Microsoft plans to have a quiet Patch Tuesday this month: Just two bulletins covering security vulnerabilities in the Windows operating system and Office productivity suite.   According to an advance notice from Redmond, the Windows update will be rated “critical” because of the risk of remote code execution attacks. This patch only affects Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.     The Microsoft Office patch will carry an “important” rating and will also c

Microsoft has revealed some additional Windows Phone 7.5 features over the weekend.   Ryan and Travis Lowdermilk from the Windows Phone Dev Podcast revealed some new features from “Mango” on Sunday. Mango, known to be Windows Phone 7.5, will include Bing Audio/Video, SMS dictation, podcast support and turn-by-turn navigation. Paul Thurrott has detailed all the new features after listening to the podcast.   Bing Audio/Vision   Bing Audio will allow Windows Phone 7.5 owners to search for mus

On May 2, Microsoft made the Release Candidate (RC) test build of its Windows Thin PC available for download by testers.   Windows Thin PC (Win TPC) is the successor to Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs (WinFLP). It is a version of Windows 7 that allows customers to repurpose existing PCs as thin clients. Win TPC doesn’t require the VDA (Virtual Desktop Access) license to access VDI desktops. The product is built on top of Windows Embedded Standard 7 Service Pack 1, and supports RemoteFX and

Last week I looked at a fascinating sample of malware that specifically targeted users of Google Chrome. Over the past few days, I’ve been looking more closely at this particular malware attack, which appears to be widespread and extremely persistent.   Social engineering has become the dominant method of distribution for fake antivirus software. And most modern browsers, with one exception, do a terrible job of dealing with this type of threat. Current builds of Chrome display a terrible flaw

Microsoft’s Windows App Store screenshots appear to have leaked for the first time on Monday.     The screenshots show Microsoft’s new application store for Windows. The store appears to be running in Windows 7, hinting that the software giant may also be planning to offer its app store for legacy versions of Windows. Cnbeta posted the screenshots on Monday, however WinRumors is unable to confirm their authenticity at this time. The screenshots appear to show a number of Microsoft’s own sof

While Silverlight didn’t get the leading role in either the day one or day two Mix ‘11 keynotes (much to the chagrin of some developers), there was some Silverlight news at the Microsoft developer/designer conference.   Microsoft is making available a public beta of its Silverlight 5 development tool/runtime, as of April 13. The beta will be available at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight.   In December, Microsoft officials outlined some of the 40 new features the company planned to delive

Microsoft released the final version of Internet Explorer 9 four weeks ago. Since then, I’ve been using it steadily, and I’ve also been fielding a steady stream of questions from readers. Here are the answers to the questions I hear most often.   Which Windows versions does IE9 work with?   Internet Explorer 9 runs on Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2. I’m running Windows XP. Can I install IE9?   No. XP is officially out of the mainstream support ph

The day 2 keynote at MMS was focused on empowering IT, and the consumerization of IT - how can IT enable users to use at work the devices they use at home. The keynote covered new ways to manage mobile devices, easily deploy and manage software, patch and manage machines, regardless of where they are, and much more.     Below is a screenshot of SCCM 2012 Beta 2 at MMS 2011     and here we can see a Windows 7 client getting software via the Software Catalog/Software Center features in S