Pc News

[Rasputin]

Major Browsers Battle Over Which One Fights Phishing Better

In the ongoing battle between the two leading Internet browsers, Mozilla has fired a shot at Microsoft. The open-source browser used the results of a company-sponsored study to claim that the antiphishing filter in its Firefox 2 software more accurately flags potential phishing attacks than does the one in its rival's Internet Explorer 7.

The move comes after Microsoft in late September released data in support of its assertion that IE 7's phishing filter is superior to competing offerings, including those from Mozilla, McAfee, and EarthLink. That claim was based on tests by an independent research group.

Mozilla tapped independent consulting firm SmartWare to test the effectiveness of Firefox 2's Phishing Protection feature, the company said. According to Mozilla, SmartWare's concluded from its testing that Firefox 2's antiphishing feature is "more effective" than IE 7's.

Details of Mozilla Study Results
In the tests, Firefox blocked 820 phishing sites (out of a total of 1040 sites) when running in local mode, a 78.85 percent success rate, the new study found. Local mode checks a list of known phishing URLs (uniform resource locators) stored locally in the browser. When running through Ask Google, which can check URL phishing site lists that are updated online, Firefox 2 blocked 848 sites, upping its success rate to 81.54 percent.

When running in a mode with its antiphishing filter's auto-check turned off, IE 7 blocked 16 phishing sites, a 1.54 percent success rate, according to Mozilla's study. With auto-check turned on, IE 7 blocked 690 sites, giving it success in 66.35 percent of all cases.

The study found 243 instances where Firefox blocked a phishing site and IE did not, and 117 instances where IE blocked a phishing site, but Firefox did not, the study found. In 65 instances, neither browser's antiphishing filter blocked the predatory site.

How Study Was Conducted
SmartWare conducted the comparison tests between Firefox 2 and IE 7 over two weeks, from October 19 to November 11, using phishing URLs collected by a service called PhishTank via its public XML (Extensible Markup Language) feed of phishing URLs. PhishTank allows community participants to submit and verify phishing URLs. For the tests, SmartWare downloaded the feed once per hour, and added any newly listed phishing URLs to the testing database.

The browsers were running on Windows XP machines, Mozilla said.

Microsoft has published its analysis of how IE 7's antiphishing filter stacks up against Mozilla and others, on the company's IE 7 team blog for the product. Microsoft hired 3 Sharp LLC to conduct its study.

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Pirated Vista May be Useless

Microsoft says supposedly pirated copies of its new Vista computer operating system "will be of limited value" to those who use them.

Microsoft responded to reports that some Web sites have been circulating pirated copies of Vista and the Microsoft Office 2007 applications suite.

The pirated Vista comes with a product key that users can enter to activate a version of the products on their computers without paying for them, according to a report on the Web site of The Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald newspaper. A product key is a unique serial number tied to each package of a software product.

A second download, called an "activation crack," can then be applied that bypasses the activation process intended to guarantee that the Vista version being downloaded is legitimate, the Herald reported. Pirated copies of Office 2007 can be downloaded just with the product key with no second activation code required.

Apps Will Expire
But Microsoft said in a prepared statement that those pirated copies of the OS won't work for long.

"The copies available for download are not final code and users should avoid unauthorized copies which could be incomplete or tampered. This unauthorized download relies on the use of pre-RTM [release-to-manufacturing] activation keys that will be blocked using Microsofta??s Software Protection Platform. Consequently, these downloads will be of limited value," the statement said.

Microsoft is still looking into reports of pirated versions of Office 2007 and declined further comment.

"Microsoft is happy that customers are eager to begin using Windows Vista," the company said.

Vista's Launch Schedule
Microsoft has been criticized for multiple delays in bringing Vista to market, but has said it wants to take care that the product is designed correctly to avoid security flaws, piracy problems, and other software glitches.

The company released Vista to computer manufacturers November 8 for them to build into new laptops and desktops available for retail sale in January 2007. Consumers can start buying individual copies of Vista January 30.

Microsoft also plans to have Vista in the hands of business customers by the end of November. It has scheduled a Vista launch event in New York City on November 30 when the new Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 will also be introduced

[Rasputin]

Microsoft Releases Six Security Updates

Microsoft has issued six security updates, fixing critical bugs in Windows components ranging from Internet Explorer to the Microsoft NetWare client service.

The updates were released Tuesday as part of Microsoft's monthly cycle of security patches. Five of the November updates are rated critical by Microsoft, meaning that these bugs could be exploited by attackers to run unauthorized software on a system without user action. Microsoft rates the sixth update, which fixes the NetWare flaw, as "important."

The updates also fix Microsoft's Extensible Markup Language (XML) parser, the Windows Workstation service, the Microsoft Agent, and the Macromedia Flash Player that is distributed with the operating system.

Nine Holes Plugged
In total, nine security flaws are patched in the six updates, said Mark Griesi, a security program manager with Microsoft.

Many of the flaws could be exploited by attackers who planted malicious code on Web servers and then tricked victims into visiting these sites.

For example, the Macromedia Flash, Microsoft Agent, and Internet Explorer bugs fall into this category, Griesi said. "The attack vector on all of these is the same," he said.

