Windows XP Service Pack 3

For those of you who have not jumped over to Vista (and yes there are many out there), Microsoft has released the final Service Pack today for download. There is no obvious new functionality with this release, for the end user anyway. It is a collection of all the past bug fixes and some stuff has changed under the hood a little bit, but nothing major. It is not a life altering experience that will render your machine into a paper weight (at least so far thats been the experience). Its relatively uneventful installing it, I just did my computer during lunch. So, if you want it now head over to the MS download center and snag a copy (its 316mb in size), or just wait until June when it gets rolled out via Windows Update. You do have Windows Update enabled don’t you?

Updated info: Seems the boys in Redmond found a problem with some obscure retail configuration with Windows XP so they have pulled the file for now. That probably will not have any ill effects for consumer versions though so if you have it installed (like me) no worries.

Ubuntu Hardy Heron in the wild

For those of you technically curious to try Linux but don’t want to dip in the pool beyond your toes there’s a new distro in town.  Freshly released as of this morning Ubuntu Hardy Heron, also known as version 8.04 is now ready for download. Its perfect for first time users. Once you download the iso file and burn the cd, you can either give it a test run by booting off the live cd.  Or, what makes this a fantastic release is that you can install from inside the windows environment without touching the actual Windows system using a program called wubi. Its a win win situation.  Oh and don’t scratch your head on the funny names here, this company is based in South Africa hence the names.

I’ve been playing with it since this morning and think that so far its great, and I believe this is a strong contender for replacing a Vista install if you don’t want to deal with that fiasco.   Try and use the bittorrent filesharing system right now as the regular methods of downloading are under heavy strain.

Apple is forcing Safari?

Nice one there Apple. Apparently the Mac side of the house has decided that we Windows users don’t have enough browser choices. So they are using their ITunes update software to push down the Safari Web browser. I just got the notice myself. No thanks! I’m a Firefox guy. I don’t appreciate this either guys, I can make my own decisions. Very underhanded, this is a Microsoft tactic! Apple your starting to become a bit tarnished in my view with this.

Update: You can now turn off Apple Safari in the Apple Update program by clicking on tools and choosing the ignore this update option with Safari checked. Poof! Gone.

Windows Vista SP1 now public

Paul Thurrott just posted on his blog that the much awaited Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is now available for public download. For those of you who are adventurous you can get it from the MS Download center (32bit or 64bit). These are fairly large downloads it looks like so low bandwidth folks should expect this could take a while to get. The 32bit is 434 mb and 64 bit clocks in at a whopping 762mb.

UPDATE: Its been widely reported that some installations are breaking peoples systems. So install at your own risk!

Microsoft Security Updates for March

Its getting to be that time of the month again, and as usual there are a whole bunch of updates coming out for March. As posted on CERT, MS will have patches for a whole range of products including ones for Office which will patch some serious holes, ones that will plug a remote code execution type of threat. More info here. Go get those patches!

We’ve moved!

I decided that the fine folks at WordPress.com can do a better job of managing a blog instead of the home brew solution I was using. Hopefully I will be able to post items of note technology wise here occasionally.