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Microsoft plans to improve Windows Vista’s much-maligned user account control feature, UAC, in the next version of its Windows client OS. UAC is designed to secure PCs by preventing users without administrative privileges from making unauthorized changes. But because of how it was set up in Vista, it can prevent even authorized users on the network from being able to access applications and features they should normally have access to. Microsoft said that in Windows 7, it will work to reduce unnecessary or duplicated password prompts, and make the prompts it keeps more informative.
Microsoft is planning plenty of other security improvements to current software for next week’s Patch Tuesday. It will ship 11 security updates — four of them rated critical. The patches will include fixes for critical security bugs in Windows Active Directory, Internet Explorer, Excel and the Microsoft Host Integration Server, which links Windows computers with IBM mainframes. The Active Directory bug affects only Windows 2000 Server, not other versions of the operating system.
Amazon’s cloud computing subsidiary will introduce a tiered pricing structure for its S3 hosted storage service next month, cutting prices for high-volume customers. The price for the first 50 terabytes of storage will remain unchanged at 15 cents per gigabyte per month, but from November 1st prices will drop progressively with volume, to $0.12 per gigabyte per month for storage beyond 500 terabytes.
Infosys Technologies, India’s second largest outsourcer, saw slower growth in third quarter revenue and profits, reflecting the impact of the economic crisis in the U.S., its largest market. Infosys also revised its US dollar revenue guidance on Friday, citing the current economic situation and the drastic depreciation of major global currencies against the US dollar. Infosys now expects revenue for the year to the end of March in the range 4.7 to 4.8 billion dollars, with annual growth 15 percent or less. It had earlier forecast revenue of around 5 billion dollars and growth of over 19 percent.
And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I’m Peter Sayer in Paris. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.
