Category Archives: Tech News
Microsoft drops support for Windows XP
After supporting Windows XP for more than 12 years Microsoft announced that they will be dropping the support for Windows XP on 8 of April 2014. After that date Windows XP users will not receive any updates through windows update and technical support from Microsoft will no longer be provided.
In addition to the above, Microsoft announced that they will also stop providing Microsoft Security Essentials for download for Windows XP users on the same date.
This is an important announcement since a Windows XP holds more than 10% of the users in the current market.
Since the upcoming security issues will no longer be fixed after the 8th of April, current Windows XP users should strongly considering moving to a newer Windows version, mainly to either Windows 7 or the Windows 8 version.
Posted in Microsoft, Tech News.
Tagged Microsoft, Windows, Windows XP
Windows 8.1 Update 1 to be released this spring (2014)
Joe Belfiore has mentioned in the Windows blog page that Windows 8.1 Update 1 is currently scheduled to be released this spring.
Over the next few months, we’ll continue to deliver innovation and progression with an update to Windows 8.1, coming this spring.
Not much information has been released yet as to what changes the new update will bring to the users, but based on the things pointed out in an official post it seems that desktop user experience will be one of the main things they want to improve.
- We’ll enable our partners to build lower cost hardware for a great Windows experience at highly competitive price points.
- We are making improvements to the user interface that will naturally bridge touch and desktop, especially for our mouse and keyboard users. We have a number of targeted UI improvements that keep our highly satisfying touch experience intact, but that make the UI more familiar and more convenient for users with mouse/keyboard. Don’t worry, we still LOVE and BELIEVE IN touch… but you’ll like how much more smooth and convenient these changes make mouse and keyboard use!
- We are enhancing support for enterprise customers via a few tweaks, particularly including features that greatly improve IE8 compatibility in Internet Explorer 11, which is especially critical for web-based line of business applications. Additionally, we’re extending mobile device management capabilities and making deployment easier.
As a desktop user I welcome any chances aimed to improve the functionality for keyboard and mouse users and I am eager to see what the update has in store for us.
What kind of features/improvements would you like to see in the new update ?
Winamp’s era is coming to an end
After 15 years of active development the company behind Winamp announced that they are shutting down winamp.com and all the associate web services they provide. No official reason for the shut down was given as of yet.
The shut down will happen on the December 20, 2013 and from that point on users will not be able to download Winamp from the official site or use any other services that were associated with it. With these sad news Nullsoft released a final version of Winamp (Winamp 5.66) which will be available on their site till the 20th of December.
Farewell Winamp, you will be missed.
Microsoft Update KB2823324 has been recalled
Microsoft has recalled one of their recent windows updates yesterday. The update was causing a lot of Windows 7 systems to have a blue screen (0xc000021a Stop error) or generate event errors with ID 55 and may even cause your system to not be able to boot upon restart.
Microsoft has already removed the update from windows updates list and they are recommending their users to uninstall the update from their systems if they have already installed it. For more information and step by step instructions on how to remove the update visit http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2839011
Posted in Microsoft, Tech News.
Tagged Microsoft, Windows 7, windows updates
Microsoft Visual Studio 2012
Microsoft has officially announced the release of Visual Studio 2012.
In addition to the things we know and love about the Visual Studio products, the newest version provides the core tools that are required to build compelling, innovative Windows Metro style applications. There are also numerous of new features and enchantments that come with this version. If you are interested in finding what are those Microsoft already created a web page which you can access here that contains all the information you will need about this release.
Also you need to keep in mind that the interface of the new Visual Studio has changed drastically since this version now uses a Metro style interface. If you are one of those people that didn’t particularly like the Metro style you might need to consider that before rushing to upgrade.
Download Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows 8
Visual Studio 2012 Online Installer (922kb)
Visual Studio 2012 Offline Installer (403MB)
Visual Studio 2012 Language Pack (20.2MB)
Posted in Microsoft, Tech News.
Tagged metro, Microsoft, Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2012
