Don't Sell Your Old Smartphone

Story first appeared in The Detroit Free Press.

Thinking of selling your smartphone or laptop computer? If you have a BlackBerry or an iPhone, go right ahead.

If you were planning to sell an Android phone or a computer running Windows XP, however, you may want to think again, according to a McAfee identify theft expert.

The expert recently purchased 30 electronic devices from Craigslist -- mostly smartphones and laptops -- to see how effective normal people are at removing personal information from their gadgets before selling them.

After he got the devices home he, did some digging around in the phones and computers himself and then sent the machines to a forensics expert to see what personal data he might glean.

Fifteen devices revealed no information about the previous owner's identity, no matter how thoroughly the experts looked. But as for those other 15 devices -- they coughed up plenty of private data.

The expert was able to get bank account information, Social Security numbers, court documents, credit card account log-ins and a host of other personal data off those devices with not much effort.

And the worst part? Most of those devices had already been "wiped" by their previous owner -- meaning all personal files had been deleted and the user had restored the device's factory settings as per the manufacturer's instructions. The data is still there after following manufacturer protocol.

So, what's the difference between the devices that still reveal personal information after being wiped and those that don't?

It came down to the type of device that was sold and what kind of operating system it was running.

BlackBerrys were totally impenetrable. Resetting to factory settings on a Blackberry totally wiped any and all personal data from the machine. Similarly, he was unable to get data off devices running iOS such as the iPad and the iPhone. Devices running Windows 7 that are wiped by their owners also got his vote of confidence.

As for smartphones running the Android system and computers running Windows XP, it is recommended that people don't sell them at all.

You don't want to sell your identity for $50. Either put the device in storage indefinitely, or put holes in the hard drive to make certain that the information cannot be pulled.


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Microsoft Warns on Windows 7 Upgrade Tool

cNet

 

Parallels, known for using virtualization to solve consumer problems, thought it had a surefire new use for its technology.

Why not use the same approach it used to put Windows on a Mac to help ease the move from XP to Windows 7. The solution was elegant, helping users both make the move and even run older programs that weren't compatible with the new version of Windows. At first, the signs from Microsoft were encouraging; the company even invited Parallells to a Windows 7 momentum event in Paris to publicly talk about the program, Parallels Desktop Upgrade to Windows 7.

There was only one problem: the way the product works runs afoul of Microsoft's license rules, at least for most users. That's because the $50 software puts the user's old Windows XP system into a virtual machine, running alongside Windows 7, a concurrent use not allowed under most Windows licenses.

CNET raised the issue with both Microsoft and Parallels after learning about the product last month. Parallels said it is up to users to make sure they are in compliance with Redmond's terms. Microsoft, meanwhile, said it was talking with Parallels, but declined to publicly call out the company. Until now.

"Microsoft does not endorse moving the user's desktop from a physically loaded OS into a VM as a consumer solution, because the vast majority (more than 90 percent) of consumers do not license Windows under a license that would allow them to transfer Windows into a virtual machine, move Windows to a different machine, or run a secondary virtual machine that is not running XP Mode on the same machine," Microsoft's general manager, Gavriella Schuster, said in a statement to CNET. "Without these license rights, most consumers will not be properly licensing Windows when using the virtualization features of Parallels' product."

Schuster pointed out that enterprise customers with a Software Assurance contract covering Windows could properly use the software. Users who buy a full retail boxed copy of Windows (or possibly of both Windows XP and Windows 7), as opposed to the an upgrade version might also be properly licensed for the Parallels software.

For its part, Parallels continues to say it is up to users to make sure they are properly licensing Windows in conjunction with the upgrade tool.

"We require customers to verify they have the proper license," a Parallels representative said on Tuesday.

Microsoft suggested it is looking for a little more than that.

"Microsoft is working with Parallels to ensure that the Windows licensing requirements are made clear to customers in their product," Schuster said.

Despite the legal issues, Parallels' upgrade tool would appear to address an important need.

