Windows Seven

Download Windows 7 crack

2009-11-20T22:06:00.002+05:30

Download

http://hotfile.com/dl/18113542/917dd55/CW.zip.html

or

http://rapidshare.com/files/309730703/CW.zip

or

http://www.mediafire.com/?dymmjjt5wq2

Convert Win7 Ultimate to Pro or Home Premium

2009-08-20T16:49:00.001+05:30

Here's the crux of the matter: If you put a DVD containing Win7 Ultimate in your PC and run the installer — either by booting from the disc or running the setup program from inside Windows — you end up with Win7 Ultimate. No surprises there.

However, if you first delete a tiny file named ei.cfg before making the installation DVD, the Win7 installer will give you the choices.

allows you to select which version to install.

In fact, no matter which Win7 installation DVD you have — Ultimate, Pro, or Premium — if you delete the ei.cfg file from the disc, you'll be offered the same choices and can install any version of Windows 7.

At the moment, only a small number of people have received a physical DVD containing Windows 7 Ultimate. Instead, most current Win7 users downloaded an .iso file, which includes everything on the Windows 7 Ultimate DVD: boot settings, file-structure details, etc. You burn the .iso file to a DVD. Then you either boot your PC from the DVD or run the setup program within an older version of Windows to kick the Win7 installer into gear.

If you have a Windows 7 Ultimate .iso file, it's easy to delete ei.cfg. First, get a 30-day trial version of the gBurner utility, which is available from the program's download page at CNET's Download.com. Then install and run gBurner, open the Windows 7 .iso file, and delete (or rename) \sources\ei.cfg. Piece o' cake, although it can take 20 minutes to save the altered .iso file.

You can then use either gBurner or Alex Feinman's ISO Recorder program (available from Alex's site) to burn a version of the .iso file without ei.cfg to DVD.

What if you do have a physical Windows 7 installation DVD, but you don't have an .iso file? In that case, use either gBurner or ISO Recorder to rip the DVD into an .iso file. Then follow the instructions above to delete the ei.cfg file and burn a new DVD.

Get the right version of Windows 7 going now and you won't have to reinstall it — or pay an exorbitant price — later.

New Windows 7 Patch V8 Orbit30 FInal

2009-06-23T07:32:00.000+05:30

http://www.ziddu.com/download/5302582/Windows7AllversionsPlusPatch8FinalByOrbit30.rar.html

Download this patch for a new improved patching system of Windows 7.

Asia Theme Pack For Windows 7 | I'm Just Being Manan

2009-06-22T07:08:00.000+05:30

Asia Theme Pack For Windows 7 | I'm Just Being Manan: "Apparently, the Windows 98 Plus! Themes For Windows 7 pack got a lot of good attention. Anand Khanse, Microsoft MVP & owner of the famous WinVistaClub asked me to do a pack for Asia & I did make a pack comprising of 12 wallpapers from different picturesque locations in"

Windows 98 Plus! Themes For Windows 7 | I'm Just Being Manan

2009-06-22T07:07:00.000+05:30

Windows 98 Plus! Themes For Windows 7 | I'm Just Being Manan: "After making your Vista into Windows 7 & XP into Vista, I had a little moment of nostalgia when I decided to install Windows 98 on Windows 7 via Virtual PC. It wasn’t exactly as easy as I thought, creating a bootable CD of Windows 98 on Windows 7 on a machine with no floppy drive was pretty geeky. Anyhoo … I got it done & listening to the welcome sound of Windows 98 brought back old memories, rebooting after installing every driver reminded me of what all we used to do back in the days. Life’s much simple now, Vista made it so, Windows 7 takes it further, which brings me to themes in Windows 7. After a long time Microsoft allows us to package Sounds, Icons, Wallpapers & Colors with ease & share them around. So I thought why not bring back those good ‘ol themes of Windows 98 on 7. Here are 4 ready made packages & resources for all 16 themes that were bundled with Windows 98.
The themes contain:
Wallpaper
Mouse pointers
Desktop icons
Sounds
Color scheme"

Microsoft asking $45-55 for Windows 7 Starter?

2009-06-16T05:24:00.001+05:30

Last month we learned that Microsoft was dropping the three-application limit for Windows 7 Starter. We noted that this was excellent news for netbook customers who want Windows 7, but the biggest aspect (price) was still yet to be unveiled. It will be very important for PC manufacturers to offer Windows 7 without increasing the price significantly. Windows 7 Starter will not be sold at retail: it will be sold directly to OEMs, which will then include it on low-end computers like netbooks. Citing "industry sources," DigiTimes reports that the XP to 7 transition for these computers won't be so easy.

The current price of Windows XP OEM version is only around US$25-30, but the latest quotes from Microsoft for the netbook version of Windows 7 is around US$45-55 and therefore first-tier vendors are unable to transfer the cost to the netbooks' sales price due to the fierce competition. The first-tier notebook vendors are still negotiating with Microsoft hoping to bring the price down.
Note that there is no "netbook version" of Windows 7; the article is likely referring to the cheapest edition that will be primarily offered on netbooks: Windows 7 Starter. While no official numbers are known for Windows XP Starter, in May 2005 PC makers said they were paying between $15 to $35 for each copy, and in April 2009 it was speculated that Microsoft was actually charging under $15 per copy.

This translates to about a $50 increase in price if netbook makers want to offer Windows 7 as opposed to Windows XP. That typically isn't a big deal, but for netbooks, $50 is a very big difference, so it's no wonder OEMs are still trying to negotiate with Microsoft. Most laptops currently offer Windows Vista, which should have a much smoother price change going to Windows 7. While it is unlikely that Microsoft will be announcing the actual prices for Windows 7 Starter, the software giant is expected to announce the retail prices of other editions before the end of the month. Redmond will be mainly pushing the Home Premium and Professional editions to the majority of markets.

Gartner: Android 'snappy,' Windows 7 less so

2009-06-16T05:23:00.000+05:30

Android running on devices at Computex was "snappy," while Windows 7 less so, according to a Gartner report published Monday. The report concluded that there is momentum behind the ARM chip platform.

"Android is the first Linux OS backed by a strong consumer brand--Google," write analysts Christian Heidarson and Ben Lee in Gartner's Semiconductor DQ Monday Report.

Though they stopped short of endorsing the platform--saying that Android is a work-in-progress--they did offer some hope for future Android-based devices running on ARM processors versus Windows 7-based Netbooks running on Intel's Atom processor. "There is a sense among PC manufacturers that although Android is not ready for prime time today--or tomorrow--it will inevitably get there," they wrote.

The report continued. "When Android did work, we found that the user interface was very snappy on relatively low-performance ARM processors, more so than on Windows 7 on (Intel's) Atom. What we learned about support from critical software vendors convinced us that there is momentum behind ARM in the PC industry, enabled by Android."

In an interview last month, Michael Rayfield, general manager of the mobile business unit at graphics chipmaker Nvidia, echoed this sentiment. "Android has got a roar ahead of it," he said. But he added: "I think it's three of four quarters from a large-screen device." Nvidia is developing its ARM-based Tegra chip platform for Android as well as Windows CE.

Other chipmakers such as Freescale Semiconductor are also touting the potential for Android on ARM-based chips. "The potential that Google has--this has got everybody's attention," said Glen Burchers, director of global consumer segment marketing at Freescale, in an interview last month.

Windows 7 Forked, Builds 7200 and 7225 with Service Pack 1

2009-06-05T17:46:00.001+05:30

Microsoft has reportedly passed the 7200 build string milestone in the development of Windows 7.

At the same time, reports indicate that the Redmond-based company is also building and testing the first Service Pack for the next iteration of the Windows client and server operating systems, even though both Windows 7 client and Windows Server 2008 R2 are yet to hit the RTM mark, let alone general availability. Wzor has leaked screenshots of Windows 7 Build 7138 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Build 7138 with Service Pack 1 already installed, and now the peek behind the Win7 scene coming from the Russian website is Windows 7 Build 7200.

According to Wzor, Windows 7 builds in the main branch, winmain, have jumped from 6.1.7141.0.winmain.090528, compiled on May 28, all the way to 6.1.7225.0.winmain.090529, wrapped up on May 29, in just a single day. Microsoft apparently passed a very important milestone in the development process of Windows 7 on May 29, but there are no details available as to what exactly happened. Still, the Redmond-based company is set to unveil all changes by the end of June 2009.

Nonetheless, it appears that the Windows 7 development process now has two directions, and two main branches. Such a move implies that Windows 7 has gone through a forking, a strategy designed to split the build tree in order to accommodate builds from two branches. Microsoft did that in the past with Windows 7 RC and RTM, and it is now doing it again with RTM and SP1.

In this context, the main branches of Windows 7, after the fork, are winmain and winmain_sp. In order to support half of the forked tree, Microsoft is also producing builds in the winmain_win7ids branch. The latest builds of Windows 7, from all branches, are 6.1.7200.0.winmain_win7ids_sp.090529; 6.1.7225.0.winmain_sp.090529 and 6.1.7225.0.winmain.090529. No official comment from Microsoft as of yet.

Windows 7 Versions

2009-06-01T12:54:00.000+05:30

Microsoft has finally released details of how it's going to distribute and sell Windows 7.

Like virtually every other announcement in the Windows 7 development cycle so far, the final decision appears to be aimed at handling a common objection - in this case, the perception that there are too many editions of Windows Vista.

The final lineup isn't as clean as some would like (my colleague Mary Jo Foley says she's "still confused" by at least one of the lineup decisions, and she calls the proposed netbook solution "ugly."

So what are the details?

For those of us in the developed world, there are only three editions that matter:

Windows 7 Home Premium
This is the successor to Windows Vista Home Premium, and Microsoft expects it to be the most common edition sold, the standard for virtually all consumer PCs.

It includes the Aero interface with its Windows 7 enhancements, plus Windows Media Center, DVD playback support, and multi-touch and handwriting features. I'm also told (but can't yet confirm) that image-based backup is included in this edition for the first time.

More...

Windows 7 Professional
This edition drops the Business label used in Windows Vista and goes back to the old XP-era name, presumably to give XP users more comfort in their upgrade decision. Unlike Vista Business, this edition contains all features in the Home Premium edition, including Media Center.

For the extra cost, you get more traditional business features like the ability to join a Windows domain, group policy based management tools, Remote Desktop host capabilities, network-based backup features, and support for the Encrypting file system.

More...

Windows 7 Ultimate/Enterprise
In the retail channel, this edition will be called Ultimate; for corporate customers with a Select license agreement, it will be called Enterprise.

In either case, the feature set includes everything in Professional edition plus support for BitLocker whole-drive encryption (and the new BitLocker To Go feature, which adds high-grade encryption to removable media).

This edition also includes all supported language packs (those cost extra for other editions) and the capability to boot from a VHD.

Microsoft is de-emphasizing the Ultimate edition, which has only been able to gather a tiny share (a Microsoft told me yesterday that Ultimate's share is in the 3-5 percent range).

It will still be available, but primarily for those who want BitLocker and as a premium upgrade for super-high-end machines where the Ultimate name might add some cachet.

The real news is that each edition is a superset of the one before it. That means you can upgrade from, say, Home Premium to Professional by purchasing an upgrade key and then "unlocking" the additional features. The entire process takes 5-10 minutes, I'm told by people who've tested it, and involves none of the hassles of the current upgrade strategy, which requires a complete reinstallation.

So what happened to those other editions? They're still around, but your ability to buy them is highly constrained.

More Ultimate...

More Enterprise...

Windows 7 Home Basic
Which lacks the Aero interface, will be available for sale only in emerging markets and will not legally be available for sale in the U.S., Western Europe, Japan, and other developed countries.
More...

Windows 7 Starter Edition
With its artificial restriction on performance (you can only run three simultaneous programs) will be available for sale worldwide, but only as a preinstalled operating system on OEM-built PCs "limited to specific types of hardware."

Microsoft is clearly confident that it has pared down the resource requirements of Windows 7 Home Premium so that it will run acceptably on the generation of netbooks that will be current when Windows 7 arrives later this year.

It's hard to imagine the Windows 7 Starter Edition name being much of a selling point. Microsoft may even be taking the calculated risk of discouraging Windows 7 from being installed on underpowered notebooks and triggering disappointing reviews.

The crucial element missing from today's announcement is pricing. Microsoft's Mike Ybarra, General Manager for Windows, told me yesterday that we can expect "aggressive price points and some very good offers" when Windows 7 is released.

In my estimation, the biggest news in this announcement is the change in how the upgrade process works. Microsoft's Anytime Upgrade program was a complete failure in Windows Vista. But the revamped version has a much better chance of drawing in upgrade dollars, a topic I'll look at more closely in a follow-up post.

More...

From Ed Bott:

Availability

Home Basic Starter Home Premium Professional Enterprise & Ultimate
Retail (boxed, with new PCs) Yes Yes Yes Ult. only

User interface features

Home Basic Starter Home Premium Professional Enterprise & Ultimate
Windows Basic UI Yes Yes Yes Yes
Windows Standard UI Yes Yes Yes Yes
Windows Aero UI ("Glass") Yes Yes Yes
Aero Peek Yes Yes Yes
Aero Snaps Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Aero Shake Yes Yes Yes
Aero Background Yes Yes Yes
Windows Flip Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Windows Flip 3D Yes Yes Yes
Live Taskbar Previews Yes Yes Yes Yes
Live Preview (Explorer) Yes Yes Yes
Jump Lists Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Windows Search Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Security features

Home Basic Starter Home Premium Professional Enterprise & Ultimate
More granular UAC Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Action Center Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Windows Defender Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Windows Firewall Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
IE 8 Protected Mode and DEP support Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Windows Update (can access Microsoft Update) Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Fast User Switching Yes Yes Yes Yes
Parental Controls Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Performance features

Home Basic Starter Home Premium Professional Enterprise & Ultimate
Windows ReadyDrive Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Windows ReadyBoost Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
SuperFetch Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
64-bit processor support Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Physical processor support 1 1 2 2 2
Processor core support Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
Max RAM (32-bit) 4 GB 4 GB 4 GB 4 GB 4 GB
Max RAM (64-bit) 8 GB 8 GB 16 GB 192 GB 192 GB
Number of running applications supported Unlimited 3 Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited

Reliability features

Home Basic Starter Home Premium Professional Enterprise & Ultimate
Windows Backup Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
System image Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Backup to network Yes Yes
Encrypting File System (EFS) Yes Yes
BitLocker Yes
BitLocker To Go Yes
Automatic hard disk defragmentation Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Previous Versions Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Create and attach (mount) VHD Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Bundled applications

Home Basic Starter Home Premium Professional Enterprise & Ultimate
Internet Explorer 8 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Windows Gadgets and Gallery Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Games Explorer with basic games (FreeCell, Hearts, Minesweeper, Purble Palace, Solitaire, Spide Solitaire) Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Premium games (Hearts, Internet Backgammon, Internet Checkers, Internet Spades, Mahjong Titans) Yes Yes Yes
Calculator Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Paint Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Snipping Tool Yes Yes Yes
Sticky Notes Yes Yes Yes
Windows Journal Yes Yes Yes
Windows Fax and Scan Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Windows PowerShell and ISE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
WordPad Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
XPS Viewer Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Windows Anytime Upgrade Yes Yes Yes Yes

Digital media and devices

Home Basic Starter Home Premium Professional Enterprise & Ultimate
Windows Photo Viewer Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Basic photo slide shows Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Windows Media Player 12 with Play To Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Windows Media Player Remote Media Experience Yes Yes Yes
MPEG-2 decoding Yes Yes Yes
Dolby Digital compatibility Yes Yes Yes
AAC and H.264 decoding Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
DVD playback Yes Yes Yes
Can install MPEG-2 (DVD playback) add-in Yes Yes n/a n/a n/a
Windows Media Center Yes Yes Yes
Number of TV tuners supported 4 of each type (analog, digital, etc.) 4 of each type (analog, digital, etc.) 4 of each type (analog, digital, etc.)
Windows DVD Maker Yes Yes Yes
Device Stage Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Sync Center Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Networking features

Home Basic Starter Home Premium Professional Enterprise & Ultimate
SMB connections 20 20 20 20 20
Network and Sharing Center Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
HomeGroup sharing Join only Join only Yes Yes Yes
Improved power management Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Connect to a Projector Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Remote Desktop Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Remote Desktop Host Yes Yes
IIS Web Server Yes Yes Yes
RSS support Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Internet Connection Sharing Yes Yes Yes Yes
Network Bridge Yes Yes Yes Yes
Offline files Yes Yes

Mobility features

Home Basic Starter Home Premium Professional Enterprise & Ultimate
Windows Mobility Center Yes (No presentation mode) Yes (No presentation mode) Yes Yes
Windows Sideshow (Auxilliary display) Yes Yes Yes
Sync Center Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Tablet PC functionality Yes Yes Yes
Multi-Touch support Yes Yes Yes

Enterprise features

Home Basic Starter Home Premium Professional Enterprise & Ultimate
Domain join (Windows Server) Yes Yes
XP Mode licensed Yes Yes
AppLocker Yes
Boot from VHD Yes
Branche Cache Yes
DirectAccess Yes
Federated Search (Enterprise Search Scopes) Yes
Multilingual User Interface (MUI) Language Packs Yes
Location-aware printing Yes Yes
Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications Yes

Source: Paul Thurrott

10 questions to consider when planning a Windows 7 upgrade

2009-06-01T12:51:00.000+05:30

Whether you're eagerly awaiting the upgrade to Windows 7 or you just want to know what to expect if and when you do, there are lots of factors to keep in mind.

Deb Shinder addresses some of the biggest concerns, from hardware requirements to driver compatibility to upgrade paths.

Windows 7 hasn't even been released yet, but the buzz around it indicates that many individuals are chompin' at the bit to upgrade as soon as it hits the market.

Despite this enthusiasm, however, much has been made of a recent survey by Dimensional Research.

According to the survey, 84% of 1,100 IT professionals surveyed said they don't plan to upgrade to Windows 7 in the next year, 16% do intend to upgrade in the next 12 months, and 42% expect to upgrade within 12 to 24 months.

In addition, 43% said the current economic downturn is one of the reasons they will delay upgrading to Windows 7.

That would seem to indicate that improvement in the economy over the next year might change the upgrade numbers.

It's also possible that this month's discontinuation of mainstream support for Windows XP, which most of the companies are currently using on the desktop, may influence some to upgrade more quickly than they might otherwise.

Sooner or later, it's likely that most home users and businesses will be upgrading from their current operating system to Windows 7. In this article, we'll address 10 issues to keep in mind when you begin planning an upgrade to Windows 7.

1: Do I need to buy new hardware?
Many people equate upgrading the operating system to the need to buy a new computer or, at the very least, add RAM and perhaps a bigger hard drive to their present systems.

That's because traditionally, each new version of Windows has needed more disk space and memory than its predecessor.

Will you need to buy new hardware if you want to use Windows 7? That depends. Microsoft's recommended hardware specifications for Windows 7 Release Candidate include a 1 GHz processor, at least 1 GB of RAM, DirectX 9.0 support, 16 GB of free disk space, and 128 MB of graphics memory (for Aero).

Those requirements are pretty much the same as the published system specs for Vista Home Premium/Business/Enterprise/Ultimate (the only difference is that the Vista specs list 15 GB of disk space). Many beta testers report that Windows 7 runs faster on their low-powered machines (512 MB of RAM) than does Vista.

Rule of thumb: If your computer is powerful enough to run Vista acceptably, it will probably run Windows 7 as well or better. If you're currently using XP on a computer with less than 512 MB of RAM or a processor that's slower than 800 MHz, you'll need to upgrade your hardware.

2: Can I upgrade directly from XP?
Many folks who are still running Windows XP want to know whether they can upgrade to Windows 7 without losing all their preferences and settings. The answer is, well, sort of. Microsoft is not providing a direct upgrade path from Windows XP to Windows 7.

An in-place upgrade is available only if you're running Vista SP1 or later. If you're running XP, even if your hardware is sufficient, you'll have to do a clean installation of Windows 7. However, you can use the Microsoft Deployment Tool 2010, which includes the User State Migration Tool, to transfer your user settings for the desktop and applications to the new Windows 7 installation. This article offers more details.

3: Can I do a Vista in-place upgrade?
If you're running Windows Vista, note that you must install SP1 or SP2 before you can do an in-place upgrade to Windows 7. If you attempt to upgrade a Vista computer that doesn't have a service pack installed, you will get a message informing you that "to upgrade to Windows 7, the computer needs to be running Vista with Service Pack 1."

4: Can I upgrade from Windows 7 beta to final release?
Many people are currently running either the public beta of Windows 7 (build 7000) that was released in January or one of the subsequent builds that has been leaked to various peer-to-peer sites since then. Many of them are wondering whether they'll be able to do an in-place upgrade to the RC and/or final release.

Microsoft has recommended that beta testers go back to Vista and upgrade from it to the final release, but that's something many will resist. Another option is to do a clean install, but again, many folks are using Windows 7 now on their mission-critical desktops and notebooks, and they don't want to have to start all over.

