News that the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) have decided not to step in and outlaw the forthcoming Phorm trial by BT has been greeted with dismay by many consumer groups. Many now believe that this “wait and see” ruling has given the trials and the system itself the green light, even though there have [...]

Continue reading " Has Phorm Been Legalised By The Back Door? "

17:25 PDT note:  due to a misunderstanding wholly on my part, I stated that this week we’d announced an IPTV feature for Windows Media Center, when in reality the new feature is a form of internet TV (meaning broadband video delivered over any internet connection, such as MSN Video).  My apologies for any misapprehension caused [...]

Continue reading " New extenders and internet TV unveiled for Windows Media Center "

Those of you involved in deploying Windows Vista to enterprises may be interested to learn of today’s publication of a study completed by Wipro and GCR Custom Research and commissioned by MS, wherein it’s demonstrated that running Windows Vista on mobile PCs delivers significant savings to organizations over running Windows XP.  The reduction in TCO [...]

Continue reading " New study highlights cost savings afforded by deploying Windows Vista "

Although many of us have used Windows Media Center Edition, there are a couple of things that may not be that well known — one of my favorites being the Movie Browser in Windows Vista.  Let’s see how it works…
Have you ever been in the mood to watch a movie but you don’t have a [...]

Continue reading " 10 Things – Windows Media Center Movie Browser "

Further investigation by our WGA team has brought to light more information on the WGA validation issue affecting users this past weekend.  Alex Kochis on the WGA blog breaks down the events of the weekend that caused the validation failure, how it was identified and what was done to fix it, and changes we’ve made [...]

Continue reading " More details on this weekend’s WGA validation issue "

update @ 14:53 PDT:  The exec closest to the development process, Core Operating System Division (COSD) Sr. VP Jon DeVaan, gives his personal take on Windows Vista SP1 over at Press Pass — check it out.
Now is the time and the time is now:  let’s talk about Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1).  Much has been made [...]

Continue reading " Announcing Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Beta "

Our “10 Things You May Not Know About Windows Vista” series continues as we explore one of the least-known features in Windows Vista:  the Volume Mixer.  Although it might not be as well-touted as the Aero interface, you may find it’s one of the more useful features available.
I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of [...]

Continue reading " 10 Things - Volume Mixer "

Mark Russinovich, one of our Technical Fellows and a prominent member of the Windows community, posted today on a topic that’s received much discussion in the past few days — that being the manner in which Windows Vista throttles network traffic on gigabit Ethernet networks when the user is engaged in multimedia playback.
As Mark puts [...]

Continue reading " Understanding how multimedia playback moderates network transfer speeds "

Hello Windows Vista Team Blog readers,
We’ve heard that some of you are very interested in getting the localized version of the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 2.1 but was not sure how the download process works for this globalized integrated download. To clarify, the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 2.1 is available in any of the SEVEN [...]

Continue reading " How to Download the Localized Version of Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 2.1? "

Earlier today (25 August) we began receiving reports of Windows Vista customers running genuine systems but experiencing failures when attempting a Windows Genuine Advantage validation.  This situation has since been resolved and validations are now being processed successfully.  
We’ve since learned that very few customers were affected.  Sr. Product Manager Alex Kochis and a team [...]

Continue reading " Addressing WGA validation issues "