Category Archives: In the News

Tech news and opinions

Firefox 3.5 to replace ideas of Firefox 3.1

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Mozilla has decided to rename the idea of Firefox 3.1 so it becomes Firefox 3.5. Mozilla has decided that a fourth beta will be released on the 14th of April and the release will be named Firefox 3.5. 

Mozilla claims on their developer news site  that the reason for the change is because of the “sheer volume of work” which seems to make it more relevant to make it a bigger release. 

Mozilla confirmed the change in this blog post. They have said they will change the upcoming release to Firefox 3.5 before the next beta is released in April.

We shall have to see what happens when the beta arrives in our download folders, but personally I think that Mozilla just want to make the release stand out more as there is evidently large amounts of work going into it. Hopefully it’ll be something to look forward to, as Firefox is (in my opinion) beginning to fall behind a little as competition from Chrome (and possibly Safari) is falling into place.

Vista SP2 and Server 2008 Release Candidate goes live!

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Microsoft yesterday lauched the Service Pack 2 Release Candidate for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista.

32 bit users click here for download, and 64 bit users click here. If you would like an ISO image, click here. 

I’ve downloaded it and tested it, and so far I cannot see many huge differences, both visually and internally. I haven’t found any bugs, other than the fact that I had to reinstall Windows Live Messenger before it would work properly. 

Also, bare in mind that you will have to uninstall the Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta if you have it already installed, which is very time consuming. It’s unlikely the whole process is going to take you less than 2 hours, even on a fast computer.

So, if you want my verdict, don’t bother with it right now. There’s not much new to see, and personally I think it would be easier and less frustrating to just wait for the final release which is due in a couple of weeks time. 

By all means download it if you’re desperate to, but if you have Vista SP1 it is relatively pointless.

PC sales to fall in 2009… except for netbooks.

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Gartner has today announced that PC sales are set to fall across 2009 by 11.9% (per cent) to around 257 million units. The company has said that this is going to be “the sharpest decline in history”.

According to Gartner, the PC industry is facing extraordinary conditions due to the economic downturn. When it seemed as if PC and notebook sales were increasing rapidly in 2008, we are beginning to see how the credit crunch is affecting the PC industry.

However, Gartner have also said that they are expecting an increase in the sales of laptops and notebook – more specifically the new mini-laptops or netbooks. 

So we’ll have to see what happens to sales over the course of this year, but it looks like many brands could be in trouble. I would like to hope that the rush of new technology might help ease the pain of the economic downturn on computing, but we’ll have to see what knock-on effect the downturn has this year.

Microsoft says Vista SP2 RC is coming in the next week

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According to Techtree, Microsoft has said that the release candidate of Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista will be available sometime next week. No official date was disclosed.

Also on the above site, it was mentioned that the file sizes will be 302MB for the 32-bit standalone installer and will come with 5 languages. However, the 64-bit version will be a more alarming 508MB so anyone with low bandwidth available on their broadband packages ought to really decide if it will be better to just wait for the final release, which is still due in the second-quarter of 2009.

As usual, as soon as the RC is released there will be news here on GEEK!, and it will be reviewed here shortly after, so stay tuned.

Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Release Candidate now available to Technet and MSDN

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Today Microsoft announced the release of the Release Candidate for Windows Vista Service Pack 2 to MSDN and Technet customers. They have also said that a public release of the RC will available in the “very near future”. Today also brought a RC of Windows Server 2008 to Technet and MSDN.

According the Windows Team Blog, Microsoft are planning to launch Service Pack 2 in the second quarter of 2009, which is good news.

So I guess we will just have to wait and see over the next few days for a public release of the RC for both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

Ofcourse, you will be informed on GEEK! as soon as it’s released publicly.