Remember when Microsoft analysts were claiming that Windows Vista sales were going to be spectacular and spark massive growth in the industry because consumers would be falling over themselves to upgrade?  Well, turns out those forecasts were a little bit too aggressive.  Now though, Microsoft itself is admitting just that.  CEO Steve Ballmer said as much yesterday in a strategy presentation to analysts, saying that Vista would create a "small surge" in PC sales in fiscal 2008. ...

We often lean heavily on the members of our community to help each other out in learning how to use software like SkinStudio, IconDeveloper and DesktopX.  They're not easy tools and require a fair bit of invested time to really get a feel for how to get them to do what you want.  DesktopX is probably one of the most difficult creation tools since it requires both coding and graphics skill. After numerous tutorials on the subject, community member, and gadget guru, RomanDA is steppi...

We've all had to deal with them, the unwanted calls at inconvenient times trying to sell us things we don't want.  In recently years many of us have flocked to sign up for the Do Not Call list, barring telemarketers (except non-profits and political groups) from disturbing your dinner.  However, the calls still come.  Companies ignore the no-call lists and don't respect your requests to be removed from their database (something they're obligated by law to do if you request it) and...

Google, friend to all, guardian of the environment and... financier of piracy? Sounds strange, but that's the latest criticism leveled against search giant Google this week.  By allowing two software piracy sites to run Google AdSense ads on their site, a few pirates walked away with over $1.1 million in ad revenue.  Many media giants such as News Corp, Disney and Time Warner are screaming bloody murder over Google's apparent support of software piracy sites. Google's defense is ...

Windows Home Server, the next big product from Microsoft, is slowly gathering marketing steam since the announcement at CES last month.  Previously, only a handful of testers in and out of Microsoft had access to the beta, to test and try to help work the kinks out.  Now however, Beta 2 is approaching and MS wants more people to get their hands on the code and put it through the paces. So if you're up to the task, and have a spare PC you can dedicate to the effort, head on over he...

Google announced this week that the extremely popular Gmail webmail service is now open to anyone who wants an account.  The service launched on April 1st, 2004 as a beta product and invite-only.  Gmail quickly caught on with tech enthusiasts, and a strange vortex of hype and demand surrounded it due to it's invite-only method for allowing people to create accounts.  Gmail is also notable for the amount of storage space it provides to users.  Starting at 1 gigabyte, the total...

Ok, so most of us remember the smiling flying people in the commercials for Windows XP, and now we're dealing with the annoying "WOW!" people in the Vista commercials, and we're more or less entertained by Apple's Mac vs PC ad campaign.  Ad campaigns for operating systems are pretty hit or miss, and in the case of Microsoft, typically miss.  So it's no surprise that one of their first, a commercial for Windows 386 is incredibly bad. Don't believe me?  Well, Gizmodo dug up an ol...

A big deal at CES that received surprisingly little press coverage in general was Windows Home Server, the little box that would tie it all together and help you bring the power of the PC to every corner of your house.  Hooked in with a Windows Vista machine running Media Center, and an XBox 360 with the Media Center connector capability built-in, the potential is definitely there for a server designed to fit in with the home media and information space. Well, Microsoft is starting to re...

Love him or hate him, Steve Jobs knows how to pick a product and market it like crazy.  The iPod, despite any technical complaints people have with it, remains the absolute dominant force in the digital music player market.  Everyone wants to unseat it, but no one has come close yet.  And then there's iTunes, the music store to go along with the iPod, which is also the most popular music store on the Internet, with over 2 billion songs sold. What ties it all together? FairPlay,...

Outsourcing work to cheaper locations and companies has been a cost-savings tactic of larger corporations for several years now, especially in the IT industry.  Why have an American support call center when you can get one for a fraction of the cost in India?  In a world of time and cost-conscious consumers, a lot of work seems to be outsourced to others.  Now, however, we're crossing into a new realm; Outsource video game playing. If you've played games like EverQuest or World...

Google has been steadily encroaching on Microsoft's territory when by releasing web-enabled clones of popular office productivity tools. Already you can do word processing, spreadsheets and email through your web browser and Google's ever-growing suite of tools.  Soon you'll even be able to work on presentations. Google conspiracy theorists discovered hints of just such a project when browsing through Google's massive mesh of websites.  While this won't unseat Microsoft's hold on th...

Remember Netscape?  The one browser to rule them all that was oh-so-unfairly unseated by the big, bad, mean Microsoft's Internet Explorer.  Netscape has gone through a few rebirths, becoming the open-source Mozilla web browser, which then spun off Firefox.  AOL, recently reviving the Netscape brand, is basing the browser on the Firefox codebase.  Now, they're preparing the launch of version 9.0. AOL posted a little teaser to the Netscape blog alluding to the upcoming relea...

In a world where Google dominates the online landscape, and often a company's fortunes rise and fall along with their Google PageRank, it's no surprise that newspapers, often slow to catch up to the advance of technology, are finding that their favorite, catchy headlines, make it impossible for readers to find their stories through popular search engines.  The witty taglines that are interesting to read and chuckle at over your morning coffee don't perform well when users search by descript...

Seems that the much-touted Family Pack discount program for copies of Windows Vista Home Premium got off to a rocky start.  Early adopters who went in for the discount in the first few days of Vista's availability received keys that didn't work with Windows Vista.  Microsoft said they were in fact valid keys, but just for some other product they refused to identify. Today Microsoft said they were in the process of issuing new keys to anyone who might have received an incorrect key ...

Sometimes, bugs are just too funny to not talk about.  Of course we expected a fair share of gotchas with Vista that would have slipped through testing, and this is one I can't imagine anyone in QA would have thought to build a test case for.  Turns out, if you have speech recognition turned on in Vista, and are using speakers instead of a headset, the possibility exists for someone to play an audio file on your computer that will cause your computer to run unauthorized tasks. Grant...