Microsoft has released a beta of it’s newest bastard child: Microsoft Security Essentials.  Those of you who were unimpressed with Microsoft OneCare will be equally unglad to know that Microsoft Security Essentials is basically just the antivirus part of OneCare.  Why?  The world may never know.  Especially when Grisoft gives you AVG Free and Avast gives you their own free antivirus, just to name a few.

Why Microsoft would release their own antivirus for Windows is understandable.  Not having antivirus these days is a b ig gaping security hole.

But why Microsoft would need to strip down OneCare into a smaller package and rename that Microsoft Security Essentials?  It seems rather silly.  It’d have made more sense to just have OneCare Basic and OneCare Professional or Premium or some such.  Or better yet, simply divide it all and let you pick and choose the OneCare features you want.

But that’s not the Microsoft way.

No.

So if you really really want it, you can go trial the beta of Microsoft Security Essentials if you like.

And if you don’t trust Microsoft with anything security related, for whatever many reasons you may have, there are always other free fish in the sea.

Yes, it’s that time of year again.  It’s Father’s Day.  Tell your dad you love him.

In honor of Father’s Day, I’ll be bringing you some good tech news for a change.  Google Streetview actually did something useful.

Yes, that’s right.  According to The Groninger Courant newspaper, one of Google’s Streetview camera cars captured a mugging in progress while snapping pics of Groningen … last September.  And did nothing.  In March the victim found the photo on Streetview and contacted the police.  Because the photos were blurred the police had to contact Google for unblurred copies.  Which Google obligingly sent to the police.  And now, thanks to Google’s Streetview (sort of) the muggers are identified.  (And hopefully arrested.)

See?  It’s good news.  Kind of…

Happy Father’s Day!

It seems like only yesterday (okay, so it was the day before) that I wrote a blog about Windows 7 not having “downgrade” rights to Win XP nearly long enough for IT departments to actually evaluate Windows 7 safely.  The news of this was from a fairly reliable source as these things go: Gartner.

But maybe, just maybe, Microsoft really isn’t that stupid after all.

Over at Vulture Central is news of assurance from Microsoft that the time limit to “downgrade” to XP is not 6 months, but 18 months!

Stranger though, is one caveat: That Windows XP “downgrade” rights get lost sooner if there’s a service pack for Windows 7.  It’s a strange clause, leaving an even stranger quandry.  Do we then hope for Microsoft to be very slow in developing the first Windows 7 service pack, knowing full well that security holes (like this one, known since January) exist in Windows 7?  Or do we hope for a quick fix to the no doubt countless problems still in Windows 7 (When is an operating system ever bug free?) and with the big patch known as a service pack, lose downgrade rights to Windows XP?  Decisions, decisions…

What is an IT department to hope for?

(Well, other than Microsoft simply giving 18 months of Win XP downgrade rights without the service pack clause, obviously.)

Now that the behemoth that is Windows 7 looms yet closer on the horizon, a lot of IT departments who are still clinging vehemently to XP (And who isn’t?) are left to wonder about just what their future holds as Microsoft is firmly throwing the good old Win32 out the window.  No longer will Windows simply be backwards compatible to all applications.  (Which, historically, is very arguable anyway as anyone who was in charge of the Win 9x migrations to Windows XP will recall.  And let’s just not even mention Win ME, or Win ME 2 Vista.)

In theory at least, Windows 7 offers Windows XP users the best of both worlds.  Windows 7, and a virtual Windows XP SP3.  It’s a combination that should be hard to beat.

On paper.

In the practical application however one niggling (screaming) detail remains.  Why VM a whole Win XP box?!  It’s the question of the day. Microsoft could have used better technologies to VM per-app instead.  Application virtualization would have been a much smoother ride for users.  Again, in theory, Windows 7 has an option sort of like this.  In practice however it really isn’t.  It’s still running a whole VMed WinXP box in the background.

Will Windows 7’s virtualized Windows XP be enough for migrations to go well?  It’s an interesting question.

And it’s a question that’s even more muddled by Microsoft’s licensing.  Buy the right license of Windows Vista and you can happily “downgrade” to Windows XP.  But for some odd reason, the same is not exactly true for Windows 7.  Those downgrade rights disappear on April 23rd, 2010. After that, you can only downgrade to Windows Vista.  (And who in their right mind would want that?)  So if your solution to Windows 7 migration is to actually install Windows XP on the boxes, you have to buy your Windows 7 boxes right away!

But who is going to do it that way?

IT departments always take time evaluating the migration before they actually move everything over.  (At least those who rightly worry.)  This process can easily take more than six months!

So, thanks to Microsoft, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

What is the right answer?  We just may see IT departments continuing to cling vehemently to Windows XP for a while yet, simply because thanks to Microsoft’s poor choice in downgrade rights they’ll have no choice.

It’s been a bad time for computers lately.  Or maybe it’s a good time.  There have been a lot of patches and updates.  Let’s take a gander at what’s going on.

First off it’s Microsoft, with a record number of security bugs fixed on Patch Tuesday last week.  If you haven’t gotten them yet (What, you turned off Automatic Updates?) it’s highly suggested you start.

For those in the Apple camp, currently laughing at the Microsofties, maybe you should look in a mirror first.  Apple has only just patched a security hole in Mac OS X for a known flaw in the Java VM that has been widely reported for over seven months.  Way to be on that ball, Apple.  So if you are on a Mac, it’s highly suggested to grab that Java  update.

In theoretically better news, Firefox 3.5 is finally out!  Sort of.  In a decidedly stupid move, Firefox 3.5 “Preview” was released.  It’s officially not a beta.  But it’s also officially not a final release.  So what the hell is it then?  It’s a beta.  Face it.  It’s a beta.  If it’s pre-release, it’s a beta.  Lame.  However, on the brighter side, this lame move was followed by a good old-fashioned update.  Firefox 3.0.11 fixes yet more bugs and patches yet more security holes.  Huzzah!

And Firefox wasn’t the only browser to get an update.  Well, besides IE, which we really don’t count because it’s part of Windows Update.  There was a Google Chrome patch!  It fixed a whole two, count them, two vulnerabilities.  Yay?  The speed of Chrome…

And last and certainly least, we have McAfee, trying to downplay a serious failure in their service pack.  A failure which caused many systems to become unbootable! As in computer-non-grata.  But according to McAfee, it’s really not so  bad as that.  Honest. And I quote:

“McAfee removed Patch 1 for McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.7i from its download servers out of precaution after a potential issue with the update was discovered. A very small number of customers reported trouble with the patch on a limited number of computers.

Once the cause of the problem has been identified and the issue has been resolved, we will repost Patch 1. Customers should contact McAfee support if they have any questions regarding this issue, and check the McAfee ServicePortal for further updates. ”

Oh right.  Well then…

And that wraps up this week’s security blitz!