In deference to them, Microsoft representatives have said that it will be possible to upgrade from the beta, but it won't be easy; it will involve a number of steps. The installer will tell you "no" when you attempt to do an upgrade from an earlier build of Windows 7. There's a procedure to bypass the version check so you can do the upgrade anyway.

Microsoft asks that you do this only if you "absolutely require" it. It's likely that you'll have a much more stable OS if you do a clean installation.

5: Will there be driver compatibility issues?
A big complaint about Windows Vista was driver incompatibility. Too many people upgraded their OS from XP to Vista only to find that a favorite peripheral, such as a printer or scanner, would no longer work. Vista also introduced a new display driver model, WDDM, which required video card vendors to write completely different display and video miniport drivers.

And security enhancements in Vista affected how the OS handles drivers. Even though Vista was in development for five years, many hardware vendors did not have Vista drivers ready for all of their products when the OS was released.

Now that Vista has been out for more than two years, most hardware vendors have updated their drivers to work with it. Because Windows 7 uses the same driver models as Vista, the vast majority of hardware devices that work with Vista will work with Windows 7.

For Vista drivers that won't install on Windows 7, you can usually solve the problem by installing in Compatibility Mode. To do this, right-click the driver's setup file, select Properties, click the Compatibility tab, enable compatibility mode, and select the appropriate operating system from the drop-down box.

6: Will there be application compatibility issues?
As with drivers, most applications that run on Windows Vista will run on Windows 7. You may need to enable Compatibility Mode on some applications, as described above. Interestingly, some applications that ran on XP and would not run on Vista will run on Windows 7. Microsoft reported in March that it had identified at least 30 old applications that will run on Windows 7 although they failed to do so on Vista. These are being referred to as "rescued applications."

7: What if I have apps that won't run on Windows 7, even in Compatibility Mode?
There may be some XP applications that you can't get to run on Windows 7, even using Compatibility Mode. In the past, that might have been considered a reason not to upgrade. However, you may still be able to enjoy all the benefits of Windows 7 without giving up your favorite apps, thanks to a new compatibility feature called XP Mode.

XPM is a host-based virtualization solution that will reportedly be made available at no cost to users of Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions.

XPM includes a fully licensed copy of XP that runs in a virtual machine on your Windows 7 computer. This differs from just installing XP on Virtual PC or VMware. The virtualized applications appear like local applications on the Windows 7 desktop because they're published to the Win 7 host operating system.

With XPM, you will be able to run any XP application on Windows 7. For more information about XPM, see Paul Thurrott's blog post on the issue.

8: Should I wait for Windows 7 release to buy a new computer?
Some individual computer users may be wondering if they should wait until Windows 7 is released to buy a new computer, to ensure that the system will work with the new OS. An advantage of waiting is that after Windows 7 is released, you'll be able to buy a computer that has it preinstalled, so you won't need to upgrade.

However, if you need a new system now, there is no need to suffer with an outdated, slow, or defective system. A Vista system purchased now will in all likelihood run Windows 7 with no problems.

But even though you don't need to wait until the final release, you might want to wait until June 1 to make your purchase. Buying a Vista system after that date will make you eligible for a free Windows 7 upgrade license. (This applies to Vista Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate editions.)

9: Which edition of Windows 7 should I choose?
A big complaint about Vista is that there are too many editions to choose from. Windows XP offered only two retail editions: Professional and Home. (XP Media Center edition and Tablet PC edition were available only to OEMs.)

But Vista offers a large and sometimes confusing array of options: Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate. (Starter is available only in "emerging markets," and Enterprise is available only to volume licensing customers.)

Windows 7 will also have both Home Basic and Home Premium editions. The equivalent of Vista Business edition will revert to the Professional moniker. As far as we can tell, Enterprise and Ultimate editions will be the same, except that the former is sold only through volume licensing. There will also be a Starter edition, which will be installed on low-powered netbooks.

A major change is that each successive Windows 7 edition will include all features of the lower cost ones. Many Vista Business and Enterprise users were annoyed that they didn't get Windows Media Center, DVD Maker, and other consumer-oriented features that came in Vista Home Premium.

Since Home Premium couldn't join a domain and lacked support for EFS and some other business-oriented features, if you wanted both, you had to buy Ultimate. Windows 7 Pro will include everything that's in Windows 7 Home Premium, and Enterprise will include everything that's in Business edition.

Companies will be able to easily block the consumer features when they deploy Pro (or Enterprise) on their networks.

Most people will find that either Home Premium or Pro will fit their needs. If you need BitLocker or the ability to boot from a VHD, you'll want Enterprise or Ultimate.

10: What are the main reasons to upgrade to Windows 7?
Why upgrade to Windows 7 rather than stay with Windows XP or Vista? If you're still running XP, an important consideration is the fact that Microsoft ended mainstream support for XP on April 14. Although critical security updates will still be provided at no cost until 2014, additional support is provided only to customers who pay for a support contract with Microsoft.

Windows 7 also provides the improved graphical user interface (Aero) you get with Vista. Search is improved, and consumers with children will appreciate the parental controls feature. The most important reason to upgrade from XP is security; both Vista and Windows 7 provide much better security.

If you're using Vista, some of the new features and functionality you'll get with Windows 7 include a more streamlined GUI with a more functional taskbar that features Jump Lists; new and more sophisticated versions of Paint, Wordpad, and Calculator; easier windows management with snap-to docking; elimination of the sidebar (while maintaining support for gadgets); and new built-in troubleshooting tools.

While Windows 7 still focuses on security, User Account Control (UAC) is far less in your face and more user-configurable than in Vista. Windows 7 also has built-in support for touch (if you have a touchscreen monitor). Keyboard fans will find a number of new keyboard shortcuts to help you avoid use of the mouse in many situations.

For administrators, Windows 7 offers new tools such as PowerShell v2, improved Group Policy, and VHD image management and deployment.

Download Windows 7 RC1

2009-06-01T12:50:00.000+05:30

Stable and completed code for Windows 7 will be released to early adopters during the coming week of May 5th 2009, with mass availability planned for the following Tuesday.

The eagerly awaited Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 will be posted to members of Microsoft's Developer Network and TechNet for download on April 30.

RC1 will be made generally available on May 5, Microsoft said late Friday. Microsoft confirmed the dates after the RC leaked to four torrent sites, causing excitement and frustration that Microsoft didn't appear to be offering a date for release.

This is expected to be the last code cut before Windows 7 is delivered as final product, unless major bugs or faults are uncovered. Microsoft pointedly did not give a date for Windows 7's release to manufacturing when it announced the RC and has been clinging to a 2010 time frame.

The smart money, though, is on release to manufacturing and OEMs this year, as early as this summer. Consumers are expected to get Windows 7 on new PCs and as boxed product in time for the back-to-school shopping window starting in September and October or the holiday shopping season a little later.

Businesses on Microsoft's enterprise accounts are likely to get a slightly earlier lead-time on the new operating system. Windows XP, the predecessor to Windows Vista, officially launched in October 2001 - in good time for the holiday shopping season - while Windows Vista was delivered to consumers in the fallow, post-holiday shopping period of a February - a fact that meant a disappointing start to sales.

Windows 7 has been pretty much completed from a usability perspective for a while, with people already using the operating system at work. Windows Experience blogger Brandon LeBlanc said changes since January's beta included bug fixes and improvements to the overall "experience,"

Windows7 software box images

2009-06-01T12:46:00.002+05:30

A website (Centrumxp.pl) has released some box images which they purport to be real images from Microsoft. I guess we will find out eventually whether that's true but here they are, you guys can decide if you think they are fake or not.

Give us your feedback (below the images).

Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7

2009-06-01T12:38:00.000+05:30

At Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference about a year ago today, Julie Larson-Green first introduced Walt Mossberg to Windows 7 and its multi-touch capabilities, which we call Windows Touch.

Microsoft first introduced multi-touch in Microsoft Surface. Since then, the Windows and Surface development teams have been collaborating closely on bringing multi-touch to Windows, and last year demoed a few applications they created to run on Windows 7.

New Windows 7 Logo Design

2009-05-22T09:32:00.002+05:30

It seems that the email on “translucency” sent out by Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President, Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, back in 2007, got lost in translation on its way to Microsoft China. Remember the leaked images featuring the new Windows 7 boxes?

Images with the concepts of the packaging for the retail copies of Windows 7 got leaked in the first half of May, featuring fresh visual interpretations of the Windows logo and a new logo built from the “7” number, a non-subtle reference to Windows 7, Microsoft's next iteration of the Windows client. It has already been confirmed that the box artwork is real, but now the new Windows 7 logo has started popping out on the Internet, with the software giant managing to offer official confirmation of its validity.

Microsoft China shamelessly displays the new 7 logo on its nook of the Windows website reserved for the successor of Windows Vista (via Long Zheng). As you can see from the screenshots attached to this article, the design matches perfectly the artwork on the Windows 7 boxes. Microsoft China has obviously jumped the gun when it comes down to publishing Windows 7-related artwork, because Sinofsky & Co. have failed to breathe a word so far as to the designs that would accompany Windows 7 to the market.

In addition to the Chinese Windows 7 website, Microsoft 7 is already using various promotion materials, including banners, DVD covers for Windows 7 Release Candidate Build 7100, and DVD artwork with the new “7” logo (via PCBeta). In this context, it is only a matter of time before the rest of Microsoft follows and unveils the official Windows 7 retail boxes along with visual concepts that will help define “7” for the consumers. But so far, the Redmond-based company is keeping mum on the matter, although the silence serves it no purpose any longer.

Don’t Forget About the Dual-Booters!

2009-05-13T10:29:00.000+05:30

InfoWorld has an article out today wherein Randall Kenney of the "Windows Sentinel" team (a program used to monitor system settings and performance to provide aggregate data for analysis) trashes end-user uptake of Windows Vista by revealing that 35% of surveyed PCs that ship with Vista have downgraded to Windows XP.

While that's a stunning number of Vista-only OEM machines running Windows XP, Mr. Kenney seems to have forgotten about those of us that dual-boot. As champions of dual-booters everywhere, we've got to put our two cents in here.

If you keep in mind the type of people who would install the Windows Sentinel tool and take part in such a geeky program you'll realize that it's not too out there for a good number of these people to be the kind that run multiple operating systems on their machines.

Obviously not all of Windows Sentinel's (only) three thousand subscribers are included in the numbers above (it's highly unlikely that even 80% of the 3000 subscribers are using hardware that only comes from the OEM with Windows Vista installed). And of the percentage that are using late-model hardware, a hefty percentage dual-boot.

We don't have any numbers as far as the number of dual-booters out there, but they're certainly not few enough to be discounted. Keeping that in mind, it's rather unprofessional of InfoWorld to claim that 35% of all Vista users will downgrade to Windows XP. Obviously big numbers make for better headlines, but this is the kind of stuff that can damage stocks and ruin jobs – you don't want that on your conscious, at least, not without good reason.

Not that we're suffering from any delusions or hallucinations with regards to Windows Vista's relatively shoddy performance and stability, but you'll agree that it's a rather far cry to go from "a lot of people have reservations about upgrading to Windows Vista" to "a lot of people will take the time and effort to remove Vista from a PC and put Windows XP in its stead;" especially keeping in mind that Vista's been out for two years now and there's an (unfortunately) increasingly-large number of Vista-only products out there on the market.

More data from InfoWorld and the Windows Sentinel service would certainly be most-welcome in giving a clearer picture of what the actual numbers are and where end-users stand in this OS mess.

View article...

Windows Isn’t For Gamers Anymore

2009-05-13T10:28:00.000+05:30

For the past decade-and-a-half, "Windows" has been synonymous with "PC Gaming" – after all, no other PC platform has managed to satiate the undying hunger gamers are quite famous for. But now it seems that Windows is on the verge of losing its distinction as the gaming platform of choice - with nothing but Microsoft's own machinations to blame.

Despite PC users' widely-varying taste and preference in operating systems and platforms, gamers need Windows. In fact, one of the biggest reason people around the globe tend to dual-boot is their undying love for gaming and the fact that no other OS out there can boast the wide range of gaming titles and genres available for their platform like Windows can. The traditional choice faced by most non-Windows users has been to either install and dual-boot Windows or bite the built and buy a gaming console - ask us, we would know.

But this is all about to change, thanks to Microsoft's reckless abandon for one of its few truly-loyal userbases.

When Microsoft first began its frenzied Vista marketing campaign in 2006, one of the points it focused on most and repeated over and over again was just how big of a gaming revolution Windows Vista was. Gaming was a large part of the Vista WOW campaign, but it has since failed to disappoint. But this isn't an article about Vista, it's about how Windows is poised to lose its gaming advantage if Microsoft doesn't get its act together sometime soon.

The problem is that Windows - standalone or in a dual-boot - is quickly becoming the lesser-appealing option when compared to a gaming console… in large part thanks to Microsoft's ridiculous, biased, and fairly infuriating decisions to release games for Xbox and then for PC.

A major part of the gaming/entertainment Vista PR that went out around the same time as the OS: Microsoft Announces Spectacular Windows Vista Title Lineup. Spectacular? Hardly so. Take a look at the Microsoft Game Studios release history for 2006 and 2007, you'll find a great disparity between the number of titles MGS released for Windows verses those for the Xbox (360)…

If you ignore expansion packs (the Zoo Tycoon development team seems to love these), you'll find that Microsoft Game Studios released a total of nineteen titles for the Xbox over these two years, compared to a mind-blowing six titles for the PC over that same period - half of which were either available on the Xbox simultaneously or years before!

But what does Microsoft have to say about the obvious deterioration of the Windows gaming market?

The Windows gaming world continues to evolve, and we believe in the future of that property.

-Shane Kim, Microsoft's Vice President of Interactive Entertainment

Sorry Mr. Kim, but we find that a bit hard to believe. Mr. Kim's statement came in response to the recent (shocking) news that Microsoft's (PC game development) Ensemble Studios - authors of Microsoft's Age of Empires claim-to-fame hit series - would be shut down for "fiscal reasons."

Obviously Microsoft is in a hard place here, needing to cater to both of the (competing) PC and gaming console markets at the same time. However, due to the serious 3rd-party hardware/platform competition in the gaming console market it seems that Microsoft's decision has been to give Xbox the priority here.

It's obviously not Microsoft's job to develop games for its own platform - technically, all they have to do for either the PC or the Xbox is develop the APIs and provide 3rd party gaming developers with the tools and support they need to make it work. And 3rd party developers have not let anyone down, with astonishing numbers of titles being published for both platforms.

But if Microsoft wants to ensure that its platform retains its current hold on the PC gaming market they're going to need to do a bit more to convince potential Windows gamers to stick to their platform and not go out and get a gaming console instead. It's quite a logical choice to focus on Windows here - there are literally millions of Windows users who would be using something else if it wasn't for Windows' vice-like grip on the gaming market.

The fact is, PC gamers and console gamers aren't the same market targets. It won't kill Microsoft's Xbox division to treat their Windows gamers with a little bit more respect than they're currently doing - if not for the users' sake then for their own.

But no matter what Microsoft Game Studios does or doesn't do, it can't actually damage the Windows gaming platform - all it does is create a scenario wherein another OS can work hard and potentially overtake Windows at its own game (pun intended!).

Mac OS and Linux both have a rare opportunity on the horizon - but for it to have any impact on the current PC gaming sector's dynamics, they'll have to put a bit more effort into the gaming scene than they're currently doing. Something that requires this sort of centralized coordination is definitely not one of Linux's strong suites, so the ball is now squarely in Apple's playing field, and it's up to them what they do with it.

Basically, Microsoft needs to watch its step. The incentives for PC gaming are at their lowest levels in years with even real-time strategy games - the PC's long-standing forte - being developed first for the gaming consoles and then, possibly, for the PC (yes, we're looking at you, Halo Wars!).

And then there's Bungie - cross-platform game developers bought up by Microsoft years ago, authors of the internationally-acclaimed "Halo" series, and now released from Microsoft's reigns with its sights set squarely on developing games for the Mac once more.

At the end of the day, Microsoft's size is getting the better of itself once more; with its own divisions failing to compete with themselves they way they should. Microsoft needs to pick up on this slow degradation of PC gaming satisfaction and do something to buck the trend, or else they could suffer some serious consequences.

View article...

Windows 7 Wallpapers Now Available for Download

2009-05-13T10:22:00.001+05:30

NeoSmart Technologies' gallery of Windows Vista wallpapers has been a huge hit over the past several years – despite what anyone might say about Vista itself, its collection of wallpapers and fonts is top-notch. And now it seems that Windows 7 isn't going to be any different – from what we've seen, the wallpapers shipping with Windows 7 are pretty darn good.

The Official Windows 7 Wallpapers are now available for download from the NeoSmart Image Gallery. Only several wallpapers have been released accompanying various Windows 7 builds thus far, but we'll keep adding new ones to the gallery as they're shipped.

Here are some of our favorite new wallpapers:

You can see these and more at the gallery here, along with the old Windows Vista ones here and here.

We're taking hundreds of screenshots of Windows 7 and its new features & components even as we're posting this – keep your eyes peeled, they'll be joining our extensive collection of Operating System screenshots in the same fashion as the Windows Vista screenshots were added: build-by-build with all the little details covered in true geek fashion.

View article...

Windows 7 Discontinues Ultimate Extras

2009-05-13T10:21:00.001+05:30

Windows 7 Discontinues Ultimate Extras

Published April 24th, 2009 in Microsoft, Software 11 Comments Tags: Microsoft, Software, Ultimate Extras, Windows, Windows 7, Windows Vista

Users attempting to upgrade from Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Edition to Windows 7 Build 7100 (the unofficial RC1 release leak), are greeted with the following "compatibility warning" dialog:

Windows Vista Ultimate Edition's "Ultimate Extras" have been a constant source of derision and anger from Vista users ever since its release 3 years ago. If the blog posts are to be believed, millions of users purchased Windows Vista Ultimate Edition in the hope that the added-value "Ultimate Extras" package - which was left un-described and of unknown worth at the time - would turn out to be a good investment.

Ultimate Extras are a couple of the minor Ultimate Edition exclusives that Microsoft used as a selling point to get users to purchase the most expensive version of Windows Vista. It was originally marketed as something similar to the ancient "Plus! for Windows" package that was quite popular back in the days of Windows 98; except it never really panned out that way.

Ultimate Extras was something of a hoax for the first couple of years, bringing nothing more than animated wallpaper and extra cards game to the table. Since then a couple of new themes/sounds have been added to the package along with a couple of other lame games - all of which made Vista users feel all the more "tricked" into purchasing a more expensive version of Windows that they, in all honesty, didn't need.

Well, it looks like Windows 7 will be doing away with the Ultimate Extras though it's anyone's guess what the final SKU lineup will look like and what the selling points and feature-sets of each of the editions will stack up to. But here's to hoping that Microsoft learns from (even more) of its mistakes and provides something of real worth with the more expensive editions of its latest OS offering.

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11 Responses to “ Windows 7 Discontinues Ultimate Extras ”

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1NavarrApr. 24th, 2009 at 6:41 pm

Sure it was a scam.. but asking users to delete the Ultimate Extra programs before upgrading to Windows 7?

How can they get away with that?
2Mahmoud Al-QudsiApr. 24th, 2009 at 7:20 pm

Perhaps it doesn't apply everything. There is no reason why the games (Tinker, Texas Hold'dem Poker) would need to be removed/disabled; but MS could probably be excused for trashing Dream Scene due to the changes to the OS.
3ozlApr. 24th, 2009 at 9:24 pm

Well this is not new, since build 6801 i remember that this same message was given when updating from Vista Ultimate to Win 7 Ultimate
4Mick RussomApr. 25th, 2009 at 4:16 pm

Product management at Microsoft is starting to become childish and inferior. How can you call Windows 7 Ultimate Ultimate if it removes Ultimate features, how is this an upgrade?

also gone is the classic start menu. What made Vista unpopular to the point where businesses deployed it at the less-than-7% level, this will be even worse.

I'm running build 7077 right now on the spare box and see no compelling reason to rush out an buy this software. Its a brutally overpriced paid-for service pack at best.

This is coming from an MCSE - worked with NT 3.51 and Citrix Winframe, and before that all Novell. It is amazing to see how badly Microsoft is handling things.
5Jacob SantosApr. 26th, 2009 at 10:12 pm

The selling point of Ultimate was never the Ultimate Extras, but getting some of the features of Business along with the Professional. The Business edition had features that the Professional edition did not have, but the professional had features that the Business didn't have, so to get both, you had to get Ultimate (which didn't have every feature Business had).

Pretty confusing.

