Plans for a single Operating System at Microsoft

Andy Lees, the President of Windows Phone, has said that a “single ecosystem” for PCs, phones, tablets and other devices could emerge by 2015.

Andy Lee was speaking at the at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference. He said, “You can have full PC compute power available in whatever form factor you like,” said Lees, implying that the company might wish to use a common interface across different devices. The trend, already visible in Windows 8 for PCs apparently learning from Windows Phone, would mean replicate Apple’s recent use of gestures on PCs, laptops, tablets and phones.
Lees also commented on the fact that Microsoft wants to provide “coherence and consistency” across different devices, “particularly with Xbox”. So far, the company has used its IE9 browser on phones and PCs.

Nilay Patel claimed “Microsoft is planning to somehow harmonize not only Windows for PCs and Windows Phone, but also the Xbox operating system sometime within the next four years — a timeframe that perfectly lines up with both the end of the Xbox 360′s 10-year lifecycle and the end of Windows 8′s expected three-year run.”

Watch out for fake virus alerts

Rogue security software, also known as "scareware," is software that appears to be beneficial from a security perspective but provides limited or no security, generates erroneous or misleading alerts, or attempts to lure users into participating in fraudulent transactions.

How does rogue security software get on my computer?
Rogue security software designers create legitimate looking pop-up windows that advertise security update software. These windows might appear on your screen while you surf the web.

The "updates" or "alerts" in the pop-up windows call for you to take some sort of action, such as clicking to install the software, accept recommended updates, or remove unwanted viruses or spyware. When you click, the rogue security software downloads to your computer.

Rogue security software might also appear in the list of search results when you are searching for trustworthy antispyware software, so it is important to protect your computer.

For the full article from Microsoft click here.

If you do end up with nasties on your machine our advice is to switch it off and contact us on 0845 644 2731, we can clean it up and save your data. On that note always, always ensure you have an upto date backup!