Microsoft OneCare fails VB100 testing

In something of an embarrassing development for Microsoft, four anti-virus products for Vista have failed to reach the required standard to achieve VB100 certification by the highly respected independent industry body, Virus Bulletin. In something of an even more embarrassing development, Microsoft’s own anti-virus flagship product, Live OneCare, was amongst the four applications that failed the certification process.

I've bought a PS3, don't tell the wife

Want a PlayStation 3? Want a kosher UK Sony PlayStation 3? Want one on the 23rd March, the official date of release in the UK? Of course you do, because like me you are a technology obsessed early adopting geek who just has to be in on such cutting edge technology from the get go. Ever since I first saw one in action, in the flesh, in the US I have known I would be buying one.

Sure, I could have gone Japanese, I could have gone American, I could have ordered via eBay. But I didn’t because I want a proper UK sourced device that is guaranteed not to cause me region locking problems further down the road, and those import PS3s simply cannot do that.

So, how much will a cell and RSX processor powered, Blu Ray playing, Gigabit Ethernet equipped, 60Gb hard drive installed, HDTV output supporting, PSP as a remote media playing and control device supporting PS3 cost me then? Well, if I wanted to buy one of the few units allocated to the UK by Sony for pre-order (and rumour has it that the European allocation will be in the region of 1 million, with the UK getting around 300,000 units) I could be expected to pay not the RRP of £425, but £675. No, I am not talking about buying off some eBay scalper here, but HMV online of all people.

iTunes not Vista compatible

File under ‘well it would say that’ you might think, but nevertheless the fact remains that Apple has issued a statement on its support website warning iTunes users not to upgrade to Vista. This due to a number of known compatibility issues with iTunes 7.0.2 and earlier versions, although you might not realise that were you to just read some of the news headlines reporting the story:

InfoWorld has ‘Wait on Vista upgrade, Apple says’ and Digital Lifestyles runs with ‘Apple Tells Vista Upgraders To Wait’ and a similar headline features at CIO Today with ‘Apple: Don't Upgrade to Vista Just Yet.’ PC Advisor is more sensationalist with ‘Windows Vista may corrupt your iPod’ while mad.co.uk has ‘Apple: Vista may corrupt iPods.’

Lenovo signs F1 deal and moves into the fast lane

Yesterday I spent the best part of the day at the Williams F1 Technology Centre just outside of Oxford to witness the launch of the brand new, never driven, FW29 F1 car for the 2007 season. Actually that’s not entirely accurate, I spent the best part of the day driving there and back to my Yorkshire home at a slightly more leisurely pace than had I been at the wheel of the FW29. As a guest of Lenovo, which announced its sponsorship of the Williams F1 team as a major partner on the same day, I was privileged to be amongst the few journalists who got to have a briefing with Sir Frank Williams, Alex Burns (Williams COO) as well as Lenovo Senior VPs Deepak Advani and Milko van Duijl.

Ionescu blog suspended days after Vista DRM crack reported

At the time of writing his blog returns an error message stating that “Account for domain www.alex-ionescu.com has been suspended” although the reasons for this remain unclear. I would like to think it is purely a coincidence, maybe a payment oversight, maybe a bandwidth problem caused by the amount of traffic flowing in that direction as a result of the Vista DRM crack story breaking. But a combination of the conspiracy theorist in me with a journalistic distrust of coincidence, means I suspect something more sinister is at play here.

A bad week just gets worse for TomTom

My original news story at DaniWeb has certainly caused something of a media frenzy. Everyone from specialist GPS and gadget websites through to national newspapers have been covering how TomTom let an unspecified number of its GO 910 satnav devices escape from the factory with not one but two nasty surprises in the form of a virus infection.

Actually, it has now come to my attention courtesy of Martin Campbell, who first contacted TomTom on December 16th about the virus infection on his unit, that there are not two but three infected files on the device. The third being autorun.inf which adds entries for copy.exe to the Windows Registry in
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2].