Wikipedia 1 - Microsoft Encarta 0

The open source community's Wikipedia may have caused the demise of Microsoft's Encarta. Microsoft have announced that Encarta is will be discontinued from June 2009. This will not have come as a surprise to the millions of people that use Wikipedia everyday.
Wikipedia's unique model of allowing anyone to update entries means that it is always going to be more up to date than any commercial package. The popularity of Wikipedia was clearly documented when they managed to raise $6 Million in donations, including $3 Million in just 10 days.

Read rest of entry

Windows 7 RC Download date announced (well sort of)...

It seems that a slight mistake was made on the TechNet website last week. The Windows 7 Release Candidate download page was displayed a bit early.
So now we know that Windows 7 RC testing program will be available to download from May 2009 and this will most likely continue until June 2009.
Windows 7 RC will expire on 1st June 2010 when users will have to install the proper edition of the software.

Read rest of entry

The end is near for Windows XP...

Microsoft will shortly be moving Windows XP from ‘Mainstream Support’ into ‘Extended Support’.
This means that although users will continue to receive security patches, they will no longer receive patches covering other issues such as stability or driver updates.
Only companies which have specific support contracts with Microsoft will be eligible to receive non-security patches. This will also have an impact on businesses that write their own Windows XP based applications and rely on Microsoft for assistance.

Windows XP will still be sold on some hardware, mostly netbooks which cannot host Vista due to limited budgets and hardware capacity. Users who purchase a netbook with Windows XP installed have to accept that they will not have access to mainstream support.

So now that you are looking at a network full of XP machines and you have just found out that mainstream support is ending, Vista might be an option after all!

Read rest of entry