The latest service packs for Windows XP (Service Pack 3) & Windows Vista (Service Pack 1) have now started showing up on Windows Update.

Go update your Windows now !

Almost everyone working in some MNC, has to use Microsoft Office Outlook to access their mails which reside in a Microsoft exchange server.

Microsoft Outlook has a feature which lets you request for read receipts from the people you are sending the mail to. A read receipt gets fired when the recipient opens the mail you have sent.

Some of the Microsoft Office Outlook users like to turn on Read Receipts for all their e-mail. This way, any time their e-mail is read by another Outlook user, they will be notified that their e-mail reached its destination. While some find this feature useful, others may not like getting deluged with these requests. To increase privacy, you can choose to ignore these requests altogether so people will not know at what time you read your e-mail.

1. From Microsoft Outlook, click “Tools” then “Options”.
2. When the “Options” multi-tabbed dialog box appears, select the “Preferences” tab.
3. Click the button “E-Mail Options”.
4. When the “E-Mail Options” dialog box appears, click the “Tracking Options” button.
5. Click the radio button “Never send a response”.
6. Click “OK” on the three dialog boxes to close them.

Now the next time you will never see a Outlook dialog asking you to send read receipts.

Are you are one the many Windows XP users out there who have been waiting for the official SP3 release from Microsoft. If yes then your waiting is over !

Microsoft has officially released Service Pack 3 for Windows XP.

You can download the stand-alone Service Pack 3 update from Microsoft’s servers now.

If you want to use Windows Update, then you have to wait because Microsoft has yet again delayed the availability of Windows XP SP3 on Windows Update. The problem is apparently due to some conflict between Microsoft Dynamics and Windows.

Download: Stand-alone installer for Windows XP SP3 English, 32 Bit

Finally… After much testing and releasing new builds, Microsoft has finally made available Windows Vista SP1 final to customers starting today.

Just open Windows Update on your Vista PC and check for new updates. You will see Windows Vista SP1 available there. You can also download the standalone package of Windows Vista SP1 from Microsoft Download Center here.

Windows Vista SP1 Pre-install check-list

1. Uninstall any pre-release version of Windows Vista SP1 (the Beta or the RC) that you have installed.
2. Update all your system drivers. If you have an incompatible driver then Windows Vista will not show up on Windows Update. Microsoft has a list of known incompatible drivers here.
3. SP1 is available in these 5 languages: English, French, Spanish, German, and Japanese. If you have any other language installed, SP1 will not be offered to you. (You might not even know if you have an additional language installed! Check the Language control panel to see what languages you have installed)

Go install Windows Vista SP1.

Windows Vista Team Blog : Windows Vista released to Windows Update

Download Windows Vista Service Pack 1 for x86 systems

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 for x64 systems

A follow-up to my previous post, I found this nifty little article in PCMAG which shows you a way to delete empty folders  with a single command. No software required to be downloaded…

Read it here.