.:: computer geek's diary ::.

Recuva 1.30.435

Maaruthi — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:08:57 +0000

Recuva pronounced “recover” is a freeware utility to restore files that have been accidentally deleted from your computer. This includes files emptied from the Windows Recycle bin as well as images and other files that have been deleted by user error from digital camera memory cards or MP3 players. It will even bring back files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses! Like all other Piriform products including CCleaner, Recuva is free for both commercial and personal use.

What’s New:

Added recovery of emails from Outlook Express.
Added recover of emails from Windows Mail.
Added ‘Email’ filter.
Fixed bug that could cause secure delete to fail in list view.
Various bug fixes.

Download: Recuva v1.30.435
Screenshot: >> Click here <<
Link: Home Page | Forums

Organizing Team Decision-Making

Maaruthi — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:21:32 +0000

Organizing Team Decision-Making
Reaching Consensus for Better Decisions


	Consensus is often essential.

While many of the decisions we make on a daily basis are quite simple, some are not. These decisions may involve assimilating a huge amount of information, exploring many different ideas, and drawing on many strands of experience. And the consequences of the right or wrong decision may be profound – for the team and for the organization.

So, should leaders be decisive, think the issues through on their own, and take firm action? In some cases, no.

There’s a limit to how much information any one individual can process, and a limit on how many perspectives one person can see. Many decisions need full group participation to explore the situation, provide input and make a final choice. As you’ve probably seen, groups can often make better decisions than any one person operating on his or her own – this is one of the reasons that companies have boards, and why important decisions are taken by these boards.

What’s more, many decisions need “buy-in” from the people affected by them, if they’re to be implemented successfully. It’s hard to get this buy-in if people haven’t been involved in the decision-making process.

The problem is that when you bring other people into the decision-making process, you need to approach decisions differently. These approaches vary, depending on a number of different factors, including:

The type of decision.
The time and resources available.
The nature of the task being worked on.
The environment the group wants to create.
The amount of buy-in needed.

Understanding why and how best to organize decisions for your team is an important skill. We’ll show you some useful tools to use when you want to involve your whole team in the decision-making process.

The Challenge of Team Decisions

Using team input is challenging, and it takes a fair amount of preparation and time. As the saying goes, if you put three people together in a room, you’ll often get four opinions. People can often see issues differently – and they all have different experiences, values, personalities, styles, and needs.

Trying to include all of these differences in one decision that satisfies everyone can be difficult, to say the least. Team decision-making strategies should therefore be used when needed, for example, when consensus and participation are necessary.

When time is of the essence, a good decision is one that’s made quickly. That doesn’t usually happen with full team decision-making. And when just one or two people have the necessary expertise to make the decision, it doesn’t make sense to involve the whole team – the experts provide most of the input and make the final choice anyway.

However, where the situation is complex, consequences are significant, commitment and buy-in are important, and where team members can work together maturely, team decision-making is often best.

Tip:
It’s easy for managers to “go overboard” with group decision-making, sometimes as a way of trying to avoid responsibility for decisions. Use team decision-making where it should be used, and individual decision-making where it’s appropriate.

You can find out more about this in much more detail the Career Excellence with our premium members’ article on The Vroom-Yetton-Jago Decision Model. This gives you a well-thought-through decision tree that you can follow to work out the best approach to use.

Team Consensus Methods

When your whole group needs to be involved in the process, you need to explore consensus decision-making models. With these, each team member has the opportunity to provide input and opinions. All members discuss alternatives until they agree on a solution.

With consensus, there’s often compromise. Not everyone gets everything they want out of the final decision. However, because everyone has fair input, the decisions reached are often ones that most can live with, however grudgingly.

Let’s look at some useful team decision-making strategies.

Ensuring Participation

A consensus decision depends on hearing everyone’s opinion. In a team situation, that doesn’t always happen naturally: Assertive people can tend to get the most attention. Less assertive team members can often feel intimidated and don’t always speak up, particularly when their ideas are very different from the popular view.

The Stepladder Technique can help manage these differences. Each team member thinks about the problem individually and, one at a time, introduces new ideas to the group leader – without knowing what ideas have already been discussed. After the first two people present their ideas, they discuss them together. Then the leader adds a third person, who presents his or her ideas before hearing the previous input. This cycle of presentation and discussion continues until the whole team has a chance to add their opinions.

