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According to InfoWorld, citing sources "familiar with the situation", Microsoft will be extending XP's availability past June 30th. An announcement is expected to be made sometime this week, possibly at the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai. InfoWorld note that Intel is using IDF to debut various low-cost notebooks based on its Atom processors, which will no doubt rival the Eee PC. Like the Eee PC, these devices lack the memory resources needed to run Vista, and thus XP remains the only Windows OS worthy of the job.

Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack 2008 is available for IT pros who have purchased older versions or who have Software Assurance.Read More...

Earlier in the week, we were told to expect an announcement from Microsoft regarding the extension of Windows XP's availability. The source indicated that low-cost notebooks like the Eee PC were the sole reason for lengthening the operating system's life. Microsoft has now lived up to these rumours, and officially announced that XP Home Edition will stay on the market "one year after general availability of the next version of Windows", or at least until June 30th 2010. If Windows 7 is delayed though, XP could remain available past 2011.

Just this month, Microsoft has updated its Windows Mobile website, launched the first beta version of the Windows Live Mobile homepage, and made the Microsoft.com domain redirect to a mobile version when a mobile browser is detected. This focus on mobile for Microsoft sites will be seen throughout the whole year.Read More...

Microsoft promised us, and they've finally delivered an update named KB940510 for practically all Windows Vista versions. It will seek out those installs which use two of the most common cracks around. Both the grace time exploit and the OEM BIOS crack are expected to be detected from the 3MB application once installed. It will prompt the user if any problems come up, and obviously, it will not stop there, as it will ask for a valid activation code.

We was informed that Internet Explorer Eight was right around the corner, and the Microsoft has released the beta of the new browser, named Windows Internet Explorer 8. The new browser is available from Microsoft Beta pages, and its compatible with Windows Vista x64, x86, Windows XP SP2 and Microsoft Windows Server 2003. The installation appears to overwrite the IE7 install, it can be later removed, and a reboot is required before the installation is complete.

Microsoft has published a short security advisory that describes a problem involving some machines with Office 2003 installed that are not able to synchronize with a WSUS server. A workaround is available while the software giant figures out a permanent solution.Read More...

The year 2008 will see the release of three major versions of the most popular browsers. We will see the release of Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 8 and Opera 9.5. All promise new and exciting features for the new browser versions and users were already able to test beta versions of both Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5.

The Windows XP Service Pack 3 is available again and many users have already made the switch to protect their system with the latest security updates. If you have installed Internet Explorer 7 before updating the system to the third Service Pack and decided to uninstall it again you might have noticed that the option to uninstall the browser is grayed out and therefor not possible.