With Windows 7, most people will be able to get by with Just the Professional edition. The Ultimate will be the home user edition of Business (which will be available to only to businesses, for the most part).
6Rob VogtApr. 28th, 2009 at 12:51 am

The bottom line? It's all about the money. I must say I've been running Windows 7 Beta since the limited public release in January on one Media Computer and have not had one blue screen or any issues to speak of. I do like the new look and ease of use, but with MS it seems to be all about marketing and $$. Amazing how Apple can come out with their new OS versions on a rock solid platform and sell it for $129.00 and MS wants several hundred. Sorry, but for me it's all about the $$$ with Microsoft. They rule the majority of the market and force you to take the OS if you are buying a new computer. That's why I'm glad I learned how to build my own computer, giving me a choice of OS. Would love to be able to run a stable version of Apple's OS on my PC.
7Simon HApr. 28th, 2009 at 9:55 pm

I'm really not certain it is excuseable to delete dreamscenes. Its moving wallpaper. just how difficult would it be to transfer it accross to Windows 7? In any event, I tend to agree with Mick. Most Vista users, such as myself, are not going to pay the amount of money they would pay for a totally new OS for what amounts to a service pack - and one that apparently will delete features you already have.
8ZaideMay. 7th, 2009 at 9:38 pm

To Rob, if you really want to buy that cheap software by Mac, go for it dude, but you get what you pay for. I've used both (and am a Windows fan, so I'm biased); the Mac just feels way too limited, especially it's limited custimization and configuration at it's core levels. I probably didn't get into it enough, but I was that dissatified right off.

To Simon, your ignorance comes across as hateful when you talk about 7 like a patch or update. Vista runs on Server 2003 core, and 7 runs on Server 2008 core. It's simply different code in essence. This is noticed, during the same update that's pictured above, that Windows Vista only passes its settings and (user) files onto 7 (if you opt to), and after that Windows' is rewritten.

I'm currently using 7 RC (7100) as my primary machine, and am running (near*) flawlessly, which is slightly better than I had Vista running. This OS is about 25-33% faster than Vista on equal hardware (50% faster boot time and shutdown on my laptop (P4 3.4, 1 GB RAM DDR, 256 MB Radeon 9800 Mobile), and it's still not finished.

My thought on the money, have Microsoft put all of the Ultimate features from Vista into every version of 7, keep the OS functionality count at 3 (Basice, Home, Enterprise), and watch the businesses and home users flock to the new OS. OEM's are getting cheaper all the time, and will be loading 7 by launch, so all those people running a 4 or 5 year old mid to high grade PC will be picking up cheap configurations with much increased performance. Vista was, quite frankly, the ME of XP. Features on old architectures, and limited scalability for the time. This is the next generation of Windows.
9ZaideMay. 7th, 2009 at 9:40 pm

*No drivers for bluetooth headset (Jabra BT350).
10eskylidderMay. 11th, 2009 at 8:25 am

Have any of you tried Ubuntu? You might be pleasently supprised. Didnt cost me a cent.

1 Windows 7 Discontinues Ultimate Extras â" The NeoSmart Files | WinSe7en Pingback on Apr. 24th, 2009 at 6:21 pm

Feed: The NeoSmart Files
Posted on: 24 April 2009 22:26
Author: NeoSmart Technologies
Subject: Windows 7 Discontinues Ultimate Extras

Users attempting to upgrade from Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Edition to Windows 7 Build 7100 (the unofficial RC1 ~~release~~ leak), are greeted with the following "compatibility warning" dialog:

View article...

Windows 7 RC and Windows XP to be available until 2010

2009-05-03T11:56:00.000+05:30

Well, friends, your queries have been answered! Our buddies over at PCWorld are reporting that Microsoft has confirmed that the Windows 7 RC will be still active until June 1, 2010. This information was actually leaked about a month ago, but Thursday say the Redmond-based software giant confirm the news.

To add to the lengthy amount of time the RC will be available, it was also confirmed that, "the RC release will be available at least through June 2009 and we're not limiting the number of product keys, so you have plenty of time." Very good news for those using it, with no intent to purchase the full version for a while (after it's released, of course). How is this compared to Windows Vista RC2? Well, users were allowed to use that for 8 months since it was made available, so 13 months is a hefty boost in terms of the timeframe.

In other news, Windows XP is still going to be available on netbooks for one year after Windows 7 is released. As you can imagine, it'll only be available to vendors selling the netbooks, so don't expect to be able to waltz into a store and pick up a fresh copy of the almost-8-year-old OS. According to ComputerWorld, "Windows-based systems accounted for more than 90% of all netbook shipments from November through January, according to market research firm NPD Group Inc, [thanks to XP]."

How to activate Windows 7 RC build 7100

2009-05-03T11:54:00.000+05:30

You can complete installation of windows 7 by leaving product key filed blank and enjoy Windows 7 for 30 days maximum before it gets expiry. The only way to activate windows 7 Pre Beta is by using product key for Windows Vista beta or RC edition.

Windows 7 RC Build 7100 can be activated with the help of previous Windows 7 Beta serial keys.

Activation Keys for Windows 7 RC 32 bit:
6JKV2-QPB8H-RQ893-FW7TM-PBJ73
TQ32R-WFBDM-GFHD2-QGVMH-3P9GC
GG4MQ-MGK72-HVXFW-KHCRF-KW6KY
4HJRK-X6Q28-HWRFY-WDYHJ-K8HDH
QXV7B-K78W2-QGPR6-9FWH9-KGMM7

Activation Keys for Windows 7 RC 64 bit:
7XRCQ-RPY28-YY9P8-R6HD8-84GH3
RFFTV-J6K7W-MHBQJ-XYMMJ-Q8DCH
482XP-6J9WR-4JXT3-VBPP6-FQF4M
JYDV8-H8VXG-74RPT-6BJPB-X42V4
D9RHV-JG8XC-C77H2-3YF6D-RYRJ9
Or you can use the crack.
Download: Activation Windows Vista SP2 All Versions

October 23 as the release date for Windows 7

2009-05-03T11:52:00.000+05:30

Acer has confirmed October 23 as the release date for Windows 7 according to the technology news site Pocketlint. We already mentioned earlier today that Microsoft was aiming for a holiday season 2009 release for their upcoming operating system Windows 7 which would go along with the release date leak. The article interestingly enough speaks of a 30 day free upgrade period prior to the release of Windows 7 which would be different from the currently expected free upgrade period beginning on July 1. The new free update period would start two months later than expected.

The information has obviously not been confirmed by Microsoft but a October release would mean a quick progression from the release candidate to the rtm release. The latest dates for the important Windows 7 releases are therefor May 5, which is the expected public release date of the Windows 7 release candidate, and October 23, which is the Windows 7 release date according to Acer. Remember that this release date would only be for the languages supported in wave 0 which are English, German, Spanish, French and Japanese. The next waves follow in a two week rhythm from that release day on. Check out the complete table for release dates for all Windows 7 language editions.

Hardware makers get ready for Windows 7

2009-03-13T09:35:00.000+05:30

New laptop and desktop designs are on tap as PC and hardware makers start tweaking components to take advantage of improved features in Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7 OS.

Microsoft has announced many improvements with Windows 7, like support for more hardware and touch-screen applications, which hardware makers hope to take advantage of. PC makers like Dell and Fujitsu are redesigning hardware to offer more wireless networking options and touch-screen capabilities, which give users an easier way to input data or move images by simply touching screens.

Mining the Right Iron: Download nowDell on Thursday launched Studio 19, an all-in-one PC with multitouch capabilities where users can simultaneously gesture with two fingers on a screen to zoom, pan, tilt or rotate elements in photos, edit playlists or browse the Web. The multitouch capabilities give users a more immersible multimedia experience than keyboards or mice would, Dell said.

Studio 19 is an early manifestation of what Dell's future Windows 7 PCs may look like. The PC maker already has touch-screen capabilities with the Latitude XT2 laptop, and a Dell spokeswoman said the company would build in touch capability across its desktops and other laptops over time.

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View more related contentView all related articlesDell has perhaps been the most vocal in its ongoing efforts to tailor hardware to take advantage of Windows 7 features. Dell officials didn't offer further details on how they plan to further hardware tweaks, but the company sees the OS as a way to rejuvenate the slumping PC industry. Dell saw a drop in desktop shipments, while its laptop shipments were flat during the previous quarter.

Windows 7 will definitely impact the way hardware is designed, and Fujitsu hopes to engineer its hardware to implement the improved wireless communications, security and touch capabilities, said Paul Moore, senior director for mobile product marketing.

The company hopes to build improvements into laptops it sells to vertical markets and customers. Fujitsu has plenty of experience with tablet PCs and the company is definitely thinking about adding touch screens, Moore said. He didn't provide a timeline on when the company may release touch-screen laptops.

Beyond multitouch screens, Windows 7 will also recognize new hardware and is designed to work better with multicore processors and storage products like solid-state drives, a Microsoft engineer wrote in a January blog entry. For example, it will transfer data to SSDs in larger data blocks, helping sustain high data throughput from storage drives.

With that in mind, companies like HP are working with Microsoft to bring Windows 7 capabilities to their hardware.

Want to compare storage products? View our IT Product Guides now."We work very closely with Microsoft ... and being the single largest partner, Microsoft [is] also very dependent on HP, and so before they make any change to their software they work with HP extensively to ensure compatibility with all of our products," said Fred Bullock, vice president of marketing at Hewlett-Packard.

One example where Windows 7 could fit in is HP's TouchSmart PC, which may showcase the core functionality of Windows 7 capabilities, including touch-screen support, Bullock said. HP also plans to build its own touch-screen capabilities that will differentiate it from Microsoft's touch-screen applications.

Additionally, chip makers including Qualcomm and Nvidia have already gained certification to boost Windows 7 communications and video capabilities.

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View more related contentView all related articlesQualcomm has said its Gobi2000 3G embedded chip will run with Windows 7, which is designed to let netbooks and laptops access multiple 3G networks incorporating HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) or EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized). The chip supports improved data speeds. Nvidia also announced beta drivers for its Ion netbook platform that could bring full high-definition video to Windows 7.

The much-anticipated OS has garnered praise from beta testers, who have said it is zippier and less resource-hungry than the current Windows Vista OS. The OS has worked effectively on PCs ranging from gaming desktops to small laptops like netbooks, which are light on memory and processing speed.

But like all previous Windows releases, customers may be smart to wait in buying a new laptop till the initial kinks of Windows 7 are worked out, said David Milman, CEO of computer repair firm Rescuecom. Some customers may be impatient to upgrade as soon as possible from the failed Windows Vista, but he is recommending customers wait till the first service pack comes out, which could be in 2010, Milman said.

7 Ways You Will Save Money with Windows 7

2009-03-13T09:34:00.000+05:30

Judging from the test version that was widely downloaded by the public, shifting to Microsoft's Windows 7 promises to inflict much less pain than its predecessor, Vista. Some of the changes to Windows even make computing easier and more fun. We aren't alone in predicting that Windows 7 will be a popular upgrade when it hits the market later this year or early in 2010.

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Buyers will have to pay the usual Microsoft tax to upgrade an existing computer. But the added benefit is that, unlike Vista, this new version of Windows will help them save some cash:

Cheaper Rigs -- One of the biggest knocks on Vista was its voracious appetite for processing power and memory. Many new PCs that were tagged "Vista Ready" were not, leaving consumers twiddling their thumbs waiting for the system to do its thing. The eye candy promised with the fancy, new interface disappeared if the hardware wasn't first rate. Happily, Windows 7 appears to run faster and demand less of hardware. Some reviewers even suggest it will run on older hardware that choked on Vista.

A Bite from Apple -- Windows 7 is more efficient and easy to use. The software, for example, makes it easy to find and "peek" at a specific window among many that might be open. That "Aero Peek" is a big hit with many reviewers. The software uses "libraries" to organize like files, such as music or videos, that are scattered across multiple drives. Microsoft also made Windows 7's security less of a nag than Vista's. Some reviewers have even predicted Windows 7 might reverse Microsoft's market share losses to Apple. And while some new Macs have recently matched premium PCs in value, Apple avoids the discount market where many consumers would rather buy.

[Read how Apple erased the Mac premium on some desktops.]

Printer Pal -- Many of us had to buy new printers, scanners and other gear that plugged into our PCs because old models wouldn't work with Vista. Hardware makers were slow to write new drivers, partly because Microsoft made late changes before launching Vista. The good news is two-fold for Windows 7. Manufacturers have largely caught up in writing their Vista drivers, at least the ones they intend to, and those drivers will work with Windows 7. So today's Vista users, and even many XP users, should be able to keep their current printer.

Cheap Starter -- Microsoft hopes to keep its system on the lowest-priced notebooks, the so-called netbooks. Vista was a no go on their limited hardware. Windows 7 already runs better on a netbook. Plus, Microsoft is crafting a special version -- a "Starter Edition" -- that it will sell at cut rates to netbook makers. Granted, the multiple editions of Vista caused consumer confusion and the same thing could befall Windows 7. And the starter edition isn't without controversy because it arbitrarily limits the PC to running three applications at a time. But it should help keep Windows netbooks competitive with Linux versions, and help keep overall netbook prices down.

[Read how netbook sales are soaring]

Cozy Connecting -- Getting two Windows computers talking to each other at home has been about as easy and fun as doing our taxes. Windows 7 introduces the idea of a "HomeGroup" that recognizes, finally, our homes don't need FBI-grade security and permissions. HomeGroup doesn't work as smoothly as we'd hope in the test version, and it only works with other Windows 7 machines. Still, it's light years better than Vista and anything before it. Users can hope that they'll finally be able to have home networks without hiring the Geek Squad or buying extra software like Network Magic.

[Read about the future for Network Magic]

Topple TiVo -- Windows 7 adds much-needed capability to the Media Center software for managing movies, TV shows, photos and music. The software has been part of some Windows versions since XP. But only now, for example, can it properly recognize and manage TV channels from over-the-air stations that have made the switch to digital. A new "Play To" feature also makes it push-button easy to send songs or videos to other devices. Just maybe we can forget TiVo or cable boxes and their monthly fees.

Power Miser -- Personal computers in general are surprisingly dumb about using power. Windows PCs in particular often run at full roar when idling or even sleeping is all that's needed. Windows 7 takes new leaps in using the PC's smarts to reduce power use. It cuts off processor cores that aren't needed and shuts down USB ports and Wi-Fi cards more forcefully. It also learns from the user: If it's timed to turn off a monitor in a minute but the mouse is moved immediately after, the timer adjusts to wait longer. Over several years, the bits of electricity saved will help pay some of the cost of upgrading.

Microsoft Says Windows 7 Heading To Netbooks

2009-02-26T08:40:00.000+05:30

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Tuesday that Windows 7 will be available for netbooks, the mini-laptops that have generated strong sales despite the recession.

Windows 7 screen shot
(Click for larger image and for full photo gallery)

More Windows InsightsWhite PapersConfiguring Security in SQL Server Windows 2008 Server as a Workstation Videos

Fibre Channel Over Ethernet Is Catching On As Data Centers Consolidate and Server and Storage Virtualization Takes OffIn a meeting with financial analysts, Ballmer said Microsoft decided early in the introduction of netbooks about two years ago that it was important to be the leading operating system vendor in the market. Today, Windows XP is in more than 90% of netbooks, aided by the high rate of return on netbooks that had shipped with Linux.
Going forward, Microsoft plans to maintain its dominance. "Windows 7 will be available on the netbook," Ballmer said.

Windows 7, the successor of the poorly received Windows Vista, is expected late this year or early 2010.

The netbook market today is growing while non-netbook PCs have been flat or slightly down, Ballmer said. Besides being a growth market, the mini-PC also provides Microsoft with an opportunity to create a downsized OS that will be easily adapted to many other different devices.

"I think you'll see an opening up of a lot of opportunities for us," Ballmer said. The CEO acknowledged that today revenue per netbook is less than on a standard PC, because the price of the OS running on these low-cost devices is less.

One component key to netbooks, which are primarily used for e-mail and Web browsing, is the browser. And on that front, Microsoft's Internet Explorer has been losing market share to the No. 2 browser, Mozilla Firefox.

Ballmer said Microsoft is spending money on marketing and building Internet Explorer 8, which is currently in beta, with features to take back and expand market share. "We believe browsers are important," Ballmer said. "They're not a commodity."

As of the end of November 2008, Firefox's market share reached more than 20%, while Internet Explorer's had fallen below 70%, according to Web metrics firm Net Applications. Throughout the year, Firefox usage on the Web grew steadily, starting in January 2008 with a 16.98% share. Internet Explorer, on the other hand, started 2008 with a 75.47% share.

Microsoft Patches IE8 On Windows 7 Beta

2009-02-26T08:38:00.000+05:30

Microsoft released a comprehensive update for Windows 7 Beta Tuesday aimed at plugging numerous compatibility and reliability holes in Internet Explorer 8.
The comprehensive update patches an array of stability problems that include crashes, hangs and memory issues on Windows 7 Beta caused by IE as well as third-party components such as Adobe Flash, Adobe Acrobat and others. The patch also fixes glitches in PDF file printing and includes a change that improves cookie management.

Microsoft researchers said that the update was prompted by user feedback, which brought attention to existing problems with IE8 and other applications running on Windows 7.

"We found that approximately 10 percent of customers who had downloaded the Windows 7 Beta had experienced some type of reliability problem in IE," said Herman Ng, Microsoft program manager, in an IE blog post. "We also found that a small number of users were experiencing crashes on a more regular basis and that about 1.5 percent of all Internet Explorer sessions had encountered a crash."

Altogether, about 50 percent reported reliability problems stemmed from 17 unique issues. Ng said that IE was responsible for about 40 percent of the reliability problems, while 60 percent were caused by third-party components.

Ng said that Microsoft worked with its third-party partners to address many of the issues, either by working around the problem inside IE or preventing the third-party application from loading.

"Because users generally have lots of toolbars and extensions installed, it's common to see this many third-party components at the top of our failure curve," Ng said.

The newly released update is available via Windows Update, and also can be downloaded via Microsoft Update.

Microsoft's Ballmer outlines his seven big bets for 2009

2009-02-25T13:29:00.000+05:30

For the past few Februaries, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer makes the trek to Wall Street to provide analysts with an annual “Strategic Update” overview, in which he covers the areas where Microsoft plans to invest and why.

This year, during his February 24 update, Ballmer was more about circling the wagons than staking out new, far-flung territories Microsoft planned to conquer in the next 10 years.

(Here is the list of Ballmer’s strategic bets he outlined in 2007; here’s Ballmer’s list from 2008.)

On Tuesday during his hour-plus presentation (which I listened to via a Webcast), Ballmer outlined seven areas “where we invest serious money.” He told Wall Streeters that Microsoft planned to engage in careful cash management; to maintain “right-size enterprise overhead”; and to put about three percent of its spending into research and incubation projects in the coming year.

Ballmer emphasized that he believed “the economy will be relatively weak for a relatively long period of time” and was adjusting his investment priorities to reflect this fact.

Ballmer’s list of seven investment areas for the coming year:

1. Windows — Netbooks are the lone bright spot in the PC market. Microsoft needs to think through how it will handle SKU pricing with Windows 7 for netbooks, Ballmer acknowledged. While business PC sales are “the most impacted” part of the business due to the economy, it’s still where Microsoft is having a lot of success upselling customers and convincing them to “attach” other Microsoft products. Ballmer called out Internet Explorer as an area where the company is losing market to its competitors, specifically Firefox. “Browsers are not commodities,” Ballmer said. “There’s a lot of work we need to do” to gain market share, he acknowledged. (Microsoft is expected to release IE 8 to the Web in March.)

2. Mobile — Windows Mobile operating systems and gaming/Zune entertainment services — not a combined hardware/software platform like the iPhone — is where Microsoft is investing, Ballmer reiterated.

3. Desktop productivity — This is Microsoft’s most profitable business — Office, SharePoint and ERP/CRM products and services — area at present. No Office 14 until 2010, but higher-priced client-access licenses and strong “attach sales” of other Microsoft products are keeping the business strong.

4. Server and tools — Ballmer cited the high percentage of annuity licensing deals as insulating the S&T business a bit from the IT spending slowdown. Ballmer cited new growth areas as its “Online” family of Microsoft-hosted services (like Exchange Online and SharePoint Online); the still-unrealized goal of getting more server customers to attach systems-management software; and new, soon-to-be-released Microsoft wares in the security-management, authentication, conferencing and collaboration space.

5. Enterprise software — This is the segment that includes Microsoft’s SQL Server database and middleware. Oracle is Microsoft’s biggest competitor here and Microsoft’s primary strategy is to take market share by finding a way to beat Oracle’s higher prices and contract lock-ins, Ballmer said.

6. Search and advertising — No new hints about what Microsoft is going to do, other than not throw in the towel. Ballmer talked up Cash Back; new deals with search distributors like Dell and Verizon Wireless; and better search and advertising algorithms as the keys to its strategy. Ballmer said he’d still like to figure out some way for Microsoft and Yahoo to “pool their resources” to take on Google, but pooh-poohed (for the umpteenth time) any talk of an acquisition. He admitted Microsoft still has about 3 to 4 percent of the global search share and that share is “the leading indicator” of progress in this market. “I don’t want to be a Jerry Yang in this market,” Ballmer quipped, referring to Yahoo’s former CEO. I know “how shareholders can get frustrate by leaders who aren’t serious about performance,” Ballmer added.

