Quick Takes on Microsoft: Security, Baidu and Rustock

Despite a long weekend, Microsoft has been busy. All of these little items are too small to warrant a blog post, so here they are as a bunch of quick hits, along with an interesting rumor.

Security Essentials Update: Microsoft has released Security Essentials v2.1 with a merged installer for Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP. This finally eliminates the separate clients for Windows XP and Windows Vista/7. There are still two installers, 32-bit and 64-bit, but at least they are unified among operating systems.

The new version features an updated Antimalware Engine, which is available for all Microsoft security products: Microsoft Security Essentials, which is aimed at individual users and small businesses with up to 10 PCs; businesses of 10 or more using Forefront Client Security; Forefront Endpoint Protection, and Windows Intune Endpoint Protection.

Some users have reported problems with upgrading their existing software. So the best thing to do is uninstall your existing apps and install it again fresh.

Microsoft Inks New Baidu Deal: Microsoft has signed a deal to provide English-language search results results from Bing to Baidu users. This is the second deal Microsoft has made with the Chinese search giant; the first one was for paid search results. Financial terms were not disclosed. Given China’s track record, search results will likely be censored.

Rustock Goes Down: If you have any doubts about Microsoft’s dedication to combating malware, you might want to have a word with the people who run the Rustock botnet. Microsoft is saying it has reduced the number of IP addresses infected with the pesky botnet by 56.12 percent worldwide since the company initiated action against the botnet in March.

A lot of that was due to Microsoft taking out a major hub of the Russian botnet with the help of U.S. law enforcement agents, including seizing hardware from Internet hosts across the U.S. Microsoft puts the drop in infections by up to 71 percent in some countries. Rustock was a major nuisance, responsible with around 150,000 machines sending around 30 billion spam messages a day.

Windows 8 Preview Next Week?: The blog WinRumors is saying it has reason to believe that Microsoft will issue a preview of the first beta of Windows 8 at next week’s Worldwide Partner Conference held in Los Angeles.

It wouldn’t be out of character; Microsoft showed off a pre-beta of Windows 7 at the Professional Developer’s Conference in late 2008 and the official beta came a few months later in January 2009. The official beta would then come in two months at the BUILD conference in September, just like Microsoft did with Windows 7; preview, then official beta a few months later.

Whether we get code or a video remains to be seen.