According to Symantec, the most critical of the updates is the Workstation service patch. "This issue can be exploited by remote anonymous attackers on Windows 2000, Windows XP and possibly Windows Server 2003 systems," Symantec said in a statement. "A wide variety of component technologies and services are impacted by this issue which has potential for a worm-style attack."

Griesi said he did not believe that a widespread worm attack based on this vulnerability was likely.

Remote attackers would be able to exploit this system remotely on a Windows 2000, Service Pack 4 system, according to Microsoft's Web site. But on an XP Service Pack 2 machine, attackers would first need to have administrator privileges on the machine. The vulnerability does not affect Microsoft's server operating systems.

Browser Bugs Squashed
The Internet Explorer update is important, because unlike many of the other services being patched this month, Internet Explorer (IE) can easily be targeted by attack code placed on a Web site, said Roger Thompson, co-founder and chief technology officer with Exploit Prevention Labs. "I think IE is always the most critical," he said via instant message.

Because hackers have also posted attack code that exploits a hole in the XML parser, the XML update is also noteworthy, he said.

Symantec also flagged the XML update. "All supported versions of Internet Explorer (including the new Internet Explorer 7.0) make use of this functionality and are susceptible to possible attack," the company said. "This is a publicly known vulnerability that is currently being exploited in the wild."

Phasing Out Support
While this month's updates mark the end of free, mainstream support for XP Service Pack 1 and Office 2003, Service Pack 1, Microsoft is cutting users of its Software Update Services (SUS) users a break. Microsoft had been planning to end support for SUS on December 6, but this deadline has now been pushed back to July 10, 2007, Griesi said.

Microsoft pushed back the date to give enterprise users a bit more time to move to SUS's successor, Windows Server Update Services, he said. "That time frame now should give everybody enough time to get it done," he said.

[Rasputin]

Burning Questions: PS3--The Blu-ray Movie Experience

From the outset, Sony has considered the PlayStation 3 an all-around entertainment console, with tendrils that extend well beyond the realm of game play. Perhaps chief among these is its support for the Blu-ray Disc format, which lets you play high-definition movies. But can the PS3 perform competitively with stand-alone Blu-ray players from consumer electronics makers?

The short answer is yes. In my initial hands-on tests, the PS3's Blu-ray Disc playback was very good--even better than I'd anticipated. (If you're impatient to read my first impressions of the PS3's image quality for Blu-ray Discs, skip ahead to "Sublime Video," past the interface discussion.) However, this is not an unqualified endorsement; in fact, I found several drawbacks that may give audio-visual enthusiasts pause.

PS3 Movie Theater
The PS3's movie playback experience is best if you start from scratch, inserting a disc into the front-loading slot as soon as you power up the unit. It took just 3 seconds for our Underworld Evolution disc to physically load into the unit itself, followed almost immediately by the PlayStation 3 startup music. The screen then blacked out, and the movie came up on screen. Total elapsed time from disc insertion to the start of the program (in this case, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's opening splash screen) was a respectable 24 seconds.

If you want to play a movie with the PS3 unit already on, the experience differs. You insert the disc and wait for something to happen, except nothing happens. The issue--one of several that keep the PS3 from being a killer Blu-ray Disc player--is that, if already turned on, the machine does not automatically start the movie disc. Furthermore, after detecting the presence of the BD-ROM, the PS3 doesn't automatically highlight that new video option so that you can select it, let alone properly identify the BD-ROM movie on the disc--as Black Hawk Down or The Phantom of the Opera, for example.

Instead, the newly inserted BD-ROM appears as an option above the Video menu index (in contrast with the other video content that we had loaded on the PS3's hard drive, which appears below the Video menu listing). You have to manually select the BD-ROM by scrolling up to that spot, and then select it by pressing the X button on the controller. The movie disc is still not identified by name, only as a BD-ROM.

Once I had the movie loaded, I discovered the next irksome hurdle to using the PS3 as a home entertainment console. Since it doesn't come with a separate remote control for video playback, I had to use the game controller to navigate through movies, and that required two hands.

Two-handed navigation for entertainment players is not unheard of--several high-end remote controls from Harmony, Philips, and others require two hands--but it is unusual, and certainly a departure from the more commonplace and ergonomic single-handed clicker. I adapted to the PS3 controller, but ultimately, though elegant for game play, it proved kludgy as a BD remote. Using two hands to control basic functions like play, fast forward, and rewind was both ungainly and imprecise; I missed not having dedicated buttons for such common features.

Sony says a dedicated remote control will be available in December for $25. (I'll post some thoughts on our blog when I have a chance to try the remote control.) The decision to leave the remote out of the PS3's bundle seems chintzy and odd to me, especially given that Sony is positioning the premium-priced PS3 as an all-purpose entertainment device. After all, Microsoft includes a remote with the premium bundle of the competing Xbox 360. (Sony does include a Blu-ray movie, the Will Farrell hit Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, with the first 500,000 systems--another clear indicator of the company's positioning of the PS3 as a Blu-ray player, too.)

Nonetheless, even with the added cost of the remote, the high-end PS3 still costs significantly less than stand-alone BD players, which range in price from $899 for the Philips BDP9000 to $1500 for the forthcoming Pioneer Elite BDP-HD1. If you buy the high-end PS3 with the remote, you'll spend about $625 (the standard console costs $100 less), making the PS3 an attractive option for high-def movie playback.