Although Windows 7 has proven popular, upgrading can be a hassle, requiring users to back up their data and programs, reinstall software, and then figure out what to do with programs that aren't compatible with the newer Windows.

A Parallels representative said on Tuesday that the product remains available for sale.

"It's out there," the representative said. "We're very excited about the product."

Windows 7 Battery Doubts Remain

Information Week

Despite denials from Microsoft, users continue to insist the OS is wreaking havoc on laptop power cells.

A day after Microsoft said it could find no evidence that its Windows 7 operating system drains laptop batteries at an unusually fast rate or issues false alarms about impending failure, users continued to insist there's an issue.

"I have the laptop computer battery problem everyone else has been talking about," wrote "Patel33", in a bulletin board post to a Microsoft support forum. The user said he and his wife have Toshiba laptops that are identical except for the fact that his runs Windows 7 and his wife has Vista.

"Guess what, in two weeks of use my battery is dying and the energy report shows only 15% chargeable. Wife's is completely fine," said Patel33.

"Same problem with mine," wrote forum member "Lagunexxx", who said the battery on his Asus notebook PC died "within a few days" of his installing Windows 7. Numerous other posts voiced similar problems.

The ongoing reports of Windows 7 battery issues prompted a Microsoft rep to jump into the forum on Wednesday. "For others posting to this thread with battery issues, please contact our support.microsoft.com Customer Support so that we can gather insight into the specific details of what you are seeing," wrote a support rep named Chris.

The new reports come just a day after Microsoft Windows group president Steven Sinofsky used a blog post to insist Windows 7 does not create laptop battery problems.

"At this time we have no reason to believe there is any issue related to Windows 7 in this context," said Sinofsky, in a post Tuesday.

"To the very best of the collective ecosystem knowledge, Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries that are in fact failing and Windows 7 is neither incorrectly reporting on battery status nor in any way whatsoever causing batteries to reach this state," said Sinofsky.

Sinofsky said it's normal for laptop power cells to start to lose their ability to hold a charge after about a year, and said users who are experiencing trouble should purchase a new battery.

Holiday PC Sales, Windows 7 Boost Microsoft

The Wall Street Journal

Microsoft Corp. said consumer demand for Windows 7 propelled a 60% increase in profit during the holiday quarter, in another sign of hope for the battered technology sector.

The world's largest software maker's results, which included a 14% rise in sales, were a welcome change after three quarters where sales fell from a year earlier. The turnaround in Microsoft's business was almost entirely due to the October launch of Windows 7, which lured consumers back to stores for copies of the software and new computers running it, especially in markets like Asia and Latin America.

Microsoft executives cautioned they haven't yet seen a return to strong spending by businesses on Windows 7 and other products, though they reiterated earlier expectations of a recovery sometime this year. "This is the best launch of an operating system we've ever had," Peter Klein, chief financial officer, said in an interview.

The Redmond, Wash., company's results looked particularly good in comparison with the holiday quarter of 2008, when spending on technology ground to a halt.

For its second fiscal quarter ended Dec. 31, the company's Windows division saw revenue jump 70% to $6.9 billion. The results included $1.71 billion in deferred revenue from pre-sales of Windows 7 that occurred before it was released.

Sarah Friar, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, said Microsoft's results were "staggering" considering that the company gets less money on average from sales of consumer PCs, where selling prices for consumers are lower than they are in the business market.

Overall, Microsoft said second-quarter profit jumped to $6.66 billion, or 74 cents a share, from $4.17 billion, or 47 cents a share, a year ago. Revenue rose to $19.02 billion from $16.63 billion, despite weakness in its non-Windows businesses.

The strength of its results showed that, for now, one of the main profit engines at Microsoft has maintained its durability in the face of a new wave of threats, including Apple Inc.'s resurgent Macintosh. It also appears Microsoft has been able to rebound from technical shortcomings that hurt the perception of Windows Vista, its last major operating system.

