On the Windows Vista team blog Mike Nash, Corporate VP, Windows Product Management announced the beta of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2) will be available this coming week to a limited number of testers.

Nash said: “Following the success of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 last spring, we have been working hard on Windows Vista Service Pack 2. As a part of the development and testing process, we’re going to start by providing a small group of Technology Adoption Program customers with Windows Vista SP2 Beta for evaluation next Wednesday, October 29”

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Microsoft has issued an emergency patch that fixes a problem ranked as ‘critical’ for Windows 2000 and XP.

The specific problem lies in Microsoft’s Remote Procedure Call (RPC), which in the absence of a firewall could allow a hacker to gain control of a computer without any user action to authenticate them. In Vista and Server 2008, the user would have to authenticate the attack which is why the problem is only rated ‘important’ forthose systems.

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Microsoft has chosen to stick with its code name for a final Windows release, Windows 7 is now officially named Windows 7.

Mike Nash, Corporate Vice President, Windows Product Management announced: “As you probably know, since we began development of the next version of the Windows client operating system we have been referring to it by a codename, ‘Windows 7′.  But now is a good time to announce that we’ve decided to officially call the next version of Windows, ‘Windows 7′.”

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In a post on the official Microsoft Engineering Windows 7 blog Ben Fathi vice president for core OS development indicated that the User Account Control system (UAC) will be refined with Windows 7 and there will be fewer but clearer prompts than in Windows Vista (Hurray!), users will also have more control about what type of prompt they see.

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The Microsoft Second Shot offer, which gives you a free second chance to pass your IT professional, developer, or Microsoft Dynamics exam, is available again worldwide through Prometric, to register visit Microsoft Learning
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Microsoft has confirmed that it has extended the availability of Windows XP on new PCs by six months. Computer makers can now “downgrade” machines from Windows Vista Business or Vista Ultimate to Windows XP Professional through to the end of July 2009

The new date is a change in policy. Previously, Microsoft had planned to halt XP Professional media shipments to major computer makers after the 31 January 2009.

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In a recent survey commissioned by Microsoft and conducted by Harrison Group Inc shows companies using unlicensed Windows software are at greater risk of IT related problems and system failures.

In the survey IT professionals and business people in nearly 1600 companies based in the US, UK, China and Brazil were interviewed. Of the companies included in the survey 43.7%, were using fully-licensed software while 56.3%, ran some unlicensed software.

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