After denying that any major Vista updates would be released before Service Pack 1 ships, Microsoft released “Vista fix packs” to testers yesterday.

Recently we became interested in a problem, one of our writers lacked a scanner but needed to get text out of a document (known as “OCR” or Optical Character Recognition).  There weren’t very many good freeware options, a few paid ones but they were fairly lacking.  All he needed to do was get access to a computer running Vista which had Office 2007 installed which is not hard in our parts.

The BBC is determined to make me eat my own words.  After I said that the iPlayer was compatible with any modern Microsoft Operating System like XP or Vista, it turns out the beta will not support Vista or Macs, I’m just guessing that Linux isn’t supported either.  Currently, the BBC iPlayer only works with Windows XP.

Ever since it came out, Vista has been reviewed over and over again by almost every site and the one thing that is common for laptops is reduced battery life when compared to laptops running XP.  Vista’s Aero glass interface along with several other features eat up battery life.  A new tool has been released to help cope with this problem.

Think Secret is reporting that rumors are abounding in regards to the 6th generation iPods are not only close to release, but not all that different from the current generation.

With the release of the iPhone, Apple may well be moving away from the desktop market to more handheld based solutions, a case in point is the iPhone.  The iPhone runs a mobile version of Mac OSX which could pave the way for future devices, like Apple based PDAs, Newton, anyone?

Stockholders can be a fickle bunch, especially the majority holders and fears had spread that the iPhone would not sell as well as Wall Street had predicted.  Not only did the iPhone sell well, it went above expectations but those first few hours after launch were a bumpy ride for new iPhone owners.

Now that Microsoft has finally set a date for Windows 7 in 2010, and since Windows XP is proving to be more stable than Vista, it seems to make more sense to avoid Vista altogether, keep Windows XP, and just wait until Windows 7.

Microsoft has the ability to spin the numbers any way they want and while I doubt very much that there are actually 60 million installations of Vista out there, the company claims to have sold 60 million copies of Vista.  This includes copies shipped to OEMs, copies sitting on machines that have not yet been sold and copies that consumers have actually bought and installed (which is very few, for now).

Looking back on what seems like a long-past release of the iPhone a mere matter of weeks ago, the consumer industry is eating up the iPhone at every turn.  However, there is a vast distinction between the consumer industry and the corporate industries, where a competitive and constantly fluctuating power struggle exists between smart phone manufacturers and service providers…can Apple secure a hold on the hearts and pockets of the industry executives and corporate big wigs?

In an highly uncharacteristic move for Apple, hints were dropped at a financial Q&A of ‘”some product transitions”.

After rumors that Vista SP1 would be “imminently” available, rumors are now floating around that Vista SP1 will not ship in final form until 2009.  Remember, the US Department of Justice is still making Microsoft provide a beta version of the service pack earlier than the final version.  But now the final versions may have been delayed for two whole years.

Those of you with Palm based handhelds can breathe a sigh of relief, if you are running Vista that is.  Palm has released Palm Desktop Beta for its handhelds, once again enabling you to exchange files and synch it with your computer but this has come at the loss of some functionality.

Apple is now offering 8-core Mac Pro power computers, bringing very high performance computing to the Macintosh world.

Microsoft’s newest operating system, Vista is approaching OSX in terms of market share.  This should come as no surprise since there are millions on millions more PCs than there are Macs but still, Vista is now installed on at least 5% of PCs meaning it is only 1% away from topping OSX and only 1.1% away from passing it.

Microsoft has adjusted its 2008 fiscal year sales forecast for its operating systems by increasing XP by nearly 50% and decreasing Vista by about 8 percent. The adjustment came after the release of Microsoft’s fourth quarter earnings.

Ever since Vista came out, owners of ATi and nVidia graphic cards have been complaining about the lack of WHQL certified drivers which has now been rectified, at least on the nVidia side but one of the problems with the drivers still existed, no multi-GPU support.  Microsoft has released a fix for that problem.

While Microsoft is still trying to pawn Vista off on the masses, Vista’s successor has already been tentatively named.  Previously known as “Vienna,” the next version of Windows is now called “Windows 7.”

Microsoft has squashed rumors that a beta of SP1 for Vista would ship this month.  The company says that SP1 for Vista will be released at some point during this year in beta form but when that will be remains to be revealed.

The interweb is a great place to find all kinds of information, including reports that it is easy for any user to crash Windows Vista simply by holding down the Windows key + E for 10 to 20 seconds.  The keyboard shortcut Windows key + E opens Explorer windows but when held down causes Vista to go insane but it does not crash.