Justyn Smith | Blog » Microsoft

Microsoft launches IE6 Countdown

Justyn — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 22:18:17 +0000

Microsoft is monitoring the worlds usage of Internet Explorer 6 by launching a website, IE6 Countdown. Their aim is to try and get the global usage under 1% so more websites can drop Internet Explorer 6 support which will save web developers a lot of work trying to support a web browser that is 10 years old.

At this point in time 12% of the world is using IE6 which is down 9% from last year. China has the highest users of IE6 coming in at 34.5% where Norway and Finland come it at just 0.7%. Australia is only at 3.2% while the US comes in just under at 2.9%.

If you have a website and would like to join the cause you can add a banner to your website asking the user to upgrade to a newer version of Internet Explorer.

Stealing software on the street

Justyn — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 23:49:02 +0000

I noticed the following clip over on Long Zheng’s blog and thought I would share it here. This is what happens when you combine an alarm, a boxed Microsoft product, and some students from University of Technology Sydney and Sydney TAFE.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt_pv_8VAzg

Bing Australia: look less, find more

Justyn — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 01:03:57 +0000

I happened to see last month on Channel Nine an ad for Bing. I only caught the last 5 seconds or so of it, and never saw it again. I was looking at Long Zheng’s site this morning and noticed he had a post about the Bing Australia Ads and seems that there is a series of them.

Internet Explorer 6 lives until 2014

Justyn — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:06:55 +0000

I know this is old news, but I felt like I needed to post this information. It seems that Microsoft has extended support for Internet Explorer 6 until 8th April 2014, despite campaigns to kill off IE6. If you have a look on IE Blog it states that the upgrades to newer versions are the responsibilities of the end user or the company.

The engineering point of view on IE6 starts as an operating systems supplier. Dropping support for IE6 is not an option because we committed to supporting the IE included with Windows for the lifespan of the product. We keep our commitments. Many people expect what they originally got with their operating system to keep working whatever release cadence particular subsystems have.

Microsoft has extended their support for Windows XP until 2014 and Internet Explorer 6 was supplied with Windows XP, so there will still be updates for another 5 years.

Windows 7 RC Screenshots

Justyn — Sat, 02 May 2009 03:29:02 +0000

I decided to install Windows 7 RC on my laptop today. It is running quite quick and I am loving it, I don’t think I will go back to Vista anytime soon. The last version of Windows 7 I ran was the original beta (7000) that was released to the public.

I thought I would post some screenshots of the new things I like in Windows 7, so without further ado, here they are.

System Information

Computer & Winver

Visual Styles (Has an Australia theme).

Messenger options from the Start Menu.

Thumbnail View

Hovering on an option in Thumbnail View.

Email Hoaxes

Justyn — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:17:27 +0000

I have received not only one, but two email hoaxes from friends within three days of themselves.

The first one is the good old “Bill Gates will give you money if you forward this”, the other being “Ericsson giving away free laptops”.

Now here is some of the transcript from the emails, and why they are hoaxes.

First email, Bill Gates / AOL giving away money (Seems too good to be true).

Subject: Please read!!!! This was on Oprah!
Content: THIS WAS FEATURED ON TWO PAGES OF THE TUESDAY USA TODAY – IT IS FOR REAL

Dear Friends; Please do not take this for a junk letter. Bill Gates sharing his fortune. If you ignore this, you will regret it later.

For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay
you $245.00 For every person that you sent it to that forwards it on,
Microsoft will pay you $243.00 and for every third person that receives
it, You will be paid $241.00. Within tw! o weeks, Microsoft will contact
you for your address and then send you a check.

Now how does Microsoft know your address and where to send the cheque too. Further down in the email, it states one person received $24,000. Bill is also putting most of his money into the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. So what makes you think your so important for Microsoft to give away money for nothing?

Second email, Ericsson giving away free laptop.

Subject: Free Ericsson Laptops – HURRY UP?
Content: Ericsson is distributing free laptops for their brand promotion.
They hope to increase their popularity and sale by this campaign.
All you need to do is send an email about this to 8 people and you will receive an Ericsson T18 Laptop. However, if you send an email about this to 20 or more people, you will receive an Ericsson R320 Laptop.

Make sure you send a copy to: anna.swelung@ericsson.com.

If you do a quick Google Search on the T18 and also on the R320, you will find this is a mobile phone, not a laptop. Now this email has been going around for quite a few years, as with the previous Bill Gates / AOL one.

You can read more about the Microsoft / AOL hoax over at Hoax Slayer and Snopes. You can read more about the Ericsson hoax over at Hoax Slayer and Urban Legend.

I’m sure there are other sources of information out there, if you do some Googling you can find results easy.

Where did hibernation go, Vista?

Justyn — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 07:00:38 +0000

I was going through all the Vista power options, trying to get my Hibernation mode back on, which seemed to have disappeared.

I found out the hibernate option will disappear if you have recently run Disk Cleanup, which I did. By running this it removes the hiberfil.sys file resulting in no hibernation. See Microsoft article KB928897.

After googling around, I found a simple method to enable / disable hibernation:

1. Click start, type “command” in the Start Search box (without quotes)
2. Right-click Command Prompt in the Programs list, and click “Run as Administrator”
3. If User Account Control prompts you to allow the action, click on Continue.
4. In the Command Prompt, type “powercfg –h off” (or “on” without the quotes), then press enter.
5. Close the Command Prompt window and you’re done

You should now have hibernate and hybrid sleep options for your power profiles.

{Open Source} Heroes Happen Here

Justyn — Sat, 03 May 2008 05:28:26 +0000

Yesterday I received my Hero Hack Pack from Microsoft, which is Microsoft’s way of getting into the Open Source community. The pack looks quite good, as you can see in the gallery. It contains a copy of Windows Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008, trial editions of course.

I’m sure Microsoft have gotten quite some publicity or bashings from trying to get a slice of the pie for the open source community. What do you think about Microsoft; Open Source or Monopoly?

Certified Vista advisor

Justyn — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 23:32:33 +0000

I received my package in the mail today from Microsoft, containing a “Windows Vista Advisor” shirt and certificate. I obtained it from doing the Vista Fact or Fiction awhile ago. As far as I know it is still valid, but you only receive the certificate now instead of the shirt.

Unified Communications Lauch

Justyn — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 01:38:07 +0000

I received my package in the mail yesterday from Microsoft, containing the Unified Communications Launch 2007 discs. The package consisted of 2 discs, containing:

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 – Full Version

Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 – Full Version

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 SP1 – Trial Version

Microsoft Office Live Meeting – Trial Version

It was quite a good pack from Microsoft promoting it products I will eventually get around to giving a go, in the meantime you can view some photos I took of the pack over in the Unified Communications Launch Gallery. There is also a current Microsoft Heroes Pack available, includes trial versions of Windows Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 which would be quite nice.