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An anonymous reader recommends a Computerworld article on a new report from Australian security vendor PC Tools. The company released figures on malware detection by its ThreatFire product, and in its user base 27% of Vista machines were compromised by at least one instance of malware. From the article:

“In total, Vista suffered 121,380 instances of malware from its 190,000 user base, a rate of malware detection per system [that] is proportionally lower than that of XP, which saw 1,319,144 malware infections from a user base of 1,297,828 machines, but it indicates a problem that is worse than Microsoft has been admitting to.”

Microsoft hasn’t responded yet to this report.

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Ubuntu is a community developed, Linux-based operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. It contains all the applications you need - a web browser, presentation, document and spreadsheet software, instant messaging and much more.

Download Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition

Download Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition Released

Integrates the Latest Stable Applications with Long Term Support

LONDON, April 21, 2008 – Canonical Ltd. announced the upcoming availability of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition for free download on Thursday 24 April. In related news, Canonical also announced the simultaneous release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition.

Ubuntu 8.04 Long Term Support (LTS) provides a stable platform for software and hardware vendors, developers and users. With three years of support and maintenance on the desktop, 8.04 LTS is a great choice for large-scale deployment. A substantial and growing ecosystem of free and commercial software built for Ubuntu provides a rich set of choices for desktop users. This is the eighth desktop release of Ubuntu. Ubuntu’s track record in delivering - on a precise schedule every six months - a commercial operating system that is free, stable, secure and fully supported, remains unique.

“Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition is a very significant release as it will take Ubuntu squarely into the business environment,” said Jane Silber, COO of Canonical Ltd. “Our business and home users have told us that they want a longer support cycle to make Ubuntu a better deployment option. We have responded to that and added a commitment to much broader software and hardware support that we and our partners are excited to deliver.

Majorgeeks has posted download links to the 316MB Windows XP Service Pack 3 Final download. It seems like you can get it sooner than the MSDN and Technet folks. Oh… they’re not happy. No. Not happy at all after Microsoft delivered a second “slap to the face”. Not my words… Read story below.

Download Windows XP Service Pack 3

Subscribers to TechNet and the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN), who pay Microsoft hundreds of dollars a year for the right to download software for testing and development purposes, called the move a “farce,” a “slap in the face” and “ludicrous.”

Yesterday, Microsoft announced that it had finished Windows XP SP3, the last major update for the six-and-a-half-year-old operating system, and said that it would post the upgrade on Windows Update and its own online download site next Tuesday, April 29.

But subscribers to the TechNet and MSDN services won’t be able to obtain SP3 until sometime “within the next month,” according to Chris Keroack, the service pack’s release manager.

Another Microsoft employee, Nick MacKechnie, a senior technical account manager with the company’s New Zealand operation, was more specific about dates. In a blog post yesterday, MacKechnie listed several dates in an SP3 timetable, including a May 2 release to TechNet and MSDN. The timetable has since been pulled from MacKechnie’s blog.

The delay — whether a month or several days — did not sit well with some TechNet and MSDN subscribers. Many, in fact, brought up the February incident, when Microsoft first refused to let subscribers download Vista SP1. After pressure from users, it reversed that decision about two weeks later.

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates indicated Friday that the successor to Microsoft’s Vista operating system will be available sooner than the company previously had indicated.Gates, in response to a question during a public appearance in Miami on Friday, said to expect Windows 7 “sometime in the next year or so.” Gates was speaking at the Inter-American Development Bank in Miami, and didn’t elaborate.

When asked to elaborate on Gates’ remarks, a Microsoft spokesman said Gates was alluding to a test version of the new software, and not the full-on commercial version. The spokesman didn’t offer additional comments outside the statement.

“As is standard with the release of a new product, we will be releasing early builds of Windows 7 prior to its General Availability as a means to gain tester feedback,” according to Microsoft’s statement. “We’re not sharing additional information at this time.”

Microsoft last said it expected a follow-up to its Vista software around January 2010. Should Gates be referring to a full-scale release, his timetable on Friday lops at least a year off the wait.

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Well, it’s something to keep an eye on. With the messy (and some would say, incomplete) release of Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system, it is no small wonder that Microsoft wants a successor out as soon as possible, if for no other reason than to quiet the masses about wanting to keep XP rather than upgrade to Vista.

Microsoft likely may want to give people something else (positive) to desire and talk about, thus drowning out the XP concerns, driving people to a feeling of more acceptance of where things are and that things are “moving forward” so they might as well accept the direction as it would be futile to swim against the current.

Microsoft is cutting prices for various versions of Windows Vista. But good luck figuring out exactly what that means for you. In the US, CNet reports that customers purchasing a full boxed version of Vista Ultimate will pay the same high $399 price as always. But the price of an upgrade disc has dropped from $299 to $219. The base price of Home Premium stays the same at $240, but the upgrade price has dropped from $159 to $129. And of course, you can find everything for cheaper if you shop around.

Confused yet? Well, one thing is certainly clear. Microsoft is trying to push more copies of Windows Vista. And while the company claims that adoption rates have been high so far, the truth of the matter is that most new Vista users got their copies when they bought a new computer preloaded with the operating system. The high price may be one discouraging feature, but wide reports of software incompatibilities and other bugs have also scared away a lot of consumers.