Navigation Experimentation
To navigate up, down, left, or right within the disc menus, you can use either the PS3 controller's directional pad or the left analog stick controller. You press X to select options and to activate play. The O button lets you exit the BD player, the square button brings up the disc's pop-up menu, and the triangle button gives you a handy, transparent-overlay on-screen menu that pops up on the left side of the screen. This menu provides quick access to certain settings, and awkward access to dedicated software-based playback controls (for example, buttons for fast forward, rewind, play, and stop)--which you need since the game controller lacks such dedicated controls.

Trying to perform certain operations, such as precise fast-forwarding, was particularly frustrating. The fast-forward steps ahead at 1.5X, 10X, 30X, and 120X, and you must press the X button to cease moving forward. Stepping forward frame by frame is even more awkward: No option clearly exists for this, but you can press the controller's X button to pause playback and then use the analog stick or the right and left arrows on the directional pad to advance a frame at a time.

Unfortunately, you'll have to experiment to figure all this out: The manual included with our PlayStation 3 provided no clues on how to use the controller's buttons for movie navigation. I had to dope out the responses via trial and error, and frequently found several paths to the same operation. This could be either confusing or convenient, depending on your perspective and on how comfortable you are using the controller to navigate the interface.

[Rasputin]

Inside the BD Player
In spite of these nits, the PS3's Blu-ray Disc movie player proved highly satisfactory in many ways.

I popped multiple Blu-ray Disc movies into the player and found that I liked the relatively quick speed with which it loaded and navigated through discs. I encountered a few noticeable pauses while switching between far-flung chapters on a disc, but no interminable hourglasses or annoying waits like the ones I experienced with the Samsung BD-P1000. The PS3 can resume playback; I discovered, though, that if I exited the player app to do something else on the PS3 before reselecting the BD movie, there was an obvious lag before play started up again.

I found the pop-up info display elegantly designed--unobtrusive, yet easily readable. (The easiest--if not the only--path to this display: Press the Select button in the middle of the controller.) It's a good thing that the display is a pleasure to read, because you'll be invoking it a lot: The pop-up is the only way to figure out where you are in the disc, since the PlayStation 3 console lacks an LCD screen such as those commonly found on DVD and dedicated Blu-ray Disc players. Personally, I prefer having an LCD on my player that I can glance at to see how many minutes remain, but the PS3's approach does have an advantage: In dark environments, you won't be distracted by a glowing LCD.

The display shows plenty of information about a given disc. On the top row you see the audio codec, including how many channels of sound, the sample frequency in kHz, and the bit rate. Comparable information is displayed for video (the video codec and bit rate). The bottom row displays the disc's title number and chapter number, the time elapsed, and the total time, with a meter that shows where you currently are on the disc relative to the total playing time.

Sublime Video
While usability is critical to any consumer electronics device, the quality of the output remains paramount. Having the PS3 finally allowed me to compare the first-to-market Samsung BD-P1000 (with the original, factory-installed firmware) side by side with another Blu-ray Disc player, and the results highlighted a fundamental shortcoming in the Samsung player that produces subpar video quality.

I tested both players with a 50-inch high-definition plasma screen, the Pioneer Elite PRO-FHD1, running the output over HDMI at 1080p. I could see that the images from the PlayStation 3 appeared noticeably sharper and crisper, with more depth and detail than the Samsung unit produced. That's probably because the PRO-FHD1 was released with noise reduction enabled by default and offered no way to disable it. Samsung's misstep on this setting goes far to account for the flat-looking image, and for the generally lower picture quality that I and other reviewers noted on the PRO-FHD1 during the summer. (The company says this problem has been fixed via a firmware update released at the end of October; all players shipped since then have the new firmware.)

Earlier, with no other Blu-ray player to compare against the Samsung, I had found its output of HD films on Blu-ray definitely better-looking than the same movies on standard-definition DVD. However, when I watched the same Blu-ray movies on the PlayStation 3, I could better appreciate Blu-ray's potential for image clarity. I also found the overall image quality more comparable to that of HD DVD films I've seen displayed on Toshiba's HD DVD players, in terms of sharpness, detail, and color.

Though my first impressions of the PlayStation 3's Blu-ray video playback quality were positive, videophiles should take note: The PS3 has two technical limitations that set it apart from stand-alone Blu-ray players. First, unlike stand-alone Blu-ray players, the PS3 does not have a dedicated video chip set optimized for decoding Blu-ray video, instead relying on the Cell processor and its software to do the job. This may turn out to be a plus, however, as Sony's improvements to the player software can be more easily distributed to existing users than a hardware upgrade.

Second, the PS3 offers 1080p60 (where the 60 refers to frames per second) playback, which is less optimal than 1080p24 for filmed content. Few displays support 1080p24 output today, but if your HD set and your BD player do so, you should see higher-quality images than you'd get from 1080p60 output. Since movies are filmed at 24 frames per second, you'd want to use an even multiple of 24 (such as 72 frames per second) to avoid motion artifacts in slow-panning scenes. If you display 24-fps content at an uneven multiple, like the commonly used 60 fps, you'll end up with those artifacts.

[Rasputin]

Audio and Display Output
The PS3's minimalist menu interface has some strong points, but the bare-bones approach can leave you scratching your head as you explore your audio and video output options.

