- Vista Marketing Program Receives Big Complaints
Government antitrust attorneys are reportedly still receiving complaints from hardware makers and other companies about Microsoft business practices, even as the software giant has stepped up its efforts to cooperate with those state and federal authorities overseeing its antitrust consent decree.
In a recent court filing, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and numerous other states said complaints were received from several companies that manufacture and sell a variety of products that work with Windows. The department has been enforcing the consent decree for more than six years. (Source: usdoj.gov)
Once upon a time, Microsoft crowed that Windows Vista would be twice as popular as XP. Research firm Ovum, Ltd., predicted a more modest 15 percent switchover in the first year, but gushed that Vista would be "the fastest-moving operating system ever." IDC forecast 10 percent, relatively anemic compared to XP's 14 percent in the first year, but a decent showing.
In total, the company will issue four security updates, including two critical fixes as well as patches for Microsoft SQL Server and its Microsoft Office Visio, the company said in a note published on its Web site Thursday.
Its security experts think that Vole should tighten up its default settings unless it wants Windows 7 to go out of Redmond with a reputation of being insecure.
But this being Redmond there is a caveat: XP customers have to perform a clean install of Windows 7. This means wiping their computer hard drive’s data first, which doesn’t sound much like an upgrade to us.