Windows Vista SP2 RTM is now on MSDN

As well as Windows Server 2008


It looks like Windows Vista Service Pack 2 RTM and Windows Server 2008 RTM just made their ways out of Microsoft’s closed testing environment and into the homes of happy beta testers. According to company officials, channel partners and MSDN subscribers are now able to get their hands on these fresh new releases.

"Today we are announcing the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) of Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. SP2 represents the latest step in Microsoft’s commitment to continuous improvement. It includes all updates that have been delivered since SP1, as well as support for new types of hardware and emerging hardware standards."

Microsoft has mentioned that the key benefits of Vista SP2 include Windows Search 4.0 for improved searching performance, the ability to natively record data to Blu-ray in Windows Explorer, a Bluetooth feature pack to support the 2.1 specification (perhaps 3.0 as well?), more simplified Wi-Fi configuration with Windows Connect Now (WCN), and UTC time zone support in the exFAT file system.

The company has also stated that the SP1 Service Pack Blocker Tool is being removed today, as was announced back in January. Service Pack 1 will now be available in Windows Update, but we highly recommend skipping it and getting a download of Service Pack 2 when it is publicly made available.

It comes as no surprise to us that Windows Vista SP2 RTM version 6.0.6006.18005 is already circulating around torrent portals in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The majority of industry is expecting Microsoft to make the update publicly available sometime this week. While no plans have been confirmed, it is best to stay patient until an announcement has been made.

by: http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13416&Itemid=38

Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 Lets You Browse Privately

Find yourself visiting websites only soon after trying to cover your tracks by clearing the browser cache and history? If so, then you might be a candidate for Firefox 3.5 Beta 4.

Zoom

If you’re wondering what happened to beta versions 1 through 3, they were labeled as Firefox 3.1, but Mozilla decided that the jump in features from 3.0.x were significant enough to make the numbers a bit further apart.

Although the latest versions of Chrome and Safari feature private browsing modes, Firefox 3.5 brings the most fully-featured implementation of it thus far.

The private browsing mode, enabled under the Tools menu, will not store any trace of pages visited, form or search entries, passwords, download lists (though downloads stored on the hard drive will remain), cookies and cache.

Clearly the first use for this mode is for those to feel less paranoid when browsing more adult-oriented sites, but it can also be used for secretly shopping for gifts on shared computers.

Firefox 3.5 also adds geo-location support. The completely optional feature, which Mozilla promises is designed with the utmost care for the user’s privacy, uses IP addresses, wireless access points and GPS data (sent over SSL) to provide web services with location-specific information. A search for pizza will show results closest to you first, and mapping software will determine your starting point automatically.

The newest Firefox also incorporates support for new web technologies such as HTML5

New Drivers from Ati and Nvidia

Both Nvidia and ATI released new drivers over the past few days: Nvidia's GeForce 185.68 beta driver and ATI's Catalyst 9.4

Wednesday Nvidia quietly released a new GeForce beta driver, supporting the GeForce 9 series, 100 series, and the 200 series desktop GPUs. Now listed as v185.68 (98,9 MB), the only new feature the beta driver offers is optimized performance for the PC game The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. Originally, v185 brought support for the new GeForce GTX 275 GPU and CUDA 2.2. The driver also gave many PC games a considerable performance boost including Crysis: Warhead (22-percent), Far Cry 2 (14-percent), and Mirror's Edge (45-percent). In addition, Nvidia added support for the GeForce Plus Power Pack #3 as well as provide numerous bug fixes.

Consumers interested in downloading the new v185.68 beta drivers can do so by hitting the links provided below:

Nvidia GeForce Driver 185.68 Beta: Windows XP (32bit) (64bit)

Nvidia GeForce Driver 185.68 Beta: Windows Vista (32bit) (64bit)

TZoomhursday AMD also released a new driver, Catalyst 9.4, just twenty-two days after the release of v9.3. In this release, AMD has included the new ATI Overdrive auto-tune application, a program that finds over-clocked engine and memory values for Radeon cards that support the ATI Overdrive feature (in this case, the Radeon HD 4000 series). The ATI Overdrive technology allows for safe overclocking by constantly monitoring the GPU temperature, ensuring that it always stays at a safe level. More additional info regarding ATI Overdrive can be found here.

Furthermore, the Catalyst 9.4 driver also addresses a few additional issues including a problem with flickering in World of Warcraft when Shadow is set to medium/high using ATI CrossFire configurations, full screen resolution problems above 1024 x 768 for specific HDMI displays, and many other issues.

