Apple PowerBook bursts into flames

Wow! Look at this!

An office staff of a marketing company were shocked yesterday when an Apple Powerbook spontaneously burst into flames melting keys, frying the battery. Although the company asked not be identified, they allowed for photos to be published.

"Suddenly flames flew up about six foot in the air and there were sparks flying everywhere. There was a popping sound and more smoke. At that point I just hit the fire alarm and scarpered," said one employee.

[via Neowin via The Inquirer]

SP2 for Vista, Windows Server 2008 coming next week

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to Betanews this afternoon that the first release candidates (without numerals) for Service Pack 2 for both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 will be released to the general public for testing next week. This after private testers with the MSDN and TechNet services receive their copies first.

For the first time, the SP2 standalone package will be delivered to users not according to operating system build, but to byte length. So the 32-bit standalone service pack (302 MB with the basic five languages, 390 MB for multi-language) will update both 32-bit Vista and 32-bit Windows Server 2008. Then there will be two 64-bit standalones, including one which covers x64 architectures (508 MB / 622 MB) and one for Itanium 64-bit (384 MB / 396 MB). The RC will represent a kind of dress rehearsal for this new method of distribution.

While the big theme for Vista SP2 has been reliability improvements, perhaps the most prominent new operating system feature undergoing its final round of tests will be the ability to burn to Blu-ray media using BD-R. This is being described as "the ability to record data to Blu-ray Disc Media," which is not exactly the same as saying "burn high-def videos." Currently, the Ultimate version of Vista SP1 enables users to burn recorded videos from digital video sources to DVD. Though it's technically feasible to burn high-def videos, when they're burned to regular DVD, they won't be all that long.

Microsoft isn't saying much today about changes to Media Center for SP2, other than to say that it adds improvements to its content protection features...which isn't exactly everyone's favorite feature.

[Via Betanews]

SPIC Meeting 27th Feb

There will be an SPIC meeting in clubroom on 27th Feb, Friday, 4.30. Please be on time.

Virtualization goes mobile

VMware demoed a touchscreen Nokia N800 featuring its mobile hypervisor at its VMworld Europe 2009 conference in Cannes today, showing Windows CE and Google's Android running at the same time.
Customers can run two operating systems on one phone simultaneously, or move their phone's contacts, apps and other data from handset to handset easily using virtualisation technology regardless of the underlying hardware or the user interface or input method.
The phones with VMware's mobile virtualisation platform will have 2 main functions.

• Allow users back up their system and data on a VM, so that they can easily transfer contacts and other information regardless of the operating system if they get a new phone.
• Run multiple VM instances on a single phone allowing users have multiple profiles on the same phone, transfer profiles & data sets across handsets.

However the system is still under testing.

Automatically Install Required Software After Reformat

Anyone who has been using Windows for any length of time knows reinstalling it is unavoidable. Some people call technical help and some do it themselves. If you reinstall on your own, you know it takes a little time but the most annoying part of reinstalling Windows is that you have to reinstall all your software one by one all over again. Software like Firefox, Winamp, VLC and other indispensable programs that don’t ship with Windows.

Windows Post-Install Wizard allows you to take care of such situations and automatically install all the software that you would like to install on a fresh install with a minimum of input.
[Full Story via MakeUseOf]