Microsoft is preparing to give its cloud platform users the capability to run Linux on its Windows Azure cloud in 2012, according to a report.

The All About Microsoft blog reports that Microsoft is poised to enable customers to make virtual machines (VMs) persistent on Windows Azure and is slated to deliver a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of its persistent VM capability in the spring of 2012.

The post goes on to say, «Customers who want to run Windows or Linux ‘durably’ (i.e., without losing state) in VMs on Microsoft’s Azure platform-as-a-service platform will be able to do so.”

In addition, according to the report: «The new persistent VM support also will allow customers to run SQL Server or SharePoint Server in VMs, as well. And it will enable customers to more easily move existing apps to the Azure platform.”

Back in June 2011, The Register reported that Microsoft was cozying up to Linux with support for Linux distributions on its Hyper-V virtualization stack.

«Supporting Linux on Hyper V also means that Microsoft can equip itself with the technical knowledge and driver-level support needed to run the open source OS on the company’s own Windows Azure cloud,” the report said.

The Register report also stated that Microsoft was in the early stages of delivering support for Linux on Windows Azure and had an early prototype in place, but the company would not be ready to deliver anything for close to a year.

Yet, according to both reports, Microsoft is seeing demand for the capability to run Linux on Azure, as the IT world at large is predominantly heterogeneous and enterprises with Microsoft technology also tend to have some Linux in their shops.

Farzana Rahman, the group program manager of the Windows Update group, has outlined Microsoft’s plans in a post on the Building Windows 8 blog: Minimizing restarts after automatic updating in Windows Update. Microsoft’s planned changes are based on many billions of items of data, but the company may adapt them in response to feedback.

«Windows Update is one of the largest services on the Internet by several measures,” says Windows boss Steven Sinofsky. It’s also one of the most successful. It «currently updates over 350 million PCs running Windows 7 and over 800 million PCs across all the supported Windows platforms,” says Rahman. «There are actually many more PCs updated by WU indirectly if you account for our Windows Software Update Server, and for those machines (or customers) that do all updates manually for any number of reasons.”

With roughly a billion PCs using Windows Update, and more than a dozen batches of updates every year, the service has proven astonishingly reliable. This has encouraged its adoption to the point where 89,30 percent of Windows 7 users now have auto-updates enabled, and only 4,88 percent never check for updates.

Limiting Windows restarts

Restarts (reboots) have become a greater annoyance for a number of reasons. These include the much greater stability of Windows Vista and Windows 7 compared with Windows XP (reboots may be rare and crashes almost non-existent), and the increased use of mobile computers that are turned off much of the time. Instead of updates being installed automatically at 3am, while they’re asleep, users are faced with the need to update when they resume work in the morning.

Where users have chosen to have updates installed automatically, they should, of course, be installed without their intervention — and that includes a reboot. If they do not want to change their behaviour, they should change the setting.

Rahman says that with Windows 7 users:

«The majority of automatic update users (39 percent) are updating when they shut down their systems. For these users, there is no automatic restart because the system can complete all steps of the installation during shutdown. This is the least disruptive experience for users, and so we do want to ’hitch a ride’ whenever we can on user-initiated shutdowns instead of inconveniencing users with a separate restart.”

However, Windows Update exists for two reasons. First, it is intended to help protect users from malware by patching security holes in their systems. Second, it helps to stem the incidence of malware by providing a sort of «herd immunity» that helps prevent malware from growing virally. Rahman says:

«There is one exception to the rule to wait for the monthly security release [before forcing a restart], and that is in the case of critical security update to fix a worm-like vulnerability (for example, a Blaster worm). In that case, WU will not wait, but will go ahead and download, install, and restart automatically. But this will happen only when the security threat is dire enough.”

No third party software updates

One bugbear is not being addressed, which is the use of multiple update programs by suppliers of third party software. Today, the majority of critical threats to Windows PCs are not due to security flaws in Windows but holes in software from Adobe, Apple, Oracle (Java) and other suppliers. Their updates are irregular and frequently intrusive. As Rahman says:

«People clearly find the experience with multiple updaters on the system less than optimal (and we agree!). Each application updater gives you a different experience, you have to remember to go visit each updater to install updates, you never know when or how updaters will run and what they might do, and so on. People would like one updater for the entire system.”

However, Microsoft is currently unwilling to take this on. The high take-up of Windows Update is based on the fact that «they trust the quality of updates distributed by WU». Bundling in updates for third party programs might diminish that trust.

For those users who have problems knowing when or how to update third party software, there is a very convenient solution (for the programs it covers). I recommend, and use, Secunia’s Personal Software Inspector (PSI). This scans your Windows hard drive, lists the applications that need updating, and provides a link to each update. Using PSI also means you don’t have to run numerous separate updaters.

Are you a Skype user who’s looking for a voice-and-video call recorder, a desktop sharing tool, integration with Outlook, or a free app for sending faxes? No longer need you turn to Google and evaluate apps in the wild, without easy comparison shopping, helpful category distinctions or customer reviews. Like a caveman.