The benefit of this process is that everyone feels heard and acknowledged. Once all the ideas are presented, the team can look at ways to narrow the options down, and so make a decision.
Voting for Consensus

Voting is a popular method for making decisions, and it’s a good approach to use where opinions are strongly divided between two or three options.

Unfortunately, it becomes less useful where there are many options – imagine an election where people have only one vote to choose between eight candidates: It’s possible that a candidate could win with as little as 13% of the vote. This would leave 87% of people feeling unhappy with the result!

Multi-voting can address this problem. Proceeding through a number of rounds of voting, individuals are given a certain number of votes in each ballot, which they can allocate to the various options any way they want. Essentially, they provide a “weighting” to their choices. They can give one vote to each of several different choices, all of their votes to once choice, or any combination in between. After all the votes are placed, the choices with the highest number of votes are carried through to the next round, until a winner emerges. Click here for our members’ article on Multi-voting.

This method allows more people to have input in the final decision. There may still be people who give the final choice no votes, but that number tends to be significantly reduced.
Establishing Group Priorities

A similar situation is where you need to prioritize a set of options, where everyone has different views, and there’s no objective framework that people can use for decisions. (The classic situation in which this occurs is where people are allocating resources between competing projects.)

Here, Nominal Group Technique provides an effective framework for ranking priorities and choosing the option that best fits those priorities. First, the team discusses the problem, and they narrow down the issues to the choices they must prioritize. From there, participants each rank their top choices. The team totals the rankings for each alternative, and the options with the highest ranking emerge as the group’s priorities.
Making Contributions Anonymous

Sometimes, people with deep expertise that you need to draw on may dislike one-another so much that they have difficulties working together. In other situations, people may need to discuss issues that are real, but unpalatable or embarrassing. In still others, proposals may need to be developed and explored in tremendous detail, suiting individual scrutiny and analysis away from a meeting.

For these situations, managing the process in a way that allows anonymous and remote contributions can help you avoid destructive situations and reach a good, well-thought-through decision.

With the Delphi Method, a facilitator helps participants individually brainstorm solutions and submit their ideas anonymously – other team members don’t know who submitted which ideas. The facilitator collects and organizes the input, submits it to others for development, critique and refinement, then goes back and forth to all participants until everyone agrees to a final set of choices – and, eventually, a final decision. (Mind Tools premium members can read our article on the Delphi Method by clicking here.)

Conducting these discussions is very time-consuming, and you need an experienced facilitator who can help individuals come together to find a solution. But the result is usually a robust final decision that has been fully explored, and is supported by each team member.

The other advantage of the Delphi Method is that it helps to eliminate groupthink.

In some situations, group cohesion and consensus can subconsciously become more important to people than reaching the right decision, with the result that the group may ignore anything that contradicts the newfound consensus. If groupthink isn’t recognized and corrected, it can lead to very poor decision-making and severe negative (and even fatal) consequences.

Key Points

Team decision-making is often time-consuming, meaning that it makes sense to prepare for it properly. Before you organize full team participation, make sure that it’s appropriate, and that you have the necessary time and resources for it.

However, teams can often commit more enthusiastically to decisions reached through consensus. Using a variety of techniques, you can do this in such a way that everyone has a chance to contribute to the final result.

Bye bye Windows Vista!! welcome Windows 7………

Maaruthi — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 21:11:40 +0000

Windows 7

Over the past few years, you’ve asked us to make some changes to Windows. We listened closely. Now it’s time to share an early look at how we’ve used your feedback. Windows 7 is faster, more reliable, and makes it easier to do what you want. Both the everyday things and the killer “is that really possible?” things. Dig into these sites to see what’s coming.

