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It wasn't too long ago we editors--or anyone!--got acquainted with Skyfire (review), the newest mobile browser to challenge Opera Mini's dominance. Check out the fresh minimalist design and clever search options, plus one disappointing feature that's far from a thriller. (Go ahead and award yourself 10 points if you spot that reference in the video.)

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There is huge amount of software designed to defend the Windows C disk from the bad guys--antivirus, antispyware, firewalls, yada yada yada. Huge amounts of time, effort, and money is spent defending the C disk. But, there are other approaches.

On his Security Now podcast (Episode 129, January 31, 2008), Steve Gibson discussed a free program from Microsoft called SteadyState that defends the C disk in a different way.

The problem that Gibson was looking to solve was that of a small-business owner, someone who needed to provide computers to employees, but didn't want them installing applications for their … Read more

As an extension of this morning's news about Google Gears making its way to mobile devices, online office suite Zoho is taking advantage of the new technology to give people a way to view Zoho Writer documents on their Windows mobile phones while away from a data connection. It's the type of situation that occurs frequently for commuters, and something that has historically given native software applications the leg up on their Web counterparts.

Users can view up to 20 of their latest Zoho Writer documents while connected, and view up to the last last five when in the Gears-enabled offline mode. According to CEO Raju Vegesna, an option to change how many documents you can load into the Gears cache is in the works. Also on tap is an offline editing mode to let you make changes or tweaks to your docs, although according to Vegesna more than 90 percent of users simply view documents on their mobile devices.

Zoho was one of the first adopters of Google's Gears technology, adding it to its Writer word processing service back in late November--something Google has still not done with its own Documents and Spreadsheets service, despite hints it was the next service to get the Gears treatment back in January.

Vegesna walks us through the process of installing Gears and accessing the mobile version of Zoho Writer in the video embedded after the break.

… Read more

A few weeks ago I complained that I couldn't figure out how to change the default location when opening or saving files in Windows' great little Paint imaging utility. That one still eludes me, but I came up with an alternative approach that's almost as fast: Put shortcuts in common dialogs to your favorite folders via XP's Places Bar and Vista's Favorite Links.

Customize XP's common dialog boxes To add new folder shortcuts in XP dialogs, click Start > Run, type gpedit.msc, and press Enter to open the Group Policy applet. Navigate in the … Read more

I expected to see some lower Vista prices in this weekend's ads, but was surprised to see just how low the prices had fallen.

Officially the price cuts announced by Microsoft on Thursday don't take effect until later this year when Service Pack 1 hits retail shelves. However, the company had said that many retailers were offering promotions that bring the software to its lower price.

But the ad at OfficeMax took things a step further. In this week's circular, the office products chain is selling Windows Vista Home Premium for $99. That's $30 less than … Read more

The Seattle Post Intelligencer has collected and ranked the all-time worst (read: most incriminating) Microsoft emails of all time, and a dandy list it is, too. For heavy email users like me, it's also a reminder that some things are better left unsaid...or at least unwritten.

Perhaps my favorite of the bunch is Jim Allchin's 2004 blast against Windows...and in favor of the Mac:

I am not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers (both business and home) the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems [our] customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn't translate onto great products.… Read more

Last week I mentioned that Lenovo's technical support wouldn't accept a minidump to help me debug a Windows failure on a new ThinkCentre A61 tower (see Debugging Windows crashes with minidumps? Not at Lenovo). Now I know why. Lenovo does not support Windows.

Note: Normally, when a computer is purchased with Windows pre-installed, tech support for Windows is provided by the computer manufacturer, not by Microsoft. To get Microsoft support for Windows requires a retail purchase of the operating system. Someone commented below that anyone can call Microsoft for paid technical support with Windows. I haven't tried … Read more

In looking at the reasons behind Thursday's price cut for Windows Vista, it's easy to blame the OS itself. After all, plenty of critics have panned it, users have grumbled and even Microsoft executives themselves were slinging arrows that the software wasn't ready for prime time when it launched last year.

But, it's important to note that this cut doesn't affect the bulk of the PC market, where folks get Vista as part of a new PC. Rather, the cut is limited to the comparatively small number of folks who buy a boxed copy of … Read more

Ever since Microsoft released Vista to the masses, most people knew just how bad the operating system was. Instead of offering the kind of functionality already found on Linux or Mac OS X and the stability that we had come to welcome in XP, Vista was nothing more than a beta release on day one, and very few improvements have been made to change that.

To make matters worse, most companies and individuals are more than happy to keep XP running, and even Apple has been able to capitalize somewhat on the issues people have had with Microsoft's latest operating system.

Obviously realizing that there is some trouble afoot, Microsoft on Thursday announced price cuts on its most expensive versions of Vista and said those discounts will range from 20 percent to 48 percent. Ironically, those discounts are designed to coincide with the release of Vista Service Pack 1, which according to Microsoft, will usher in a slew of security fixes and improvements that should make the Vista experience much better.

And while I applaud Microsoft for finally dropping the price on its ill-fated software, the price drop looks more like a PR move than something that will have an impact on consumers and, most importantly, shows just how much trouble this company is in with Windows.… Read more