Whatever the Microsoft marketing department is on over at its Redmond HQ, long may it continue. The company’s just released its latest ads for Internet Explorer 8 and while I’m not a big fan of the browser, I’m a massive fan of these web-only ads.
Obviously inspired by the television series Mad Men the campaign features a wonderfully terrible Dean Cain hamming it up as he eulogises on the browser’s best features. Surreal doesn’t even cover the humour, which is well … odd and clearly straight out of the same camp as those Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld ads which I loved and everybody else hated because the world is wrong. If anything though, it’s seems clear there’s a renewed confidence within Redmond following those Laptop hunter ads which did so much to sting the cool Apple exterior.
The videos are posted below for your gratification, though we’ll warn you in advance that the O.M.G.I.G.P features projectile vomit. On the bright side, the G.R.I.P.E.S video will teach you where Dean Cain lives. Really. We know… Microsoft, what’s the world coming to.
The EU is in self-congratulatory mood today, declaring that its clampdown on mobile roaming charges means “the roaming rip-off is now coming to an end”.
While the EU has indeed made progress, we’re a long way from popping the champagne corks and declaring a famous consumer victory.
Look, for example, at the data rates. The EU’s new rules still allow mobile networks to charge up to 1 Euro (86p) per MB for data downloads when roaming. That’s £880 per GB! To put that in perspective, BT charges £15.65 per month for a 10GB data download allowance on its Option 1 package; mobile networks can theoretically charge £8,806 for the same amount of data! And I’ve yet to see any compelling evidence that the costs associated with mobile data are an order of magnitude higher than they are for fixed line providers.
Firefox 3.5 - the browser that’s suffered more delays than an NHS IT project - has finally arrived. You can download a copy from the Get Firefox site.
As Matthew Sparkes noted in his preview of Firefox 3.5, not much has changed on the surface, with the exception of a rather clumsily implemented Private Browsing mode.
However, one issue I’ve noticed after installing the browser this afternoon is that my Google Gears Add-on has been disabled, because it isn’t compatible with this latest build. That’s a significant issue for anyone who uses Firefox to access services such as GMail and Google Reader offline.
Why hasn’t Google got its Gears Add-on ready for the launch of 3.5? Is this the first sign that cracks are beginning to appear in the once harmonious Google/Mozilla relationship, now that Google has its own browser to worry about?
Firefox 3.5 is out as a Release Candidate - as close to a final version as you can get without being a final version - so I’ve taken a look to see how it compares to its competitors.
Porn/Private Browsing
Most other browsers already had this feature, and now Firefox does too. With nothing more than a quick Ctrl+Shift+P your tabs will be whisked away and stored safely, leaving you with a fresh window for your… personal research.
When you’re all finished up, the same shortcut will bring back all your previous tabs and send all trace of your secret session into oblivion (it does not erase feelings of guilt). (more…)
If there’s one thing you could never accuse Microsoft of lacking, it’s good old-fashioned Chutzpah.
The world’s favourite monopolist has launched a new “Get The Facts” campaign for Internet Explorer 8, that seems remarkably short on fact and a bit top-heavy on the codswallop.
You can see Microsoft’s version of the facts running down the left-hand side of the page, where the company has decided to compare Internet Explorer 8 against Firefox and Chrome. Yes, that’s right. Internet Explorer 8 wins in every single category, apart from a couple where it generously shares the honours with its rivals.
We could spend a couple of hours demolishing the argument for almost each and every one of those Microsoft ticks. Then again, we could spend a couple of hours shooting fish in a barrel or stealing sweets from children with only one arm, but we’ve got better things to do, so we’re just going to deal with the most blatant of Microsoft’s whoppers.
Those with a long memory may well remember Adobe’s first attempt to conquer the business market with the launch of Acrobat Exchange and its promise of the “paperless office” built around the round-robin swapping of PDFs. The arrival of the internet largely put paid to that original all-encompassing vision but now, sixteen years later, Adobe is back for a second bite at the cherry with the announcementof the official out-of-beta launch of Acrobat.com.
So is Adobe likely to be any more successful this time around? The recent press briefing, given by product manager Eric Larsen and hosted within Acrobat.com itself, was certainly interesting…
And so the EU’s pointless vendetta against Microsoft reaches its ridiculous conclusion:Microsoft will now ship Windows 7 in Europe without any web browser whatsoever. Â The pathetic gripes of a vastly inferior competitor - yes, I’m talking about you Opera - have concluded with the EU making life harder for consumers, PC manufacturers and, ironically, Opera itself.
PC manufacturers will of course bundle a browser with any new Windows 7 PC, and I wouldn’t mind betting that the only browser the vast majority will choose to bundle is Internet Explorer.
And what about people who buy Windows 7 off the shelf? A spokesperson for Microsoft Europe said the company will provide a free IE8 CD-ROM with every retail copy of Windows 7. So the company’s still effectively bundling IE8 - it’s just making consumers jump through a few more hoops to install the browser. Utterly, utterly pointless.
We’ve been playing with the Create a Collection tool and it really is gobsmackingly well designed. Once registered, you merely give your collection a name, a brief description and pick your favourite Add-ons. The Add-ons are, well, added simply by typing the name into the search box and selecting from the drop-down menu that appears as you type.
Once you’ve selected all your Add-ons, you can twiddle with advanced features, such as creating a bespoke URL for your collection and uploading an image.
And so, we present the PC Pro Firefox Essentials - ten brilliant add-ons that have been hand-picked by the PC Pro editorial team.
If you think we’ve missed a brilliant add-on, let us know on comments below and we’ll consider them for future inclusion. Subscribers to our Collection will be alerted whenever we add a new extension.
Alternatively, if you create any fantastic Collections of your own, provide a link in comments so that others can follow.
The annual Electronic Entertainment Expo, known as E3, attracts tens of thousands of hardcore gamers and industry figures to Los Angeles each June.
It’s the biggest show of the year, where Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo deliver keynote presentations, and, even though it’s easy to get caught up in Project Natal and the PSP Go, plenty of exciting PC news has emerged from E3.
Here, we’ve sifted through the dodgy RTS titles and lazy console ports to pick out the most important PC gaming stories to emerge from the three-day conference, so take a look at our top stories and let us know what you think.
Things move incredibly quickly in technology. Back in the March 1999 issue of PC Pro, for example, our news section was bemoaning the fact NT4 was as “secure as a piece of Swiss cheese” and marvelling at the prospect of some blue-sky BT technology called ADSL.
Why the sudden flashback to 1999? Because that, according to the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority’s website, was the last time the ICT National Curriculum for 5 to 11-year-olds was updated. Scan right down to the bottom of the page, and there you’ll find: “This content relates to the 1999 programmes of study and attainment targets.”
