• Opinion: Microsoft, instead of turning the lights off on XP, make it open source

  To state the obvious,, Microsoft is hugely important economically and culturally, and as Peter Parker (AKA Spiderman) was told by his grandfather: "With great power comes great responsibility." (Actually Voltaire said it first but he said it in French so that doesn't count.)

• Patch Tuesday: Microsoft to release 6 patches, 1 critical

  Microsoft announced today that next week's Patch Tuesday will be the lightest of 2012, with six security bulletins and just one rated critical.

• A quarter of infected Windows PCs have UAC turned off

  Despite Microsoft’s efforts to make its User Access Control (UAC) security prompts less annoying, many users are still turning it off and in doing so helping thieves do their job, according to Microsoft.

• Calif. woman sues Microsoft over XP downgrades -- again

  Rerun of lawsuit tossed by federal judge last February

• Windows Explorer explained: Easier file selection

  People who don't work with files on a regular basis have a devil of a time remembering the keyboard shortcut for selecting multiple files. (You hold down the Ctrl key while clicking each individual file.)

• Prepare your PC for future data disasters

  Reformatting and restoring a PC is not fun--in the way spending 2 hours in the dentist's chair is not fun. You have to back up all your data (and pray that you haven't forgotten anything), reformat the hard drive, install Windows, track down missing drivers, find and reload all your software, restore your data, and pull out clumps of hair over the things you inevitably neglected to save. (Firefox plug-ins, anyone?)

• How to get Windows 7 features on a Vista or XP system

  Vista received well-deserved criticism for bringing few noteworthy new features in its train when it arrived to take over from Windows XP. In contrast, Windows 7 offers plenty of new stuff to like. Fortunately, you can add many of these features to your Vista or XP machine by using downloads and Web services.

• How to get Windows 7's look and feel on a Vista or XP machine

  Much of the excitement about Windows 7 relates to an assortment of user-interface improvements: a little eye candy here, a few window-management tweaks there. Below are some of the highlights, along with the tools you'll need to get them for your current OS.

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  Windows 7 RTM: Is it really better than Vista?

  With the appearance of Windows 7's Release to Manufacturing (RTM) build, Microsoft may be hoping that it can finally dismiss Windows Vista as an unsuccessful experiment that paved the way for something better.

• A year after Windows XP's death, users keep it alive

  A year ago today, Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows XP, no longer selling new copies in most venues. The June 30 kill date for XP followed a six-month outcry from users about Windows Vista, with demands that Microsoft keep XP available alongside Vista for the many users who were frustrated by ease-of-use, compatibility, and retraining issues.

• Windows 7 public previews slow Vista's growth, says metrics firm

  Windows Vista's market share growth has slowed since Microsoft released public versions of Vista's successor, Windows 7, according to data published today by Web metrics company Net Applications.

• Vista SP2: six things you need to know

  Windows Vista Service Pack 2 has been released as a public beta version.

• If Windows is a dead end, what's next?

  The writing is on the wall. Despite a major push to sell the much-maligned Windows Vista, customers aren't buying. Nearly two years after Vista's release, Windows XP remains the standard desktop OS in business, and Microsoft has extended its availability three times (currently to August 2009) due to customer demand. Microsoft itself forecasts just 2 percent growth in Vista sales in early 2009, after lackluster sales in 2008. And that's after forcing customers to buy Vista to get XP "downgrades."

Whitepapers about Windows Vista

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  Best Practices for Preparing for SharePoint Migrations

  This paper focuses on some of the most common platforms that content can be moved from: Windows Server file shares, Exchange public folders, and previous versions of SharePoint. However, the strategies discussed can also be applied to content from other sources, such as Documentum, Novell or UNIX file shares, Notes databases, and web sites.