7. Entertainment and TV — It’s not just about Xbox here, Ballmer told analysts. “The real opportunity is a device next to or in every TV set,” whether that device is a PC, a gaming console, a set-top box, or a new appliance device. Microsoft’s strategy is to bring its gaming, entertainment and other servics to the PC, phone and TV.

In previous years, these Strategic Updates weren’t so much a reiteration of where Microsoft is putting its money today as where it planned to invest over the coming 10 years. It’s clear — and not surprising — that the economic downturn is definitely putting a damper on Microsoft’s blue-sky spending plans. Ballmer’s acknowledgment, made multiple times today, that many investors want Microsoft to get out of search and advertising, was interesting — as was his justification that “once you get out you can’t get back in” for not abandoning the market owned by Google.

Microsoft tweaks Experience Index for Windows 7

2009-02-25T13:24:00.001+05:30

Microsoft Corp. has changed the PC performance rating tool Windows Experience Index for Windows 7 to better measure faster graphic cards, multi-core processors and drives.

The index's top score will go up from 5.9 to 7.9, and add several new tests to more accurately measure the performance of hard-disk and solid-state drives, says a mid-January post at the Engineering Windows 7 blog.

Windows Experience Index, first introduced with Windows Vista, is intended to help users discover which parts of their system needs to be upgraded for Windows and applications to run well, or if the PC needs to be replaced.

Reviews of the first public beta of Windows 7 indicate that it generally runs faster and more smoothly than Vista, despite the two sharing a very similar codebase.

But critics have alredy begun questioning the revamped index's usefulness and accuracy. One beta tester, going by the handle 'Hurricane Andrew' on Microsoft's MSDN developer Web site, complained that an older hard drive using the slower IDE interface was awarded a much higher rating than his newer, larger hard drive using the faster SATA-II interface.

"I hardly believe that's accurate," he wrote.

Others complained that the new scale, from 1.0 to 7.9, was counterintuitive, or that the criteria for drive performance should not have changed between Vista and Windows 7 for consistency's sake.

Michael Cherry, an analyst with the independent firm Directions on Microsoft, said he "doesn't put much stock" in the index's scores.

A Microsoft representative said in an e-mail that the company was "closely monitoring" input from beta testers aboutWindows 7, including for the new index, but would not say if changes would result from the feedback.

Windows 7 apps may not run faster on quad-cores
The Windows Experience Index, found under the System Icon in Vista or Windows 7's Control Panel, quickly scans hardware befor delivering five results, including for: processor, memory (RAM), graphics for general desktop work, gaming graphics performance, and the primary hard drive's performance. The results are based on the rated specifications of each component, not on their actual performance history in the scanned PC.

Because PC performance is often determined by the speed of the slowest-performing component, the index's "base score" is defined by the lowest of the five scores, rather than an average of all five.

PCs with a base score of between 1.0 and 2.9 can run Office applications and surf the Web, but not play games and videos or use Vista and Windows 7's Aero graphical user interface, Microsoft says.

Computers with a base score in the 3.0-range should be able to run Aero and most of Vista and Windows 7's new features, while those with scores in the 4.0 to 5.0-range should be able to enjoy high-definition (HD) video and 3-D gaming.

25 Random Things About Me: By Windows 7

2009-02-12T09:18:00.000+05:30

1. Vista and I are not twins.

2. UAC is not a security cure-all.

3. 40 percent of UAC prompts are from Windows, not as many as you'd think.

4. As of Feb. 10, 2009, beta me has become unavailable for download, but if you started downloading before that you can continue the download until Feb. 12.

5. The above schedule is not applicable to MSDN and TechNet subscribers.

6. You can upgrade to me from XP, as long we have an understanding of "upgrade" to mean "reformat your machine and do a fresh install."

7. I don't play well with McAfee, but Kaspersky, AVG and Symantec are cool.

8. For low-end notebooks, or "netbooks," OEMs will try my Windows 7 Starter flavor, but Windows 7 Home Premium will let you reap my full experience.

9. Windows 7 Starter will only let you run three applications at a time, but it's for OEMs offering me on PCs with limited hardware.

10. The Ribbon Interface is not a waste in Paint! My applets like Wordpad and Paint benefit from the Ribbon UI because they inherit built-in keyboard accessibility support using ribbon Keytips, have tooltips on all commands, and have ready support for DPI and Windows themes.

11. I am really excited about the new features in Calc: Check and correct, calculation modes and even templates.

12. I am all about "green." If you want to run an HTML report detailing energy-efficiency issues, type in the following at an elevated command prompt: powercfg/energy -- close any open programs.

13. Windows 7 Ultimate costs $350? Unsubstantiated rumor!

14. Regarding my different SKUs, you try making a pizza for a billion people!

15. With me, multiple volumes can now be defragmented in parallel -- no more waiting for one volume to finish before initiating the same action on another volume.

16. My taskbar is 10 pixels higher than in Vista.

17. Some of my best qualities? Less CPU, less disk I/O.

18. Windows' borders remain in Aero transparency when maximized, unlike in Vista.

19. 1 GB will be enough to run Windows 7 ... No, really.

20. Beta Time Bomb. August 1. Period.

21. The default time it takes between hovering a mouse over a taskbar item and the display of its thumbnail image is 400 milliseconds.

22. You can change the about setting by changing the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse MouseHoverTime registry key value.

23. I am on Facebook: My Facebook page

24. I have 8,485 fans on Facebook. Linux has 91,503.

25. Won't you become my fan? Please?

Door shutting on Windows 7 beta

2009-02-12T09:16:00.000+05:30

The clock is ticking for those that want to play around with the Windows 7 beta.

Microsoft issued a late reminder on Monday that people had only until midnight Pacific time to start downloading the operating system.

Those who started their download in time have until 9 a.m. PST Thursday to finish the process, Microsoft has said. Those who went to the site on Tuesday were able to get a product key, but not the code itself.

"We're sorry, but downloads are no longer available," Microsoft says when users click through from the download page.

The betta fish, the unofficial mascot of the Windows 7 beta.
(Credit: CNET News)

Although the beta version will cease being available to the general public, members of Microsoft's MSDN and TechNet developer programs will continue to have access to the code.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the Windows 7 Beta at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. After a slight hiccup, Microsoft made the code available on January 10.

The software maker has said the next test version of Windows 7 will be a near-final "release candidate" version, although it has not said when to expect that to arrive. Officially Microsoft has said that the final version of Windows 7 will come by the end of January 2010, although the company has been aiming to get it done in time to be on PCs that ship for this year's holiday-shopping season.

Trick To Expand The Windows 7 Send To Menu

2009-02-10T17:14:00.001+05:30

The default Send To menu in Windows 7 contains only five locations: Compressed Folder, Desktop Shortcut, Fax Recipient, Mail Recipient and DVD Writers. What many users do not know is that it is possible to expand the Windows 7 Send To menu by pressing Shift before right-clicking on a file or folder in Windows 7. Pressing the Shift key before right-clicking will expand the Send To menu with more than ten new entries like several My Documents folders, Downloads or Contacts.

Change Windows 7 Taskbar Hover Time

2009-02-10T17:11:00.001+05:30

One new feature of Windows 7 are thumbnail previews when hovering the mouse over a taskbar item. The default time before the thumbnail is displayed is 400 milliseconds which might be not fast enough for some users while it might be to fast for others. Here is how you change the Windows 7 taskbar hover time.

Load the Windows 7 registry editor by pressing [Windows R], typing [regedit] and hitting [enter]. Navigate to the following Registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse

Locate the Registry key MouseHoverTime. It should have a default value of 400 (milliseconds). Simply double-click that entry and change the number. The thumbnail will appear faster if you enter a lower number or slower if you enter a higher one. You need to logout or restart the computer before the changes take effect.

The same menu contains several addition parameters of the mouse in Windows 7 including the double-click speed, mouse sensitivity or mouse speed.

Automatic Logon to Windows 7

2009-02-05T17:09:00.000+05:30

If you want to further speed up the Windows 7 boot process you could configure the computer system to automatically logon the user. This is especially for computer systems that are in use by only one person as it would not even be a privacy or security risk.

All that needs to be done to configure Windows 7 for automatic logon is the following:

Press Windows R. A command box should appear. Type control userpasswords2 and hit the enter key. This should display the User Accounts screen in Windows 7. Select the user account in the main table and uncheck the “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer. A click on the Apply button will open the Automatically Log On window. Enter the password and confirm it to add the password to the system so that it does not need to be entered during logon.

Windows 7 market share climbing

2009-02-05T17:08:00.000+05:30

The release of the public beta of Windows 7 has had a huge impact on the market share of the upcoming operating system. The market share climbed from 0.01% in December 08 to 0.10% in January 09 according to the market share monitoring company Net Applications. The beta was released on January 9 with distribution problems on the first few days which got sorted out later.

The 0.1% market share puts Windows 7 in front of operating systems like Windows NT, Symbian, Windows CE or Android which all got a lower market share according to Net Applications. It should however be noted that the company is monitoring websites and calculates the market share based on the values that are submitted in the headers during the connection. This explains the rather low market shares of the mobile operating systems.

The next operating systems in sight are Windows ME, Mac OS and Windows 98. The most popular opearting systems according to this study are Windows XP with more than 63% market share, Windows Vista with 22.48% and Mac OS X 10.5 with 5.28%

Enable or disable Windows 7 Administrator Account

2009-02-05T17:06:00.000+05:30

A word of caution at the beginning. It is generally not advised to tamper around with the build in administrator account of Windows 7. If you do not need it or do not know why you would need it then don’t. Here is a quick rundown on how to enable or disable the Windows 7 administrator account.

The easiest way to enable or disable the Windows 7 build in administrator account is from the command line. Open a command prompt with administrator rights. This is done by right-clicking on the command prompt icon in the Windows 7 start menu and selecting Run As Administrator from the available options.

To enable the Windows 7 administrator account:

net user administrator /active:yes

To disable the Windows 7 administrator account:

net user administrator /active:no

To change the password of the Windows 7 administrator account:

Net user administrator password

An alternative would be to enable or disable the Windows 7 administrator account using the Local Security Policy option. You can open the Local Security Policy by launching secpol.msc from the run box.

You find the option under Local Policies-> Security Options. Just change the setting Accounts: Administrator account by double-clicking the entry

Microsoft’s worst nightmare: Windows 7 deemed less secure than Vista

2009-02-05T09:24:00.002+05:30

While Microsoft officials won’t say it (at least not publicly), one of Windos 7’s main selling points is likely to be that it’s the “anti-Vista.” It will be faster, smaller, more reliable and… less secure?

If Microsoft continues on its current path regarding one of Windows 7’s components — the User Account Control (UAC) feature — the company might find itself in the regrettable place where Windows 7 could be less secure than Vista, according to some testers.

Two Windows enthusiast bloggers, Long Zheng and Rafael Rivera, have now discovered not one, but two, seemingly severe exploit channels in the UAC setting that is currently set as the default for Windows 7. The first exploit they publicized (after talking to Microsoft privately about it) allows malware to turn off UAC; the other allows malware to auto-elevate without notifying the user. To date, Microsoft’s response is that the new UAC default is set the way it is “by design” and isn’t problematic.

I asked Microsoft again on February 3 if it was still standing by its statement that the UAC default setting for Windows 7 is fine as is. Microsoft declined to let me speak to anyone directly and instead provided this statement (in the form of these bullet points):
“This is not a vulnerability. The intent of the default configuration of UAC is that users don’t get prompted when making changes to Windows settings. This includes changing the UAC prompting level.
Microsoft has received a great deal of usability feedback on UAC prompting behavior in UAC, and has made changes in accordance with user feedback.
UAC is a feature designed to enable users to run software at user (non-admin) rights, something we refer to as Standard User. Running software as standard user improves security reduces TCO.
The only way this could be changed without the user’s knowledge is by malicious code already running on the box.
In order for malicious code to have gotten on to the box, something else has already been breached (or the user has explicitly consented)”

I am not a security or a Windows internal expert. But I asked someone who knows a thing or two about how Windows works. He asked to remain anonymous. He said the current Windows 7 UAC setting is flawed in its design. It should not prompt only for non-Windows binaries (which is the default Windows 7 setting).

“The issue is that things, like the WSH (Windows Script Host), are part of windows and if a scripting host or other ‘Windows’ component, like WSH or Power Shell, can be used by malicious software to drive the UI, it is trivial to pull off an exploit like this. This is a major problem though as in its current form, Win 7 is potentially far less capable in its default configuration, at stopping drive-by malware when compared with Vista.”

In other words, if the UAC setting is allowed to stay as is, Windows 7 could be deemed less secure than Vista. Ouch.

If Microsoft’s current, wide-scale Windows 7 beta is a real beta (and not just one in name only, as I’ve argued in the past), it would follow that Microsoft is still planning to use tester feedback to alter Windows 7 in ways that will make it a better product. Yes, there is a risk that by having to go in and fix or change a feature could derail the well-finessed Windows 7 ship schedule. But isn’t the point of having outside testers look at your code to find potential problems? And isn’t improving the security of Windows still an overriding goal for the Windows team?

What’s your take? Does Microsoft need to rethink what it has done to UAC to make it less hated than it was in Vista?

Windows 7 Editions That Microsoft Forgot

2009-02-05T09:24:00.001+05:30

would come in six editions. While it sounds like Microsoft will have an edition for everyone and anyone, we feel there are a good number of other Windows 7 editions Microsoft should consider. Here are some of them, listed in no particular order.

Windows 7 XP Edition: For people who want their OS to look like XP in perpetuity. For those who want the ultimate in streamlined operating systems, Windows 7 DOS Edition would be a perfect choice.

Windows 7 Clippy Edition: Gives you lots of "helpful" advice and will offer to guide you through even the most mundane tasks with the help of friendly cartoon characters. "It appears you are trying to open a folder! Do you need help?"

Windows 7 Economic Stimulus Edition: It's very big, massively expensive, may or may not work, and includes a "bug" that adds three zeroes to all numbers. Ideally, the government will pay for a copy for every citizen.

Windows 7 I CAN HAZ OPERATING SYSTEM? Edition: Everything in the operating system would be written in lolcat form. It would allow Microsoft to cash in on the lolcat Internet meme: "SRY, U HAD ERROR. KTHXBYE." This edition would integrate The Lolcat Translator just in case you get confused.

Windows 7 Klingon Edition: Perfect for Star Trek fans everywhere, this edition would be written entirely in Klingon. It would serve as a companion product to the Lolcat edition. No Klingon-to-English translator would be included, since any self-respecting Trekkie should already be fluent in Klingon.

Windows 7 Zombie Edition: Optimizes your PC for takeover by a botnet commandante, who can then streamline instructions for efficiency and fast performance. (This may already exist in earlier Windows OSs.)

Windows 7 LGE (Lead Generation Edition): Requires a full set of personal information from the user before it will operate, and then shares that information with interested third parties for a small fee; also removes any option to mask your identity or disable/erase cookies.

What other Windows 7 editions would you like to see from Microsoft? Post a comment below and let us know!

Windows 7 Testers Uncover Another UAC Flaw

2009-02-05T09:23:00.000+05:30

Two Windows 7 testers claim they've found a second glitch in the Windows 7 beta's default security configuration that could let malware automatically elevate itself to full administrative privileges without triggering User Account Control prompts or even shutting down UAC at all.

Last week, Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) bloggers Long Zheng and Rafael Rivera published simple proof-of-concept code that automatically disables UAC in Windows 7 without any user interaction. On Wednesday, Zheng and Rivera published details on a second UAC flaw in the Windows 7 beta that stems from the OS being set up to automatically elevate Microsoft-signed applications and code in order to minimize UAC alerts.

The problem, according to Zheng, is that some of these trusted, Microsoft-signed applications are designed to execute third-party code for legitimate reasons, which allows attackers to create malware that exploits their trusted status.

"Unfortunately, this flaw is not just a single point of failure. The breadth of Windows executables is just too many and too diverse, and many are exploitable," Zheng wrote.

Microsoft denied that the first UAC flaw was actually a flaw, claiming that the only way UAC could be changed without the user's knowledge was if malicious code was already running on the box.

Microsoft is still investigating the second UAC flaw, said a spokesperson who declined to comment further. However, both Zheng and Rivera reported hearing rumors that the second UAC issue has been fixed in internal Windows 7 builds.

To illustrate the potential impact of the second UAC flaw, Rivera published a proof-of-concept that could let attackers use rundll32.exe -- one of the Microsoft-signed applications -- to execute malicious code on a PC with full administrative privileges.

Zheng recommended that Windows 7 beta users set their UAC settings to 'high' in order to minimize the danger for both flaws. However, that makes UAC in the Windows 7 beta behave in the same overly chatty fashion it did in Vista, which once again highlights the difficulty of balancing security and usability concerns.

While Windows 7 is expected to hew to the same high security standards as Vista, security experts are watching Microsoft's response to the UAC issues closely, and some are beginning to take issue with how the software giant is responding to the UAC reports.

Microsoft: All Windows 7 Editions to Run on Netbooks

2009-02-05T09:18:00.000+05:30

Microsoft Tuesday unveiled a plan to release six editions of Windows 7 and said all of them will run on a range of hardware, including netbooks.

However, the company is emphasizing two main SKUs (stock-keeping units) of the forthcoming OS -- Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional -- saying these are the ones most customers will buy, according to information posted on Microsoft's Web site.

With Windows 7, Microsoft hopes it will be easier for customers to decide which edition of the OS is right for them. By doing so, the company once again seems to be trying to learn from mistakes it made with the release of Windows Vista, premium versions of which had special hardware requirements that hindered customers' transition from XP and confused users as to which edition they should purchase.

When Microsoft released Vista, premium versions such as Windows Vista Ultimate and Windows Vista Home Premium did not run on many PCs that already were running Windows XP. Microsoft tried to give hardware partners and customers fair warning of this and through a controversial program had OEMs put stickers on new PCs to let customers know which version of Vista those machines could run.

Still, many customers did not feel Vista hardware requirements were communicated effectively and Microsoft is still embroiled in a class-action suit over that sticker program, called "Windows Vista Capable."

In addition to Home Premium and Professional, Windows 7 will come in the following editions that mirror Vista's SKUs: Windows 7 Starter; Windows 7 Home Basic; Windows 7 Enterprise; and Windows 7 Ultimate.

Microsoft is recommending either Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional for most of its customers, it said.

Windows 7 Home Premium is for the average user and Windows 7 Professional -- replacing Windows Vista Business -- is for small businesses and people who work at home but have to operate in an IT-managed or business environment with security and productivity concerns, the company said.

Windows 7 Starter is a limited-functionality version of the OS that will be available worldwide but only as a pre-install by OEMs (original equipment manufacturers). This expansion of its availability -- Vista Starter was only available in emerging markets -- led one blogger to surmise that Windows 7 Starter is the version Microsoft will push for the netbook market.

"This version will only be sold through PC makers to users," wrote Paul Thurrott on the popular SuperSite for Windows blog, which has a list of SKUs and the differences in functionality. "This suggests that netbook makers will choose this version, even in the US."

Windows 7 Enterprise is Microsoft's SKU for its enterprise customers, while PC enthusiasts that "want it all," according to Microsoft, should purchase Windows 7 Ultimate.

Like Vista, Windows 7 also will have Home Basic edition that will only be sold in emerging PC markets "for customers looking for an entry-point Windows experience on a full-size value PC," according to Microsoft.

Making all editions of Windows 7 available on small form-factor PCs, widely known as netbooks, is an especially strategic move for Microsoft, as the same was not true for Vista.

Netbooks, also called mini-notebooks because they are smaller than typical PCs, have become an important segment of the PC market, the overall growth of which has been stunted by the current global economic crisis. In fact, Microsoft blamed sales of netbooks partially for missing its financial guidance for its fiscal second-quarter earnings last month, saying the sale of these devices cut into the PC market.

Because of its hardware footprint, it is difficult to run Vista on netbooks, which mainly run XP or Linux. Having Windows 7 running on these devices will give users an upgrade path from XP and should put Microsoft on surer footing in that market.

Vista also had six SKUs, and features, functionality and hardware requirements differed among them.

This is also true of Windows 7 editions, with the premium versions having more features and functionality than the basic versions. However, Microsoft said it plans to remove some disparities between the different SKUs of Windows 7 by making them all a "superset of one another," so if people decide they want to upgrade from, for example, Home Premium to Professional, they won't lose any functionality from their previous version in that transition, it said.

"With Windows 7 there is a more natural progression from one edition to the next," Microsoft said.

Microsoft has targeted late this year or early next year for the release of Windows 7. The OS is currently in its first public beta, but Microsoft said last week there would be no beta 2, as there typically is with its software products. Instead, the next release of Windows 7 will be a nearly completed release candidate.

XP to Windows 7 'Upgrade' Scheme Announced

2009-02-05T09:16:00.001+05:30

Microsoft will help users upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 by selling upgrade media, but warned XP users they must do a "clean" installation of Windows 7. That means all data on the XP machine will be lost.

