Welcome to January 2008. Amongst all the CES coverage we’ve been doing we failed to notice yesterday, being the second Tuesday of the month, revealed to us on our Windows desktops that monthly ritual all Microsoft customers must endure: security patches. We’ve decided here at SlipperyBrick to implement the Microsoft Security Bulletin Watch - a basic way of us providing you information about new patches Microsoft is releasing.

For January 2008 Microsoft has released one Critical, One Important and seven Non-Security, High-Priority updates on the Microsoft Update site. You may not of course need all of these - it depends upon your machine’s specific Windows OS flavor and what you already have installed on your PC. Check after the jump for a summary of the most important updates.

“No Wow, No How: Windows Vista” titles the number 1 spot on PCWorld’s list of the 15 biggest tech disappointments of the year and we can’t really disagree. Heck, I personally upgraded a machine from XP to Vista earlier this year and was unable to use Internet Explorer on it for months, and I still cannot get Windows Media Player to work correctly with MPEGs.

Just as PCWorld had pointed out there are a lot of cool things in Vista that are an improvement over the previous OS, but it just “…isn’t all that good.” The article goes on to note that hardware incompatibilities seemed to be over the top early on, it runs slower than XP and the new user account controls caused more irritation than a feeling of safety. PCWorld could not finish up the article without at least mentioning that the fastest notebook they tested with Vista running on it was a MacBook. We also cannot refute that Vista will eventually have its dominate day in the sun, but it’s unfortunately not this day.

If you keep hoping that the day will come when you can stop your TV broadcast in mid-stride and pick it up again from a different room there is a company located in Redmond, WA that you should know about. It’s called Microsoft.

The software giant is hoping on the day after the big Apple news to steal a little bit of the tech crowd’s attention with its announcement of Extenders for Windows Media Center, a range of applications for Windows Vista that Microsoft promises will make it easier for you to have media convergence in your home.

Microsoft has announced that it will release Service Pack 1 containing updates and fixes for the new Windows Vista operating system in the first part of 2008, putting a date to a milestone that many companies look for when upgrading Microsoft products.

The company, consistent with earlier announcements, is planning on releasing a beta version of the SP1 for Vista in a few weeks to a limited number of users in somewhat of a cautious manner.

“A small group of testers has been putting a preview of the SP1 Beta through

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Keyspan has announced the release of the RF Remote for Windows Vista. The remote is used to run the Vista media player for watching TV, movies, photos or listening to music or the radio on both Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate. The real “key” in this remote from Keyspan is the “RF” part, however.

The RF remote uses radio frequency signals to control the Vista media player which is unlike most remote controls that use infrared (IR). The RF remote control does not require …

At the annual Microsoft fninancial analysts meeting in Redmond last Thursday Kevin Turner, Microsoft COO, stated that the company has shipped over 60 million copies of its new Vista operating system since its release. Since the Vista global launch at the end of January Microsoft says it had shipped 20 million copies in the first week and 40 million in the first 100 days.

“By our math, we eclipsed the entire installed base of Apple in the first five weeks that this product shipped,” Turner said.

Microsoft had a bit of a rough …

Information, or “misinformation” as Microsoft is calling it, was passed around the net earlier this month that Microsoft would be releasing the first service pack for Windows Vista sometime earlier this week. Well, the week is almost out and we’ve seen no SP1 show up anywhere, and now Microsoft has released a statement regarding the issue:

“There will be a Windows Vista service pack and our current expectation is that a beta will be made available sometime this year. Service packs are part of the traditional

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Yesterday among a number of other announcements Steve Jobs unveiled the release of the Safari web browser for Windows as a public beta version. The browser had previously only been available for the Mac. If you were one of the likely thousands like me that downloaded the browser to try out on a Windows box, you may want to be careful with it for a little longer.

Within only a few hours, (some within a few minutes) of its release as many as six bugs were …

Microsoft had recently launched a beta version of its web-based email client MSN Hotmail, called Windows Live Hotmail beta. The new Live Hotmail starts rolling out of beta today where users can sign up for a new Hotmail account, and existing uses can choose to upgrade their current MSN Hotmail account by clicking an upgrade button in the upper left of their screen once they are logged in.

The Live Hotmail has the most significant improvements in the Hotmail client since it launched in 1996, boasting a …

You may want to set a side a little time for some updates and rebooting on Tuesday, February 13th. Microsoft has 12 security updates scheduled in their monthly security bulletin communication that list out various Security Bulletins affecting Microsoft software products.

Eight of the security bulletins scheduled to be released Tuesday affect Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Office with seven of them having severity rating of ‘Critical’ with the rest rated as ‘Important’. The remaining four bulletins range from ‘Important’ to ‘Critical’ and will affect Windows with Visual Studio, Step-by-Step Interactive Training, Microsoft …

An novel security hole presented itself last week with the new version of Windows Vista released by Microsoft to customers around the world.

George Ou, and online blogger, reported on Tuesday through ZD Net that he was able to access the Start Menu on Vista and could potentially run programs through voice command audio files played through the system speakers. This type of functionality could allow a hacker to run programs, delete files and any number of other harmful processes accessible through the voice command functionality of Windows Vista.

Microsoft has attempted to downplay …

The consumer versions of Microsoft Windows Vista are finally available today around the world. Vista is available both at retail outlets and, in a first, via download. Microsoft’s tag line for Vista is The “Wow” starts now. And most consumers will be “Wowed” by the ridiculous number of different versions to choose from. Do you want Home Basic, Business, Home Premium or Ultimate? Good question. Most of the decision depends on knowing what you want to do. Unfortunately the technology experts in every family will end …

Customers with business accounts have had Windows Vista available to them for almost two months, and the launch to general consumers is just a few days away, scheduled for the 30th of January.

Even with the limited exposure the new OS has had, there have already been reported issues with drivers, some anti-virus software and Quickbooks to name a few. To help with this, Microsoft has created a page to help you get ready for Windows Vista, walking users through the different editions …

Microsoft may again be a victim of its own success. Many companies in South Korea rely on ActiveX, a technology built into Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, that enables users to run arbitrary applications in their browser. However, IE7 (Internet Explorer 7) breaks some of the functionality that companies rely on to run their ActiveX plugins in user’s browsers. Because of this the South Korean government through its various ministries has advised users to be cautious about upgrading.

So …

Microsoft has announced that it will extend its free support period for Windows XP. The Redmond Washington software giant had originally planned to discontinue free support in January of 2009. Microsoft said the support period applied specifically to the Home edition of Windows XP.

Windows 98 and ME just ended their supported life in July of 2006. Microsoft has a history of extending the support life of products based on customer demand. Windows 98 support was supposed to end in January of 2004. …