Explore the below link to know more about Windows 7

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx

Windows 7 Beta 7 (Sneak Previews)

A Tour of Windows 7 Beta
http://www.pcworld.com/article/157165/a_tour_of_windows_7_beta.html

Hands-on Guide to Windows 7: Lesson 1
http://www.pcworld.com/article/158537/handson_guide_to_windows_7_lesson_1.html

Hands on Guide to Windows 7: Lesson 2
http://www.pcworld.com/article/158676/hands_on_guide_to_windows_7_lesson_2.html

Hands on Guide to Windows 7: Lesson 3
http://www.pcworld.com/article/158723/hands_on_guide_to_windows_7_lesson_3.html

Hands on Guide to Windows 7: Lesson 4
http://www.pcworld.com/article/158725/hands_on_guide_to_windows_7_lesson_4.html

Hands on Guide to Windows 7: Lesson 5
http://www.pcworld.com/article/159267/hands_on_guide_to_windows_7_lesson_5.html

Hands on Guide to Windows 7: Lesson 6
http://www.pcworld.com/article/159363/hands_on_guide_to_windows_7_lesson_6.html

Windows 7 Beta videos: a peek at the coolness to come

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-videos.aspx

Windows 7 Problem Steps Recorder: Miracle tool

If you’ve ever offered technical support to other computer users, you might find yourself losing a slice of your sanity over their inability to describe the problem clearly. And most times it’s not the fault of the user, it’s just difficult to describe what you see with words. A feature new to Windows 7, called “Problem Steps Recorder” looks to be the missing tool for documenting where it all goes wrong.

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090111/windows-7-problem-steps-recorder-miracle-tool/

First Windows 7 build 7032 screenshot leaks

Days after the leak of build 7022 (32-bit) to public torrent sites, WinFuture.de has posted a screenshot clearly showing a 64-bit Enterprise edition of build 7032. We already know of a build 7034, but this is significant because there have been no screenshots or any other tangible proof of any of the 703x builds. The screenshot shows the following build string: “‘6.1.7032.0.winmain.090129-1812,” meaning that the build was compiled on January 29, 2009 at 6:12PM. Since it is an interim build, it’s not surprising that the screenshot shows the build expiring on July 2, 2009.

Other than the new build number, the screenshot (full-size image) does not show too much. A date is shown in the bottom left in a European format, but all this shows is that the screenshot was taken today. There appears to be a new icon in the taskbar, and it looks like it is for the Control Panel. IE8 is still at RC1, which is not surprising. The user has Hibernate set as the default for the power button in the start menu, but this doesn’t necessarily mean Microsoft has changed it from Shut Down. This build does not include the fixes to UAC.

Look out for more leaked builds in the coming days as users become more and more impatient awaiting the public RC build rumored to be coming in April. Testers are expected to get a newer build before that.

Update

WinFuture.de has now posted more screenshots of build 7032. Head over to their site to check them out in all their glory!

For Screen Shots – see below link (This may take time to load)

http://winfuture.de/news,45137.html

Information about UAC in Windows 7

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/01/15/user-account-control-uac-quick-update.aspx

Sacrificing security for usability: UAC security flaw in Windows 7 beta (with proof of concept code)

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090130/uac-security-flaw-windows-7-beta-proof/

Microsoft dismisses Windows 7 UAC security flaw, continues to insist it is “by design”

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090131/microsoft-dismisses-windows-7-uac-security-flaw-insists-by-design/

Second Windows 7 beta UAC security flaw: malware can silently self-elevate with default UAC policy

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090204/second-windows-7-uac-flaw-malware-self-elevate/

Microsoft TechNet Forums – Windows 7 Beta
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/category/w7itpro/

Dedicated blog to the engineering of Microsoft Windows 7 (Must visit!!)
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/

Windows 7 News

Windows 7 News is dedicated to bringing you all the latest news, rumors, screenshots and videos of Microsoft’s next OS release, currently expected in 2010 all in one place. Since its creation in Feb 2007, the site traffic has grown from nothing to over 10,000 page impressions per day, and is expected to grow even further once more the launch date of Windows 7 gets closer.

http://windows7news.com/

Fore more information and screen shots of Windows 7, visit Paul Thurrott’s Win Supersite…….
http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/

Incase if you would like to test Windows 7 Beta on your systems, follow these links

How to Dual Boot Windows 7 with XP or Vista

http://lifehacker.com/5126781/how-to-dual-boot-windows-7-with-xp-or-vista

Installing Windows 7 on Virtual Machine

http://www.scribd.com/doc/11571223/Installing-Windows-7

DVD Flick 1.3.0.7

Maaruthi — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 21:01:19 +0000

Convert various PC video formats to a DVD that can be played on pretty much any standalone DVD player.

DVD Flick aims to be a simple but at the same time powerful DVD Authoring tool. It can take a number of video files stored on your computer and turn them into a DVD that will play back on your DVD player, Media Center or Home Cinema Set. You can add additional custom audio tracks, subtitles as well as a menu for easier navigation.

