While most of us ( including me) were focusing on Vista’s new features it looks that some were concentrating on the more boring but nonetheless important end user licensing agreement. You all know about it, it’s that big screen of text you never read but you have to agree to in order to install any software.

As I was saying there are some that read the fine print and think about it. And they should, for that agreement contains lots of information you bound yourself to when you use a certain software. In our case the software is Windows Vista and it seems that the new Vista EULA contains serious limitations and privacy issues.

As you can read here, the agreement allows Microsoft to check the legitimacy of software on a machine and to delete programs considered as dangerous without asking the user. Besides, when you activate Vista on a device the software is associated with that specific piece of hardware and it sends automatically information about your hardware to Microsoft.

This all might be a false alarm but I strongly advice that you read the ‘fine prints’ in ALL your software, and specially the Vista EULA as it might take from you the control over your own computer.

Featured Tags licensing_agreement, microsoft, privacy_issues, windows_vista


Sphere this entry»

Yahoo has started developing a brand new version of Yahoo! Messenger, specially created for Windows Vista. They say the new software is built from scratch and it aims to combine the reliable and easy-to-use features of Messenger with the cutting-edge experience of Vista.

The new version is not available just yet, but they have published a set of 4 screenshots, and they simply look amazing. You may check them out below. Click the thumbnails to enlarge.

Left to right: Sports widget, tabbed conversations, chat window, contact list.

Featured Tags aims, messenger, windows_vista, yahoo


Sphere this entry»

Since the first beta version of Windows Vista, along the time a bunch of experimented designers and coders built up theme packs, icon packs, partial transformations or even full transformation packs for XP mostly, that would change the face of your operating system, to be similar to the one of Vista.

I’m going to start with something simple enough. Some icon packs, for those of you who just want the icons to look different. Vista High PX is a package which contains more than 150 icons based on the model of Windows Vista at an exemplary quality. Or if you’re more of the picky kind of person, you can browse through Windows Vista Icon Packs, which is the greatest pack of Vista and Longhorn icons with a total of over 1200 icons.

Each time you start programs from the Start menu, you use the interface that has not changed for 10 years. No wonder that it becomes more and more difficult to use it due to the increase in the number of programs. Vista Start Menu is a completely another approach to the interface. In the process of development we were oriented towards how people perceive information and also towards the ability to remember the position of items.

And now for the top three transformation packs out there. The first would be Vista Customization Pack 3.6. Since it’s not just a “skin”, but a shell utility, the pack not only improves your desktop’s look, but it adds a few goodies too. The package performs many improvements to your Windows XP installation. The new icons, theme, color schemes and fonts blend in and give your system an awesome look. If, after you’ve installed it you’ll want to get back to the XP style, you can simply uninstall the pack, and it will undo the modifications.
Read the rest of this entry »

Featured Tags microsoft, windows_vista, windows_xp


Sphere this entry»