Launch Woes: Vista RTM Leaked/Cracked, Zune Street Date Broken and Playstation 3 Naked Plus Firmware Updated

Within a day I saw the leaked copy of Vista RTM on Digg. The comments section of the post ran up to 100 fast with the Pirates chattering away on how to circumvent the installation. And within another day the semi crak appeared along with Office 2007 Enterprise RTM. The fact that this happened isn't astounding. The speed in which it happened however is another story entirely. But of course there were more than 3 million people on the public beta cycle and that's probably where the homework began on this crack. The thing is that the activation hasn't been done in yet and I would even say that the crak may be a honeypot situation where MS tracks who, what and when on how this is all done. Anyway check out the details on the soon to be patched crack at the line below.

http://apcmag.com/node/4560

Zune: Speaking of products that came out a little earlier than expected. A few months ago I thought I wanted a Zune. I have since recovered and I think I want a cheaper iRiver Clix. But check your local Best Buy because some have started selling the Zune early. I really want a Hard Drive based player, however, this preview from CNET [and some other just posted amateur reviews] have me thinking Flash based players a bit longer. The killer on the Zune was that you can't use it as a portable drive for non music files. Read more from CNET below.

http://reviews.cnet.com/Microsoft_Zune_30GB_black/4505-6490_7-32068976.html

Playstation 3: What I love about launch day is the time it takes for someone to sit down and crack their system open for all of us on the web to see. Patrick Norton, at that time on the Screensavers, bought an original Xbox and opened it's casing on live TV just hours after it went on sale. The chip did say "Intel Inside" by the way. The below link is a series of photos of the internals of the $600 PS3. I imagine "howstuffworks.com" will be doing the same in even more detail before Thanksgiving.

http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/...

And even more scary is the list of things added or modified from the base firmware of the launch units. See more in the link below.

http://ps3.qj.net/Playstation-3-Firmware-1-10-Released-/pg/49/aid/72450