For example, if you bravely dig deep through the Settings menu into the BD/DVD Settings, you'll find an arcane option for Cinema Conversion, with choices of Automatic and Video but no on-screen explanation of what they mean. You have to turn to the online user manual for clarification. According to that manual, the setting optimizes playback to match the frame rate of your source video: The Video option is for 30-fps output, such as you'd find with TV shows and animated content encoded at 480i or 576i resolution. The Automatic option refers to movies, which are captured at 24 fps. The player will convert the video for output to your display depending on the setting you choose (the default setting is Automatic).

The minutiae of the PS3's audio settings are even less clear. Neither of the two BD Audio Output format options--Linear PCM (the default) and Bitstream--is explained. I had to go to Sony directly to find out.

The PS3's default is to convert recognized audio streams to Linear PCM, an uncompressed audio format, for output via HDMI or digital optical audio. This can be advantageous if, for example, you're outputting to an HDTV that has built-in speakers and decodes only Linear PCM. If you're using your own home theater receiver, though, you'll want to use the Bitstream setting: In this mode, the PS3 passes the audio "bitstream"--be it Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS, or DTS-HD--through to your receiver via the HDMI or optical connector; from there, the receiver decodes the audio and outputs it to your speakers.

If you go with the default and use HDMI for a source with 7.1-channel audio, you'll need to output to a device that can read Linear PCM at 7.1 channels to get the full benefit. If your disc has DTS-HD 7.1-channel audio, that audio will be output at 5.1 channels instead. If you choose the Linear PCM default but use the digital optical connection, you can have only 2- and 5.1-channel sound. The multi-A/V-out (either component or composite video) supports 2-channel audio only.

Player Stats
Notably, the PS3's specs state that it can handle BD-ROM (region code A), BD-R, and BD-RE media (but not older BD-RE version 1.0 discs, which you're not likely to encounter, anyway). This makes it the only BD player on the market that can play video you have recorded on your own BD discs, using PC-based Blu-ray burners such as those of Pioneer and I-O Data. The PS3 also supports the new HDMI 1.3 spec (see our article on new HDTV technologies for details), another first among Blu-ray Disc players. (Neither of Toshiba's first-generation HD DVD players nor the RCA HD DVD player supports HDMI 1.3.) The PS3 also plays standard DVD formats (DVD-ROM and DVD±RW), plus audio CDs, CD-RW, and Super Audio CD (no DVD Audio, though).

The BD drive inside the PS3 has a maximum read rate of 2X. Video outputs via HDMI at high-definition resolutions of 1080p, 1080i, and 720p. Unlike many stand-alone DVD players today, the PS3 does not upconvert standard-definition DVDs to 1080p for output over HDMI. Instead, Sony says it leaves such upconversion to the television set. If your set does a good job with its upscaling, this won't be a problem--but not all sets handle the upconversion well.

Unfortunately, even though the PS3 has built-in gigabit ethernet, it does not currently support BDLive content. BDLive is the moniker Blu-ray Disc proponents use to denote online interactive content that can be delivered to a Blu-ray player via the Internet. Such content is not yet available, and none of the stand-alone BD players support BDLive. The Blu-ray Disc Association doesn't anticipate the release of BDLive hardware requirements until June 2007, so I wouldn't expect to see the content much before then. Sony has not announced whether PS3 BD Live support will be an option via a firmware update in the future.

Likewise, the company has not announced plans to support the full, updated version of the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) copy-protection spec when it's completed. Currently all high-definition players--both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc--support only an interim version of AACS, which allows playback of commercial movies. The full version (oft-delayed, with no ETA in sight) will support "managed copy," the ability to copy content from a disc to another device via USB or memory card, for example. If the PS3 cannot upgrade to the full spec, it will be at a disadvantage as other Blu-ray players do.

Bottom Line
A stand-alone Blu-ray player aimed at home theater enthusiasts will certainly have a different look and feel than the PS3. Such players--including shipping or announced units from Samsung, Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer, and Sony--will look like any other home theater component. Such players tend to natively support a variety of audio decoding options, certainly more than what the PlayStation 3 does. Construction quality may also vary, with attention to issues such as disc vibration. Plus, stand-alone players feature dedicated video chip sets that are optimized solely for the task of decoding Blu-ray video (as opposed to game play). And, of course, you can expect a remote control to ship with these units.

The PlayStation 3 can complement your home theater, but it falls short of being a full-blown home theater device unto itself. That said, in my hands-on tests, the PlayStation 3 proved a reasonably agile Blu-ray Disc movie player, despite its rough navigational edges. And its usefulness as a Blu-ray player could go up a few notches once the remote control comes out next month.

Moreover, the PS3 is quite a deal if you want to play high-def Blu-ray movies and aren't wedded to getting a stand-alone home-theater-style device. Even with the remote, you'd be spending hundreds less than you would for a stand-alone player--plus, you could use the machine to play games, browse pictures, and surf the Web, too.

[Rasputin]

Quest Releases SharePoint Migration Tool

Quest Software has released a new tool to move public folders from Microsoft's Exchange e-mail server software to SharePoint Server 2007.

Public folders are used to make documents, e-mail, or a booking calendar accessible throughout an organization to people using the Outlook e-mail program.

The feature became very popular in Exchange, said Joe Baguley, global product director for Quest, which offers a variety of migration tools for software from Microsoft, Oracle, and others.

