Bowing to pressure from customers and computer makers, Microsoft plans to keep Windows XP around a little longer.

Large PC manufacturers were slated to have to stop selling XP after 31 January. However, they have successfully lobbied Microsoft to allow them to continue selling PCs with all flavours of Windows XP preloaded until 30 June, a further five months. Microsoft also plans to keep XP on retail shelves longer and will allow computer makers in emerging markets to build machines with Windows XP Starter Edition until June 2010.

The move indicates the continued demand for the older operating system, some nine months after Windows Vista hit store shelves.

In recent weeks, several PC makers launched programs that allow new PC buyers to more easily “downgrade” their Vista Business and Vista Ultimate machines to Windows XP. Fujitsu, which was among those lobbying for the change, has started including an XP restore disc in the box with all of its laptops running Vista Business.

Source: ZDNET

Windows Vista is facing stiff competition from an unlikely source: Windows XP.

The six-year-old operating system is showing surprising strength more than half a year after the full launch of its successor. In April, Dell acknowledged continued XP demand and resumed offering XP as an option on new systems. In July, Microsoft chief financial officer Chris Liddell ratcheted up the percentage of OS sales the company expects XP to account for in fiscal year 2008 from 15 percent to 22 percent. Finally, in August, Microsoft announced an XP Service Pack 2c release that does nothing more than add new Windows XP product keys so the company can keep selling the OS to businesses through January 31, 2009.

In addition, customers who purchase a Vista machine from Dell, HP, or Lenovo (among other vendors) can use a vendor-supplied XP Pro recovery disc to replace the Vista operating system on their system with XP Pro.

Chris Swenson, director of software industry analysis for the NPD Group, says that, from January through July of this year, XP sales accounted for a healthy 42.3 percent of online and brick-and-mortar retail OS sales. By contrast, from January through July of 2002, after XP’s launch in October the year prior, Windows 98 accounted for just 23.1 percent of retail sales. (Windows Me launched after Windows 98, but it didn’t supplant the older OS.)

Source: PC World

Bosses are not planning to make the iPhone available to employees as a corporate mobile option because of the high price tag and network-operator restriction.

Apple has just revealed details of the UK version of the iPhone, which will be available from 9 November. At an event in London, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs named O2 as the exclusive mobile operator for the iPhone, which will cost £269 in addition to a monthly contract ranging from £35 to £55.

Despite the cost, a poll of more than 700 readers by ZDNet.co.uk’s sister site silicon.com found a third would switch mobile operator just to get their hands on an iPhone. The US version has already sold more than one million handsets in the first 74 days since it launched.

However, when silicon.com asked a 12-strong CIO Jury IT director panel whether they have plans to make the iPhone available to staff in the range of corporate phones they offer, only one said that they would.

Source: ZDNET

Microsoft released the beta of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 to a private group of testers, taking one step closer to the anticipated official launch in the first quarter of next year.

Nick White, a program manager on the Vista team, announced the beta drop in a posting to a company blog. “Today we release the Beta of windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) to a private group of Beta testers via connect.microsoft.com,” White said, referring to Microsoft’s beta test site.

Late last month, when Microsoft finally confirmed the beta and partially outlined its schedule, an executive promised that SP1’s first preview would be out before the end of September.

Microsoft has invited approximately 12,000 people to test SP1, Mike Nash, the head of Windows client operating system product management, said in a videotaped interview posted on Microsoft’s Channel 9 site. A later build during the release candidate period will be available to a larger group. Microsoft has said that MSDN and TechNet subscribers will be able to participate in that round of testing.

In his interview, Nash stressed that Vista SP1 would be very different from 2004’s Windows XP SP2, the last service pack Microsoft delivered. “The philosophy is very different,” Nash said, referring to Vista SP1 and repeating the message other executives delivered in August when the service pack was revealed. In XP SP2, we were creating a lot of new functionality. [Vista] SP1 is just focused on addressing the issues we’ve heard about,” and it will not add new features or capability to the operating system, he said.

Source: computerworld.com

New research reveals that more than a third of hard disks which are bought second-hand still contain sensitive company and personal information.

Researchers from BT and the University of Glamorgan purchased 300 second-hand hard disks in the UK, Australia, North America and Germany and analysed them to see what data could be recovered. They found salary details, financial company data, bank and credit accounts, medical information, pornography, visa applications and on-line purchasing records.

In total the researchers found over 37% of the hard disks still contained recoverable personal data – a 3% increase on last year’s research – indicating that organisations and individuals still aren’t effectively wiping their disks before disposing of them.

At QBS PC Help we have always recommended that old hard drives are securely wiped before being sold or disposed of – see our PC Hard Drive Data Erasure article for more information on this subject.

Source: PC Pro