If Vista Leaves You Cold

In This Issue:
1. Editor's Note: If Vista Leaves You Cold
2. Today's Top Story
     - Security Vendors Spot Second Excel Bug
Related Stories:
     - Cisco Call Manager Flaw Could Invite Hackers
     - Spoofing Defense Dissed By Security Experts
3. Breaking News
     - Q&A: Can Microsoft Regain Its Edge In Software?
     - Most Microsoft Workers Search With Google
     - Blade Vendor War Looms On Horizon
     - IBM's 'Frozen Chip' Claims Speed Record
     - Yahoo Messenger Allows Users To Share Services
     - SCO To Unix Developers: We Want You Back
     - Dutch Court Rules Against Site Linking To Pirated Content
     - Opera Beats Mozilla, Microsoft To Release
     - Linux To Drive Innovation In Mobile Market
     - The Hartford: Lessons From 3 Years Of Work On SOA
     - IBM Puts Sales Contracts Online
4. Grab Bag
     - Police Got Phone Data From Brokers (Associated Press)
     - Teen, Mom Sue MySpace.com For $30 Million (The Statesman)
     - Web Users Open The Gates (Washington Post)
     - How Billions Of Bogus Pages Undermine Search Engines, Advertisers, And The Web (EmailBattles.com)
5. In Depth: Safety Of Personal Data
     - Google's Orkut Hit By Personal-Data-Stealing Worm
     - Tech Heavyweights Join Effort For Federal Privacy Law
     - The High Cost Of Data Loss
     - Porn-Surfing Oregon Worker Exposes 2,200 Taxpayer IDs
     - Sad State Of Data Security
6. Voice Of Authority
     - Brownie Troop Field Trip Into The Privacy Jungle
7. White Papers
     - Putting The Customer Back In Customer Service: Three Principles For Customer-Centric Support
8. Get More Out Of InformationWeek
9. Manage Your Newsletter Subscription

Quote Of The Day:
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." — Thomas Edison

1. Editor's Note: If Vista Leaves You Cold

If you don't plan to jump on upgrading to Windows Vista right away, you've come to the right place. Our top story for this week is Fred Langa's terrific article showing you how to completely rebuild, repair, or refresh an existing XP installation without losing data—and without having to reinstall user software, reformat, or otherwise change or destroy your PC's setup.

If your XP PC is acting up, Fred shows you how you can reinstall XP while leaving your user accounts, names, and passwords intact—and in only a smidgen of the time a complete reinstall would take.

This article is only the latest in a series about ways to solve common XP problems. Other titles include "XP's Little-Known 'Rebuild' Command"; "The OS Inside The OS"; "How To Save An Hour (Or More) On XP Installs"; and "XP On Your Thumb Drive." All of them have been pretty popular with our readers.

What does all this continued interest in XP mean? My guess is that it portends that businesses intend to stick to XP for a significant amount of time. A case in point: Earlier this month an InformationWeek-affiliate Web site, Small Business Pipeline, ran a poll asking small businesses if they intended to upgrade to Vista when it was finally released.

Overwhelmingly, respondents said they intended to wait. Only 16% said they would definitely be upgrading to Vista. A whopping 73% said they were going to stick with what they had until Vista is proven stable. (Eleven percent said they hadn't yet decided.)

These numbers apply to small businesses only, which obviously have different needs—and vastly more limited resources—than larger enterprises. Yet according to analysts, even the biggest companies will probably delay implementation. Some, like Gartner, which released a report in early May, even predict that the majority of them will wait as long as 12 to 18 months after Vista's release to upgrade from XP. Indeed, the Yankee Group recommends waiting to install Vista until 2008. The reason? Vista's management tools won't have fully matured until then, making implementation a rocky proposition.

And all evidence is that most PC buyers—businesses and consumers alike—won't be interested in installing Vista until they purchase new PCs. So until the current installed base of PCs is replaced, Vista adoption will be very sluggish. Microsoft itself says that with previous Windows operating systems, less than 10% switched to the new operating systems on existing machines.

What do you think? Is your organization planning to upgrade to Vista once it becomes available? Or do you plan to wait a significant amount of time—12 to 18 months—before making the switch? Or will you wait until you can purchase new, Vista-ready systems? Give us your feedback by going to my blog.

Alice LaPlante
[email protected]

2. Today's Top Story

Security Vendors Spot Second Excel Bug
After security vendors reported a second zero-day bug in the popular business application, Microsoft is recommending several different defensive strategies.

3. Breaking News

Q&A: Can Microsoft Regain Its Edge In Software?
Software expert Michael Cusumano looks at the Microsoft-Google battle, Vista delay, and other challenges facing Redmond, such as the need to build a new operating system from scratch.

Most Microsoft Workers Search With Google
Do employees at Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google use their own search engines? Apparently, some do and some don't.