DVD Flick is Open Source, meaning that anyone can download and view or modify the program’s source code. It also means that it is absolutely free of charge. Several external programs are used by DVD Flick to do the dirty work like encoding and combining of video material. All of these programs are free, some are Open Source too.

DVD Flick can read and use the following file formats out-of-the-box:

* AVI type 1 and 2 files (.avi)
* MPEG files (.mpg)
* MPEG audio files (.mp2\.mp3)
* MPEG-4 files (.mp4)
* Matroska files (.mkv\.mka)
* Vorbis files (.ogm\.ogg)

And any other format as long as the appropriate DirectShow filters are installed for it.

Features:

* Burn near any video file to DVD
* Support for over 45 file formats
* Support for over 60 video codecs
* Support for over 40 audio codecs
* Easily add a menu
* Add your own subtitles
* Easy to use interface
* Burn your project to disc after encoding
* Completely free without any adware, spyware or limitation

What’s New:

Version 1.3.0.7

* Added: buttonSubtitleMenuX and buttonAudioMenuX button types that jump to a title’s audio or button menu directly.
* Changed: Removed “High” encoding priority setting. It is not useful anyway (no speed gain, only chokes other processes).
* Changed: Updated FFmpeg to revision 19276.
* Changed: Updated ImgBurn to version 2.4.4.0.
* Changed: Removed “Enable menu” checkbox and replaced it by a “None” menu option.
* Fixed: Overflow error when loading large files.
* Fixed: Negative audio delays were not corrected.

DVD Flick has the following system requirements:

Processor: A Pentium MMX or compatible AMD processor, or better. A Pentium IV or later is recommended, the faster the better. Multithreading is supported.
Memory: At least 256 MB of free physical RAM, 512 MB or more is recommended. When using Windows Vista, at least 512 MB is required.
Operating system: Windows 2000 Professional, or any edition of Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7.

Source code

The source code of DVD Flick is released under the GPL. You can download it, use it, redistribute it, modify it and copy and paste from it as you see fit, as long as the license is left intact and credit is put where credit is due, though that is more The Right Thing to do, but not required by the license.

Most of DVD Flick’s code is written in Visual Basic 6. You will need MinGW and GCC if you want to compile DVD Flick’s support library and TCMPlex. The supporting programs are not included. And must be copied from a regular DVD Flick installation.

Download DVD Flick source code – 2 MB

Latest version:
1.3.0.7 – 13 MB
View the changelog to find out what’s new.

Features

Supported video codecs

All of the following video codecs are supported by DVD Flick. The ones highlighted in green are common video codecs.

4X Video	American Laser Games	Apple Animation	Apple Graphics
Apple MJPEG-B	Apple QuickDraw	Apple Video	Asus v1 and v2
ATI VCR1	ATI VCR2	Autodesk Animator Studio	AVID DNxHD
AVS Video	Bethsoft VID	C93 Video	CamStudio
Cin Video	Cinepak	Cirrus Logic AccuPak	Creative YUV
Duck TrueMotion v1, v2	DV	DXA Video	Flash Screen Video
FLIC video	Flash Video	Fraps FPS1	H.261
H.264	HuffYUV	IBM Ultimotion	Id Cinematic
Microsoft Video-1	Miro VideoXL	MJPEG	MPEG-1 and 2
MPEG-4 (DivX\XVid)	Id RoQ	Intel Indeo 3	Interplay Video
JPEG-LS	KMVC	LOCO	Lossless MJPEG
Microsoft RLE	MSMPEG4 v1, v2, v3	MSZH	On2 VP5, VP6
Planar RGB	QPEG	RealVideo	Renderware TXD
RTjpeg	Smacker Video	Sony Playstation MDEC	Sorenson Video 1, 3
Sunplus MJPEG	TechSmith Camtasia	THP	Tiertex Seq Video
VC1	VMD Video	VMware Video	Westwood VQA
Winnov WNV1	Windows Media **	Xan/WC3	ZMBV
MPL \ TrueHD	Motion Pixel Video	EA CMV \ TGV	EA XA

* RealVideo 3 or 4 support is not yet perfect
** Windows Media 9 is still experimental

Supported audio codecs

All of the following audio codecs are supported by DVD Flick. The ones highlighted in green are common audio codecs.