"Regarding XP, customers can purchase upgrade media and an upgrade licence to move from Windows XP to Windows 7," a Microsoft spokeswoman told Computerworld US. "However, they will need to do a clean installation of Windows 7."

In a follow-up reply to questions, the spokeswoman fleshed out what Microsoft means by upgrade. "The 'upgrade' part is referring to the licence," she said. "You will be able to get the discounted 'upgrade' licence, but it will include full bits."

That's how David Smith, an analyst with Gartner, interpreted 'upgrade' in Microsoft's description of what it would offer XP owners. "They're talking about the upgrade price," he said, pointing out that most software vendors use the term to designate a lower-priced version aimed at existing customers.

Although Microsoft Tuesday spelled the six planned versions of Windows 7, it declined to provide pricing for them, or for the XP upgrade licences.

Typically, an operating system upgrade offers users the choice between an in-place migration of the machine - including installed applications and all data - and a fresh installation, which overwrites the hard drive's contents. When Microsoft launched Windows Vista in January 2007, for example, it offered people then running XP those upgrade paths.

Smith and other analysts applauded Microsoft's decision to not provide in-place upgrades from XP to Windows 7. "I'm not a big fan of them," said Smith. "They're tough enough from one version to the next, and from two versions [behind], it would be pretty challenging, technically."

Michael Gartenberg, formerly an analyst at JupiterResearch, and now a vice president of mobile strategy with JupiterMedia, agreed. "For most end users, it will probably mean that they end up with a more reliable installation," he said.

Microsoft benefits, too. "It makes life a lot easier for Microsoft by not having to support an XP to Windows 7 transition," said Gartenberg. "It means that it's something they can get out the door earlier."

Microsoft has been aggressively pushing Windows 7's timetable. Just two weeks after it launched the first - and in the end, the only - public beta of the new operating system, the head of Windows development said the company is moving directly to 'release candidate' directly to 'release candidate'.

But the process of upgrading a PC from Windows XP to Windows 7 won't be easy, Gartenberg predicted. "It's a double-edged sword. For many consumers who may be looking to go directly from XP to Windows 7, the idea of doing a clean install, backing up their applications, backing up their data, can lead to a lot of hassles," he said.

"Considering that there's a lot of XP out there, one has to wonder why Microsoft is taking this approach," Gartenberg added. "It's not going to be the simplicity of sticking a disc in the drive and upgrading. We'll have to see if that affects the upgrade market."

Microsoft said it was working on ways to help Windows XP users make the move, but would not get specific. "Microsoft plans to have other tools and ways to help people get through that process, but we don't have full details on that at this time," the company's spokesman said today.

Windows 7 Gets Antitrust Scrutiny

2009-02-04T17:32:00.000+05:30

Technical advisers to the antitrust regulators who monitor Microsoft Corp. 's compliance with a 2002 antitrust settlement will test Windows 7 "more thoroughly" than earlier versions of the operating system, according to a recently-released status report filed with the federal judge watching over the company.

The three-member panel of computer experts that works for state antitrust officials has had a copy of Windows 7 since at least last March , but in December 2008, Microsoft delivered additional documentation to the Technical Committee.

In the report , submitted last Wednesday to U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly , antitrust officials with the Department of Justice, 17 states and the District of Columbia said that Microsoft had given notice that "changes to the protocols in Windows 7" required 30 new and 87 revised technical documents.

Microsoft has been under a microscope since it struck a deal in 2002 that required the company to document communication protocols so that other developers, competitors included, can craft software that works smoothly with Windows clients and servers. The decree also set up the technical committee and forced Microsoft and state and federal antitrust officials to deliver regular reports to Kollar-Kotelly.

The newest report spelled out changes the committee, dubbed "TC" by the court, will make to test Windows 7, the successor to Vista.

"In light of the number of new documents that need to be reviewed, the TC is going to shift its focus to direct review of the documents by the TC's engineers as the most efficient method of identifying issues with the documentation," read the status report. "The revised strategy will enable the TC to review the new Windows 7 and system documents more thoroughly than it would otherwise, which is particularly desirable given the significance of these new documents to the project as a whole."

Originally, the consent decree Microsoft signed was to expire in November 2007. Several states objected, however, and after months of legal back-and-forth, Kollar-Kotelly in January 2008 extended her oversight by another two years, to Nov. 12, 2009.

Microsoft is also facing renewed scrutiny from the European Union , which two weeks ago filed preliminary charges against the company, accusing it of violating antitrust laws since 1996 by bundling the Internet Explorer (IE) browser with Windows.

Microsoft Denies Windows 7 UAC Vulnerability

2009-02-04T17:31:00.000+05:30

Microsoft is denying that there is a security hole in the User Account Control (UAC) feature of Windows 7 after a blogger reported it last week and posted what he said was a fix for it.

"I can tell you that this is not a vulnerability," a spokesman for Microsoft through its public relations team said in an e-mail.

Last week, Long Zheng, a long-time Microsoft watcher and blogger, wrote on his I Started Something Blog that a change Microsoft made in Windows 7 to improve the UAC security feature has left the new OS less secure because it allows someone to remotely turn the feature off without the user knowing.

Zheng said that the new UAC default setting, which does not notify a user when changes are made to Windows settings, is where the security risk lies. A change to UAC is seen as a change to a Windows setting, so a user will not be notified if UAC is disabled, which Zheng said he was able to do remotely with some keyboard shortcuts and code.

However, Microsoft is standing by the change to UAC's default setting, saying it was the result of "a great deal of usability feedback on UAC prompting behavior," and that the feature cannot be exploited unless there is already malicious code running on the machine and "something else has already been breached."

"The intent of the default configuration of UAC is that users don't get prompted when making changes to Windows settings," the spokesman said. "This includes changing the UAC prompting level."

UAC has been a controversial feature since Microsoft introduced it in Windows Vista to improve its security and give people who are the primary users of a PC more control over its applications and settings. The features prevents users without administrative privileges from making unauthorized changes to a system.

Because of how it was set up in Vista, UAC sometimes -- through a series of screen prompts -- prevents even authorized users from being able to access applications and features they should normally have access to. Microsoft vowed it would make changes to the feature to make it more user-friendly in Windows 7.

Windows 7 has been in public beta for about a month and not expected to ship until early next year. However, Microsoft said Friday the next release of the OS would be a nearly final release candidate and not another beta release, so some believe it will be out before the end of 2009.

Microsoft: Windows 7 Security 'Bug' Is a 'Feature'

2009-02-04T17:30:00.000+05:30

Microsoft insisted Monday that what outsiders have called a "security flaw" in Windows 7 is not a bug, but the way the new operating system is meant to work.

Last week, Rafael Rivera , a developer for a Virginia-based company that sells secure messaging software to the U.S. government, and Long Zheng, a well-known blogger who writes "I Started Something," argued that a change to User Account Control (UAC) in Windows 7 could be exploited by attackers to secretly disable the feature.

UAC, which debuted in Windows Vista , is a security feature that prompts users for their consent before tasks such as program and device driver installation are allowed. The feature has been roundly criticized since Vista's launch, primarily for too-frequent nagging. Even Microsoft acknowledged UAC's problems last year when it named it one of the five factors that contributed to Vista's slow adoption pace.

In Windows 7, UAC has been modified to pop up alerts less often. It also, said Rivera and Long, has been changed so that by default the feature is set to "Don't notify me when I make changes to Windows settings."

"Windows 7 now ships with UAC configured to hide prompts when users change Windows settings," noted Rivera in a post to his blog on Friday. "While this mode still ensures normal applications can't overwrite your entire registry, Microsoft made a boo-boo in allowing users to change any Windows setting without any prompts.

"Yes, you can even change UAC settings, allow[ing] applications free reign in elevated mode, after the required restart," Rivera continued.

The danger, Rivera and Long said, is that attackers can easily disable UAC -- one of Microsoft's most heavily-promoted security features in the last two years -- without involving the user, and -- since by default Windows 7 doesn't warn when such changes are made -- without the user's knowledge.

The pair created a proof-of-concept script that disables UAC, and posted it online.

"We soon realized the implications are even worse than originally thought," said Long. "You could automate a restart after UAC has been changed, add a program to the user's Startup folder and because UAC is now off, run with full administrative privileges ready to wreak havoc."

Microsoft disagreed with Rivera's and Long's conclusion.

"This is not a vulnerability," said a Microsoft spokesman in an e-mail. "The intent of the default configuration of UAC is that users don't get prompted when making changes to Windows settings. This [includes] changing the UAC prompting level."

The spokesman went on to say that the changes to UAC in Windows 7 were based on feedback Microsoft received from users, and noted that a script such as the one Rivera and Long created could only gain entry to a PC if the user downloaded and ran it, or if it was introduced as part of a broader attack. "In order for malicious code to have gotten on to the box," the spokesman continued, "something else [must have] already been breached, or the user has explicitly consented," the spokesman said.

Andrew Storms , director of security operations at nCircle Network Security Inc., took Microsoft's side in the discussion. "I would agree [that] it is functioning as designed," said Storms via instant messaging. "The word 'vulnerability' is probably misplaced in this case. [And] the point is that it had to have gotten on there and run by something...a user clicking, some third-party software, etc."

The Microsoft spokesman declined to answer a question about whether the company would alter UAC behavior in Windows 7 as it moves from beta to the next milestone, a release candidate. Long, however, noted that on the official feedback forum for Windows 7 beta testers, Microsoft has hinted that it will not change the UAC default settings.

In a follow-up entry posted Saturday , Long remained mystified by Microsoft's reluctance to address the issue. "What I do not understand is how they are treating the seriousness of this problem," he said. "Microsoft's argument is entirely based on the user, which I agree to an extent -- they have to download and execute such an application, but remember, this can be a low-privileged application so it would have no warnings whatsoever.

"How could a low-privileged application be[ing] able to turn off the entire privileged-applications security-layer not be a security flaw?" he asked.

Users can protect themselves by simply resetting UAC settings to the "Always notify" option. "Annoying, but safe," said Long.

To change UAC's settings in Windows 7, locate the control panel -- typing "UAC" in the Start menu's search field is the fastest way to bring it up -- then drag the slider up to the "Always notify" mark. Click OK.

Microsoft launched a public beta of Windows 7 three weeks ago, and recently extended the download deadline to Feb. 10.

Windows 7: Which Edition is Right For You?

2009-02-04T17:29:00.000+05:30

Microsoft has confirmed the existence of six separate Windows 7 versions. That's identical to what launched with Windows Vista, although you won't likely see Windows 7 Home Basic appearing on your local store shelves. Nor might you be able to use Windows 7 Starter, depending on where you live and the hardware you're intending to run it on.

Confused? Here's a full breakdown of Windows 7 shipped editions, ordered by complexity:
Windows 7 Starter

Lacks: Aero enhancements, the ability to run more than three simultaneous programs at once*, HomeGroup creation, full mobility capabilities

Available: Emerging markets only, only installed on OEM-specific machines and limited to certain kinds of hardware

*Ignores background applications like file backup utilities, but will trigger if you actually open up the backup program
Windows 7 Home Basic

Lacks: Aero enhancements, live thumbnail previews, Internet connection sharing

Available: Emerging markets only (no U.S., Western Europe, Japan, and other developed countries)
Windows 7 Home Premium

Includes: Aero enhancements, multi-touch capability, media functionality for playing movies and burning DVDs, and the ability to create home network groups

Available: Worldwide!
Windows 7 Professional

Includes: Enhanced networking features like domain join, advanced backup, location-aware printing, and offline folders, as well as Mobility Center and Presentation Mode.

Available: Worldwide!
Windows 7 Enterprise

Includes: Branch Cache, DirectAccess, BitLocker, AppLocker, boot from VHD support

Available: Volume licensing only
Windows 7 Ultimate

Includes: Everything. The whole enchilada. Just not any Ultimate extras--Microsoft has scrapped the notion of these extended add-ons for its future operating systems.

Available: Limited availability
What to Get and How to Install It

Microsoft intends for Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional to be the two editions that most consumers are apt to pick up. Your Average Joe should target the former, whereas small business-themed customers will want to opt for the latter. Microsoft has yet to offer its official suggestions for or hardware recommendations for the operating systems, so stay tuned. However, Microsoft alleges that the various editions of Windows 7 will be able to run on a "very broad set of hardware, from small-notebook PCs (sometimes referred to as netbooks) to full gaming desktops."

Microsoft has yet to announce price points for any of the Windows 7 products. Upgrading from a lesser Windows 7 version to a more meaty variety will be handled through Microsoft's electronic upgrade capabilities. Going from a standard Vista Home Basic or Home Premium install to Windows 7 won't require a reformat of any kind. According to Windows guru Paul Thurrott, the new operating system can be installed right overtop of these Vista editions without complications. Going from XP to Windows 7 will require a clean installation, as will jumping from a 32-bit Windows 7 installation to a 64-bit installation.

Ten Windows 7 Editions on the Cards

2009-02-01T11:29:00.001+05:30

How many editions will Windows 7 come in? A recent beta release of Windows 7 lists five versions during the installation process:

Windows 7 Starter Edition: a stripped-down version for customers in developing countries running underpowered hardware that has been around since XP

Windows 7 Home Basic: the controversial low-end consumer flavour introduced with Vista that Microsoft apparently debated whether or not to release

Windows 7 Home Premium: also introduced with Vista

Windows 7 Ultimate: introduced with Vista, the loaded-with-goodies version aimed at hard-core hobbyists

Windows 7 Business: introduced with Vista as the replacement to Professional for corporate use.

A Microsoft spokeswoman confirmed the five version names in the Windows 7 beta, but said they were only "preliminary".

"We will continue to take customer feedback from the beta test period into account as we refine the SKU set for Windows 7 and will share more information when we are further along the development path," the spokeswoman said.

Windows 7 installation guide

2009-01-24T16:36:00.005+05:30

Provogue:

Before doing anything, Backup all your data for safety. It is always better to install Windows 7 as a whole new OS. But if you need, you can dual boot the same. For dual boot option, You should run the DVD after loggin into the older OS.

Upgrade Note: One cannot upgrade from XP to Windows 7.

What you'll need:

A DVD burner, and a blank DVD
Minimal system requirements per Microsoft:
1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor
1 GB of system memory
16 GB of available disk space
Support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128 MB memory (in order to enable Aero theme)

Installation:

To install Windows 7, you'll need to pop in the DVD you just burned, restart your computer, and boot from the DVD.

First, you'll pick your language, time, currency, and keyboard in an environment that looks very much like Vista's. Clicking Install Now will set things into motion.

After accepting the License Terms (which I did not scrutinize — I'm guessing someone else will!), you pick your installation option (Upgrade or Custom – I picked Custom for obvious reasons). Next, you're prompted to choose your partition.

Important: Unless you don't care about your Vista installation, make sure you pick the newly-created partition! for dual booting. Or else, just select the drive (most probably C:) you want to install and go further.

In what looks like Vista's installation process, you'll be going through "copying files", "expanding files", "installing features", "Installing updates", and "Completing installations." Be prepared for a restart (in which the newly-created boot menu behaves perfectly). Next, setup "is starting services" – and then you'll have time to go get a drink or two... or three... or four...

If you're into nice graphics, the Windows 7 logo may impress you (I sure liked the "Starting Windows" graphics!) — if not, you'll just have to sit through the "setup is preparing your computer for first use" and "checking video performance" screens.

Next — and this is where things actually start happening — you get to enter your username and a computer name (no password yet). Next, you enter the product key (you did get one, right!?!), upon which you're urged to "Automatically activate Windows when I'm online."

The "Setup Windows" screen will be familiar to anyone using Vista, with options to have Windows "help protect your computer."

A reboot will bring up the quintessential boot menu, and you'll be prompted for your "computer's current location" (Home, Work, or Public). Next, the "Homegroup" question is up (more on that later), and that's it: you've got Windows 7 running.

Note: The beta expires on August 1, 2009

Windows 7 FAQ: https://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-faq.aspx

Make Windows 7 genuine in 5 seconds

2009-01-18T09:42:00.004+05:30

Get your Windows 7 copy genuine within 5 seconds or in a boot (Though timing may vary as my rig is a Super Fast Mean Machine). Just download the link and follow the instructions.

Download Patch

Windows 7 Release Candidate Expected For April Release

2009-01-18T09:40:00.001+05:30

The first and only release candidate of Windows 7 is expected to be released in April 2009 according to a news post on wzor.net which are citing Microsoft sources. The OEM of Windows 7 is aiming for an autumn release while the final retail release is expected to be available at the beginning of the Christmas season.

The latest known official builds of windows 7 are build 7015 and 7016 that have been created on 4.1.2009 and 12.1.2009. Build strings for those releases are 7015.fbl_multimedia_media.090104-1750 and 7016.0.090105-1500.

Windows 7 Not Recognizing DVD Drive

2009-01-18T09:39:00.000+05:30

a strange problem after upgrading to Windows 7. Some of the connected DVD drives where not recognized by Windows 7. The devices where listed in the device manager with a yellow exclamation mark displaying that there were problems with digital signings.

Windows cannot verify the digital signature for the drivers required for this device. A recent hardware or software change might have installed a file that is signed incorrectly or damaged, or that might be malicious software from an unknown source. (Code 52)

The workaround that helped all users in the forum was to press F8 during boot to turn of digital signing. This would load the drivers for the drives and they could be used normally. This is on the other hand not a perfect solution. To fix the problem that dvd drives are not recognized in Windows 7 permanently do the following:

Option 1:

1. Press Windows R, type regedit and press enter.

2. Open the Registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

3. In the right pane, right-click UpperFilters, and then click Delete.

4. Click Yes to confirm the removal of the UpperFilters registry entry.

5. In the right pane, right-click LowerFilters, and then click Delete.

6. Click Yes to confirm the removal of the LowerFilters registry entry.

7. Exit Registry Editor, and then restart the computer.

Note After you remove the UpperFilters registry entry and the LowerFilters registry entry, you may lose functionality in certain programs such as CD recording programs. In this scenario, you must reinstall any affected programs. If the problem recurs, contact the program vendor to determine whether an update is available for the program.

Option 2:

Click on Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Right click Command Prompt -> Run as administrator.

Paste the following line and hit enter afterwards

bcdedit /set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS

This should solve the problem of DVD drives not being recognized in Windows 7.

Dual Boot Partition Not Showing In Windows 7

2009-01-18T09:38:00.000+05:30

If you install Windows 7 on another hard drive or partition on your computer system you might notice that the partition of the other operating system is not showing up in Windows 7. This happened to a dual boot system on a test laptop with Windows Vista being the initial system and Windows 7 being installed on another partition.

The reason for this is that the drive letter of the Windows Vista partition is not assigned in Windows 7 meaning the Vista partition does not have a drive letter and can therefor not be displayed in Windows 7. Here is how to fix that.

Click the Windows key, enter diskmgmt.msc and press the enter key. This will open the Disk Management interface that is displaying all connected hard drives and partitions.

All you need to do is to select the partition with the missing drive letter in the lower half of the screen (where it say Disk 0, Disk 1 and so on) and right-click it.

Select Change Drive Letter And Path from the context menu. Click on the Add button in the next menu and pick a drive letter from the pulldown menu.

A click on OK finishes the processes and the Windows Vista partition (or any other that was missing) should now be visible in Windows Explorer.

The Bumper List of Windows 7 Secrets

2009-01-14T16:03:00.001+05:30

The Bumper List of Windows 7 Secrets
It’s great to see Windows 7 Beta finally released to the world! We're very proud of what has been accomplished over the last months; in many ways, it sets a new quality bar for a beta operating system release. Building on top of the Windows Vista foundation, Windows 7 adds a great deal of polish and refinement to both the user interface and the underlying architecture, while at the same time introducing many new features and improvements that support new hardware, give power users and casual users alike better tools to manage their digital lives, and enable new classes of application experience.

Over future blog entries, I’ll spend time drilling into some of those areas in more detail; of course, there are plenty of articles already out there that dissect Windows 7 in some depth, with the Windows SuperSite and Ars Technica providing notably comprehensive entries. I’d also like to draw particular attention to the series of Windows 7 interviews that Yochay Kiriaty has been posting on Channel 9, which give the inside scoop on the development of many of the most significant new features.

For now, though, I want to focus in on some of “secrets” of Windows 7: the many little tweaks and enhancements that we’ve made in this release that I’ve discovered and collated over the last few months of using Windows 7 across my home and work machines. These are the things that are too small to appear in any marketing document as “features”, but that you quickly miss when you switch to an older version of Windows. There are some who think that we’re arbitrarily hiding functionality to make Windows easy for casual users, but I’d argue that a great deal of effort has been put into this release to satisfy power users. In homage to those of us who enjoy discovering the nooks and crannies of a new operating system list, I’ve put together the longest blog post that I’ve ever written. If you’ve downloaded and installed Windows 7 Beta recently, I think you’ll enjoy this list of my thirty favorite secrets. Have fun!

