Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is not measurably faster than the original stock edition, a Florida-based developer of performance testing and network metrics software said Monday.

"Microsoft has hinted that SP1 is faster than Vista RTM," said Craig Barth, the chief technology officer at Devil Mountain Software, referring to the release to manufacturing version of the operating system. "But we found pretty much nothing measurable. It surprised me as much as it surprised everyone else, but the numbers are the numbers."

Exclaimer, provider of email utilities for Microsoft Exchange environments, released Exclaimer Mail Utilities 2007, the first available suite of software tools that provide significant email enhancements to organizations using Microsoft Exchange 2007. The latest incarnation of Exclaimer’s flagship product suite is designed for organizations that have implemented Exchange 2007 and want to utilize all the benefits that Exclaimer Mail Utilities offers.

Exclaimer Mail Utilities 2007 allows organizations to execute a host of powerful mail features at the server level, ensuring compliance with corporate-wide policies and procedures. It provides the ability to add disclaimers and signatures to outgoing email, take advantage of industry-leading anti-spam technology, establish auto-responder messages from any email address, perform email blocking and redirection functions, and perform a wide range of automated actions via a powerful rules engine.

As part of a last-minute flurry of legislative activity before lawmakers returned home for the Thanksgiving holidays, the U.S. Senate approved legislation aimed at toughening the nation’s cyber-crime laws. The Identify Theft Enforcement and Restitution Act (S. 2168), approved late on Nov. 15, would make it easier for law enforcement officials to prosecute cyber-extortionists. Current law only permits the prosecution of those who seek to extort companies or government agencies by explicitly threatening to shut down or damage a computer.

If ultimately passed by the House and signed by President Bush, the new law would make it a crime punishable by up to five years in prison for threatening to steal or release information from a computer.

You know retailers are ready for Black Friday–but so are hackers poised to launch a slew of Web-based attacks against consumers. Your money and personal information could be at risk. Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is followed in marketing lingo by Cyber Monday. Both are big days for retailers and online fraudsters. Consumers should watch out for emails advertising incredible deals that seem too good to be true.

A common scam is to pick the hot toy of the season and send out a spam email blast offering it for much less than the typical price. Victims end up entering credit card information on malicious sites designed to look like well-known, trusted ones. They might also unknowingly download a keylogger that can steal personal information people type in when making any kind of Internet transaction.

Microsoft has tapped a former Sun Microsystems and IBM executive to lead its North American sales and marketing. Robert YoungJohns, who most recently was president and CEO of performance management software vendor Callidus, is now president of North America sales and marketing as well as a corporate vice president at Microsoft. In his new role, which begins Dec. 3, YoungJohns will manage an 8,500-person sales force and report to Microsoft COO Kevin Turner.

KACE, a systems management appliance company, announced on Nov. 19 that its new survey revealed that 90 percent of the Windows users are concerned about migrating to Vista, and that 44 percent would consider deploying Macs or Linux-based systems to avoid Vista migration. While Microsoft claims that Vista deployments are increasing, analysts, such as Forrester, observe that business Vista adoption has been going extremely slowly and that Linux is becoming a serious contender for the enterprise desktop.

MDO Ltd. announced the release of eBoostr, a complete replacement for Microsoft ReadyBoost technology for Windows XP. Upgrading computer components can be costly, and is not always possible. Buying and plugging a USB flash memory stick, on the other hand, is neither expensive nor complicated. That is why Microsoft developed a new technology called ReadyBoost. ReadyBoost uses flash memory plugged into a computer to enhance operating system responsiveness, decrease loading time, and improve computer performance.

Unfortunately, Microsoft ReadyBoost is only available in Windows Vista. Since the day Microsoft announced its ReadyBoost technology for Windows Vista, the company made it clear that no ReadyBoost upgrade will be released to support Windows XP and older operating systems. eBoostr is a third-party implementation of speed-enhancing technology based on using flash memory to enhance the responsiveness and performance of a Windows XP computer. eBoostr works similar to Microsoft ReadyBoost, providing many of the same benefits to the end user.

Cybersquatters and phishers have beefed up their tactics for the holiday season making it difficult for online shoppers and frustrating for many businesses, according to analysts at MarkMonitor, a firm that tracks company brand abuse on the Internet. The company conducted a four week analysis in September to determine the state of brandjacking–a common problem brand names being abused on the Web.

Cybersquatting, the term used when a person hijacks a word or phrase using a Web domain to point to a site that isn’t owned by the trademark owner is among MarkMonitor’s top concerns headed into the holiday season. The practice rose 10% over the previous quarter and 20% year over year. It falls in line with expectations as the holiday season ramps up, said Frederick Felman, chief marketing officer of MarkMonitor.

Consumer and corporate use of the Internet could overload the current capacity and lead to brown-outs in two years unless backbone providers invest billions of dollars in new infrastructure, according to a study released Monday.

A flood of new video and other Web content could overwhelm the Internet by 2010 unless backbone providers invest up to $137 billion in new capacity, more than double what service providers plan to invest, according to the study by Nemertes Research Group, an independent analysis firm. In North America alone, backbone investments of $42 billion to $55 billion will be needed in the next three to five years to keep up with demand, Nemertes said.

Microsoft released its Visual Studio 2008 and the .Net Framework 3.5 announcing the release to manufacturing Nov. 19. The Redmond software giant released the latest version of its development toolset on time, two years after delivering the previous version of the technology, Visual Studio 2005. The technology is available to MSDN subscribers.

Company officials said Visual Studio 2008, codenamed Orcas, contains more than 250 new features and delivers significant enhancements in every edition, including Visual Studio Express and Visual Studio Team System to enable developers of all levels–from hobbyists to enterprise development teams to build applications. The new development platform provides a consistent solution for developing applications for the latest platforms, including the Web, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, the 2007 Office system, and more, the company said.