Another potential threat to Windows seems to have abated as well: the inexpensive laptops known as netbooks that generally deliver lower Windows licensing revenue to Microsoft than other computers. Mr. Klein said netbooks have stabilized at about 11% of the PC market and that roughly 90% of them continue to be sold with Windows on them.

Outside its Windows franchise, most of Microsoft's other businesses continued to show weakness. Sales in the division that includes its Office software were flat, while its online services division's revenue declined 5% to $581 million from the prior year, despite the high-profile launch of the Bing search engine. Microsoft's Mr. Klein said he's still confident about the long-term prospects of Microsoft in the search business.

The company has continued to gain a bigger share of Internet searches since it launched Bing last June, rising to 10.7% of U.S. searches in December from 8.3% a year earlier. The company has said its online business could improve further if a proposed deal for Microsoft to handle the search operations for Yahoo Inc. receives regulatory approval in the coming months.

The company could experience a further boost in software sales when it releases a new version of its flagship suite of productivity applications, called Office 2010, due out in June.

Lenovo Expects Lift From Windows 7

Reuters

Lenovo, the world's fourth-biggest personal computer maker, expects a boost in its PC sales from the launch of Microsoft's new operating system, Windows 7, its chairman said on Saturday.

"It will have a big impact, and we have made a lot of preparations for it," Lenovo Chairman Liu Chuanzhi said in remarks, translated from Mandarin, which indicated the impact would be positive.

Liu spoke to Reuters on the sidelines of an industry forum but declined to give a revenue contribution forecast.

Earlier this week, Lenovo launched two new laptops under its corporate line, both running the new Microsoft operating system.

Industry-watchers are betting on further recovery of computer sales next year as the global economy improves and businesses replace old machines. However, opinion is divided on how strong the impact of Windows 7 will be.

Microsoft Corp launched Windows 7 on Thursday, its most important release for more than a decade, aiming to win back customers after the disappointing Vista.

Taiwan's Acer Inc's chairman J.T. Wang also told Reuters recently he expected the launch of Windows 7 to be a positive factor for sales as consumers look to upgrade computers running on the Vista or the 8-year-old XP system.

PC shipments in the Asia Pacific region, excluding Japan, grew 17 percent in the third quarter, research firm IDC said on Tuesday. Lenovo had the largest market share in Asia.

Window Shopping: Windows 7 Preview

Windows 7 is no Windows Vista. But it remains a Windows operating system. 
Story from the Washington Post

That is, Microsoft's new release, arriving in stores and on new computers Thursday, ought to turn the troubled Vista into a bad memory. But it shouldn't make people forget about Apple's Mac OS X.

The primary reward 7 offers to Vista users who shell out for the upgrade -- $119.99 to go from Vista's Home Premium edition to 7 Home Premium -- is better performance.

In particular, 7 upgraders should see their computers win back some free memory (about 200 megabytes' worth, going by the figures in Windows' Task Manager tool on an HP and Dell laptop) and disk space (about 7 gigabytes even when upgraded to 7's overpriced Ultimate edition, the only kind provided by Microsoft's PR firm). Their computers may start up and shut down faster, although the HP took as long as ever to boot up.

Windows 7 also disciplines Vista's most annoying feature, the "User Account Control" dialog that asks you to confirm that you really want the computer to perform a given task, just in case a virus is trying to take over the system. You'll still get hit with a "UAC" prompt when you install a program, but you should no longer see it during such routine actions as joining a new wireless network.

On its desktop, 7 introduces a new, Mac-like version of the taskbar on the bottom of the screen. Here, the old rectangular taskbar buttons have been condensed to squares that can be rearranged and can point both to open programs and ones you use often -- much like Mac OS X's Dock.

On a computer with enough graphics processing power to run 7's Aero graphics, each open program's taskbar button will also present a pop-up preview of its windows (or, in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, Web pages you have open in tabs inside its window). A right-click on these buttons brings up "jump list" menus of frequently-used commands. These changes combine to allow much more fluid switching between programs than in Vista, let alone XP.