Companies often build front-end forms for the public folder to allow, for example, an employee to book a meeting room. The booking would then be imported into a public calendar for all to view, Baguley said.

Microsoft Phasing out Folder Support in Exchange
Microsoft is de-emphasizing public folders in Exchange Server 2007, due for release at the end of this month, Baguley said. Exchange Server 2007 will still support public folders, but the version of Outlook accessible over the Internet won't display them, according to Baguley. Exchange 14--a future release of the product--won't support public folders at all, he said.

Microsoft is trying to get people who want the public folder-type functions to use SharePoint Server 2007, its collaboration and portal software, Baguley said.

Quest's product, called the Public Folder Migrator for SharePoint, automates the movement of folders from Exchange to SharePoint while preserving the hierarchy of the folders and consistency of the data. The task can be done manually but it is a "painful" process, Baguley said.

Quest is offering an evaluation copy for download. Pricing in North America is $25 per user or $15 for customers who are already using Site Administrator for SharePoint, a collection of SharePoint management tools.

[Rasputin]

More Powerful Typhoon Servers

The next version of Tyan Computer's Typhoon server, which uses Intel's recently announced quad-core Xeon 5300 processor, will be available in January, the company said this week.

The Typhoon 600 servers comes with five motherboards, each with two processor sockets, said Victoria Chin, a Tyan spokeswoman in Taipei. With the quad-core Xeon 5300 chip, the Typhoon 600, which was first demonstrated at the Intel Developer Forum in Taipei last month, can support up to 40 processor cores.

The Typhoon 600 that supports the Xeon 5300 will be available in January, while a version that uses Intel's Xeon 5100 dual-core processor is now available, Chin said. The most basic Typhoon 600 Xeon 5100 system costs $15,000 and does not include processors or the operating system, she said.

The Typhoon is designed for workgroup applications, such as research and development, where significant computer power is required. For example, the Xeon 5300-based Typhoon 600 is capable of 256 GFLOPS (billion floating operations per second) when operating at peak performance, Tyan said.

Earlier Versions Still Available
Earlier--and less powerful--versions of the Typhoon, which use Intel's Xeon 5100 or its Core 2 Duo desktop chip, will continue to be available after the Typhoon 600 is introduced, Chin said.

Those systems, announced during the Computex exhibition in June, include four two-way motherboards for the Xeon 5100 system, and four single-processor motherboards for the Core 2 Duo system.

[Rasputin]

Full-Steam-Ahead DVD

Ultrahigh-capacity discs, such as those promised by the Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD formats, are enticing; but like any fresh technology, they're going to be expensive when they first reach store shelves. That doesn't mean, however, that you have to wait to pack extra gigabytes onto your discs affordably.

Today's conventional DVD burners can deftly handle writing two layers of data onto a disc, and they can do so significantly faster (by nearly a third, if you pick the right drive) than they could just six months ago. In recent months, drive manufacturers have increased the write speeds of dual-layer DVD-R and double-layer DVD+R burners from their original speeds of 2.4X to 6X and 8X, respectively; and each type should eventually hit the same 16X maximum write-speed ceiling as write-once single-layer DVD drives.

Just as important, prices for the two-layer media used in the dual- and double-layer drives are finally showing signs of dropping. For example, you can now purchase a five-pack of 2.4X DVD+R DL discs that sold for $25 six months ago for about a third of that price. And 8X DL media is coming this fall (see "Firmware Update Required?" for more).

Rewritable speeds have also jumped up a notch, from 4X to 8X for DVD+RW, and from 4X to 6X for DVD-RW. Discs formulated to receive data at those speed ratings, however, remain rare (they're so scarce, in fact, that we conducted our DVD+RW tests with early production-level 8X discs from Verbatim). We expect to see appropriate-speed media trickling onto the market in limited quantities by the time you read this, though.

We evaluated five of the latest internal IDE DVD burners--Lite-On's $75 SHW-1635S, Pioneer's $90 DVR-R100, Plextor's $105 PX-740A and $155 PX-716AL (a slot-loading model), and Sony's $100 DRU-810A--and two external drives, LG's $180 Super-Multi GSA-2166D and Samsung's $200 WriteMaster SE-W164C. All seven drives made our chart, which includes three previously tested models, Asus's DRW-1680P, Samsung's TS-H552U, and Plextor's PX-716UF. Our Best Buys, though, went to two of the newcomers, the Pioneer and the LG.

Most of the new drives had identical specs, including 16X single-layer DVD-R and DVD+R and 8X DVD+RW. All of the drives support double-layer writing at faster speeds to 2.4X media, the first generation of DVD+R DL media to ship last year. But five of the seven products claim to deliver double-layer DVD+R at 8X; the Samsung advertises 5X writes; and the Plextor PX-716AL bills itself as a 6X writer. Across the seven drives, all but two feature 4X dual-layer DVD-R support (the same speed as the currently available media). The Pioneer DVR-R100's spec promises 8X performance, and the Plextor PX-716AL pledges 6X.

[Rasputin]

Compared with the drives in our August DVD burner chart, performance results this time around improved dramatically. Plextor's PX-740A and Sony's DRU-810A each posted record-setting times during write-once tests, using both single- and double-layer media. Using 2.4X double-layer Verbatim media to burn at a faster speed (in this case, 8X) than the media is rated for, these drives bested the times of their predecessors (the Plextor PX-716A and the Sony DRU-800A) by more than 10 minutes, completing our test burn in about 40 percent less time. In our experience, however, the Sony device required a rest between double-layer burns; otherwise, as Sony confirmed, the drive's thermal protection circuit would automatically step down the write speed to prevent the drive from overheating.

