Quick News: Windows XP SP3, Multicores Will Rule The World And Firefox Hacks I Used 5 Years Ago

This vacation thing is cool. I really need to take one more often. I have caught up on so many things. This blog being one of them of course. My sad sad humble apologies to all for having to be kind of under the radar for a while. But enough about that let's look at some news.

Windows XP SP3: Paul on the Windows Weekly Podcast, via twit.tv, mentioned that the once set for 2008 Service Pack may now be coming out sooner than previously thought. If you thought Server 2008 [once known as Longhorn Server], Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Home Server was just too much for Q4 of 2007 well then be even more perplexed because Paul says that is exactly when XP SP3 is set for release. Seems that the networking additions to the kernel will trickle down to XP users as well making interoperability a *snap*. hold back the loads of applause please. So be prepared to burn backups and carry patches on USB drives this Holiday Season gang.

Vista's Standard User Interface: Speaking of Paul's wonderful site and podcasts.. The Super Site for Windows has a really nice and detailed look at the UI used in Vista Basic. I have assisted in a few Vista trainings in the last two months and this description would have been helpful in explaining the options with AERO Glass and the like. Oh and one of our attendees told me that Paul's book "Vista Secrets" is already scanned in at Bookshare.org. Well worth the read for anyone thinking or already using Vista I tell you. Here's the link to the Vista Standard UI article.

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_ff_std_ux.asp

Multicores: Imagine a world where you have computers with 64 cores running in a 64 bit operating system with 2 TB of RAM? It's going to happen and it could happen with Vista or the next version of Windows. This Ars Technica article discusses some of the futuretech already built into Windows.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070529-microsoft-exec-next-version-of-windows-to-be-fundamentally-redesigned.html

Firefox: I have been using tweaks to about.cfg for a long time. But many new comers to Firefox don't know about simple and easy to do mods to FF that should be a basic tool on the Geek utility belt. This Computerworld article compiles a good number of these classic tweaks and it's one worth bookmarking.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9020880