Another welcome shift comes at the far right end of the taskbar. Windows 7 sweeps the tray clear of meaningless icons left by third-party programs to show only such core system-status indicators as the volume control and a laptop's battery gauge.

The Start menu, however, remains the same old mess, though that's also the fault of programmers who ignore Microsoft's software guidelines.

But 7 takes a step back with its new Library folders, a set of prominent shortcuts to all the documents, music, pictures and videos on a computer. On a computer used by only one person who already sticks to the default Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos folders, they're more likely to confuse.

Further confusion may result from Microsoft's decision to remove most of the applications it bundled with Windows Vista. This well-meaning effort to declutter the desktop excises a few programs nobody will miss, but others -- like Windows Mail -- are widely used.

Worse yet, Microsoft's suggested remedy of free, souped-up "Windows Live" replacements will introduce far more clutter: The Live installer comes preset to install everything from instant-messaging software to a video editor to a blogging tool to a browser toolbar.

One Vista extra returns in improved form: its backup software, which now comes set to preserve all of a user's files and settings, not just a vaguely defined subset of them. But this program's inability to restore a selected program's data files -- say, e-mail archives -- to its original, hidden location in your user directory makes it useless in many common software malfunctions.

On a new computer, Windows 7 should work well -- numerous third-party programs, such as Apple's iTunes and Google's Picasa, all worked just as they did in Vista.

But upgrading an older machine from XP to 7 is a recipe for pain even if the computer meets 7's hardware requirements. Your first warning should be a flyer in the 7 box that begins "Please read these instructions carefully and completely . . . " -- as if it were the manual for a new circular saw.

Microsoft calls an XP-to-7 upgrade a "custom install," but "destructive install" is more accurate. You run an Easy Transfer utility to back up your files, the 7 installer wipes out XP, your programs and the drivers enabling your computer's hardware; Easy Transfer reloads your files and settings; you reinstall programs. On a test XP system, this left some applications missing their settings or files.

But even if you're just moving from Vista to 7, things can go wrong. A Dell laptop wouldn't connect to a wireless network it had used reliably in Vista, while an HP laptop needed updates to its fingerprint-recognizer and TV-viewing software -- and the latter update failed two times in a row. You might want to wait a month or so for your computer's manufacturer to ship a round of bug fixes.

In other words, if you were hoping to stop policing random software-versus-hardware squabbles, Windows 7 isn't the operating system for you. Nor does it bring an end to drawn-out program installations and uninstallations, the risk of virus and malware attacks, the need to submit the computer to "validation" checks, or compatibility problems between 32-bit software and 64-bit installations of Windows.

Then again, for Vista users weary of that operating system's foibles, Win 7's selling points can stop at two words: "not Vista."

Microsoft Launches Windows 7 Ads

By Information Week

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) on Thursday kicked off an advertising campaign for the new Windows 7 operating system with a spot on the CW's "Vampire Diaries".

The 30 second commercial features a young girl using her father's Windows 7-equipped PC.

"I found these happy words all over my dad's computer; 7,7,7,7," she says. The girl goes on to launch a slide show featuring a cute menagerie comprising bunnies, cats, and unicorns.

The ad concludes with the girl saying, "I'm a PC, and more happy is coming."

The spot is noteworthy in that it eschews the use of celebrities to promote Microsoft's new OS. The company previously tapped comedian Jerry Seinfeld for a campaign to promote Windows, but the series was widely panned for being too abstract and failing to connect viewers with Microsoft technology.

Windows 7 has already been released to some business customers, and is slated to go on sale to consumers starting Oct. 22nd.

Microsoft needs the OS to be a hit, as its predecessor—Windows Vista—failed to win the hearts of consumers and was virtually shunned in the enterprise market. Complaints ranged from Vista's incompatibility with older software to its intrusive security measures and heavy horsepower requirements.