Some other drives rated at 8X for double-layer DVD+R didn't achieve such lofty results. For example, Lite-On's SHW-1635S performed more like a 4X drive in our tests. According to Lite-On, in spite of its specs the drive is designed to suppress the burn speed, so as not to write faster to slower-rated media; the company says this approach minimizes the potential for burning an error-riddled disc. (For more on faster double-layer writing, see "Firmware Update Required?").

Though we've tested drives in the past that counted 8X DVD+RW among their specs, this month we saw the first true 8X packet-writing performance, delivered by Plextor's PX-716AL. This drive burned our 2.64GB batch of test files and folders to 8X DVD+RW Verbatim media in a blistering 6 minutes, 30 seconds. The speed boost could help you complete your backups in a little over half the time required by the previous generation of 4X-rated drives and media.

The PX-716AL's stellar test results are even more impressive when you compare them with the times we recorded for the other six 8X DVD+RW-rated drives in our tests: None of those burners reached their advertised 8X speeds, peaking instead at speeds closer to 4X or 6X.

A potential cause of this sluggishness is the drive's firmware (software installed in flash memory on the drive), which contains instructions detailing how the drive should write to specific media. Typically you can update the firmware easily with a download from the drive manufacturer's Web site. We suspect that every drive maker whose drive spec calls for 8X +RW will make the necessary firmware adjustments once media starts to ship in volume, and will issue a free update to increase performance, so you won't be left behind if you buy a drive today.

[Rasputin]

Several of this month's drives have unusual features, or mixes of features, that make them stand out from the crowd. For example, the LG is the sole drive we tested for this chart that writes to noncartridge DVD-RAM media. If you have one of the many living-room DVD recorders equipped with DVD-RAM (from Panasonic, JVC, and Samsung, among others), you'll find this capability great for playing back or recording from DVD-RAM discs. (If you use cartridge media, you can always remove a DVD-RAM disc from its cartridge before using it in the LG drive.) DVD-RAM discs are handy because they are seamlessly interchangeable between PC drives and set-top DVD-RAM recorders (DVD±RW media may be less so).

The unique feature of the Lite-On SHW-1635S is its short profile. Its smaller design makes this inexpensive, high-performance model suitable for use in compact computers from vendors such as AOpen and Shuttle.

Plextor's chic PX-716AL is the sole slot-loading burner on the chart--and the first such burner we've tested. Its design resembles what you'd find in an automobile CD player or on a Mac Mini, and it looks cool, making this drive ideal for use in a customized home entertainment center PC. You'll pay a premium for the gee-whiz factor, though: At $155, this internal drive is nearly as pricey as the external models we reviewed. Though the PX-716AL costs more than its PX-740A stablemate, the product's high price is only partly due to its slot-loading mechanism. This drive also offers a host of other features related to Plextor's firmware and PlexTools software, including PowerRec, which lets you define the laser's strength settings; Secure Recording, for password-protecting your data; and Silent Mode, which enables quieter DVD playback.

Although Hewlett-Packard's LightScribe technology is gaining ground, the LG is the only drive we tested this month that supports it. (Three others we considered for this ranking--previous chartmakers from HP and LaCie--incorporate LightScribe as well, but all were hampered by painfully slow double-layer write performance.) LightScribe employs the drive's laser to etch a label onto a specially coated disc; when you finish burning your data, you can flip the disc over and proceed to burn your label. Plextor, Lite-On, and Sony all have plans to add LightScribe to their next-generation drives, due later this year.

Software proved to be another differentiator among the drives on our list. Nero's disc-burning suite continues to rule among the DVD burners on the chart. Five of the seven newcomers this month use a version of Nero's OEM software, and two of the holdovers, from Asus and Samsung, use Nero as well. The Nero versions vary from vendor to vendor; visit "The Skinny on Burner Bundles" for more information on software bundles. Pioneer continues to offer the most jam-packed software bundle of the bunch: The DVR-R100 comes with Ulead's DVD MovieFactory 4 SE suite, VideoStudio 9 SE, CD & DVD Picture Show 3 SE, and Photo Explorer 8.5 SE; in addition, the Pioneer device bundles the complete version of NovaStor's comprehensive backup software, NovaBackup 7.2, which sells for $50 as a stand-alone package.

Among the current crop of DVD burners, some of our picks rank high in spite of their firmware glitches. Two of our favorites are Sony's DRU-810A and Plextor's PX-740A--though Sony's package has the edge with a slightly beefier version of Nero's software. Our Best Buy nods, however, go to Pioneer's internal DVR-R100, which combines a stellar software bundle with reasonable performance, and LG's external Super-Multi GSA-2166D, a high-performance drive that does most everything, including LightScribe labeling and writing to all DVD formats.

[Rasputin]

Best Lip Syncher? Yahoo Buy, Bix, Lets You Prove It

Yahoo plans to buy Bix.com, a Web site that lets users create online contests, as part of its push into offering more online social media services.