4X IMA ADPCM	AAC	AC3 \ E-AC3	AMR NB and WB
Apple lossless	Apple MACE 3, 6	ATRAC 3	CD-ROM XA ADPCM
Cin	Creative ADPCM	CRI ADX ADPCM	DSP Group TrueSpeech
DTS	Duck DK3,4 IMA ADPCM	DV	EA ADPCM
FLAC lossless	G.726 ADPCM	Id DPCM	Intel Music Coder
Interplay DPCM	Microsoft ADPCM	MPEG layer 1, 2, 3 (MP3)	MS IMA ADPCM
Musepack *	QT IMA ADPCM	RA144	RA288
RADnet	Real COOK **	Shorten lossless	Sierra Online DPCM
Smacker	SMJPEG IMA ADPCM	THP ADPCM	True Audio (TTA)
Vorbis	WavPack	Westwood Studios IMA ADPCM	Windows Media 1, 2
Xan DPCM	Nellymoser

* Only SV7 is supported
** 5.1 surround version is not supported

Supported container formats

All of the following container formats are supported by DVD Flick. The ones highlighted in green are common formats.

4xm	ADTS AAC audio	American Laser Games	ASF (WMV)
AVI	AVS	Bethsoft VID	C93
CIN	Creative VOC	CRYO APC	DV
DXA	EA Multimedia	FLIC format	SWF *
GXF	Id Cinematic	Id RoQ	Interplay MVE
Macromedia Flash	Matroska	MPEG audio	MPEG-1 systems
MPEG-2 PS, TS	MPEG-4	MXF	Nullsoft Video (NSV)
NUT	Playstation STR	QuickTime	Raw AC3
Raw CRI ADX audio	Raw MJPEG	Raw MPEG video	Raw MPEG4 video
Raw PCM **	Raw Shorten audio	Real Media	Sega FILM/CPK
SEQ	Sierra Online	Sierra VMD	Smacker
SUN AU format	THP	WAV	WC3 Movie
Westwood Studios VQA/AUD	TechnoTrend PVA	LMLM4	MVI
EA XA

* Only embedded audio is decoded
** 8\16 bits mulaw/alaw

Supported subtitle formats

MicroDVD	SubRip (SRT)
Substation Alpha (SSA\ASS) *	SubView

* Only text is read, no markup or colors

AviSynth

DVD Flick can also read AviSynth scripts, which allow you to do advanced postprocessing of images using a powerful scripting language. You will need to have AviSynth installed in order to use it’s functionality in DVD Flick. AviSynth’s homepage is at http://avisynth.org/.

FFMPEG

DVD Flick relies on the very powerful FFMPEG project to decode the many file formats and codecs it supports. FFMPEG is also used to provide audio and video encoding functionality in order to produce the final DVD.

FFMPEG’s homepage can be found at http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/.

Spyware Terminator 2.5.8.145

Maaruthi — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 20:58:19 +0000

Millions of users worldwide rely on Spyware Terminator, winner of many awards and high ratings from industry experts and users. Its free comprehensive protection is comparable to competitors’ paid versions!

Spyware Terminator includes:

Fast spyware scanning
100% real-time protection
HIPS protection
Antivirus protection
Multilanguage Support
Free automatic updates
Free scheduled scans
Free support

Spyware Terminator will scan your computer for known threats and report findings in a manner that is easy to read and interpret. Every entry is given a rating and a classification, which makes it very easy to decide if a detected item should be removed. Unlike some free software titles, Spyware Terminator will remove all threats for free.

Spyware Terminator is licensed for free for both home and business use.

Download: Spyware Terminator 2.5.8.145 – 632KB (Freeware)
View: Spyware Terminator Website

TubeMaster++ Update Makes Grabbing Videos and Music Easier

Maaruthi — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 21:27:47 +0000

Windows only: Last year we shared TubeMaster Plus with you, an extremely handy program for downloading videos and music from streaming sites. TubeMaster++ has been released and comes with a slew of new features.

TubeMaster++ makes grabbing streaming videos and music incredibly simple. As long as TubeMaster++ is running, it will grab nearly every kind of media you watch over your internet connection thanks to its ability to scan the incoming data and not rely on the browser itself. Whether you’re watching a video in Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Opera, as soon as you start watching it, TubeMaster++ will begin capturing it.