Windows Management. By now, you’ve probably seen that Windows 7 does a lot to make window management easier: you can “dock” a window to the left or right half of the screen by simply dragging it to the edge; similarly, you can drag the window to the top of the screen to maximize it, and double-click the window top / bottom border to maximize it vertically with the same horizontal width. What you might not know is that all these actions are also available with keyboard shortcuts:
Win+Left Arrow and Win+Right Arrow dock;
Win+Up Arrow and Win+Down Arrow maximizes and restores / minimizes;
Win+Shift+Up Arrow and Win+Shift+Down Arrow maximizes and restores the vertical size.
This side-by-side docking feature is particularly invaluable on widescreen monitors – it makes the old Windows way of shift-clicking on two items in the taskbar and then using the context menu to arrange them feel really painful.

Display Projection. Had enough of messing around with weird and wonderful OEM display driver utilities to get your notebook display onto an external projector? In that case, you’ll be pleased to know that projection is really quick and simple with Windows 7. Just hit Win+P, and you’ll be rewarded by the following pop-up window:

Use the arrow keys (or keep hitting Win+P) to switch to “clone”, “extend” or “external only” display settings. You can also access the application as displayswitch.exe.

If you want broader control over presentation settings, you can also press Win+X to open the Windows Mobility Center, which allows you to turn on a presentation “mode” that switches IM clients to do not disturb, disables screensavers, sets a neutral wallpaper etc. (Note that this feature is also available in Windows Vista.)

Cut Out The Clutter. Working on a document in a window and want to get rid of all the extraneous background noise? Simply hit Win+Home to minimize all the non-active background windows, keeping the window you’re using in its current position. When you’re ready, simply press Win+Home again to restore the background windows to their original locations.

Multi-Monitor Windows Management. The earlier tip on window management showed how you can dock windows within a monitor. One refinement of those shortcuts is that you can use Win+Shift+Left Arrow and Win+Shift+Right Arrow to move windows from one monitor to another – keeping them in the same relative location to the monitor’s top-left origin.

Command Junkies Only. One of the most popular power toys in Windows XP was “Open Command Prompt Here”, which enabled you to use the graphical shell to browse around the file system and then use the context menu to open a command prompt at the current working directory. In Windows 7 (and in Windows Vista, incidentally – although not many folk knew about it), you can simply hold the Shift key down while selecting the context menu to get exactly the same effect. If the current working directory is a network location, it will automatically map a drive letter for you.

It’s a Global Village. If you’ve tried to change your desktop wallpaper, you’ve probably noticed that there’s a set of wallpapers there that match the locale you selected when you installed Windows. (If you picked US, you’ll see beautiful views of Crater Lake in Oregon, the Arches National Park, a beach in Hawai’i, etc.) In fact, there are several sets of themed wallpapers installed based on the language you choose, but the others are in a hidden directory. If you’re feeling in an international mood, simply browse to C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT and you’ll see a series of pictures under the Wallpaper directory for each country. Just double-click on the theme file in the Theme directory to display a rotation through all the pictures for that country. (Note that some countries contain a generic set of placeholder art for now.)

The Black Box Recorder. Every developer wishes there was a way that an end-users could quickly and simply record a repro for the problem that they’re running into that is unique to their machine. Windows 7 comes to the rescue! Part of the in-built diagnostic tools that we use internally to send feedback on the product, the Problem Steps Recorder provides a simple screen capture tool that enables you to record a series of actions. Once you hit “record”, it tracks your mouse and keyboard and captures screenshots with any comments you choose to associate alongside them. Once you stop recording, it saves the whole thing to a ZIP file, containing an HTML-based “slide show” of the steps. It’s a really neat little tool and I can’t wait for it to become ubiquitous on every desktop! The program is called psr.exe; you can also search for it from Control Panel under “Record steps to reproduce a problem”.

The Font of All Knowledge. Long Zheng will be happy: we’ve got rid of the Add Fonts dialog that has served Windows faithfully for the last twenty years. (Of course, for most of that time, it’s been deprecated – the easy way to install a set of fonts has simply been to drag them into the Fonts folder via Control Panel.) But now font installation is really easy – we’ve added an “Install” button to the font viewer applet that takes care of the installation process:

There are lots of other new features built into Windows 7 that will satisfy those of a typographic bent, incidentally – grouping multiple weights together, the ability to hide fonts based on regional settings, a new text rendering engine built into the DirectWrite API, and support in the Font common file dialog for more than the four “standard” weights. For example:

Gabriola. As well as the other typographic features mentioned above, Windows 7 includes Gabriola, an elaborate display type from the Tiro Typeworks foundry that takes advantage of OpenType Layout to provide a variety of stylistic sets, flourishes and ornamentation ligatures:

Who Stole My Browser? If you feel like Internet Explorer is taking a long time to load your page, it’s worth taking a look at the add-ons you have installed. One of the more helpful little additions in Internet Explorer 8 is instrumentation for add-on initialization, allowing you to quickly see whether you’re sitting around waiting for plug-ins to load. Just click Tools / Manage Add-ons, and then scroll right in the list view to see the load time. On my machine, I noticed that the Research add-on that Office 2007 installs was a particular culprit, and since I never use it, it was simple to disable it from the same dialog box.

Rearranging the Furniture. Unless you’ve seen it demonstrated, you may not know that the icons in the new taskbar aren’t fixed in-place. You can reorder them to suit your needs, whether they’re pinned shortcuts or running applications. What’s particularly nice is that once they’re reordered, you can start a new instance of any of the first five icons by pressing Win+1, Win+2, Win+3 etc. I love that I can quickly fire up a Notepad2 instance on my machine with a simple Win+5 keystroke, for instance.

What’s less well-known is that you can similarly drag the system tray icons around to rearrange their order, or move them in and out of the hidden icon list. It’s an easy way to customize your system to show the things you want, where you want them.

Installing from a USB Memory Stick. My wife has a Samsung NC10 netbook (very nice machine, by the way), and we wanted to install Windows 7 Beta on this machine to replace the pre-installed Windows XP environment. Like most netbook-class devices, this machine has no built-in media drive, and nor did I have an external USB DVD drive available to boot off. The solution: I took a spare 4GB USB 2.0 thumbdrive, reformatted it as FAT32, and simply copied the contents of the Windows 7 Beta ISO image to the memory stick using xcopy e:\ f:\ /e /f (where e: was the DVD drive and f: was the removable drive location). Not only was it easy to boot and install from the thumbdrive, it was also blindingly fast: quicker than the corresponding DVD install on my desktop machine.

It’s also worth noting in passing that Windows 7 is far better suited to a netbook than any previous operating system: it has a much lighter hard drive and memory footprint than Windows Vista, while also being able to optimize for solid state drives (for example, it switches off disk defragmentation since random read access is as fast as sequential read access, and it handles file deletions differently to minimize wear on the solid state drive).

I Want My Quick Launch Toolbar Back! You might have noticed that the old faithful Quick Launch toolbar is not only disabled by default in Windows 7, it’s actually missing from the list of toolbars. As is probably obvious, the concept of having a set of pinned shortcut icons is now integrated directly into the new taskbar. Based on early user interface testing, we think that the vast majority of users out there (i.e. not the kind of folk who read this blog, with the exception of my mother) will be quite happy with the new model, but if you’re after the retro behavior, you’ll be pleased to know that the old shortcuts are all still there. To re-enable it, do the following:
Right-click the taskbar, choose Toolbars / New Toolbar
In the folder selection dialog, enter the following string and hit OK:
%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
Turn off the “lock the taskbar” setting, and right-click on the divider. Make sure that “Show text” and “Show title” are disabled and the view is set to “small icons”.
Use the dividers to rearrange the toolbar ordering to choice, and then lock the taskbar again.
If it’s not obvious by the semi-tortuous steps above, it’s worth noting that this isn’t something we’re exactly desperate for folks to re-enable, but it’s there if you really need it for some reason. Incidentally, we’d love you to really try the new model first and give us feedback on why you felt the new taskbar didn’t suit your needs.

It’s a Drag. Much play has been made of the Jump Lists feature in Windows 7, allowing applications like Windows Live Messenger to offer an easy task-based entry point. Jump lists replace the default right-click context menu in the new taskbar; another way to access them (particularly useful if you’re running Windows 7 on a one-button MacBook) is by left-clicking and dragging up in a kind of “swooshing” motion. This was designed for touch-enabled devices like the beautiful HP TouchSmart all-in-one PC, where the same gesture applies.

Another place where you can “swoosh” (not an official Microsoft term) is the IE 8 address bar, where the downward drag gesture brings up an expanded list containing the browser history, favorites and similar entries. The slower you drag, the cooler the animation!

Standards Support. Every review of Windows 7 that I’ve seen has noted the revamped WordPad and Paint applets that add an Office-like ribbon to expose their functionality. Few, however, have noticed one small but hopefully appreciated feature: WordPad can now read and write both the Word 2007-compatible Office Open XML file format but also the OpenDocument specification that IBM and Sun have been advocating:

Windows Vista-Style Taskbar. I wasn’t initially a fan of the Windows 7 taskbar when it was first introduced in early Windows 7 builds, but as the design was refined in the run up to the beta, I was converted and now actively prefer the new look, particularly when I’ve got lots of windows open simultaneously. For those who really would prefer a look more reminiscent of Windows Vista, the good news is that it’s easy to customize the look of the taskbar to more closely mirror the old version:

To achieve this look, right-click on the taskbar and choose the properties dialog. Select the “small icons” checkbox and under the “taskbar buttons” setting, choose “combine when taskbar is full”. It’s not pixel-perfect in accuracy, but it’s close from a functionality point of view.

Peeking at the Desktop. While we’re on the taskbar, it’s worth noting a few subtleties. You’ve probably seen the small rectangle in the bottom right hand corner: this is the feature we call “Aero Peek”, which enables you to see any gadgets or icons you’ve got on your desktop. I wanted to note that there’s a keyboard shortcut that does the same thing – just press Win+Space.

Running with Elevated Rights. Want to quickly launch a taskbar-docked application as an administrator? It’s easy – hold down Ctrl+Shift while you click on the icon, and you’ll immediately launch it with full administrative rights (assuming your account has the necessary permissions, of course!)

One More of the Same, Please. I’ve seen a few folk caught out by this one. If you’ve already got an application open on your desktop (for example, a command prompt window), and you want to open a second instance of the same application, you don’t have to go back to the start menu. You can simply hold down the Shift key while clicking on the taskbar icon, and it will open a new instance of the application rather than switching to the existing application. For a keyboard-free shortcut, you can middle-click with the third mouse button to do the same thing. (This trick assumes that your application supports multiple running instances, naturally.)

Specialized Windows Switching. Another feature that power users will love is the ability to do a kind of “Alt+Tab” switching across windows that belong to just one application. For example, if you’ve got five Outlook message windows open along with ten other windows, you can quickly tab through just the Outlook windows by holding down the Ctrl key while you repeatedly click on the single Outlook icon. This will toggle through each of the five Outlook windows in order, and is way faster than opening Alt+Tab and trying to figure out which of the tiny thumbnail images relates to the specific message you’re trying to find.

Walking Through the Taskbar. Another “secret” Windows shortcut: press Win+T to move the focus to the taskbar. Once you’re there, you can use the arrow keys to select a particular window or group and then hit Enter to launch or activate it. As ever, you can cancel out of this mode by hitting the Esc key. I don’t know for sure, but I presume this shortcut was introduced for those with accessibility needs. However, it’s equally valuable to power users – another good reason for all developers to care about ensuring their code is accessible.

The Widescreen Tip. Almost every display sold these days is widescreen, whether you’re buying a notebook computer or a monitor. While it might be great for watching DVDs, when you’re trying to get work done it can sometimes feel like you’re a little squeezed for vertical space.

As a result, the first thing I do when I set up any new computer is to dock the taskbar to the left hand side of the screen. I can understand why we don’t set this by default – can you imagine the complaints from enterprise IT departments who have to retrain all their staff – but there’s no reason why you as a power user should have to suffer from default settings introduced when the average screen resolution was 800x600.

In the past, Windows did an indifferent job of supporting “side dockers” like myself. Sure, you could move the taskbar, but it felt like an afterthought – the gradients would be wrong, the Start menu had a few idiosyncrasies, and you’d feel like something of a second-class citizen. The Windows 7 taskbar feels almost as if it was designed with vertical mode as the default – the icons work well on the side of the screen, shortcuts like the Win+T trick mentioned previously automatically switch from left/right arrows to up/down arrows, and so on. The net effect is that you wind up with a much better proportioned working space.

Try it – in particular, if you’ve got a netbook computer that has a 1024x600 display, you’ll immediately appreciate the extra space for browsing the Internet. For the first day you’ll feel a little out of sync, but then I guarantee you’ll become an enthusiastic convert!

Pin Your Favorite Folders. If you’re always working in the same four or five folders, you can quickly pin them with the Explorer icon on the taskbar. Hold the right-click button down and drag the folder to the taskbar, and it will be automatically pinned in the Explorer Jump List.

Starting Explorer from “My Computer”. If you spend more time manipulating files outside of the documents folders than inside, you might want to change the default starting directory for Windows Explorer so that it opens at the Computer node:

To do this, navigate to Windows Explorer in the Start Menu (it’s in the Accessories folder). Then edit the properties and change the target to read:
%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /root,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}

If you want the change to affect the icon on the taskbar, you’ll need to unpin and repin it to the taskbar so that the new shortcut takes affect. It’s worth noting that Win+E will continue to display the documents library as the default view: I’ve not found a way to change this from the shell at this time.

ClearType Text Tuning and Display Color Calibration. If you want to tune up your display for image or text display, we have the tools included out of the box. It’s amazing what a difference this makes: by slightly darkening the color of the text and adjusting the gamma back a little, my laptop display looks much crisper than it did before. You’d adjust the brightness and contrast settings on that fancy 42” HDTV you’ve just bought: why wouldn’t you do the same for the computer displays that you stare at every day?

Check out cttune.exe and dccw.exe respectively, or run the applets from Control Panel.

ISO Burning. Easy to miss if you’re not looking for it: you can double-click on any DVD or CD .ISO image and you’ll see a helpful little applet that will enable you to burn the image to a blank disc. No more grappling for shareware utilities of questionable parentage!

Windows Movie Maker. Windows 7 doesn’t include a movie editing tool – it’s been moved to the Windows Live Essentials package, along with Photo Gallery, Mail and Messenger. Unfortunately, Windows Live Movie Maker is currently still in an early beta that is missing most of the old feature set (we’re reworking the application), and so you might be feeling a little bereft of options. It goes without saying that we intend to have a better solution by the time we ship Windows 7, but in the meantime the best solution for us early adopters is to use Windows Movie Maker 2.6 (which is essentially the same as the most recent update to the Windows XP version). It’s missing the full set of effects and transitions from the Windows Vista version, and doesn’t support HD editing, but it’s pretty functional for the typical usage scenario of home movie editing.

Download Windows Movie Maker 2.6 from here:
http://microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d6ba5972-328e-4df7-8f9d-068fc0f80cfc

Hiding the Windows Live Messenger Icon. Hopefully your first act after Windows 7 setup completed was to download and install the Windows Live Essentials suite of applications (if not, then you’re missing out on a significant part of the Windows experience). If you’re a heavy user of IM, you may love the way that Windows Live Messenger is front and central on the taskbar, where you can easily change status and quickly send an IM to someone:

On the other hand, you may prefer to keep Windows Live Messenger in the system tray where it’s been for previous releases. If so, you can fool the application into the old style of behavior. To do this, close Windows Live Messenger, edit the shortcut properties and set the application to run in Windows Vista compatibility mode. Bingo!

Enjoy The Fish. I’m surprised that not many people seem to have caught the subtle joke with the Siamese fighting fish that is part of the default background, so I’ll do my part at keeping the secret hidden. Check out wikipedia for a clue.

When All Else Fails… There are always those times when you’re in a really bad spot – you can’t boot up properly, and what you really want is something you can quickly use to get at a command prompt so you can properly troubleshoot. Windows 7 now includes the ability to create a system repair disc, which is essentially a CD-bootable version of Windows that just includes the command prompt and a suite of system tools. Just type “system repair disc” in the Start Menu search box, and you’ll be led to the utility.

Windows 7 beta 1 build 7000 cd keys

2009-01-12T18:46:00.000+05:30

All weekend as Windows 7 keys were hard to come by, people tried accessing Microsoft’s TechNet site to access their unique activation keys. Originally with a 2.5m download limit, people expected keys to go fast, but with that limit removed, it appears that the TechNet issued keys are generic – and I’ve used one to activate Windows 7 beta 1, so I know it works!

Activation keys used to “activate” software programs are meant to be unique, thus ensuring your key is not claimed or used by anyone else.

It was expected that with a download limit of 2.5 million copies of the Windows 7 beta, something that has now been reversed (until January 24), there was unsurprisingly an expectation that there would only be 2.5 million activation keys, too.

Thus a scramble emerged for users to try and secure their keys before all were gone. Sites all over the Internet (including iTWire) were showing users how to get Windows 7 keys from the Microsoft TechNet site using a simple method that required refreshing the page a lot.

However it now appears that there are 10 different keys which can be used to activate any copy of Windows 7 beta 1, be it the 32-bit or 64-bit version, and it appears that, at least for now, these keys can be used as many times as anyone likes.

Reported all over the Internet, these keys are as follows:

Windows 7 Beta 32-bit Product Key

6JKV2-QPB8H-RQ893-FW7TM-PBJ73
TQ32R-WFBDM-GFHD2-QGVMH-3P9GC
GG4MQ-MGK72-HVXFW-KHCRF-KW6KY
4HJRK-X6Q28-HWRFY-WDYHJ-K8HDH
QXV7B-K78W2-QGPR6-9FWH9-KGMM7

Windows 7 Beta 64-bit Product Key

7XRCQ-RPY28-YY9P8-R6HD8-84GH3
JYDV8-H8VXG-74RPT-6BJPB-X42V4
482XP-6J9WR-4JXT3-VBPP6-FQF4M
JYDV8-H8VXG-74RPT-6BJPB-X42V4
D9RHV-JG8XC-C77H2-3YF6D-RYRJ9

Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit keys appear to be completely interchangeable.

I personally used one of these keys to activate a copy of Windows 7 beta 1 on a Dell Mini 9 netbook, and given that these keys must have already been used by many, many people, the reports that they keys are generic and can be used by anyone seem to be true.

If you still haven’t downloaded your copy of the Windows 7 beta, you can now do it from the official Windows 7 site.

public beta version of Windows 7

2009-01-12T13:29:00.001+05:30

As anticipated, Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer last week announced the first public beta version of Windows 7 at the International CES trade show.

The beta was scheduled to become available for download on Friday afternoon, although Microsoft at least temporarily postponed the release in order to add more "infrastructure support" to its Web site. That was driven by heavy traffic that overloaded the site hours before the beta code was even due to be posted. Microsoft said the beta will be capped after the first 2.5 million downloads. But users who aren't able to obtain an activation key can still download the code and run it on a 30-day trial basis.

The beta, which Microsoft called "feature complete," requires a PC with a 1-GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of available hard-disk space and support for DX9 graphics with 128MB of memory. The company noted that the recommended configuration may change for the final release.

In an interview at CES, Bill Veghte, Microsoft's senior vice president in charge of Windows, said the new operating system should be less of a resource hog than its predecessor, Vista.

"I don't want to make commitments on where we'll be at the [release to manufacturing date]," he said. "But at beta right now, we look very comparable to the hardware requirements that Windows Vista had when it came out, and the hardware has moved on. I am very optimistic."

Ballmer didn't disclose a final launch date for the operating system. Microsoft to date has said that it would deliver Windows 7 by about this time next year.

Some analysts, however, expect Microsoft to ship Windows 7 in time for this year's back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons. Vista shipped in early 2007, missing those crucial sales periods in 2006.

Microsoft Postpones Windows 7 Beta Release

2009-01-10T10:02:00.000+05:30

Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) has delayed the release of the first public beta of Windows 7 due to heavy traffic, and is working on putting more network infrastructure in place to support demand, according to a Friday afternoon post to The Windows Blog.

Brandon LeBlanc, a communications manager on the Windows Client Communications Team, said Microsoft is delighted by the overwhelming interest and will post an update to the blog once the additional capacity has been added and Windows 7 Beta 1 is ready for public downloads.

"We want to ensure customers have the best possible experience when downloading the beta, and I'll be posting here again soon once the beta goes live," LeBlanc wrote.

Some eager Windows 7 beta testers expressed their dismay in the comments section of the blog post.

"I've been trying to download all day, and all I got was 'server busy'," wrote one poster. "Logistically speaking, [BitTorrent] would have been a life saver here," wrote another poster.

On Wednesday evening at the Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the Friday launch date for Windows 7 Beta 1 and called Windows 7 "the best version of Windows ever."

Windows 7 will be more reliable than previous versions of Windows, and will boot faster and have longer battery life, Ballmer told CES attendees. At CES, the buzz around Windows 7 was strong, based on snippets of conversation heard in the hallways and conference rooms during the event.

