new Vista.

Thus, if you are worried about how the demise of Windows XP will affect your computing, you too can add your name to the signature campaign to save this reliable operating system. It could help prevent Microsoft from removing Windows XP from their shelves. The good news is that even the Government has advised the schools to refrain from installing Vista because according to this circular, Vista is more suited for the needs of business enterprises rather than for the education industry.

In any case, it is heartening to learn that Microsoft has extended the life of Windows XP from September 2007 to the end of June 2008. In addition, the company has also learnt about the petition and it feels that it would be best for the company to take into account the feelings of end-users and there is thus good reason to believe that they will not precipitate any hasty action.

With so many thousands of people signing the petition to kill the switch to Microsoft’s new operating system Windows Vista, there is enough reason to hope that users will not have to immediately switch over to using Windows Vista.

For those who have spent the last five years using the Windows XP operating system, it must surely have grown under your skin and a switch to the latest Microsoft operating system Windows Vista may not be exactly the most desirable thing. No doubt, with Windows XP you had to put up with a number of patches as well as updates and of course in all this time the face of computing had undergone many changes.

At present, users need to use the Internet to perform downloads of various tools, and software products, and of course, you must have got used to downloading your favorite music as well as video using the Windows XP operating system. As a matter of fact, for many years Microsoft has been working in developing a radically different operating system in the form of the Windows Vista which is the product of extensive research and development.

Now that the testing and adjustments have been finished, Windows Vista is the new operating system being shipped with all new hardware, and so it pays to find out just how its launch is going to affect you. The first thing that will strike you is that Windows Vista is not radically different from Windows XP and so there is less to learn once you make the switch. In fact, you will feel very much at home using the Vista operating system, though once you dig a little deeper into how each works, there will be a few notable differences.

Windows Vista of course has a number of new tools and features that help you to perform your computing quicker and in an easier manner and best of all, using this new operating system is actually quite a lot of fun. There are also certain developments that make your Vista more intuitive as well as safer and secure. What’s more, there are as many as eight different Vista editions with some versions specific to certain companies and also to large corporations.

If you are living in the United Kingdom, you can opt for either Vista Home Premium or Vista Home Basic that essentially are very much like your old Windows XP Home Edition. However, if you need something even more advanced, you can opt for Windows Vista Ultimate that is the equivalent of Windows XP Professional Edition.

Vista sports a whole new design including the excellent transparency effects which you get provided you have a powerful enough graphics card. The Start button has gone and been replaced with Windows Logo. Overall, Vista is very efficient, and searching is integrated very tightly into your Start menu. For first time users, there is a Welcome Center that shows you how to configure your system.

A new feature is Parental Controls and in addition, there is also Windows Sideshow to specify what must be displayed on this screen. Control Panel options have been given a new name and the old Display Properties is now known as Personalization. New tools have been added and now Windows Mail replaces Outlook. XP Pictures as well as Fax Viewer are now Windows Photo Gallery, and the way folders are displayed is also new.

No doubt, today Microsoft has enjoyed an Internet presence for quite a few decades and even though it continues to offer the public exciting new products including Windows Live Search, as a search engine it does lag behind both Google and Yahoo! However, it is nevertheless a much used search engine and thus it has a lot of relevance to most Internet users regardless of the fact that it is still not the number one search engine.

Just recently it came out with an announcement regarding the launch of its adExcellence program in the UK. In fact, this product first hit the US market sometime around December of 2007, and it seems that it was successful enough for it to also be launched in the United Kingdom. Furthermore, it enables advertisers to get training free of cost so that they can become experts in adCenter.

However, when using adCenter that targets Latino users, Microsoft does not as yet allow the landing page to be written in the Spanish language which is a real pity because there are certainly a significant number of Spanish speaking Americans that would have welcomed such a feature.

The fact is that the market for Spanish speaking Americans is huge and lack of this particular feature is sure to affect many people who would have welcomed being able to read the landing page in Spanish. According to Microsoft, the reason why this facility is not available is because use is being made of an American distribution channel which is especially targeting US citizens and thus there is no scope to allow a foreign language such as Spanish to be used on the landing pages.

The trouble is that there does not seem to be a similar restriction when using Google or even Yahoo! which is a pity because there is certainly a huge Spanish American presence in the US.

Another piece of trivia relates to Microsoft adCenter being used to power advertisements on the Wall Street Journal Digital Network. Thus, now it is possible to power your paid as well as contextual ads on Wall Street Journal’s Digital Network which includes a number of sites including WSJ.com and Marketwatch.com.

In fact, this feature gives Microsoft added advertising exposure to as many as twenty million users and it also means that there are as many as three hundred and thirty million page views made on a monthly basis. Though, contextual ads shall start to appear in a short time frame, as far as the paid search ads go, the timing for them has yet to be announced.

In an internet era where memory and storage are no longer costly components, there is an apparent competition amongst major players such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo to offer more to the netizens, and thereby lure them to one’s own side. The latest on the list of freebies offered to netizens is the Windows Skydrive, a free password protected 5GB online storage and sharing mechanism for internet users from Microsoft. Clearly a move to rival Google’s and Yahoo’s Google Apps and Briefcase respectively, Microsoft initially offers its Skydrive feature in 38 countries including US, UK, and India, where its beta version was early released. It appears that the phenomenon of free online storage is also likely to affect the existing market of USB pen drives as people will now have a vault of memory space in the web to upload and save their date for future reference/use than having to carry it around in pen drives from office/work to home and vice versa.

Here is a brief peep into the features of Windows Skydrive. Anybody having a Windows Live account/Passport Id can use Windows Skydrive from any part of the globe, in the same way they access emails. It has a storage capacity of 5 GB per account, and the maximum size of individual files that can be uploaded is set to 50 MB. Users will have three options to store the files – in Public, Personal, and Shared Folders – in which the first one will be accessible to all in the web, while the latter only to those with whom the folders have been shared. At present, no other internet major offers a storage capacity at par with Windows Skydrive. Yahoo Briefcase, its nearest rival, has only 25 MB storage.

Interestingly, Google, who in most of the times had managed to stay a notch ahead of Microsoft in terms of launching new products or enhancements, this time, had failed to negate Windows Skydrive’s fancy launch with a similar product/offer. To avail 5 GB or more memory space, now a user has to pay $20 a year to Google. In other words, it is a paid service of sorts for Google. In the case of Mac, the subscription for memory space up to 10 GB stands at $99, even though it comes with a number of other tools such as web hosting, Mac training, and heavy desktop software integration. In short, none currently offers memory storage space of this extent, and that for free of cost.

Let’s wait and see how the new war is fought by the majors in the coming days.

Party Gaming you can play online casino games in your browser, wherever you are. Our suite of 53 games offers everything from blackjack and baccarat to movie-themed slots games. Enjoy all our great casino action, promotions, and offers, 24/7. You can even play instant bingo in your browser. There’s no need to download any software. It’s free, easy, and you can start playing straight away. Don’t forget about the world’s largest online poker room for beginner, casual or pro players. Choose from Texas Hold’em, Omaha and more!