The European Court of First Instance has upheld the commission's decision [PDF] finding that Microsoft abused its dominant position. It did this by refusal to supply and authorize the use of interoperability information and tying of the Windows client PC operating system and Windows Media Player. The EU Commission's reaction is here, including this statement from Neelie Kroes:
In a study conducted by Dutch’s Consumers’ Union on the problems experienced by Vista users, it concluded that “Vista is not yet a sufficient replacement for Windows XP” and recommended to consumers to consider alternative operating system.
According to OS News, the conclusion was drawn after the union did a 4 week investigation, where it received some 4,200 consumer complaints on Windows Vista. Most of the complaints revolved around application and peripheral hardware compatibility issues.
With its conclusion, the Consumers’ Union advises its consumers to validate their applications and meticulously inspect their current hardware together with the peripherals before moving to Vista.
A European Union court on Monday dismissed Microsoft's appeal against the 2004 ruling which found the company had abused its dominant market position to score over rivals. Microsoft's lawyers failed to impress the European Court of First Instance, which not only dismissed the case but also rejected the appeal against the €497 million ($690 million) fine imposed on the company. Update: Red Hat has issued a statement about the Commission's ruling.
Microsoft has begun patching files on Windows XP and Vista without users' knowledge, even when the users have turned off auto-updates. Many companies require testing of patches before they are widely installed, and businesses in this situation are objecting to the stealth patching. "Normal behaviour," according to Microsoft.
While I definitely think some elements of Vista are definite improvements, 10 months of experience has shown me there are some things that just annoy me to my very core. Here are the three things that most make me wish I had the strength to move over to Linux — full time.
1. Explorer crashing over and over and over and over and over again
This is a legacy Windows issue that has always plagued me. Scrolling through huge directories and even just downloading something that Windows doesn't like can cause explorer.exe to start thinking emo thoughts and take its own life. While this doesn't usually mean I lose any work, it can frustrate the hell out of me if I'm doing something with several complicated paths and it means I have to start all over again.
Last week, Cringester J. J. decided to upgrade his Vista notebook from Home Premium (original recipe) to Ultimate (extra crispy). Being a savvy digital citizen, he decided to use Vista's Disk Cleanup tool to clean up any messy files before he did the deed. I'll let him take it from there:
I spotted two error reporting entries ["Per User Archived Error Reporting" and "Per User Queued Error Reporting"] and based on the description when selected decided it was safe to add them to the default cleanup list.
I was browsing while eating my sandwich and noticed all but the default system icons disappear from my desktop, when I went to the Start menu (classic) I noticed several icons here were also missing as well as icons from the QuickLaunch toolbar. …
Sales of boxed copies of Windows Vista continue to significantly trail those of Windows XP during its early days, according to a soon-to-be-released report. Standalone unit sales of Vista at U.S. retail stores were down 59.7 percent compared with Windows XP, during each product's first six months on store shelves, according to NPD Group. In terms of revenue, sales are also down, but the drop has been less steep, at 41.5 percent.
A federal court hearing Tuesday could resemble a 1960s sci-fi thriller as Microsoft, the King Kong of operating-system manufacturers, squares off against Google, the Godzilla of search engines.
The hearing is intended to review how well Microsoft is complying with a five-year-old court order that settled the Department of Justice's antitrust case against the software maker. Most of the provisions of that order are set to expire in November.
The Justice Department says Microsoft is complying with the order, but Google disagrees. After a fight to get through the courtroom door, Google filed an amicus brief that claims Microsoft's latest operating system, Vista, makes it hard for users to choose a different desktop browser and stay with it. Google — along with group of states known as the "California Group" — wants the final judgment extended beyond its scheduled expiration date.
Microsoft has denied it has switched on an anti-piracy measure in Windows Vista that would result in a "black screen of darkness" for unlicensed OEM copies of the operating system but the software giant did not rule out turning it on in the future.
According to a leaked e-mail from a local Microsoft OEM partner, the strict Vista anti-piracy measure, known internally as "Reduced Functionality" would be enabled this week leaving pirated copies without a start menu, task bar, desktop, and only one hour of Internet browsing before the screen turned black.
Responding to the Computerworld report, a Microsoft spokesperson said the information received was inaccurate and Microsoft has not deployed the update that includes reduced functionality mode in non-validated copies of Windows Vista this week.
IBM’s iAccessible2, code-named Project Missouri, is a specification for technology used to help the visually impaired interact with Open Document Format (ODF)-compliant applications and was developed in part using Microsoft Active Accessibility (MAA) as a starting point.
IBM developed code from the specification and uses it within its own products such as Lotus Notes. In addition, IBM has implemented in code its IAccessible2 specification, which makes accessibility features available to the visually impaired, and plans to donate that to the OpenOffice.org effort (see related story). The company already has donated the specification itself to the Linux Foundation.