Andy Patrizio

*UPDATED: If you weren’t feeling like an unhired beta tester before, Microsoft is going to make you feel like one now. In an audio blog posting, the coordinator of Vista’s development cycle implored testers to be “aggressive” in testing Release Candidate 1, issued on September 1. A release candidate is typically software in the final […]

Intel won’t comment on published reports it plans to announce the layoff of as much as ten percent of its workforce next Tuesday, the day after Labor Day. Intel  had said earlier this year that it hoped to avoid layoffs. Chief Financial Officer Andy Bryant said in April he didn’t think the planned review of […]

Microsoft’s Zune isn’t even in the hands of testers yet but already one analyst is giving it a thumbs down, mostly due to its possible hardware legacy. A research report from American Technology Research on Wednesday declared the Zune “underwhelming” and could end up “another classic case of overpromising and underdelivering” by Microsoft . ATR […]

Amazon.com has posted the prices for the numerous flavors of Windows Vista, some of which are in line with previous versions and one of which can induce sticker shock. By taking pre-orders for Vista, Amazon  has tipped Microsoft’s hand. Microsoft  declined to comment on the veracity of prices listed on Amazon. “It is still too […]

Microsoft on Tuesday launched a public beta version of Windows Live QnA, a search engine designed for users to ask specific questions that members of the Live community answer. Live QnA is meant to be a place where someone can ask for specific information search engines can’t always readily find because they are very niche […]

The uproar over the Consumer Reports special report on computer security continues, this time as anti-spyware vendors express frustration with what they feel was a totally incorrect testing methodology. Consumer Reports, published by the non-profit Consumers Union, drew considerable criticism from antivirus vendors for creating 5,500 new viruses, all modifications of existing viruses, to test […]

Moving to a multi-core world means applications will have to be written in a different manner, and as such, Intel has introduced three new utilities to make that process simpler. Until recently, CPU makers like Intel &nbps;and AMD simply increased the CPU clock speed to improve performance, and every application ran faster for it. But […]

An FCC certification application has opened the curtain on Microsoft’s forthcoming Zune player, providing details on what the player will offer. All devices have to go through a certification process with the Federal Communications Commission to prove they don’t interfere with other systems. Toshiba had submitted a request for a “HDD portable audio player” to […]

Microsoft is capitulating to tester complaints about the new interface in Office 2007 and adding the option to make the vaunted “ribbon” UI behave like the old standard drop-down menu. It may come as a bit of a surprise that during a speech at the Australian Tech Ed show, a Microsoft  technology specialist said the […]

Reporter’s Notebook: You could be forgiven for feeling like an unpaid beta tester these days. It seems everywhere we look these days, we’re surrounded by beta software, technologies previews or some other euphemism for unfinished code. Almost everything on Google except the search engine is stamped BETA. In fact, just recently I was in a […]

Microsoft has posted the first release candidate for Internet Explorer 7, adding a number of improvements under the hood along with the usual bug squashing from the last beta. The main goal of the release candidate is to assist developers in ensuring that their Web sites are compatible with this impending final release. Microsoft  has […]

So, who hasn’t had an application or device driver lock up on their computer? Everyone knows that frustration. To counter this, researchers at Microsoft  have come up with a mathematical solution to lockups that examines your code and asks the same question: “Sarah Connor?” The program from Microsoft Research is called the TERMINATOR software verification […]