Microsoft's TechNet and MSDN testers were able to download the Windows 7 beta on Wednesday. According to the CRN Test Center, Windows XP users cannot upgrade directly to the Windows 7 Beta, although they can upgrade from Vista systems with Service Pack 1 installed.

Microsoft says it has yet to make a final decision on what will or won't be included in the generally available version of Windows 7, but advises only clean installations of operating systems during the beta phase in any event.

Microsoft releases fix for Windows 7 MP3 corruption issue

2009-01-10T09:53:00.000+05:30

Earlier this week, Microsoft warned that there was a serious MP3 corruption issue in the Windows 7 beta (build 7000), which has been making the rounds on piracy networks. The company promised a fix, and it has now arrived. Regardless of where you got the beta from, I strongly recommend that you download and install this patch: 32-bit and 64-bit. The accompanying KB article 961367 has not yet been posted as of publishing time. Nevertheless, the Microsoft Download Center describes the fix as follows:

Install this update to resolve live and recorded TV issues in Windows Media Center, recorded TV playback issues in Windows Media Player, and MP3 file corruption issues in Windows. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer. This update is provided to you and licensed under the Windows 7 Pre-Release License Terms.

As you can see, Microsoft took the opportunity to fix other issues in the beta with this patch. Still, the most critical of the issues fixed was MP3 corruption. Here's how the corruption occurs: the first few seconds of an MP3 file will be cut if the header of the mp3 file is larger than 16 kilobytes and if metadata is written to the file. The corruption will occur either when the user edits the metadata from inside WMP12 or Explorer, or if WMP12 is set to automatically fill in missing metadata using the online service. The changes are irreversible, so make sure to install this patch before you play back any of your MP3s.

This is probably the most serious bug that has been discovered in the Windows 7 beta, and it's a good thing that it was, because Microsoft is about to give it out to the public in a couple of hours.

Expect Office 2007's 'Ribbon' UI to permeate Windows 7 apps

2009-01-10T09:52:00.000+05:30

The controversial "Ribbon" user interface that Microsoft Corp. introduced in Office 2007 is being used for some of Windows 7's built-in applications, such as WordPad and Paint.

According to Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Windows product management, the Ribbon will be adopted for many other Windows 7 applications from Microsoft as well as third-party vendors.

"This is one of the things we think will differentiate apps written for Windows 7, as opposed to those for earlier versions of Windows," Nash said in an interview today, as the company released the Windows 7 beta for public download.

Microsoft's site was overrun early today by would-be downloaders eager to get their hands on the operating system, which Microsoft maintains will ship in early 2010, despite evidence that it will arrive before that. Site traffic was so heavy that the company later postponed the rollout, but did not specify a new date.

Part of Microsoft's overall plan to modernize its user interfaces and catch up to Apple Inc. in this key area, the Ribbon replaces the drop-down menus, icons and toolbars that have dominated applications from Microsoft and most other vendors in the past two decades.

Proponents said the Ribbon provides a quicker, more elegant way to access an ever-increasing set of commands and features.

According to Nash, the Ribbon offers a much-needed refresh to WordPad and Paint, two "applets that hadn't been touched by us since the mid-'90s."

To encourage software developers to adopt the Ribbon, Microsoft is including Ribbon development tools in the free software development kit for Windows 7, as well as in the latest version of Microsoft's .Net programming environment, he said.

But critics, and there are more than a few, said the Ribbon is rigid and requires them to relearn commands and shortcuts they were already happy with.

Windows 7 itself doesn't use the Ribbon UI, though there are a number of UI changes that may also initially alienate hardcore XP fans or less-technical users.

That could lead to the same sort of backlash that Windows Vista faced. Microsoft's task with Windows 7 is compounded, he acknowledged, because it is aiming to make Windows 7 perform equally well whether is running on a 9-in. netbook screen, a 42-in. plasma TV or in a multimonitor office environment.

A 17-year veteran of Windows development, Nash said, "this is not a new problem." He is confident that for most users, the "short-term pain of transitioning from Version X will be outweighed by the duration of the benefit after you learn Version X+1."

Nash declined to comment specifically on a report that Microsoft plans to let resellers offer free or discounted upgrades to customers who buy Vista PCs after July 1.

Microsoft offered a similar program called Vista Express for five months around the time of Vista's release.

"You can look at what historically our behavior has been," he said.

As for the Windows 7 beta, Nash said users can install an upgrade on top of Windows Vista, or do a clean install in an empty hard drive partition or in a virtual machine. They can even install Windows 7 in a VM on a Mac, he said.

Ballmer touts Windows 7 beta, new deals

2009-01-08T11:48:00.001+05:30

LAS VEGAS--As he takes the stage Wednesday, Steve Ballmer has a mighty big task ahead of him.

Not only is he taking over Consumer Electronics Show keynote duties from Bill Gates, he is also aiming to convince the tech world that Microsoft is serious about defending its turf on the PC as well as making headway on the Web, television and phone. Oh yeah, and then there's that whole economy-melting-down thing.

Ballmer hasn't arrived in Sin City empty handed, however. In perhaps the biggest announcement of the night, he will announce Microsoft is ready with a beta version of Windows 7 and he will show off some of its key consumer features.

Microsoft will also announce new deals for Windows Live that will see Microsoft's search engine become the default on PCs from Dell as well as touting a deal with Verizon Wireless that leaked earlier in the day. The company is also counting on two Halo game releases this year to help keep the Xbox 360 going in the right direction.

But Microsoft faces considerable competition in each of the areas Ballmer is discussing. On the PC front, a resurgent Apple has increased its share. In search, Google continues to dominate. In the phone market, Apple's iPhone has grabbed much of the spotlight, not to mention significant market share. Google also has joined the fray, while longtime competitors such as Research in Motion and Palm are trying to maintain their slices of the pie as well.

And then, of course, there's the substantial financial headwind. Ballmer is expected to express his usual optimism--despite the global financial outlook--and discuss the company's commitment to research and development in both good times and bad. That said, Microsoft is clearly not immune from the problems that led Intel Wednesday to announce that fourth-quarter revenues were down 23 percent from the same quarter a year ago.

On the PC side, Microsoft is looking to turn the page from Vista to its successor, Windows 7. Microsoft isn't talking about any new features of Windows 7, saying it talked about all of the key features at the Professional Developer Conference last year. Instead, it will attempt to demonstrate what features like improved home networking really mean for the average household.

As for the beta of Windows 7, Microsoft said it will be immediately available for technical beta testers and those in Microsoft's TechNet and MSDN developer programs and will be made publicly available on Friday. The company still isn't officially committing to a final release in time for this year's holiday season, although the company is clearly still aiming for that.

Ballmer will also discuss Windows Live. In addition to the global PC deal with Dell and the five year U.S. deal with Verizon Wireless, Microsoft has expanded its relationship with Facebook to allow users to see within their Windows Live homepage certain of their buddies' Facebook updates. The company is also stripping the beta tag off many of its Web-based and downloadable Windows Live products.

On the phone side, Ballmer is expected to talk about the improved mobile browser Microsoft released at the end of last year, but the company is not talking yet about when to expect a serious upgrade to the Windows Mobile operating system, which has grown rather long in the tooth. Microsoft has made reference to an interim Windows 6.5 release that could serve as a bridge until the more significant overhaul of the operating system--Windows Mobile 7--makes its delayed debut.

On the automotive side, Microsoft is announcing a new version of its Ford Sync entertainment system that uses voice recognition software from its Tellme acquisition.

While that's the main news of the show, check out our live blog to get some live quotes, our commentary, as well as updates on any celebrity guests or funny videos that are often the hallmark of Microsoft's keynotes.

Windows 7 May Add Spice to CES

2009-01-08T11:46:00.000+05:30

Software could overshadow gadgets at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show, with Microsoft expected to shed light on its upcoming Windows 7 OS.

The financial meltdown may also be lingering topic as tech vendors gather to flaunt products at the show in Las Vegas, hoping to show enough glitter and sparkle to bring them better fortunes in the new year. Attendees will pour over the latest technologies, including OLED (organic light-emitting diode) TVs, netbooks, smartphones, media players, and other entertainment devices.

Audiences may miss the show's perennial star, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, who gave his final CES speech earlier this year. Instead, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will kick off the event with a keynote address on Jan. 7. He's expected to give a peek at Microsoft's Windows 7 OS, which many hope will be zippier and less resource hungry than Windows Vista.

Microsoft expects to make "significant" Windows 7 announcements, including a possible release of Windows 7 beta software. A "sneak peek" at future Microsoft Office software may also be offered.

A look at Microsoft's future software could add pep to what otherwise might turn out to be a subdued show. Attendance at CES 2009 is expected to drop as consumers and technology vendors cut spending amid the economic crisis. Hotels, which in previous years were often packed months before the show, have been offering discounted rates to fill rooms.

The Consumer Electronics Association insists that pre-registration has been strong and says it's too early to call it a quiet show. Organizers expect 130,000 attendees, said CEA spokeswoman Tara Dunion.

However, that would still be a significant drop from 144,000 attendees at CES 2007.

The prospect of a reduced audience hasn't fazed companies like Intel, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Dell from showing products in or around the show. Overall, 2,700 companies will be present at various locations, including the Las Vegas Convention Center and surrounding resorts and hotels.

A standout at CES could be netbooks, small laptops used for basic applications such as Web surfing and e-mail. Intel defined the category with its Atom processor, which was then solidified by the success of Asus' Eee PC. The show could see an evolution of netbooks, with features like touch screens attracting interest. Asus will likely show a touch-screen netbook, and Intel is showing off its Convertible Classmate, a netbook with a touch screen that swivels.

Via's elusive Nano processor may also make an appearance. Rumor has it that Samsung will show its NC20 laptop based on a Nano processor.

Some of Intel's competitors, meanwhile, may try to redefine how people think of netbooks by pushing more advanced capabilities. Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia may talk more about boosting graphics on netbooks. Freescale and Qualcomm could demonstrate netbooks with more communication-savvy chips.

Mundane laptops will also get a makeover. Expect plenty of buzz around a new Sony Vaio laptop, which the company says is "revolutionary" and will change the way users think about the products. It remains unclear if the tiny laptop is a netbook or a full-featured ultraportable. For power users, Lenovo is expected to show the ThinkPad W700DS laptop with two screens -- a first in laptops -- for people who want to perform multiple tasks at the same time.

Rounding off mobility will be smartphones with new operating systems, touchscreens and 3G connectivity. Many mobile phone companies are expected to adopt Google's Android platform, including Samsung, which may show an Android phone at CES.

Struggling smartphone maker Palm is holding a big event to announce its new Linux-based OS code-named Nova, along with new devices. The company hopes to use CES as a springboard to regain prominence in the smart phone market, where it has been eclipsed by Research In Motion and Apple.

Like past CES shows, televisions will grab the imagination of visitors as vendors fight to remain the centerpiece for home entertainment. CES 2008 saw the emergence of OLED screens with prototypes from Sony and Samsung, and CES 2009 could see further progress. In May, Sony CEO Howard Stringer said a 27-inch OLED TV would be coming, which could launch at the show.

Samsung showed a 40-inch OLED high-definition TV prototype in October, and larger screens may be on tap.

Given TV's ease of use, some may prefer these devices for Internet access in the future. With that in mind, some companies are working to merge the Internet and TV. Silicon Image will show its Allio high-definition LCD TV with a built-in PC so users can simultaneously use the TV and Internet through a split screen.

Intel will show prototype products for running mini-applications to complement TV viewing with information from the Internet. For example, widgets will allow TV watchers to talk to friends in real time or buy products advertised on TV from online stores.

The Internet also continues to shape how entertainment is delivered. Streaming media will battle Blu-ray DVD as the way to deliver entertainment and movies to end users. Having conquered HD DVD, Blu-ray still has a hurdle to pass with most players priced above US$150, so expect prices to drop at CES.

Some kinks also need to be worked out to better stream media between entertainment devices, and expect to see some improvements at the show. Tzero will demonstrate devices for wireless HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) multimedia streaming between devices using ultrawideband (UWB) wireless technology. Tzero's technology enables uninterrupted wireless delivery of high-definition video and surround sound at a rate of 480Mbps over 20 meters, the company claims.

Users may also see progress in data transfers between PCs and devices like digital cameras with improvements in the USB 3.0 specification.

Overall, many other gadgets will be on display to enjoy over the show's four days. CES may end up being more relaxing and intimate with the floors less crowded.

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Review: Windows 7 Beta 1 shows off new task bar, more UI goodies

2009-01-08T11:41:00.003+05:30

The just-released Beta 1 version of Windows 7 is a solid, fast-performing, stable operating system that appears to be just about fully baked and ready for prime time. It is much further along than Windows Vista was during its initial beta phase, and it appears to be feature-complete. Based on the stability and speed of this beta, don't be surprised if Microsoft Corp. releases Windows 7 before 2010 rolls around.

The new, powered-up task bar makes an appearance for the first time in this beta, and it proves to be something of a mixed bag. As I'll explain later in this review, the task bar makes it much easier to manage and switch between open windows and applications, but it also mixes icons for launching applications with icons for managing open windows.

Note that this review covers only the features that made their debut with Beta 1 of Windows 7. For an overall review of all of Windows 7, see "Windows 7 in-depth review and video: This time Microsoft gets it right."

The new Windows task bar
The task bar, new in this beta, will no doubt be the most controversial new feature introduced in Windows 7. Gone is Quick Launch bar for launching applications that used to live at the left side of the task bar. Instead, large icons across the task bar are now used to launch applications.

By default, Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer and Windows Media Player all have icons in the task bar. You can, however, add an icon for launching any application to the task bar by dragging the program's icon to it, for example, from the Most Recently Used list on the Start menu.

Those icons do double duty because they also manage your open windows. For example, if you've already launched Internet Explorer, and you have three tabs open to three different Web sites, the Internet Explorer icon changes subtly to show three icons stacked on one another, as shown in the image above, indicating that you have three tabs open.

The task bar in thumbnail view.
Click to view larger image.Hover your mouse over the stacked icon, and you'll see all three open tabs as thumbnails just across the top of the task bar. Hover your mouse over any of the thumbnails, and your entire desktop is taken up by that open window. Hover it over another thumbnail, and the desktop is taken up by that one. Click any of the thumbnails or open windows, and you'll go straight to that window.

The task bar in stacked list view.
Click to view larger image.If you aren't a fan of thumbnails displaying open windows, you can instead have all open windows display as a stacked list. When you're using stacked lists, to go to any open window, click on it in the list. To close the window, hover your mouse over it in the list, and click the red "X" that appears.

One more nice touch: When you download a file using Internet Explorer, a green bar on the icon shows you the progress of the download.

Jump lists
The task bar also makes use of another new feature that debuts in this beta -- "jump lists." A jump list is a list of actions or items associated with a particular application. To see a jump list for any application, right-click its icon in the task bar.

Typically, you'll see a history list of the most recent open files -- or Web sites, in the case of Internet Explorer -- as well as options to pin the application icon to the task bar (if you haven't already pinned it there) or unpin the application from the taskbar (if you've already pinned it there).

You can also unpin the three default task-bar icons -- Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer and Windows Media Player -- in this way.

Jump lists also make their appearance on the Start menu, in the Most Recently Used application list. A small arrow appears to the right of any application with an associated jump list. Click the arrow to see the list, then make your choice from the list.

There has also been a minor change to the Windows Shut Down button. Click an arrow to the button's right, and you get a list of shutdown options, including switching to a different user, logging off, restarting, locking the desktop, or putting your machine into sleep or hibernation mode.

The new Windows 7 Shut Down button.
Click to view larger image.Aero Peek
The other major change to the interface in this beta is the addition of Aero Peek, a nifty little enhancement to the Aero interface introduced in Vista that lets you "peek" behind any open window to your desktop. It's far more fully featured than the Show Desktop icon that lived on the Quick Launch bar in previous versions of Windows.

Aero Peek lives as a small, rectangular area just to the right of the clock at the right edge of the task bar. When you have windows open and you mouse over the Aero Peek rectangle, all of your open windows disappear, and you see through to your desktop. But you don't see just the desktop -- you also see the outlines where each of your open windows would be.

Aero Peek makes your open windows disappear but shows their outlines on the desktop. Click to view larger image.So, for example, if you have three open windows -- one near the top of the desktop, one to the left side, and one to the right -- you would see the outlines of each of those screens. If you prefer just to see the desktop itself, with no outlines, click the Aero Peek rectangle instead of hovering your mouse over it.

Aero Peek also works in concert with the task bar. As I mentioned previously, when you hover your mouse over an application with open windows, you'll see thumbnails of the open windows, and you can preview them by hovering over any thumbnail. That's Aero Peek at work. If you turn off Aero Peek, you won't be able to see the thumbnails -- you'll only see them as a stacked list. To turn Aero Peek on and off, right-click the Aero Peek rectangle, and either check or uncheck the box next to Preview desktop.

I did experience some problems with Aero Peek and the task bar thumbnails (which are turned on when you turn on Aero Peek). They worked only intermittently, then inexplicably stopped working entirely. I fixed the problem using one of Windows' built-in troubleshooters, but I don't know what caused the issue. I haven't heard reports of this happening to other people, so it's possible that the issue was specific to my test machine.

Speed and compatibility
Microsoft set out to make sure that Windows 7 wouldn't have the same issues with hardware compatibility that Windows Vista had, and the company said that all hardware that works with Windows Vista should also work with Windows 7.

It appears that even in this beta version, that goal has been met. Windows 7 immediately recognized all the components of my Dell Inspiron E1505 without a hitch -- something that early versions of Vista had serious problems with, particularly when it came to wireless networking adapters.

And while the prebeta version of Windows 7 had problems connecting to my Linksys wireless router, this new beta version immediately recognized the router and connected to it without a problem.

I found no software problems either. Windows 7 ran every piece of software I threw at it, including not just obvious programs such as Microsoft Office, but lesser-used ones as well, such as Windows Live Sync. In addition, several antivirus applications are already compatible with Windows 7, including AVG and Kaspersky. I've been running the free version of AVG without problems.

I did, however, find an oddball problem that most likely affects very few people in the world -- and perhaps only me. I installed Windows 7 on a dual-boot machine, in which the C: drive boots to XP and the J: drive boots to Windows 7. Unaccountably, when I boot into Windows 7, Windows 7 shows the J: drive as if it were a C: drive. And the real C: drive is invisible -- it simply doesn't show up in Windows 7 at all, and I have no access to it. However, when I boot to XP, I can see both the C: and J: drives. If anyone has a solution for this, I'd appreciate hearing it -- there's a lot of disk space going to waste.

Beta operating systems typically run slower than the shipping version, but Beta 1 of Windows 7 is already surprisingly fast. It appears to be clearly faster than Vista, without delays associated with displaying menu items or boxes, launching programs, or doing other tasks.

The bottom line
This first beta of Windows 7 is a polished piece of work, with few apparent kinks to be worked out. Windows 7 is much further along at this beta stage than Windows Vista was at a similar point. In Vista's Beta 1 stage, the user interface was still being tweaked, the operating system was sluggish, and there were many hardware incompatibilities. Not so with Windows 7. Because so little has changed between the prebeta and beta versions of Windows 7, don't be surprised if Windows 7 is on a fast track to release.

That being said, the new task bar is somewhat confusing to use at first. After you live with it for a while, you get used to it doing double duty as a task launcher and windows manager. Still, it wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft tweaked it in future beta versions.

Given the beta's stability and speed, you can safely download it and use this on a test machine. As with any beta of an operating system, though, you shouldn't use it on a production machine.

Free Windows 7 beta 1 DVD

2009-01-07T10:15:00.000+05:30

in case there was still any doubt, the beta version of Windows 7 will be available by next week.

From this Microsoft blog: "Breaking News! Attend an upcoming MSDN Developer Conference and you will receive a Windows 7 Beta 1 DVD."

When's the next upcoming MSDN Developer Conference? Tuesday, Jan. 13 in Chicago.

During his keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show tomorrow, Ballmer is widely expected to announce the release of the beta version of the new operating system.

Free Windows 7

2009-01-07T09:53:00.000+05:30

Microsoft Corp. will offer free or discounted Windows 7 upgrades to users who buy Vista PCs after July 1, according to a Web site that has accurately predicted the company's moves in the past.

TechARP.com, a Malaysian Web site that correctly named the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) dates for several Windows editions last year, said that Microsoft will unveil a program for Windows 7 that's similar to Vista Express Upgrade, a 2006 marketing effort that provided free or discounted Vista license to buyers of Windows XP in the months leading up to Vista's early-2007 release.

According to TechARP, Microsoft will allow original equipment manufacturers to purchase Windows 7 upgrade media, which they can then offer to customers who buy a Vista-power system between July 1, 2009 and a date to be determined.

The upgrades, however, would not be shipped to those PC buyers until the general availability date for Windows 7. Microsoft has not set a delivery for the new operating system, and instead has stuck to a broad range of dates, from late 2009 to early 2010.

The Windows 7 upgrade program as spelled out by TechARP resembled the earlier Vista Express Upgrade. In that program, people who purchased Windows XP PCs between Oct. 26, 2006 and March 15, 2007 were eligible to receive free or inexpensive Vista upgrades.