You can save files, play them back right in TubeMaster++ and convert them. What formats can you convert into? A better question would be what formats can’t you convert into. You can convert audio formats into WAV, MP3, OGG, and AC3, among others. Video can be converted into dozens of formats and presets for mobile devices including the Creative Zen, iPod, Blackberry, PSP and PS3, various mobile phone sizes, and more universal formats like AVI and MPEG4.

TubeMaster++ does lose one feature from its predecessor: because of dependencies it has on installed software it is no longer portable. The trade off will be more than worth it for most people however as the new version is more stable, offers more features, has a built-in video and music search engine, and has dropped the upgrade requirement to download from adult video-sharing sites. TubeMaster++ is freeware, Windows only, and requires Java Runtime Environment and WinPcap (both of which are included in the installation if you don’t have them.)

TubeMaster++

GFI Backup is an Easy to Use, Free Backup Solution

Maaruthi — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 21:25:47 +0000

Windows only: Backup and Synchronization utility GFI Backup is an easy to use, full-featured package for keeping your collections of files safe and secure.

Using the software is easy, with a wizard-based setup for new backup tasks and lots of options to choose from. GFI Backup can do AES encryption, incremental or differential backups, notifications, or file synchronization—and it can backup your data to local folders, FTP, network, or even removable flash drives, making it worth a look for anybody seeking a free but powerful backup solution.

GFI Backup is a free download for Windows, email registration required to download. For more, check out our five best Windows backup tools, our five best file syncing tools, or just check out previously mentioned DropBox for instant file-syncing anywhere.

GFI Backup

Firefox 3.5 Portable Available for Download

Maaruthi — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 21:23:30 +0000

Windows only: Firefox lovers have no doubt already updated to the recently released Firefox 3.5 for its amazing new features, but if you’re more the portable type, Firefox 3.5 Portable Edition is officially available for download.

This portable version comes to us from the reliable folks at PortableApps.com, makers of the popular, previously mentioned Portable Apps Suite, and brings all the goodies of Firefox 3.5 to your thumb drive. You may still need to perform a little about:config tweaking to get your extensions working with Firefox 3.5, but apart from that the portable version looks like it’s ready to go.

Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition

Malwarebytes 1.38

Maaruthi — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 16:07:18 +0000

Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware is a high performance anti-malware application that thoroughly removes even the most advanced malware and spyware. With one of the fastest, most effective quick scans and malware removal

capabilities on the market, this program is the perfect addition to your PC’s defenses.

The full version of the product includes a number of key features, including the ability to schedule updates and scans and most importantly, a real-time malware protection module that blocks malicious processes before they even start.

What’s new:

(FIXED) Minor issue with updating.
(FIXED) Certain types of freezing during full and quick scans.
(FIXED) Problem with Estonian language and installer.
(FIXED) Certain folders showing up as files in results list.
(FIXED) Scan time improperly displayed if Abort Scan clicked after Pause Scan.
(FIXED) Error during loading log files after database update.
(FIXED) Issues with freezing in protection mode. Certain conflicts with anti-virus software.
(ADDED) Some proxy support, please see /proxy command line parameter.
(ADDED) New command line parameters: /logtofolder, /logtofile (see help file).

News source: Official website
Download: Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware 1.38

Microsoft set to beta Microsoft Security Essentials June 23

Maaruthi — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 15:11:17 +0000

Microsoft confirmed today that they plan to release a public beta of Microsoft Security Essentials (formerly codenamed Morro) on June 23.

The free anti-virus product will begin with a beta program next week and an updated beta version over the summer period. Company officials also confirmed that Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) will be launching in fall this year. We have learned that Microsoft is targeting September or at the latest to have the anti-virus software available for the October 22 Windows 7 launch.

Formerly known as Morro, the software giant plans to replace its Windows Live OneCare offerings with MSE later in the year. Microsoft will discontinue retail sales of OneCare on June 30 so you won’t be able to purchase it in store after that date, but consumers will still be able to purchase the product after 30 June directly from Microsoft.

The beta will be available next Tuesday in limited form, Microsoft is targeting it at the first 75,000 US, Israel and Brazil based customers. A Chinese beta will be available in mid July. Similar to the Windows 7 beta it is likely the company will expand the offering to meet demand.