One month ago, I pledged that I would try Windows Vista on my new PC for a month before deciding whether I would keep it or revert back to Windows XP as my primary desktop OS. The verdict? I’m sticking with Vista, begrudgingly.

The images include the start menu and a range of other administration views, such as program lists and the Control Panel. Mainstay applications such as Paint and Calculator are also represented. Overall, the screenshots show a distinctly Vista-like interface, but there is still plenty of time for tweaks and changes to take place.

Representatives of big browser makers Microsoft, Mozilla and Google talk about the future of browsers, as developers decry browser incompatibility and ask what browser makers plan to do about it. The panel of experts talked about HTML 5, Canvas, Silverlight, IE 8, Google Chrome and Firefox at the Web 2.0 Expo.

After experimenting with ads featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates, Microsoft has now decided to go straight for the Jobsular with its next set of ads for Windows. Directly targeting Apple’s ‘I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC’ series of ads, Microsoft’s new adverts are all introduced by a man who looks like John Hodgman (the PC in the Mac ads).

Those of us who run Linux on our home machines have a harder time testing sites for Internet Explorer compatibility, or accessing sites that require proprietary IE features. IEs4Linux is a script that can help you set up three older versions of IE on any system running Wine. Unfortunately, the program is not as polished as it should be.

Microsoft’s Sysinternals team has quietly released a utility that allows you to create multiple desktops on Windows Vista or Windows XP.The utility lets you open different applications in each separate desktop and easily switch between the desktops with hotkeys or by clicking the tray icon, Linux style.

Microsoft’s version of the story: Redmond had always planned to drop Seinfeld. The awkward reality: The ads only reminded us how out of touch with consumers Microsoft is — and that Bill Gates’s company has millions of dollars to waste on hiring a has-been funnyman to keep him company.

CEO Mark Hurd is not running Carly Fiorina’s Hewlett-Packard, but he’s not running Bill & Dave’s old shop either. He is trying to do to HP what Lou Gerstner did to IBM a decade ago, transform his company into a services powerhouse, growing through acquisitions and lay-offs.

Hewlett-Packard, the world’s No. 1 PC maker, has quietly assembled a group of engineers to develop software that will let customers bypass certain features of Vista, the latest version of Windows. Employees on a separate skunk works team are even angling to replace Windows with an HP-assembled operating system.

Company managers also contrasted IE8 Beta 2’s “Suggested Sites” feature with the “Suggest” feature used by rival Google Inc. in its Chrome browser, saying that Microsoft’s browser requires the user’s explicit permission before it’s used. They did, however, acknowledge a bug that prevents the request from reappearing during reinstalls.