Windows Vista hasn't fared so well since its debut. Its generally low reputation among customers has led one Forrester analyst to dub Microsoft's latest OS "the New Coke of tech," while some studies have suggested that nearly a third of customers who buy a PC with Vista pre-installed may actually be downgrading those machines to XP.

Still other customers seem to wish the whole thing will just go away. They don't want to hear about Vista at all -- they'd rather hear about Windows 7, the upcoming OS from Microsoft that will be Vista's successor. And given the dismal consumer reaction to its latest attempts to market Vista, Microsoft seems willing to oblige. The sketchy early reports of Windows 7 have lately grown into a steady trickle of hints and rumors. The catch is, not all of it sounds particularly encouraging.

It looks as if Microsoft's OOXML office document file format will be published as an open standard after all. The International Standards Organization (ISO) today rejected four appeals from subsidiary national standards bodies that claimed ballot irregularities during the standardization process. Had these appeals been upheld, an OOXML standard could have been delayed indefinitely, despite Microsoft's best efforts to fast-track the process.

Barring any further hold-ups, ISO is expected to publish the full text of the standard within the next few weeks. But as the dust clears, many IT managers and office software users will likely be left scratching their heads: What does an open standard office file format from Microsoft actually get us?

Users are rightfully annoyed when services like Gmail experience unexpected outages. We've come to expect that our e-mail should be available whenever we need it -- even when the service is provided for free. Imagine your frustration, then, if you found out that software you had bought and paid for had suddenly stopped functioning on a certain date.

This is exactly the problem faced by customers of VMware ESX, VMware's enterprise-class virtualization engine. As of today, due to a bug in VMware's license management software, no new virtual machine instances will launch for customers running VMware ESX 3.5 U2. And so far, there's no fix.

For most small to midsized businesses, software means Microsoft. For almost any category of business software -- from word processing to spreadsheets, presentations to communication and collaboration -- Microsoft is the de facto vendor of choice. Alternatives do exist, but who wants to be the first one to rock the boat? Microsoft has grown so cocky about its position that it even bragged that it would soon steal five million users away from IBM's Lotus Notus, a competitor to its own Outlook and Exchange.

That's not the kind of threat that IBM takes lying down. On the contrary; it's digging in. Big Blue claims that it is redoubling its efforts to win customers away from Microsoft, beginning with a big win in Asia and new partnerships with major Linux vendors.

Just as it's a good idea to store important documents in a safe deposit box to protect against fire, storing a copy of your data offsite is a smart move for any business. But for many individuals and small businesses, regular backups are enough of a chore, let alone regularly moving those backed-up files to offsite storage. It's easy to fall out of the habit.

A new startup called Cucku thinks the answer is something it calls "social backup software." Cucku Backup makes regular backups of your important files to a local hard disk and then automatically sends a copy of the latest changes to an offsite "backup partner" -- whether it's a dedicated server or just a friend with a PC. You don't need any special hardware to make it happen. So how does it work? I'll give you a hint: Your backup partner can't be more than a phone call away (but Cucku doesn't use a modem).

A recent study of Web browser installations showed that far too few are up to date with the latest security patches. And browsers aren't alone; as my dear old mum can attest, it can be hard to keep up with OS and application patches when all you want to do is use your computer for work. It should come as no surprise that many PCs are vulnerable to security exploits that could otherwise be prevented.

Firefox got top marks in the browser study because of its automatic update feature, which notifies users of the latest patches as soon as they're available. A growing number of vendors are using a similar approach, automatically checking for updates whenever you use their software. But now it turns out that automatic updates aren't always all they're cracked up to be. A new exploit called Evilgrade can take advantage of automatic updaters to install malicious code on unsuspecting systems, and your computers could be more vulnerable than you think.

Earlier I mentioned SourceForge.net's annual Community Choice Awards, designed to honor open source software projects in a variety of categories. This year's awards were open to any open source projects, not just ones that were hosted on SourceForge.net, so they promised to be an accurate representation of the entire field.

Now it's done. Your input was received and the votes were tallied. The winners were announced on Thursday during a ceremony at the O'Reilly Group's OSCON open source convention. And in the end -- though it was a worthwhile exercise -- the roster of honorees offered few surprises.

Web-based e-mail has come a long way since the early days. At first it was just a convenient way for home users to check their mail through a familiar, Web-based interface. Today, Webmail providers have evolved into full-service messaging centers, offering gigabytes of storage and a host of integrated features, such as calendaring, spam blocking, and malware filters. No wonder Webmail is the preferred e-mail tool for a growing number of business users, too.

There's just one problem: To access the Web, you need to be online. When you're not connected, your entire inbox goes missing -- even the messages you received last week. Fortunately, a number of vendors are working on solutions to this very problem. One of the most interesting, Yahoo's Zimbra Desktop, released its third beta test release today.

The open source MySQL database began life as a lightweight alternative to big, resource-hungry database management systems, such as Oracle or Sybase. Over the years, however, users have clamored for more and more features, causing MySQL's codebase to swell with capabilities that had previously only been found on its commercial cousins.

But not every MySQL developer agrees with this direction. Some feel that it's high time not just to apply the brakes, but to take a U-turn. In particular, some customers in the Web application development community have been calling for a lean, mean database that doesn't waste time with higher-end features that aren't necessary for Web apps. This week, their call was answered.

Sometimes, it's hard for my right hand to know what the left is doing. I do half of my computing at my primary desktop PC at my office, and the other half on either of two different laptops. It can be hard to keep track of my work with my files scattered around all those different hard drives.

What I need is some way to keep my files synchronized between all these different machines. Nothing I've tried in the past has really worked for me -- until now. Windows Live Mesh, which Microsoft made available to the general public as a "technology preview" on Tuesday, is the best synchronization system for Windows PCs that I've seen so far. And best of all, it's completely free.