Microsoft Patches 17 Flaws in Client Products
by Alex Woodie

Server operators could breath a little easier following the latest round of patches by Microsoft yesterday, but PC administrators must still be on guard. The Patch Tuesday event for June continued the recent spate of client-side vulnerabilities with four critical patches, one important patch, and one moderate patch fixing 17 separate security problems in Microsoft's client-side products. And at least one security expert contends Microsoft attempted to conceal a major programming gaffe in Windows Vista by labeling a flaw moderate instead of giving it the critical label it deserved. READ MORE >

Microsoft Stretches 'Vision Thing' with Surface Computing
by Alex Woodie

You have to credit Microsoft with doing some things right--the graphical user interface, productivity apps, development tools, just to name a few. But sometimes, the company gets it so wrong, it's painful to watch. Like the new "Surface Computing" initiative launched a couple of weeks ago, which will be DOA. The funny thing part is, Microsoft is acutely aware of its failings in the whole "vision thing," but it just can't stop itself from doing it again. READ MORE >

Microsoft Updates Server Virtualization Software
by Alex Woodie

Microsoft this week made available an update to Virtual Server 2005, its premiere virtualization software for servers in lieu of the hypervisor product that's still in development. The software giant has added several new features to Virtual Server 2003 Release 2 Service Pack 1, including support for hardware-based virtualization technology, new backup and recovery features, better clustering, and support for the latest releases of the Solaris and SuSE Linux operating systems. READ MORE >

Sun Broadens Its Blade Server Lineup
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

For all of the talk about the blade server form factor in the server space, blades have not grown anywhere near as fast as many had expected and after the failures of a number of players, the market is dominated in a disproportionate fashion by Hewlett-Packard and IBM. While Dell, Fujitsu, NEC, Sun Microsystems, and a number of players are trying to get into the game--some for the second time, in fact--none has broken out sufficiently in blades to make this a three horse race. With the "Constellation" blade server announcements that Sun made last week, the company hopes to change that. READ MORE >