But Skype’s App Directory is currently limited in small yet important ways:

There are only 20 or so apps at the moment, which isn’t exactly the whole Skype ecosystem. The popular call recorder I use isn’t in there, for example. That number, though, should grow over time.
Unlike the Apple, Amazon or Android app stores, Skype’s is really a directory, not a store. You can’t purchase the apps through Skype, but are routed to the developers’ individual sites.

The best analog might be Dropbox’s Apps site, which likewise links out. But unlike Dropbox, Skype has a robust payment-and-credits system to handle its own services. Even though Skype isn’t owned by eBay any more, Skype and PayPal are still pretty well-integrated. Handling payments, refunds and information is a real service Skype could offer both its customers and developers. Not doing it doesn’t make much sense.

Some reasons Skype’s not going the Apple/Amazon/Android route:

It keeps developers happy. They get full access to user and billing information, and users who are tied to them as much as Skype.
The system’s a lot easier to scale if you don’t have to worry about handling payments, both in terms of approving apps and managing the backend.
Skype doesn’t want to use PayPal or credit cards or anything else, but would rather wait until the Microsoft purchase is approved to roll out a 2,0 store using Microsoft’s own payment system.

Whatever the reasons, these limitations are why I call Skype’s a «junior» app platform. It’s still one that’s worth watching. That little platform might grow up&nbsp

The Opera Mini Web Browser for iPhone maintains the same limitations on Flash support as the iPhone’s Safari browser, and the browsing experience may not be as smooth, but for power users this may be the browser app for you.

Opera won over some users and supporters on the PC platform by offering a number of functions and controls — including content saving, sharing and organization. In some ways, Opera turned the Web into a graphics-friendly file system.

The Opera Mini Web Browser for iPhone does a lot of the same thing, allowing easy, one-button bookmarking (by clicking a heart-shaped icon), page-saving (by clicking a photo-shaped icon), and a «share button» that lets you post URLs directly to Facebook or Twitter.

The Opera Mini Web Browser for iPhone isn’t the slickest of browsers for handling pop-ups or Flash incompatibilities, but it is the best we’ve seen for managing Web-based content.

The software does more than just protect against spyware, it also seeks out and destroys trojans, adware, spybots, tracking threats and even the infamous keyloggers. These are all very serious threats that can result insubstantial financial or data loss. Aside from monetary or personal loss, these viruses also compromise system resources, thus slowing down the users computer. PC Tools Spyware Doctor seeks out and destroys all of these threats, thus restoring the system performance to a like-new state.

The main improvements made in this edition of PC Tools Spyware Doctor are internal adjustments within the program, therefore the main functions of the software have remained the same, thus minimizing the learning curve for regular users of PC Tools Spyware Doctor. Since the software is specifically designed to deal with spyware threats, it is far more successful at doing so than the standard antivirus program. Every wise computer owner will have a competent spyware suite installed on their machine, especially if they run an online business or commit banking activity online.

The internal reworking of the virus base has made the software unsurmountable in the anti-spyware industry, as it now has the ability to recognize viruses that have not yet been cataloged, based on code similarities and variations that are commonly seen in spyware. PC Tools Spyware Doctor not only finds and destroys spyware after it has infected the computer, but it also does an excellent job of preventing it as well.

Since the utility uses minimum system resources, it can be run constantly in the background of the users operating system with little to effect on computer performance. In fact, it is recommended to leave it running at all times to prevent spyware attacks. By leaving the program running, users can prevent malicious executable files from installing on their system. Since this package includes 3 licenses, it is capable of protecting most households.

Perhaps one of the most convenient improvements is the speed of spyware scanning, which is noticeably faster in this edition. Spyware Doctor’s long list of protective features, combined with its overall functionality and capabilities, have won it multiple awards since its release. In fact, many experts recommend this software over any other spyware prevention software.
PC Tools Spyware Doctor: What We Liked

* Scan times are much faster, and the program consumes minimal system resources.
* The preventative features of Spyware Doctor prevented every virus thrown at it.
* The support for the software is excellent.
* Is superb at suppressing threats, particularly the infamous keyloggers.
* This edition is by far the most efficient version of PC Tools Spyware Doctor.

PC Tools Spyware Doctor: What We Didn’t Like

* Although the installation is simple, it can be a lengthy process on some computers.

PC Tools Support

Support for all PC Tools software can be found at the PC Tools online support center. There users can find a variety of helpful resources that pertain to every PC Tools software. Each software has a different selection of help sections, however all of them contain a FAQ sheet, a sales and general inquiries section, an educational knowledge base full of tutorials, and access to direct technical support. Users can also search for a specific topic using the search bar underneath the aforementioned sections.
About PC Tools

PC Tools specializes in the development, production, and distribution of security utility software for Windows and MAC OS X. The company has become an industry leader of security software, providing more than 15 different security software titles. Originally founded as part of the WinGuides network, the division was later rebranded as PC Tools. PC Tools is headquartered in Ireland with offices is the UK, US, Australia, China and the Ukraine.