And don’t forget the fact that Windows XP still offers most of the features many computer users are looking for, so why upgrade? Look, we’re not trying to bash Microsoft here. In fact, quite the opposite. The company put out an operating system more than 5 years ago that was solid enough that it’s still in use today. Maybe when Microsoft stops offering security and feature updates for Windows XP people will switch to Windows Vista en masse. But charging hundreds of dollars for software that may not run on existing computers and doesn’t offer many advantages over your existing software doesn’t make much sense to us, price cut or no price cut.

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Microsoft has often stated that it plans to expand its Windows Live suite and improve how this interacts with its client OS, instead of integrating everything straight into Windows. This has two main advantages:

1. Anti-competitive lawsuits are (hopefully) avoided as the optional services must be downloaded and installed first
2. The Windows team is free to focus on the core features of the operating system, which (hopefully) results in a less-bloated release

Windows Live’s future will deeply rely on whether Microsoft succeeds in acquiring the web giant that is Yahoo. It is unclear how Microsoft would use the Yahoo branding, but it’s more than likely that Windows Live is here to stay in some form or another. During the software giant’s employee webcast to discuss the Yahoo bid, Microsoft noted that it is already planning its next update for Windows Live. “We are now in vision phase for Windows Live wave 3, working to get that out later this year,” division President Kevin Johnson declared. Details were not revealed, except that search would play a big role in the update.

The heart of Windows Live, the part which needs to be successful for the whole suite to work together, is search. Windows Live Search hasn’t been doing so well; Microsoft believes its third place product is due for some rebranding, and a name change may be coming. The revamp was rumoured to come in September, when Live Search was overhauled, but is now expected in the next biannual search update, reported to occur sometime this spring (possibly in April). The new brand name has yet to leak; Microsoft employees keep referring to it as Rome.

Whatever it ends up being called will probably be an improvement over the current name.

Following a recent court loss, hugely popular file storage service Rapidshare might soon be faced with a tough choice: stop users from uploading/downloading copyrighted music from its servers, or get shut down.

German’s equivalent of the RIAA, GEMA, has won a copyright infringement case against Rapidshare, as the judge ruled that Rapdishare can be held accountable for the actions of its users. It’s the story as old as the internet: if you’re merely providing a hosting service, should you also monitor every file hosted on your servers and prevent any copyrighted files to be uploaded/downloaded? Lately, the answer has been yes: at the very least, if the music/movie industry points to a file and ask you to remove it, you have to comply.

However, although GEMA was quick to declare victory on this one (press release in German), claiming that RapidShare now must take preventive action and check all the files on its servers for copyright infringement, it’s not quite clear what the court has decided yet. We’ve seen pressure to put similar requirements on ISPs, and the general consensus among experts is that this would be either impossible or highly impractical; RapidShare, with the huge amount of material it hosts (they claim 4.5 petabytes of storage), would be no different.

The folks at TorrentFreak spoke to Christian Solmecke, a lawyer at the Cologne Chambers of Lawyers Wilde & Beuger, who thinks that RapidShare’s demise is far from inevitable. “RapidShare will appeal against the decision of the Landgericht (District Court) of Düsseldorf. If they do so, we will have to wait and see what the Oberlandesgericht (Higher District Court) of Düsseldorf (as the Court of Appeal) says,” he says.

RapidShare is fully operational at the time of this writing.

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Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 is now available for Windows from MajorGeeks. Will update post later with final release notes when available.

Download Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.0.9

Microsoft has expanded their refurbishing rules and now companies that want to fix up and sell their old PC’s will be able to legally include a genuine copy of Windows XP. Microsoft will be offering the license through the Microsoft Authorized Refurbisher (MAR) program.

“Companies don’t know what to do with their old PCs, so they collect dust in the company cafeteria or stack up in the hallways,” Hani Shakeel, senior product manager of the Genuine Windows Product Marketing team said in a statement

The new program will be available to Microsoft’s A-list OEM friends worldwide and to other refurbishing partners in North America. It will cover both Windows XP Home and Windows XP Professional provided the refurbisher has a Certificate of Authenticity. This program will allow them to retore the PC to its original state. Microsoft currently estimates that 28 million PC’s are in the secondary market, which is about 10% of the market worldwide, this program will help companies legally sell old computers and hopefully in turn keep some out of the landfills.

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Microsoft appears to be taking a cue from Google, and is rolling out its latest web service to just a few Windows Live users at a time. LiveSide reports that some folks are able to access the new Windows Live Calendar today, while others will be taken to Hotmail or MSN Calendar if they follow that link.

The updated calendar application seems to be a decent Google Calendar competitor, with many of the same features:

• Day, Week, Month, and Agenda views customizable by name and color
• Create multiple calendars
• Share your calendars with other Windows Live users
• Receive email reminders of scheduled events
• Share calendars via xml
• Import ICS files from Outlook, Google Calendar or other calendar apps

There’s no way to synchronize calendars. Yet. But LiveSide reports that Microsoft is working on the ability to synchronize your Windows Live Calendar with Outlook and/or Windows Mobile. And that could make this a killer web app. Right now you need a third party solution like GooSync or GMobileSync to synchronize a PDA or phone with Google Calendar.

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