Mike Speiser, Bix.com's president and chief executive, posted a note on the Web site announcing the planned acquisition. The deal will help create a larger audience for Bix users, he said.

American Idol
Bix.com users create contests and then ask others to submit entries. Contest subjects include lip-synching, photography, dance, beauty and many others. Viewers cast votes and winners can receive prizes if the contest creator offers one. Some contests are sponsored by companies that view them as promotional opportunities.

In a Yahoo blog posting on Thursday, Bradley Horowitz, Yahoo vice president of product strategy, described the site as offering American Idol fans the opportunity to play the role of the show's producer, a contestant and Simon Cowell, a popular judge on the amateur singer contest TV program.

Acquisitions On The Rise
Once Bix.com becomes part of Yahoo, users can expect more community features and more entertaining content, Speiser said. In addition, Yahoo is already looking into how it might integrate Bix with other offerings such as Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Video, Horowitz said.

Bix.com, founded in January, joins several other social media companies acquired by Yahoo including Flickr, Jumpcut, Del.icio.us and Upcoming.org.

Yahoo competitor, Google, has also been aggressively pushing into the entertainment and social online offerings arena. Google recently bought YouTube, the popular online video sharing site.

Speiser will become vice president of community for Yahoo's communities group. Speiser was one of the founders of Epinions, a popular Web site that lets users share their experiences using a wide range of products that they've bought.

[Rasputin]

Skype Launches Mobile Service

Skype launched its first mobile voice-over-IP service in collaboration with an operator, 3 Group, whose customers will soon be the first to use it.

3 Group customers will be able to make free Skype calls to other 3 Group Skype users and to PC-based Skype users around the world. Customers must subscribe to one of 3 Group's new monthly data plans to use the service.

3 Group has not yet revealed the pricing for the plans but says they will include unlimited usage, subject to fair-use limitations. For mobile phone users who make lots of international calls, the offering could deliver significant cost savings, depending on the cost of the data subscription.

3 Group Service Offers Unlimited Calls
"It's now possible for the 136 million Skype users to break from their PCs and use Skype wherever they are," said Niklas Zennstrom, chief executive officer of Skype, speaking today in London as part of the launch of 3 Group's new mobile data offering.

The client software on the phone looks just like the client customers use on their PCs, he said. Users can check if their buddies are online and click on a contact to place a call to them.

Premium paid Skype services such as SkypeIn and SkypeOut will become available to mobile customers next year, Zennstrom said. SkypeIn gives customers a phone number that allows landline phone users to call them on their Skype account. SkypeOut offers low rates on calls to regular phones.

Skype already offers a client for Microsoft Pocket PCs and 5 million people have downloaded it. However, those users had to either hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot or use GPRS, which could come with potentially high access fees, Zennstrom said. Because the new 3 Group X-Series service has a flat rate for unlimited usage, people won't be afraid of potential high costs for using mobile Skype, he said.

Service Launching in the UK
The X-Series offering will become available first in the UK on December 1 and eventually to all other markets in which 3 Group operates.

A spokesman for a public relations firm that represents Skype said that for now the client will only work on the Nokia N73 phone, one of two phones that 3 Group launched with its new offering. A 3 Group spokeswoman did not know whether the Sony Ericsson W950i, the other phone launched with the new 3 Group service, would also support the Skype offering.

Fans of the Symbian operating system, which runs Nokia's smart phones, have been eager to see a Skype client built for the platform. In October, Skype promised that the delayed client for Symbian would become available by the end of this year.

Skype made a deal with 3 Group earlier this year to support the voice-over-IP service for 3 Group customers using wireless data cards with their PCs. Typically, mobile operators have been reluctant to enable Skype and some have even blocked the service because it can compete with their own voice offerings.

3 Group, owned by Hutchison Whampoa, has 14 million mobile users in countries including Ireland, Austria, Denmark, Italy, Australia, and Hong Kong.

[Rasputin]

Pirated Vista May be Useless

Microsoft says supposedly pirated copies of its new Vista computer operating system "will be of limited value" to those who use them.

Microsoft responded to reports that some Web sites have been circulating pirated copies of Vista and the Microsoft Office 2007 applications suite.

The pirated Vista comes with a product key that users can enter to activate a version of the products on their computers without paying for them, according to a report on the Web site of The Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald newspaper. A product key is a unique serial number tied to each package of a software product.

A second download, called an "activation crack," can then be applied that bypasses the activation process intended to guarantee that the Vista version being downloaded is legitimate, the Herald reported. Pirated copies of Office 2007 can be downloaded just with the product key with no second activation code required.

Apps Will Expire
But Microsoft said in a prepared statement that those pirated copies of the OS won't work for long.

"The copies available for download are not final code and users should avoid unauthorized copies which could be incomplete or tampered. This unauthorized download relies on the use of pre-RTM [release-to-manufacturing] activation keys that will be blocked using Microsofta??s Software Protection Platform. Consequently, these downloads will be of limited value," the statement said.

Microsoft is still looking into reports of pirated versions of Office 2007 and declined further comment.

"Microsoft is happy that customers are eager to begin using Windows Vista," the company said.

Vista's Launch Schedule
Microsoft has been criticized for multiple delays in bringing Vista to market, but has said it wants to take care that the product is designed correctly to avoid security flaws, piracy problems, and other software glitches.

