Software & Apps - Page 118

In March this year S3 Graphics released its Chrome 430 GT graphics card and it was designed to take on the ATI Radeon HD 4850 and it managed to do rather well in most of the tests we performed, which you can read here.

The folks over at Neowin have managed to get hold of an internal schedule release update from Microsoft concerning the release dates of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP.

If you haven't made the move to Vista yet and as our traffic stats confirm, there are many of you that haven't, you should pay attention to this news.

S3 Graphics' Chrome 430 GT graphics card is a hard product to actually buy at the moment but that hasn't stopped a couple of Chinese websites finding them from the underground and putting the new $60 DX10.1 card through its paces.

Mozilla has released the latest developer preview of Firefox 3 which is Beta 5 and it comes with a staggering 750 fixes from the previously released beta.

S3 Graphics today announced its new graphics card into the US market, the 65nm based Chrome 430 GT.

Firefox is seen by many as the Internet browser of choice. The reason for this is because it has worked faster than Microsoft's IE at times, and it also seems to have fewer issues when loading up websites.

With IE7 a few months old, Firefox have been a little slow in keeping pace with the frenetic updates that Microsoft seem to pump out like clockwork. I like to think it is because they (Mozilla) take their time to perfect things first.

Despite recent news that Microsoft are apparently planning to withhold Windows 7 from being released until early 2011, we've decided to give you the other side of the story.

A recent roadmap suggests that Microsoft will launch "Windows 7", the successor to Vista as early as the second half of 2009. This is contrary to initial reports which stated its release sometime in 2010. According to APC Magazine, there are three milestone projects in the Windows 7 program, with the first stage already in progress. M1 is an Alpha build which has shipped to key partners for code evaluation. Stage two, due around April/May will be an updated version, and stage three is likely towards the end of the year if all goes to plan.

Along with Service Pack 1 for Office 2007 being released recently, Microsoft also let Service Pack 3 for Windows XP out of the bag.

It is not the final release which is expected sometime next year but still manages to pack in a total of 1073 fixes. It also includes four new features including a new activation scheme, Network Access Protection Module, Microsoft Kernel Mode Cryptographic Module and a Black Hole Router detection algorithm.

There was talk of Windows XP SP3 including DX10 support but that didn't end up being the case. If you are still using Windows XP and haven't made the move to Vista yet, BetaNews is hosting the beta service pack for download.

Go grab it here! Keep in mind it is still in beta form, so take some caution and backup first!

As many of you would now be aware, Microsoft are working on a third Service Pack to further support Windows XP and keep it in good health for a while to come. Though it's been mentioned that upon release, SP3 will be Microsoft's final installment before they pull the plug on support from XP and focus entirely on getting Vista right.

Some details have come to light about the progress of SP3 and what we can expect from it once it reaches final status. A massive 1,073 patches and hotfixes will be embedded into the new Service Pack as well as four completely new features which have been backported from Vista; these being as follows :-

- New Windows Product Activation model: no need to enter product key during setup

- Network Access Protection modules and policies have been brought to XP after being one of the more-well-received features in Windows Vista. You can read more about NAP here

- New Microsoft Kernel Mode Cryptographic Module - the Windows XP SP3 kernel now includes an entire module that provides easy access to multiple cryptographic algorithms and is available for use in kernel-mode drivers and services.

- New "Black Hole Router" detection - Windows XP SP3 can detect and protect against rogue routers that are discarding data

Dailytech have the full scoop on it here. Long Live XP!