Update Round-up: AMD fixes Ryzen, Microsoft breaks Windows 10

Updates and patches have become big parts of our daily digital life these days and last few days both AMD and Microsoft have dropped some big ones; although, with very different results.

First up is AMD and its promised fix which we reported about in our in-depth coverage of Ryzen 3000 processors' boost-clock controversy. If you haven't yet read it then please do so for some much needed context and insight on the matter. Here is a TLDR version:.

With the recent debates over boost-frequency of  Ryzen 3000 series desktop processors, AMD promised an impending update that would fixate any oddities in boost behavior that bars the processor cores to hit the max-boost ceiling. The chip-maker claimed in a blog post that it has identified a bug which is responsible for sub-optimal performance of its boosting algorithm under certain workloads.

So, does the fix works? For the most part, yes it does. Some review-sites have already got their hands on the updated firmwire containing the fix and put their Ryzen CPUs through tests. Techpowerup's Ryzen 9 3900X clocked higher on the new BIOS with AGESA 1.0.0.3ABBA and even boosted beyond its 4.6GHz rateing which wasn't possible with the old BIOS.

No more Winamp: The llama's journey comes to an end

Remember Winamp? The mighty little program originally developed by Nullsoft, that used to be your favorite media player back in the days? If you ever wondered about what happened to Winamp after you ditched your Windows-XP system and bought into i-gadgets then we have news for you - both good and bad. For the good part, Winamp is still with us; you can download it, skin it and take it for a spin - just like the good old days. Bad news is, this could very well be the last spin for this venerable app! A small and inconspicuous looking message on their website tells you that there will be no more whipping the llama's ass after December 20, 2013 as that seems to be the end of line for Winamp.

End draws near for Windows Vista: No more mainstream support

It is easy to forget about Vista - the not so glorious predecessor of Windows 7, in midst of all the hype surrounding the upcoming release of Win-8. But there is still a considerable number of PC users out there who, for various reasons, are still hooked on to this operating system. If you belong to this category then the latest announcement from Microsoft is of significant importance to you. As of April 10, 2012 - Microsoft no longer will provide mainstream support for Vista. Mainstream support includes technical and security updates, automatic fix and patches and other operational supports. But this is not necessarily EOL (End of Life) for Vista as Microsoft offers an extended support for those in need. However, this applies only to the commercial/enterprise customers - not to the retail consumers. This extended support itself will be terminated in 2017 according to Microsoft, making Vista truly a thing of the past (If it's not already for most PC users!).

Microsoft India store got hacked: Bad news for many reasons

In a somewhat bizarre and embarrassing turn of events, it is reported that the Microsoft Online Store in India got hacked by a group of Hackers with its online users database in jeopardy. On 12th of Feb, visitors to that site was for a shock when they saw the main page was displaying a masked face (Anonymous style!) on a dark background, instead of the usual weekly offers! The hacker group responsible for this calls itself "Evil shadow Team", an outfit we haven't very much heard of before. It seems like the owners of the website have regained control since but the site itself is still out of service as at the time of this writing. Anyway, what is of greater concern is that the whole user database including e-mail addresses, user names, pass-words or even physical addresses got compromised in the process. The hacker group claimed that the user database was in form of plain text (!!), not encrypted or secured by other security measures thus making it an easy prey. This is not only embarrassing for Microsoft but also asks questions about methods deployed in maintaining and safekeeping of the site.

Windows XP: Still an OS to recon with

Things are always in a constant state of evolution in the world of personal computing and the speed at which every piece of software, hardware and device evolves is simply mind numbing. Very few can withstand the test of time here and those which can, become milestones of the industry. Microsoft's Windows XP is definitely one of those iconic figures. Earlier we told you about Internet Explorer 6 and how it still endures in many computers world wide and now some latest reports show that Windows XP is still a dominating force in the desktops. According to the numbers shown by this market analyst firm, Win XP enjoys a healthy 47.19% of the total desktop market as of January, 2012. Surprisingly enough, Microsoft's latest and greatest Windows 7 follows behind with a total of 36.40% of the market share while Widows Vista trails even further behind with only 8.22%. We've got another statistics in our hand though which shows Win 7 and Win XP to have 46.1% and 32.6% of the market share respectively, however it's unclear whether this stat consists only of the desktop market or the entire PC market. Whatever the case may be, one thing is clear- Windows XP is still considered as one of the mainstream operating systems by many users across the globe and with good reasons. Unlike IE 6, Win XP still gets official support from Microsoft and will continue to do so until April 14, 2014- a rather long support streak for a decade old operating system. This support includes security updates and patches. Thanks to that, Win XP is not as vulnerable to modern threats as it should be considering its age. Reliability is another plus for XP, built on Windows NT kernel this this venerable OS is considered as one of the most stable version of windows till date. In fact a desktop PC with Win XP can perform most of the everyday tasks we expect from our PC and also it is less demanding on the hardware. One can boot into XP with something like a low power Atom CPU and only 1GB of RAM without any problem and still have all the Windows functionality. XP also has a 64 bit version which can accommodate for more than 4GB of physical memory. If you can manage without advanced features like Aero and WEI, you will be fine with XP. Gamers on the other hand are better served by Win 7 or Vista simply because of Direct-X support. While you can still play Direct-X 9 titles without any issue in an XP machine, if you're looking for DX 10/10.1/11 features you have no way but to upgrade your OS.

Overall Windows XP had a great run and we expect this to continue even further as many users worldwide are simply hardware limited. Many organizations and institutions, that still run XP in their systems, might be concerned with the cost of necessary system upgrade that comes with an OS upgrade. Compatibility of some legacy software might be an issue with some users though there is the "Windows XP mode" feature present in Win 7 for those kind of scenarios. With said that many users are already migrating to a newer version of Windows as we speak and with Microsoft dropping support for XP in 2014, this trend will become more prominent in future. But for now Windows XP is still Good Enough!