The company released Vista to computer manufacturers November 8 for them to build into new laptops and desktops available for retail sale in January 2007. Consumers can start buying individual copies of Vista January 30.

Microsoft also plans to have Vista in the hands of business customers by the end of November. It has scheduled a Vista launch event in New York City on November 30 when the new Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 will also be introduced

[Rasputin]

Three Minutes With Zimbra's Satish Dharmaraj

Open-source collaboration software vendor Zimbra is adopting an intriguing approach to taking on proprietary titans like Microsoft and Google, using its channel partners as its competitive muscle.

The aim is for Zimbra to step completely out of directly selling the commercial versions of its products so the startup can focus fully on software development and support, according to Satish Dharmaraj, Zimbra's ebullient cofounder and chief executive officer.

It's a particularly interesting time to head up an open-source company in the wake of several surprising recent developments. Among them were Sun Microsystems's decision to use the GNU GPL (general public license) to open source Java and Oracle's move into providing what it terms full enterprise support for Red Hat's distribution of Linux.

Prior to founding Zimbra and holding executive positions at messaging software companies Openwave and Onebox, Dharmaraj was at Sun's JavaSoft division where he was a prime mover in designing and implementing JavaServer Pages technology to create dynamic Web content.

IDG News Service sat down with Dharmaraj to talk about Zimbra, its competition, and recent developments in the open-source arena. An edited transcript follows.

Sun, Oracle Going Open-Source
IDGNS: What's your take on Sun's open sourcing of Java?

Dharmaraj: It's great news. It was surprising they're going with GPL. I only wish they'd done it four years before when the open-source movement was getting started. It would've killed, stopped [Microsoft's] .Net from ever having been. They [Sun] made a mistake.

IDGNS: And, your thoughts on GPL?

Dharmaraj: GPL is whatever [Richard] Stallman [the creator of GPL] decides it is. We chose to go with the Mozilla Public License [MPL] primarily because it allows downstream value-add by developers who can decide on their own whether to open source. It's more like the Lesser GPL.

We had a long debate on whether to go GPL or MPL. Firefox uses MPL and Mozilla is respected. We didn't have to worry what the hell is going to happen with GPLv3.

There's a shift going on. Companies are open source, but at the same time they need to feed their developers and run a company. Traditional GPL companies have been hobbyists. It's all pure speculation about what will be in GPLv3. [The license is currently in draft form.] Stallman is trying to really restrict all the commercial benefits of GPL. The philosophy of the Free Software Foundation is that software should be totally, totally free and companies shouldn't benefit from it ever. Ironically, Red Hat and MySQL are the ones he's killing with it.

IDGNS: What do you think about Oracle's move into Red Hat's territory?

Dharmaraj: There are inherent risks of the open-source model. It's a lot more than putting source code out there. You allow your competitors to take your code and compete with you on price and efficiency. Now Larry's joined the Linux market, Red Hat and Suse need to roll up their sleeves and compete more on price and efficiency. I don't think it's predatory per se, but Linux didn't need another vendor to split the pie. Why doesn't Oracle focus on the enemy, proprietary vendors, and go shooting at Redmond? From the purely customer perspective, it might actually be a good thing giving users one throat to choke if something goes wrong with the database or the Linux kernel.

Zimbra vs. Exchange
IDGNS: Turning to Zimbra, how do you position yourself against your open-source competitors Scalix Corp. and Open-Xchange Inc.?

Dharmaraj: There are two ways to go about open source. You can take what Microsoft Exchange did and do an open-source version of it and do it on top of Linux. That's what they both did. There's no way you can win competitively with Microsoft with that approach. When we launched Zimbra, our entire goal was to create something unique, with a lot of things Exchange doesn't have like hierarchical storage management. With our Thanksgiving release [Zimbra Collaboration Suite 4.5], we're offering integrating archiving and cross-mailbox search.

IDGNS: Some analysts have suggested times when it's not appropriate to substitute Zimbra for Exchange, particularly if users want tight integration with other Microsoft software. What do you think?

Dharmaraj: If you're using Active Directory and Outlook, then you can slot in Zimbra. If you're using SharePoint, we still don't have integration with SharePoint. We're not particularly looking to add it. We're not hearing from the market that it's a big need. It sounds as though when Microsoft launches Exchange 12 next year, SharePoint will be mandatory to roll out Exchange. That could be beneficial to us.

IDGNS: Looking ahead, will Google and Yahoo pose more of a competitive threat to Zimbra than Microsoft?

Dharmaraj: Absolutely. The biggest threat lies with Google and Office Live. Pardon me for being cocky, but compared to even Google we're already two years ahead with our business application, and Google is ahead of Microsoft. We won't compete person-on-person. We'll let our channel partners compete, like Tata Broadband in India and Orolix in Brazil. We don't compete with our channel since we don't host applications ourselves.

Sales and Marketing Tactics
IDGNS: What's the current split of your business between indirect and direct sales and where would you like it to be?

Dharmaraj: It's 70 percent indirect and 30 percent direct. We hope to see it as 100 percent indirect and zero direct.

IDGNS: What about tie-ups with broadband providers in the U.S.?

Dharmaraj: We're talking to a lot of service providers here. They have the same fear as overseas ISPs have. They don't want to be a bit pipe. If they're only a bit pipe, the stickiness of their customers is lost. Most of the providers aren't in software development and all of them have a small business division.