Perhaps motivated by Duke Nukem Forever shipping after a decade-and-a-half of development and delays, Microsoft decided to finally patch a vulnerability dating back to the 1990s. Included in yesterday's Patch Tuesday bulletin bonanza is a little nugget listed as CVE-2011-1871, which according to ComputerWorld.com is a fix for the dreaded 'Ping of Death,' or at least it was dreaded some two decades ago.
It's no easy task remaining relevant for a decade, as Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme can attest (and if you don't know who they are, it reinforces the point). Yet somehow, Windows XP is still a fan favorite 10 years after its release, at least according to its market share numbers. But is the love affair with XP finally starting to fizzle? Let's take a look.
Users still clinging to Windows XP like that fast and gnarly Trans Am from yesteryear that's just too familiar to part with have yet another reason to consider a new ride. According to security firm Avast, XP is a fertile breeding ground for cyber infection, especially for rootkits, of which 74 percent of infections originated from in a recent six-month study cataloging over 630,000 samples.
Windows and Windows Live Division revenue dipped 1 percent for the fourth quarter ended June 30, 2011, and was down 2 percent for the year even though Windows 7 sold more than 400 million licenses, Microsoft announced. Nevertheless, the Redmond software giant posted big numbers overall, with $17.37 billion for the quarter, an 8 percent increase from the same quarter one year ago. For the fiscal year, Microsoft reported record revenue of $69.94 billion, a 12 percent jump from last year.
We've lost count of how many times Windows XP has been sentenced to death, only to receive a stay of execution from Microsoft in some form or another. Give netbooks credit for keeping the popular OS alive longer than it probably would have been had netbooks never been popularized. But even those have migrated to Windows 7. Well, Microsoft has made the decision to finally retire Windows XP, for good, three years from now.
Keyboard shortcuts are the essence of PC productivity. While newbs slowly mouse around their screens in search of buttons to click, seasoned tech vets hammer through a day’s work with ease thanks to a wealth of arcane hotkey combos that knock out useful tasks in seconds. Of course, every PC user knows a few handy shortcuts, and hardened system tweakers like yourself have forgotten more hotkeys than most users will ever learn. But here are 10 cool combos that even you might not know.
Oh, Microsoft, why have you abandoned PC gamers? Don't get us wrong, Age of Empires Online looks awesome, but the company's almost complete lack of PC gaming news at this year's E3 left a bitter taste in our mouths, and Microsoft's been conspicuously silent on the PC front ever since – until now. Lower your heads and mourn, PC gamers. The continuously half-baked Games for Windows disappears on July 11th, swallowed by the all-consuming console-centric blob that is the Xbox brand.
Microsoft's marketing machine tried to convince Windows users that Windows 7 was a collective effort based on your ideas. "Windows 7. Should have called it Windows Kevin. I'm a PC, and Windows 7 was my idea," an actor says in one of Microsoft's 
The dark corners of shady Internet bars just became a whole lot safer thanks to Microsoft. The boys and girls in Redmond noticed a disturbing trend towards the end of 2010; the rate of infection due to malware spread via Autorun was skyrocketing. Rather than shrugging their shoulders and telling Symantec to deal with it, the company released an update in February that disabled most Autorun functions on Windows PCs. Four months later, the results are in – malware authors looking to slip your computer a mickey via infected flash drives had better start looking at Linux instead.
Are we the only ones who ignore telemarketers? Between caller ID, voicemail, and the oh-so-awesome Do Not Call list, it's easier than ever to avoid being hassled about aluminum siding while you're trying to eat your dinner. Apparently, not everybody's gotten the message: Microsoft's reporting that there's a new computer scam making the rounds, only this time you're swindled over the phone rather than via email. Your wallet still gets hit just as hard.
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