"We work hard to deliver the best platform solutions that consist of CPU and GPU, said AMD senior manager of advanced marketing Ian McNaughton. "As the only company in the industry that can deliver both we have the unique opportunity to develop free software to optimize performance across AMD-based platforms. I don’t think we say enough about our gaming software."



by: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-GeForce-ATI-Catalyst-Drivers,7523.html

Bad News From Microsoft

A new survey reveals that 84 per cent of IT pros don't have plans to upgrade to Windows 7 in the next year and that half of respondents are considering alternatives.

The survey, which was conducted by Dimension Research and commissioned by KACE, a systems management appliance company. The survey had 1,142 respondents and 99 per cent of them had a Windows installed at their companies.

We don't know who Dimension Research are, but clearly they didn't think through there questions very well. Windows 7 is in beta at the moment, few companies would consider upgrading their operating systems until the operating system has bedded in a while. The fact that 16 per cent are thinking of doing so in the next year is unusual.

It means that IT pros think it possible that they will upgrade their systems in just six months to make the leap. The rest of the statistics make Microsoft look good. Within two years, 59 per cent of IT pros plan to upgrade to Windows 7.

by: http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13157&Itemid=38

Intel Launches Nehalem Xeon Chips

Intel has officially launched its latest Nehalem-based Xeon processors, the single-socket 3500 and dual-socket 5500 series for servers and workstations.

While the announcement may seem a bit stale in light of all the hubbub about the desktop Xeons such as the latest Mac Pros and the Lenovos D20 and S20 offering Nvidia Quadro or ATI FirePro graphics, and Nvidia's Tesla C1060 GPU co-processor platform.

CNet reports that fresh announcements are due today from the bigger server suppliers, among them IBM. "If you thoroughly maximize the capabilities of Nehalem, generation to generation you can get something like two times the performance capability," said Alex Yost, vice president IBM BladeCenter.

According to Mercury News, HP yesterday launched 11 products incorporating Xeon 5500 chips, including blade servers, rack servers and tower servers.

When asked where these new releases would leave AMD's Shanghai server processor, Intel’s Pat Gelsinger told the Financial Times that Intel sees Nehalem having a huge impact on AMD's four-socket business.

"The performance gains we showed over the previous 5400 processor, all 30 of them are new two-socket records, and every one of those benchmarks bar one beats the four-socket Shanghai," explained Gelsinger. "We see Nehalem having a much bigger impact on their four-socket business than our own four-socket one," he concluded.

The launch of Intel’s Xeon processors comes in the middle of the company’s legal battle with Nvidia over the its new line of processors. Intel doesn’t believe that Nvidia has the right to design integrated memory controllers. Intel filed a lawsuit back in February which stated that the chipset license agreement the two companies signed four years ago does not extend to its future generation CPUs with integrated memory controllers.

The new processors are now shipping for $188 to $1,600 for the Xeon 5500 and $284 to $999 for the Xeon 3500. Hit up the press release for the full scoop.

by: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Intel-Nehalem-Xeon-3500-5500,7419.html

Geforce 185.66 beta drivers

Within the past 72 hours, Nvidia has released Geforce 185.63 beta and Geforce 185.65 beta drivers for its Geforce 8-series (G92), 9-series, and 200-series GPUs. Apparently, these releases didn’t meet up to the company’s expectations so it pulled them and came back today with an update, Geforce 185.66 beta.

These drivers are identical in feature set to .65, including support for Ambient Occlusion, the newly released Geforce GTX 275, and CUDA 2.2 for improved performance in GPU Computing applications.

As we mentioned yesterday, this release reinstates the Ambient Occlusion feature, although to a more limited extent. In 185.20 beta, the setting could be set to Low, Medium, High and Off. In the more refined .63 and .65, only On and Off can be selected. On another note, Nvidia claims the following examples of improvement over official Geforce 182-family drivers:

Up to 11% performance increase in Call of Duty: World at War. Up to 5% performance increase Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts. Up to 22% performance increase Crysis: Warhead with antialiasing enabled. Up to 11% performance increase in Fallout 3 with antialiasing enabled. Up to 14% performance increase in Far Cry 2. Up to 45% performance increase in Mirror's Edge with antialiasing enabled.

Again, the drivers are bundled with the PhysX 9.09.0203 WHQL system software and include support for GeForce Plus Power Pack #3.

Geforce 185.66 beta Vista 64-bit

Geforce 185.66 beta Vista 32-bit

Geforce 185.66 beta XP 64-bit

Geforce 185.66 beta XP 32-bit

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