Neowin.net

Germany's tecChannel has launched an English-language version of its site, and has celebrated with a seriously trainspotter analysis of the interaction between Windows XP's product activation and Redmond central control. Despite (or possibly because of) Microsoft's insistence that the WPA process is completely harmless and doesn't send the company any of your personal data, the system has since its introduction been the subject of much paranoid speculation.

The Register has not entirely shared this paranoia, although we do worry about why Windows installations seem to have a general compulsion to chatter with remote systems without entirely sharing the experience with us. And we also reckon the real worry is what Microsoft might do if people really started to trust it. However, the good news for now is that tecChannel's investigation indicates that WPA's not a threat to privacy, and shows that it sends the following: Product ID, derived from the product key entered during installation; system locale (IDs you to the nearest country); product code, which is the first five digits of the product key; hardware hash, which is based on the hardware in the local computer, but which does not give Microsoft information on this computer's hardware; data from the WPA.DBL file, if one has been created by a previous installation; and the product key itself.

News source: theregister.co.uk

* Customizable Toolbars and Mail 3-pane
Toolbars can be customized the way you want them. Choose View / Toolbars / Customize inside any window. Mozilla Thunderbird also supports a new vertical 3-pane configuration (Tools / Options / General), giving you even more choice in how you want to view your mail.

* Extensions
UI extensions can be added to Mozilla Thunderbird to customize your experience with specific features and enhancements that you need. Extensions allow you to add features particular to your needs such as offline mail support. A full list of available extensions can be found here.

* Contacts Manager
A contacts sidebar for mail compose makes it easy and convenient to add address book contacts to emails.

* Junk Mail Detection
In addition to automatically detecting junk mail using the same method as Mozilla Mail, Thunderbird also sanitizes HTML in mail marked as junk in order to better protect your privacy and give peace of mind when viewing a message identified as junk.

* New default theme
Mozilla Thunderbird 0.1 sports a crisp, fresh and attractive theme, based on the amazing Qute theme by Arvid Axelsson. This is the same theme used by Mozilla Firebird, giving Thunderbird a similar look and feel. Thunderbird also supports a growing number of downloadable themes which alter the appearance of the client.

* Stream-lined user interface and simplified Options UI.
* Integrated spell checker.