WinInsider

Microsoft announced Monday that two of the companies scheduled to release multimedia add-on packs for Windows XP--Cyberlink and InterVideo--have already begun selling the add-ons online. As reported previously, Microsoft had signed deals with Cyberlink, InterVideo, and Raviscent to supply MP3 encoding and DVD playback add-ons for Windows XP, in order to provide who need these key technologies with an easy and affordable way to get them. Most XP users will get this functionality through a new PC purchase, however.

Speech recognition--the broad term that encompasses vocal computing, from dictating text and controlling software with your voice to asking for sports scores over a cell phone--is in a bit of a slump. Desktop speech recognition, in particular, has hit financial and technological walls in the past year. One of the world's major speech-recognition players, Lernout & Hauspie, is nearly kaput. Meanwhile, there's no sign yet that speech-recognition technology has moved beyond the merely intriguing into the realm of necessity.

If Windows XP were an album, Jim Allchin would be on the cover, a middle-age rock star jamming a triumphant guitar solo encore that brings down the house.  Allchin, head of Microsoft's platforms division and part of Chairman Bill Gates' inner circle, is the maestro behind the computer program dubbed XP - the flashiest, most powerful and perhaps the most controversial product in Microsoft's 26-year history.

"This is the finest operating system in the world," Allchin declared in August, on the day his team finished XP after an all-night bout of testing.

Thanks to ActiveWin for the link

1. You can rename several files at one time within Explorer. 
2. The new 'Align to Grid' feature for the Windows desktop. Now I don't have to right-click and Arrange every time I move a stupid icon. Try as you might, you can't drag desktop icons off of the screen with this option turned on.
3. I think I've rebooted this computer less than ten times, yet XP's boot process (from BIOS to desktop) is faster than it's ever been. It took me 45 seconds to get back up and running again.
4. ...

Thanks to NeoWin for link

How you view the move to Windows XP will depend largely on your background. If you're a Windows 98, 98 SE, or Windows Millennium Edition (Me) user, Windows XP is a massive upgrade that shouldn't be undertaken lightly. To users of Windows 2000 Professional and, to a slightly lesser extent, Windows NT 4.0 Workstation, however, migrating to Windows XP should be painless, with a few exceptions. But regardless of which Windows version you're using now, how you make the move to XP is an important choice. In this showcase, we'll examine the issues you will face when installing or upgrading to Windows XP and take a look at the various ways in which this can be achieved. After surveying your options, you can check out my many Step-by-Step guides to installing and upgrading to Windows XP. These will be made available in the coming days, in rapid succession.

The cynical might dismiss Plus!XP as a pointless attempt by Microsoft to siphon even more money out of its customers, but I've always thought that the Plus! packs served a valuable service by making the overall computing experience more enjoyable. And since this release is focused so heavily on entertainment, that's more true with Plus!XP than ever before. That's not to say that Plus!XP is a must-have purchase for all XP users, as it's not. But I suspect that digital media enthusiasts like myself, especially, will want to take a closer look at Plus!XP. And of course, anyone who's interested in beautiful desktop themes and photo-realistic screensavers will want to take check out Plus!XP as well.

A Forrester analyst says the battle between AOL and Microsoft is heating up with this week's launch of online services AOL 7.0 and MSN 7.

C|Net Video (high speed connection)

The marketing wheels at Microsoft Corp. are grinding into motion as the software giant gears up to launch its Xbox video game console, which it envisions not only as a gaming machine but an entertainment hub for the home. With less than a month to go before the Nov. 15 debut of Microsoft's big foray into the $20 billion-a-year global video game market, the company is marshaling everything from Mexican food to 18-wheel trucks to preach the Xbox gospel, executives said on Friday. "On the marketing side it's all about building buzz," said Robbie Bach, Microsoft's "Chief Xbox Officer", told Reuters in an interview.

A new standard for networks of storage devices is making its way out of the prototype stage, with new products from Cisco Systems and others. The new standard, called iSCSI, joins storage devices and servers with networks built with the common Internet protocol (IP) instead of faster but more expensive and complicated Fibre Channel technology. IBM and Cisco are among the major backers. Most companies in the storage business are moving to accommodate iSCSI, and a number of announcements are expected at the Storage Networking World conference next week in Orlando, Fla.

As chip makers battle to increase their processor speeds, they are quickly running into problems controlling the amount of heat generated by swifter processors. One company is looking to solve the temperature issue with a futuristic approach that involves putting fiber-optic technology on a chip, possibly making it easier to transfer information and reduce the heat around a processor. To increase the performance of processors, companies such as Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) try to double the number of transistors on a chip about every 24 months and push processing components closer together. Both of these techniques tend to increase the amount of heat produced by a processor, to the point that companies are now trying to find new ways to dissipate heat and spread components farther apart.