Blade Vendor War Looms On Horizon
Get ready for the blade wars. This small but fast-growing segment of the server market appears to be ready to pop as vendors release streamlined designs that are better positioned as rackmount replacements and, in some cases, offer pricing attractive enough to draw new customers to the model.

IBM's 'Frozen Chip' Claims Speed Record
IBM and Georgia Tech claimed they have demonstrated the first silicon-based chip that can operate above 500 GHz by cryogenically "freezing" the circuit. By comparison, 500 GHz is more than 250 times faster than today's cell phones, which typically operate at approximately 2 GHz.

SCO To Unix Developers: We Want You Back
SCO is offering cash and cars to developers who use its toolkit to produce the wireless applications.

Brief: Social Networking Site Launches For Music Junkies
Mog.com doesn't allow music sharing, but it does use a free application to automatically create a Web page for the user and post a list of the tunes in his or her computer.

Dutch Court Rules Against Site Linking To Pirated Content
An appeals court ruled that making files available constitutes publishing. It also overturned a lower-court ruling in favor of an MP3 search directory and ordered damages.

Opera Beats Mozilla, Microsoft To Release
The final version of Opera 9 has shipped, offering users small Web-based "widget" applications, support for BitTorrent, a content blocker and security bar, and customized search.

Linux To Drive Innovation In Mobile Market
A new consortium to develop a mobile Linux faces several challenges, including governance and sharing intellectual property rights.

The Hartford: Lessons From 3 Years Of Work On SOA
To make service-oriented architectures work, companies need to be willing to break down organizational silos.

IBM Puts Sales Contracts Online
The service is free, available to customers of all sizes, and includes all IBM sales and leasing contracts.

All Our Latest News

Watch The News Show

In the current episode:

John Soat With 'Order In The Court'
Verizon files a lawsuit against Vonage, Microsoft loses its appeal of a patent lawsuit, American programmers cry foul, and more.

Eric Chabrow With 'The Wizard Of Oz'
Ray Ozzie has an extremely loyal following that will likely benefit Microsoft in the future.

Cynthia Ramsaran With 'Sony Style'
Sony has a new Notebook exchange program—return an old laptop and get money to purchase a new Sony product in return.

----- The latest research, polls, and tools -----

Analyzing The Outsourcers: Global Services
How does your outsourcer stack up? Learn how more than 400 business technology professionals rated six of the leading outsourcers in InformationWeek Research's "Analyzing The Outsourcers: Global Services" report.

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4. Grab Bag

Police Got Phone Data From Brokers (Associated Press)
A significant number of federal and local law enforcement agencies have ignored laws that are supposed to protect citizens' civil liberties and spent $30 million buying personal telephone records from private-sector data brokers.

Teen, Mom Sue MySpace.com For $30 Million (The Statesman)
A lawsuit filed in Texas claims that the booming online social network is responsible for protecting children from adult sexual predators.

Web Users Open The Gates (Washington Post)
The Washington Post takes a long hard look at the decade that it has been online.

How Billions Of Bogus Pages Undermine Search Engines, Advertisers, And The Web (EmailBattles.com)
According to Monetize, a blog that covers search engine vulnerabilities, a black-hat programmer managed to get Google to index more than 5 million Web pages over a three-week period. Although Yahoo and MSN were also bamboozled, it was to a much lesser extent than Google.

5. In Depth: Safety Of Personal Data

Google's Orkut Hit By Personal-Data-Stealing Worm
The malware works its way onto users' personal computers when they click on infected links in Orkut scrapbook pages.

Tech Heavyweights Join Effort For Federal Privacy Law
They're trying to convince Congress to pass a comprehensive federal consumer privacy law that would cover the handling of personal data.

The High Cost Of Data Loss
Sensitive personal data has been misplaced, lost, printed on mailing labels, posted online, and just left around for anyone to see. The situation has become untenable. Here's the ugly truth about how it keeps happening, who's been affected, and what's being done about it.

Porn-Surfing Oregon Worker Exposes 2,200 Taxpayer IDs
The identities—including Social Security numbers, names, and addresses—were transmitted to an unknown hacker by a keylogging Trojan embedded in a PC at the state agency where the employee was working.

Sad State Of Data Security
Businesses and government agencies seem inept when it comes to protecting personal information, as the list of mishaps keeps getting longer.

6. Voice Of Authority

Brownie Troop Field Trip Into The Privacy Jungle
John Foley bristled when he saw the kind of information required for his daughter to visit a local Score! learning center.

7. White Papers

Putting The Customer Back In Customer Service: Three Principles For Customer-Centric Support
Despite decades of investment, companies and customers fail to agree on what constitutes effective customer service. Adopting the principles of customer centricity, however, will lead to an alignment of customers' expectations with corporate objectives.

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