Mozilla is moving closer to the release of its first mobile Firefox browser.

The alpha 2 version of Fennec was made available on Dec. 22, one Mozilla developer announced.

The BBC, quoting a Firefox mobile developer, noted that Fennec is only day’s away from release.

“We’ve made major strides improving startup performance, panning and zooming performance, and responsiveness while pages are loading,” wrote one Mozilla Fennec developer, who announced the release of Alpha 2 on his blog. “In addition to the great performance work, we’re starting to work towards feature completion.  We’re making great progress on our Windows Mobile builds and are starting to roll on Symbian.”

The mobile browser runs on Nokia’s 810 Internet tablet and Nokia 900 smartphone, which run the Maemo Linux based operating system. Mozilla has also provided versions of Fennec for Windows, MacX and Linux desktops for developers.

Mozilla also plans to support Windows Mobile and Symbion mobile operating systems.

Fennec includes touch-screen support, a password manager, pop-up blocker and Firefox-style tab-browsing interface.

 

You’ve got to love the headline on the Business Week piece that went live last night: “Verizon Wireless Prepares for the iPhone.” Talk about enticing readers to click.

Unfortunately, the piece is not what you expect. The companies haven’t cut a deal that has Verizon working overtime to prepare for the device’s arrival. Likewise, Verizon’s CTO - who who talked to Business Week for this story - didn’t even suggest that a deal is coming.

Plain and simple, he said that the network is ready for the amount of traffic that iPhone users might put on a network. That’s a nice little jab at AT&T, which clearly was not ready for the demands and has taken a public relations beating because of it.

Right about now, I could go into some rant about how the iPhone is great device and that the shoddy service from AT&T has held it back. I could go off about the back-and-forth spat - which included a lawsuit - over 3G network maps for AT&T and Verizon. I could even bring up the fact that Verizon made a splashy announcement over its partnership with Google and how Google’s Android is becoming a strong competitor to the iPhone.

But I’ve written all of that already.

If there was actual news of a Verizon-Apple deal to report, you can rest assured that I’d be chasing that Business Week story to get more details on the deal. But that’s not the case here. I suspect that the editors at BW were just looking for some headlines to lure people in before they completely check out for the holidays.

 

It’s been a while since I did a mega-update/purge of my list of Microsoft codenames. But at last, I’ve gotten to my task.

The now 19-page December CodeTracker PDF update is ready to go. This is the same chart I use myself to keep up with the many, morphing codenames of products and technologies coming from Microsoft.

The tracker is free. If you’ve already registered on ZDNet, just grab it. If you haven’t, registration info will be requested before you download it. Whether you’re a Microsoft customer, partner, analyst, competitor (or even employee), you might find it useful.

(If there’s a codename missing from this list that you’d like me to check out (and ultimately add), please don’t hesitate to contact me via e-mail. All e-mails I receive are treated as confidential — unless you want a mention/credit line, of course.)

Meanwhile, if you’d like to get posts from “All About Microsoft” in e-mail form (hourly, daily or weekly), you can subscribe here. And if you are all about Twitter, you can follow me there, as well.

 

If Microsoft expects its customers to take license agreements seriously, it has a responsibility to communicate the terms of those agreements to its customers clearly and unambiguously. As I noted earlier this month, Microsoft does a generally poor job of explaining its complicated rules for how Windows licensing works. But I deliberately left one type of Windows license off that list, because it deserves its own special place in the Corporate Communications Hall of Shame.

I’m talking about OEM System Builder licenses for Windows desktop editions. If you look at any online shopping site that caters to PC enthusiasts, you’ll find these copies displayed alongside the upgrade and full license packages that Microsoft says retail customers are supposed to buy. My friend and fellow Windows expert Paul Thurrott just posted a thorough look at the Windows 7 OEM System Builder package, complete with pictures. If you’re building your own PC or looking for installation media that won’t make you jump through hoops to install it, this product is extremely attractive, because it’s significantly less expensive than a full retail license. The installation media works almost exactly like a full retail copy of Windows, except that it can’t be used to perform upgrades, only a custom (clean) install. After installation, an OEM copy is essentially indistinguishable from a retail copy.

Many readers tell me they bought that software and installed it on their own new (or old) PC, happily saving a significant chunk of change in the process. According to Microsoft, they are violating the terms of the OEM System Builder license agreement, which says, in convoluted language, that you must install the software using the OEM Preinstallation Kit and then resell the PC to a third party. If you install that software on your own PC, you don’t have a “genuine” copy of Windows.

 

The battle between Linux and Windows will most likely rage on for years to come. We can foresee that even when all things migrate to the cloud, users in both camps will still be screaming the virtues of their favorite operating system. And, of course, many will be one of those campers (and I can bet you know just which camp I’ll be in). But being in that camp does not preclude me from seeing the benefits and strengths of the Windows operating system.

In next two 10 Things articles, we are going to take pieces of each operating system and place them in the other. In this first article, I am going to share 10 features from the Linux operating system that should be in the Windows operating system. In the next article, I will go the other way.

Now you should know, features will encompass literal features as well as systems and even philosophies. I don’t want to leave anything out of the picture. In the end, my hope is that theoretically, at least, we’ll have a much more ideal operating system. Of course, you can (and will) be the judge of that. Let’s get going and start adding Linux features to Windows.