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By Peter Galli  |  Posted 2006-10-12 Email Print this article Print
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


In addition, Microsofts Sievert will use his keynote to show a number of products currently undergoing the Vista logo testing process and which will all be available this holiday season. These include the smallest high-definition camcorder on the market, the Canon HV-10 HD Camcorder; NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards; Logitechs MX3200 Laser cordless desktop set; the MX Revolution mouse; the ChillStream game pad; the QuickCam UltraVision camera; and InterVideos WinDVD and WinDVD Creator.
Microsoft is approaching the certification of applications differently with Vista: There is the "works with" designation that indicates the application will work with and run on Vista, and theres the "certified for Windows Vista" designation, which has a higher bar and is for applications that take advantage of Vista in a unique way.
Microsoft has done internal testing on some 1,900 external applications since the release of the first Vista beta. Click here to read more. "The certification ensures our customers will have a great experience with these products now, and an even better one when they are using them with Windows Vista. These products will make a great gift for the holidays that gets better with Windows Vista," the spokesman said. Products from ATI, Belkin, Computer Associates, Corel, D-Link, Fujifilm, Hauppage, Hewlett-Packard, Logitech, NetPro, Nero, Riverdeep, Seagate, Trendmicro, Viewsonic, Workshare, Yahoo and other companies are also expected to receive the "Certified for Windows Vista" logo over the next few months, further contributing to the growing Windows Vista ecosystem, he said. NVIDIA GeForce GPUs (graphic processing units), which enable features in Windows Vista such as Windows Aero and Flip-3D, will carry the "Certified for Windows Vista" logo. "People can be truly confident that any products carrying the logo will provide a top-notch experience with their Windows Vista PCs," Ujesh Desai, general manager of desktop GPUs at NVIDIA, said in a statement. For his part, Steve Ro, CEO of InterVideo, whose WinDVD Creator offers a range of video and DVD editing features, said all the companys software will be certified to carry the logo so as to ensure the best multimedia experience on Vista PCs. What is the business case for upgrading to Vista? Click here to read more. Consumers can now also buy new PC games, such as "Company of Heroes," "Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy" and "Microsoft Flight Simulator X," that will offer superior compatibility with Vista, as well as with Windows XP. These games will bear the "Games for Windows" logo and meet certain requirements, such as the ability to work with x64 versions of Vista and support the Windows Vista Games Explorer function. In related news, Attachmates Extra X-treme v9 host access solution has achieved the "Certified for Windows Vista" branding. This terminal emulation software securely connects Windows users to IBM, Unix and OpenVMS applications. Analyst firm Gartner has said Vista will run on just about any PC available today, but it will only show its true colors on about half of them. Click here to read more. Extra X-treme 9 is expected to be released in early November, the same month that Microsoft expects to make Vista available to its business volume-license customers, and is designed to seamlessly integrate with, and take advantage of, the enhanced security, manageability and productivity features within the new Vista operating platform, Eric Varness, Attachmates vice president of marketing, said in a statement. Check out eWEEK.coms for Microsoft and Windows news, views and analysis.


 
 
 
 
Peter Galli has been a financial/technology reporter for 12 years at leading publications in South Africa, the UK and the US. He has been Investment Editor of South Africa's Business Day Newspaper, the sister publication of the Financial Times of London.

He was also Group Financial Communications Manager for First National Bank, the second largest banking group in South Africa before moving on to become Executive News Editor of Business Report, the largest daily financial newspaper in South Africa, owned by the global Independent Newspapers group.

He was responsible for a national reporting team of 20 based in four bureaus. He also edited and contributed to its weekly technology page, and launched a financial and technology radio service supplying daily news bulletins to the national broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, which were then distributed to some 50 radio stations across the country.

He was then transferred to San Francisco as Business Report's U.S. Correspondent to cover Silicon Valley, trade and finance between the US, Europe and emerging markets like South Africa. After serving that role for more than two years, he joined eWeek as a Senior Editor, covering software platforms in August 2000.

He has comprehensively covered Microsoft and its Windows and .Net platforms, as well as the many legal challenges it has faced. He has also focused on Sun Microsystems and its Solaris operating environment, Java and Unix offerings. He covers developments in the open source community, particularly around the Linux kernel and the effects it will have on the enterprise.

He has written extensively about new products for the Linux and Unix platforms, the development of open standards and critically looked at the potential Linux has to offer an alternative operating system and platform to Windows, .Net and Unix-based solutions like Solaris.

His interviews with senior industry executives include Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Linus Torvalds, the original developer of the Linux operating system, Sun CEO Scot McNealy, and Bill Zeitler, a senior vice president at IBM.

For numerous examples of his writing you can search under his name at the eWEEK Website at www.eweek.com.

 
 
 
 
 
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