Those of you have been holding off on upgrading to Vista, or wishing to skip the operating system all together by moving directly to Windows Seven, may see the new Windows OS in stores as soon as this coming September!

According to a bevy of tech blogs, “7″ could be ready to launch as early as Q3 2009, a full quarter earlier than was previously thought, and better than the simple “2010″ time frame given by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. This would clearly be a much appreciated release time for those hoping to avoid the troubled Vista OS all together.

As someone who bought a new PC which included Vista, and have been somewhat unhappy and oftentimes annoyed by the OS, I will be very interested to see what the consumer response is to Microsoft Windows 7.

When experiencing hardware difficulties, its important to update your drivers in order to make sure that they are not causing the problem. Thankfully, updating our drivers often fixes hardware issues and is actually quite easy and quick to do if you use the driverssoftware.com drivers resource.

When you visit driverssoftware.com you’ll notice that they have drivers listings for every type of hardware you own, all in one easy place. And they conveniently list the most often needed drivers, such as hp drivers and brother drivers directly on their homepage, so that you can access them quickly.

One aspect of the driverssoftware.com website that I particularly like is the big green “update drivers” button near the bottom of their homepage. This big, noticeable, button makes it easy to check which of your drivers need updating, and then update them accordingly. Simply click on the button and follow the directions, and you’ll probably notice your computer working a lot more efficiently when you’re done!

Every day more and more consumers are attracted to the convenience of online shopping and are spending more of their hard-earned dollars over the net. Unfortunately, at the same time, the chances of becoming a victim of online fraud are also on the rise. Complaints regarding general merchandise purchases that were paid for but never received by customers, accounted for 30% of Internet fraud complaints, and auction purchases, with the same circumstances, topped the list at 44%.

While most e-commerce sites are trustworthy and have taken precautions to protect their customers, it is still a good idea to use caution and follow a few simple rules of internet security.

1. Use only a single credit card, ideally with a low credit limit, when making online purchases.
2. Use only reputable e-commerce websites that offer both a street address and telephone number in case you require assistance with a transaction gone bad.
3. Choose verified sellers. Take a few minutes to investigate whether the vendor is a verified member of a reputable third party organization such as the Better Business Bureau or VeriSign.
4. Keep a paper printouts of all online transactions, and hold on to them as you would a receipt from any other store - at least until you receive your goods.
5. Keep in mind - if an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Botnets are basically groups of computers which some unsavory people have infected and networked for the purpose of spreading viruses, as well as send spam.

The biggest problem with botnets is they are very difficult to track back to their creators, and, unfortunately, they are becoming used more and more in extortion attempts. If you’re wondering how exactly they’re used in to extort, just consider a person who sends you emails to either pay what is demanded or see your website crash. Unfortunately this type of activity becomes an almost common occurrence.

Often times botnets consist of hundreds or even thousands of compromised computers. With such giant networks at their disposal, botnets can use DDoS as a method to cause troubles. An example of this is, a small botnet with 500 bots is sometimes able to bring corporate websites down through the use of bandwidth combination of all computers in order to overwhelm the system.

One technique that can be used to fight against botnets is what is known as a ‘honeypot’. A Honeypot is able to assist in finding out how attackers gain access to systems. Honeypots are basically a set of computing resources that a person permits to be compromised for the purpose of gauging the ways hackers trick the system. The Unpatched operating systems Windows 2000 or XP machines offer good honeypots due to the ease in which their systems can be compromised.

Most of you will have heard of companies such as Symantec, Mcafee, and Trend Micro, as all of these businesses have a large market presence in the United States. Microsoft, another household name, also has plans to join the AntiVirus market. As you may be aware, Microsoft had, in recent years, acquired the intellectual property rights and technology from GeCad software, Pelican’s a behavior-based security software as well as Giant Company’s anti-spyware and Sybari’s Software.

There has been a lot of speculaton on whether Microsoft will gain a dominant position within the antivirus market by combining its technologies with its own operating systems for free. This is a technique they have also used in regards to word processing software and Internet browsers.

Of course, there are many companies with great market presence in other countries that are beginning to expand. Some of these include GriSoft from the Czech Republic, Sophos from UK, and Panda Software out of Spain, among others.

It unclear exactly where industry is heading and all of the players face a continued and rapidly evolving landscape. The amount of manpower and effort involved in finding fixes for viruses is extensive. Furthermore, malicious programs are increasing in both complexity and numbers, with some virus companies receiving hundreds of new virus reports daily. Unfortunately, new viruses are often able to change and hide themselves y renaming themselves in an effort to make it harder to locate and remove them.

Anyway you look at it, all of the players will have their work cut out for them going forward.