Partly as a result, Windows sales have slumped significantly in recent months.

The full version of Windows 7 Home Premium is priced at $199, with an upgrade from Vista or XP costing $119. The full version of Windows 7 Professional is $299, with upgrades going for $199. Windows 7 Ultimate is priced at $319, with the upgrade version at $219.

Brace for bumps in Windows upgrade

By The Wall Street Journal

It's amazing how many people are still using Windows XP.

We need to talk about this because Windows 7 is scheduled for release in late October. In between the two, we've had Micro soft Vista, which has been something less than a success. From the oversold Aero interface, which taxed PC performance for a small payoff in looks, to the misleading "Vista Capable" sticker that implied a computer was ready to go when it could handle only the basic Vista version, the interim operating system has been a frustration all around.

No wonder so many businesses and individuals have continued to run XP while hoping to bypass Vista and go straight to Windows 7. And no wonder Microsoft is hoping for great things from Windows 7 -- its Windows revenues have, for the first time, dropped year over year.

But we XP holdouts are now going to pay the price. For if an upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 is a relatively painless process, the cut-through from XP to Windows 7 is fraught with challenges. It turns out that XP users can't exactly upgrade. What they have to do is back up all their data and run a clean install of Windows 7, thus eliminating their programs, their associated drivers, and anything else they've left on the disk. Good luck finding all those old installation disks when you're hoping to reinstall the programs you use daily.

Windows 7 will wipe out your hard disk data for you during the installation phase, so whatever file folder organization you've established will be eliminated in the process. Transferring your personal data is eased somewhat by Microsoft's "Easy Transfer" program, which can move your information to an external hard disk and restore it to the newly established Windows 7 environment on your PC. Even so, moving data is a chore, and any long-time XP user with a disk stuffed with files will wish for a cleaner way to proceed.

You might think I'm about to trash Windows 7 after having spoken well of it in the past, but I'm actually of two minds about all this. Over the years, I've made it a practice to periodically back up all my data and do a clean Windows install every eighteen months or so. Performance is much snappier when you do such a reset, for reasons that doubtless have to do with mangled registry settings and all the digital detritus that builds up after installing program after program. It's time-consuming, but a clean install offers serious performance benefits if you're confident of your data backups.

Just be aware of what Windows 7 will ask of you if you're currently running XP. If a new computer is on the horizon anytime soon, consider simply waiting until the manufacturers are selling machines with Windows 7 preinstalled. You'll avoid the hassles of the "upgrade" and will have a fair assurance that Windows 7 will have the right drivers for your hardware, something that at present may not be the case for older equipment. And again, if you're running Vista, the regular upgrade process seems to be relatively quick and painless.

Be sure to check your current system to make sure it has the requirements for running Windows 7. A complete list is posted at windows.microsoft.com/systemrequirements , and bear in mind that these are minimums.

Many will wait and see

Meanwhile, the rollout of Windows 7 may not be as easy as Microsoft would like. Two recent reports have noted that about 60 percent of businesses will not buy Windows 7 at launch, while a study from PCMag Digital Network found that 32 percent of consumers will buy Windows 7 in the six months after it becomes available.

Those numbers surprise me a bit because Microsoft is pitching Windows 7 as a cleaned up version of Vista, one in which performance is made paramount and tuneups to the user interface make it easier to use. With the underlying engine being much the same, then, the need to wait for the first service pack release -- many businesses do this when new operating systems appear -- seems to be negated. Judging from the "release candidate" software many reviewers have seen, Windows 7 is already robust and a significant improvement over Vista.

Things would have run so much better if the transition from XP to Vista had been seamless, but Vista's problems have kept millions using the older system, and that has complicated the Windows 7 picture immeasurably. So have the legions of netbooks still being sold with XP as their primary system. Having skipped Vista on my main machine, I'll do the "clean install" from XP whenever possible, looking forward to a new operating system while remaining dismayed at how exasperating Microsoft system upgrades always turn out to be.