TechARP did not have a closing date for the program, noting only that it was "TBA," or "to be announced." The site did say, however, that OEMs would be free to specify a shorter eligibility period than Microsoft's.

Upgrades will be available from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium, and from Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Ultimate, said TechARP. Buyers of PCs equipped with Vista Business will be able to upgrade to a Windows 7 Professional.

Vista Express Upgrade also used clearly-defined upgrade paths. People who had bought a computer with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, for example, were offered only Vista Home Premium, while those who purchased an XP Home PC were given Vista Home Basic.

Microsoft and its hardware partners will be hoping for a smoother road to the upgrades this time around. Vista Express Upgrade was plagued with problems, including delays before users received their upgrade discs. In February 2007, nearly a month after Vista hit retail shelves, for instance, users flooded Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. support forums with angry messages about the wait.

In 2006 and 2007, PC makers charged a variety of prices for the XP-to-Vista upgrades. HP offered free upgrades, while others, including Dell, charged users $49. TechARP did not have any information on pricing, which would, if the Windows 7 program is handled the same way, be up to the individual makers.

Microsoft declined to comment on the TechARP posting. "We often explore options with our partners for how we offer products, but we have nothing to announce at this time," a company spokeswoman said Tuesday.

A public beta of Windows 7 is thought to be imminent -- perhaps as early as tomorrow, after Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer delivers a keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas -- but clues on Microsoft's own Web site seem to point to a release no later than next week.

Leaked copiesof the Windows 7 build thought to be the one pegged for beta distribution have been available on file sharing sites for more than a week.

Security experts warn against pirated Windows 7

2009-01-06T18:00:00.000+05:30

Where am I? > Home > News > Enterprise Security Technology
Leaked versions of Windows 7 appeared on the internet last weekSecurity experts warn against pirated Windows 7
Early versions on P2P networks could contain malware

Written by Phil Muncaster

vnunet.com, 06 Jan 2009
Security experts have urged users to be wary of pirated early versions of Microsoft's forthcoming Windows 7 operating system because they may contain malware.

An early build of Windows 7, labelled 'Windows 7 Ultimate Build 7000', was leaked onto the internet last week, and made widely available for download via several peer-to-peer networks.

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Rob Rachwald, director of product marketing at security vendor Fortify, highlighted an increase in software infected with malware being posted on the internet, and warned that users should only download software from a trusted source.

"The whole idea is to exploit something popular, whether it's getting users to download porn or popular software. It's just a clever way to spread malware, " he said.

Rik Ferguson, solutions architect at content security vendor Trend Micro, echoed these sentiments.

"We would definitely discourage people from downloading and installing any software where they cannot be sure of the reliability of the content, or the trustworthiness of the source," he said.

Pirated software distributed over peer-to-peer communities ranks pretty low on the credibility scale
Rik Ferguson Trend Micro

"Pirated software distributed over peer-to-peer communities ranks pretty low on the credibility scale."

It is widely expected that Microsoft will make some significant Windows 7 announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.

Five things Steve Ballmer won’t tell you about Windows 7

2009-01-06T17:58:00.000+05:30

On Wednesday night, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is going to step on stage at the Venetian Hotel’s Palazzo Ballroom to give the keynote address that kicks off the Consumer Electronics Show. It’s the first time for Ballmer, who’s taking the slot that his predecessor Bill Gates has had for years.

It’s widely expected that Ballmer will publicly unveil Windows 7 Beta 1, just as Gates used the stage to announce previous Windows versions. He’ll no doubt have an entourage of product managers to help him do the actual demos, hopefully inspiring a wow or two from the assembled throngs.

I’m looking forward to the demo, even though I don’t expect any surprises. Mostly, I’m going to be listening between the lines, paying attention to the things that Microsoft chooses not to talk about. In the spirit of the occasion, I offer up the following predictions of things that Ballmer will take great pains to avoid saying.

1. “Some of you are going to hate our new OS, no matter what we do.”

Building software is part art, part science, and all compromise. Every design decision involves tradeoffs in performance, in ease of use for novices versus raw power for experts, even in esthetics. I addressed some of these issues in a post I wrote last year, How do you benchmark real-world work? I fully expect each succeeding wave of Windows 7 reviews to include plenty of “Microsoft sucks” commentary. Especially from InfoWorld.

The back and forth between my ZDNet colleague Jason Perlow and me last week illustrates this principle perfectly. Jason (and the commenters who agree with his point of view) want Microsoft to offer an option that allows them to use their system using the Windows interface they mastered in 1998. I think pursuing that backward-looking strategy would be a massive waste of limited development resources.

The bottom line is you can’t please everyone, and one size will never fit all. So the big question for Microsoft is whether they can please enough people and generate enough positive buzz to drown out the negative voices.

2. “Good luck finding drivers for all your old XP-only hardware.”

Over the past few months, I’ve installed and used Windows 7 on a dozen separate systems, representing a wide range in hardware capability and all sorts of different form factors. Virtually every one of those systems had also run Windows Vista at some point in its lab lifecycle, which made it easy for me to track down the best drivers for each subsystem and peripheral.

Over the course of the last two years, I’ve discarded or replaced a handful of devices that didn’t work at all with Vista: several network cards, some storage adapters, a scanner, a TV tuner. In every case, I had to replace the unsupported part or do without. The good news is that the driver model for Windows 7 is identical to that of Windows Vista, so all the hardware I now own (and all the drivers I’ve bookmarked and saved) will work on upgraded systems.

So, what happens to people who decided to skip Vista and stick with XP, for whatever reason? They get to face those exact same issues. If your device doesn’t have a driver for Windows Vista, it will not work under Windows 7. Period. Full stop.

3. “We’re still at the mercy of our clueless OEM partners – and so are you.”

Some of the worst complaints about Windows Vista came from users who were subjected to horrible installations from OEMs, with poorly written drivers, inadequate hardware, and great heaping helpings of crapware to slow everything down to a crawl.

I had the chance to see this phenomenon up close and personal last year, when I rebuilt a Sony VAIO whose performance with Windows Vista was so awful that its owner basically wrote it off and bought a new MacBook. After a clean installation, including Vista Service Pack 1, its performance was eye-opening and impressive.

Since that time, Sony, Dell, and other top-tier OEMs have cleaned up their acts impressively. But even if Windows 7 turns out to be an excellent operating system, there’s still the potential for it to be scuttled by sloppy or greedy hardware makers. Microsoft executives are jawboning like crazy with their hardware partners; you know they’ll be holding their breath after the launch to see how those systems perform in the real world.

4. “It might be years before we have a killer application for Vista or Windows 7.”

The myth of the “killer app” has never been stronger than with Windows Vista. The idea refers to some program that performs an absolutely irresistible function and only runs on a particular platform. If you need that program, you have to upgrade to the new OS.

But software developers, including Microsoft, aren’t interested in cutting off customers who still use older platforms, especially in this tight economy. So, as a result, most popular Windows programs these days are written to run on Windows XP, Vista, and (soon) Windows 7. And there’s no sign that’s going to change anytime soon.

If anything, Microsoft is doing its best to avoid any kind of Vista-only software. The new Windows Live Essentials bundle, for example, works on XP and Vista, as does Windows Live Mesh and every member of the Microsoft Office family.

None of those programs are going to drop XP support anytime soon (although it’s remotely possible that the next version of Office will work only on Vista or later). That strategy of wide backward compatibility is the right thing to do for customers, but it bolsters the argument of those who contend that a killer app is the only reason to upgrade.

5. “Our licensing terms are as hopelessly confusing as ever.”

Microsoft hasn’t gotten around to announcing how many editions of Windows 7 it plans to produce or what their prices will be. But one thing is certain: the confusing, multi-layered Windows business model isn’t going to change.

Royalty OEMs (the big PC makers like HP, Dell, Sony, and Toshiba) have one price list and one set of terms. Small system builders have another set of rules. Retail copies are horrendously overpriced.

Enterprise customers have to navigate through a thicket of price lists and volume licensing programs that actually require their own certification programs. And even Microsoft sometimes contradicts itself completely on how licensing terms apply to some customers.

Those are my predictions. Sit back, grab some popcorn, and watch the keynote for yourself, in low (100k), medium (300k) or high quality (750k) streams.

Technical Preview of Kaspersky Anti-Virus For Windows 7

2009-01-05T11:28:00.001+05:30

The popular security software developer Kaspersky has released a first technical preview version of the upcoming Kaspersky Anti-virus solution for Windows 7. The release can be downloaded directly from the Kaspersky ftp site. Its current version is 8.0.0.1015. Below is the full Kaspersky press release:

ftp://ftp.kaspersky.com/beta/kavwks8.0_for_windows7/kavwks8.0.0.1015en.exe

Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of secure content management systems, announces the release of a technical prototype of Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows 7.

Windows 7 is the next release of the Microsoft Windows operating system which will replace Windows Vista and is a step forward in the development of Microsoft operating systems. The new OS will incorporate enhanced reliability, greater efficiency, an improved interface and extended working features both in global and local information networks.

The technical preview is a complex solution for securing computers running under Windows 7. The prototype includes not only an antivirus component but an effective and fully functional firewall and anti-spam filter.

At the heart of the new technical prototype is Kaspersky Lab’s new antivirus engine which is even more effective at detecting malicious programs than its predecessor. The new engine dramatically increases system scanning speed thanks to improved processing of objects and optimized use of system resources, particularly on dual- and quad-core processor platforms. The unique product architecture ensures high productivity and one of the lowest uses of system resources in the industry.

The technical preview includes a highly effective heuristic analyzer. The heuristic analyzer detects and blocks as yet unknown malicious programs. If a program signature is not included in the antivirus databases, i.e., the malicious program is unknown, the heuristic analyzer will safely launch the program in an isolated virtual environment, analyze the program’s actions and conclude with a high degree of probability whether it is potentially harmful before it is launched in a live environment.

In addition, the technical prototype includes a new user interface developed to meet the needs of both inexperienced and advanced users.

Windows 7 activation patch

2009-01-05T11:25:00.001+05:30

Everyone who has downloaded a leaked build of Windows 7 will have noticed that the versions will have a time limit of 30 days and watermarks. The official testers have all received Windows 7 keys to activate the Windows 7 operating system for a longer period.

We are usually not reporting about tools from the cracker scene but this one deserves to be mentioned as it seems to be the first to patch the Windows 7 Beta to be genuine. Windows 7 Plus Patch is a one stop Windows 7 patcher that can not only activate Windows 7 but also remove the watermarks, the send feedback option and even rearm Windows 7 up to five times.

The tool can only be run in Windows Safe Mode and has to be executed with administrative rights.

Windows 7 wallpaper pack

2009-01-03T13:11:00.001+05:30

Windows 7 is a future version of Microsoft Windows expected to be released in 2010 or later. Recently LongZ from istartedsomething.com released unofficial windows 7 wallpaper pack on Devianart.

The wallpaper that contains the unofficial Windows Seven logo centred on a wavy yellow and pink background looks pretty impressive. The wallpaper is available in various resolutions. You can download Windows Se7en Wallpaper pack from here.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/50921443/

Watch Steve Ballmer's CES 2009 keynote live!

2009-01-03T10:46:00.001+05:30

The CES 2009 conference is less than a week away and the world is looking forward to Steve Ballmer’s keynote which is expected to reveal new information about Microsoft’s upcoming operating system Windows 7. Many news sites assume that Steve Ballmer will announce the public release of the Windows 7 Beta in his keynote. While that is not totally clear yet it is generally assumed that the Windows 7 Beta will be released in the beginning of January.

Long posted information about the live streams of the keynote on his Windows 7 blog. It will begin on Wednesday January 7 at 6.30pm PST and three live streams can be accessed to view the keynote from anywhere on the globe:

100K CEO 2009 Live Stream
300K CEO 2009 Live Stream
750K CEO 2009 Live Stream

Add All Regional Themes To Windows 7

2009-01-03T10:45:00.000+05:30

We have reported earlier that Microsoft has the intention to ship Windows 7 with regional themes that make use of wallpapers and additional interface enhancements that are unique depending on the region Windows 7 has been sold. Currently the five zones Australia, Canada, Great Britain, United States and South Africa are known and it is very likely that additional zones will be added in the retail versions.

There is one interesting option to add all regional themes to Windows 7. The option works both in the 6956 and the 7000 build of the operating system. It is very likely that it can also be used in the retail versions of Windows 7.

To activate all regional themes in Windows 7 do the following:

Navigate to \Windows\Globalization\MCT\
The folder contains five folders that represent the five regions currently available in Windows 7
Open the themes folder in one of the folders and doubleclick on the xx.theme file to activate that theme.
Repeat the steps to add all five regional themes to Windows 7

Windows 7 beta damages some MP3

2009-01-03T10:43:00.000+05:30

It is probably fair to say that the Windows 7 builds that have been floating around on the Internet are very stable and that only a handful of minor errors have been reported yet. According to Neowin the latest two builds of Windows 7 that leaked to the Internet may damage mp3 files under certain circumstances.

The problem was first recognized by users who noticed that the first few seconds of their mp3 files had been cut off. Some thought it was related to bad crossfading first but it soon turned out that the data was not there anymore. Many users thought it was caused by Windows Media Player 12 but it turned out to be a global problem.

It does however only happen under the following circumstances: The first few seconds of a mp3 file will be cut in Windows 7 if the header of the mp3 file is larger than 16 Kilobytes and if meta data is written to the file. Some media players are able to automatically add missing meta data which is the most likely cause.

The changes are irreversible and it is advised to backup the mp3 collection before using them in the current builds of Windows 7. A Microsoft employee has confirmed the bug in the forum. According to his statement Microsoft is working on a hotfix for the problem.

According to him the public beta which will be released in early January will not be affected by the problem.

Windows 7 beta 1 performance - How does the OS compare to Vista and XP?

2009-01-03T10:14:00.000+05:30

How does Windows 7 beta 1 compare to Vista and XP in terms of performance? That’s a question that’s been hitting my inbox regularly over the past few weeks. Let’s see if we can’t answer it!

Important note: Before I go any further I feel I need to make a point, and make it clear. The build I’m testing of Windows 7 (build 6.1.7000.0.081212-1400) is a beta build, and as a rule beta builds are usually more geared towards stability than performance. That said, the performance of this build should give us a clue as to how the OS is coming along.

Rather than publish a series of benchmark results for the three operating systems (something which Microsoft frowns upon for beta builds, not to mention the fact that the final numbers only really matter for the release candidate and RTM builds), I’ve decided to put Windows 7, Vista and XP head-to-head in a series of real-world tests to find out which OS comes out top.

The tests

There are 23 tests in all, most of which are self explanatory:

Install OS - Time it takes to install the OS
Boot up - Average boot time to usable desktop
Shut down - Average shut down time
Move 100MB files - Move 100MB of JPEG files from one hard drive to another
Move 2.5GB files - Move 2.5GB of mixed size files (ranging from 1MB to 100MB) from one hard drive to another
Network transfer 100MB files - Move 100MB of JPEG files from test machine to NAS device
Network transfer 2.5GB files - Move 2.5GB of mixed size files (ranging from 1MB to 100MB) from test machine to NAS device
Move 100MB files under load - Move 100MB of JPEG files from one hard drive to another while ripping DVD to .ISO file
Move 2.5GB files under load - Move 2.5GB of mixed size files (ranging from 1MB to 100MB) from one hard drive to another while ripping DVD to .ISO file
Network transfer 100MB files under load - Move 100MB of JPEG files from test machine to NAS device while ripping DVD to .ISO file
Network transfer 2.5GB files under load - Move 2.5GB of mixed size files (ranging from 1MB to 100MB) from test machine to NAS device while ripping DVD to .ISO file
Compress 100MB files - Using built-in ZIP compression
Compress 1GB files - Using built-in ZIP compression
Extract 100MB files - Using built-in ZIP compression
Extract 1GB files - Using built-in ZIP compression
Install Office 2007 - Ultimate version, from DVD
Open 10 page Word doc - Text only
Open 100 page Word doc - Text and images only
Open simple Excel doc - Basic formatting
Open complex Excel doc - Including formula and charts
Burn DVD - Win 7 beta 1 .ISO to disc using CDBurnerXP
Open 10 page PDF - Text only, using latest Adobe Reader 8
Open 100 page PDF - Text and images, using latest Adobe Reader 8
These series of tests will pitch Windows 7 build 7000 32-bit against Windows Vista SP1 32-bit and Windows XP SP3 32-bit. The scoring for each of the tests is simple. The winning OS scores 1, the runner up 2 and the loser scores a 3. The scores are added up and the OS with the lowest score at the end wins.

The test systems

I’ve used two desktop systems as the test machines:

An AMD Phenom 9700 2.4GHz system fitted with an ATI Radeon 3850 and 4GB of RAM
An Intel Pentium Dual Core E2200 2.2GHz fitted with an NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS and 1GB of RAM
The results

Here are the results of the tests for the two systems:

Conclusion

The bottom line is that the more I use Windows 7 the more I like it. Sure, we’re looking at a beta build here and not the final code, so things could change between now and release (although realistically final code ends up being faster than beta code). Also I still have some nagging issues relating to the interface, and some concerns that the UAC changes will break applications and other code, especially installers, but overall Windows 7 beta 1 is a robust, solid bit of code.

Sure, Windows 7 is not XP, and never will be (thankfully). And if you’re put off by things such as activation and DRM, then Windows isn’t the OS for you (good news is there are others to choose from). But if you’re looking for a solid OS then Windows 7 seems ready to deliver just that - a fast, reliable, relatively easy to use platform for your hardware and software.

Source: ZDNet

Windows 7 Reviews Mixed On Pirate Bay

2009-01-03T10:13:00.001+05:30

An early version of Windows 7, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s successor to the widely maligned Vista operating system, is drawing mixed reviews from users of a popular, though legally questionable, file-sharing site.
"I'm using this OS as I type," wrote a Pirate Bay user going by the name "al966g." "Looks like it's OK to me, not too much different than Vista but a few new items," the user wrote.

More Windows InsightsWhite PapersWindows 2008 Server as a Workstation Overview of Windows Search Technologies Videos

Intel (NSDQ: INTC) CEO Paul Otellini demonstrates and discusses the future of collaboration and talks about Intels business model, including how it approaches R&D.Al966g noted that he had Windows 7 running on a relatively underpowered Pentium 4 computer with only 768 MB of RAM. Vista, by contrast, was widely criticized for steep hardware requirements that forced users to upgrade their PCs.
Another Pirate Bay user, "bren72," said the Windows 7 beta version he's using works well for games. "I can mount all my games, which are playing incredibly well for my older hardware," he wrote. "It looks like Microsoft took note of some of the problems with Vista and made changes."

Other users weren't as impressed. "What's the point of this vs. Vista, it looks the same," said "stevenrm87." The beta version of the OS, reportedly Windows 7, build 7000, can be downloaded from several infamous torrent sites often used to share pirated content.

Microsoft isn't planning to officially release beta copies of Windows 7 until its MSDN developers' conference in January. A final version of the OS isn't expected until late 2009 or early 2010.

Microsoft may not be overly displeased with the leaks.

The company is urging partners to begin work on Windows 7 product development as soon as possible to avoid the sort of compatibility problems that plagued the launch of Windows Vista in January 2007.

Earlier this month, Intel released a preproduction version of Windows 7 drivers for graphics chipsets. The WDDM1.1 graphics driver is designed for "enabling the full Windows 7 experience," Intel said, noting that the driver is the result of ongoing collaboration with Microsoft.

When Vista launched in January of last year, many hardware makers--including Intel--did not have fully compatible drivers ready. The problems marked the beginning of a slew of bad press for Vista that ultimately led many businesses and consumers to reject the OS.

Microsoft for the first time unveiled Windows 7 features at its Los Angeles Professional Developers Conference in October and appears anxious to release the OS as soon as possible. The company has formally said that Windows 7 won't ship until early 2010, but the January release of a beta disk is the latest sign that Windows 7 could debut in late 2009.

Microsoft is hoping Windows 7, which includes native support for touch screens, will help erase memories of Vista, which has been a disappointment for the company.

Source: Information Week

Microsoft will bring Windows 7 Beta on January 13th

2009-01-01T15:59:00.001+05:30

A blog posting on Microsoft's Technet by Keith Combs hinted on Tuesday that a beta version for the company’s new operating system Windows 7 would be made available as early as January, 2009.

The update is confirmed on the basis of a blog posting. Combs also recommended those who wanted to get hold of the Windows beta 7 to sign up for participation in the upcoming MSDN developer conferences.

The blog posting suggested that all who were to attend the aforementioned conferences would receive a DVD with Windows 7 beta 1 on it, adding though that the attendees for the December events would not benefit from the offer.

Keith Combs stated that the DVDs containing the beta version of Windows 7 would not be ready until January 13, the earlies

The company also said, "Windows 7 will offer more options than ever to customize and personalize Windows-based PCs with styles that match the user's personality," though it provided little detail.

Perhaps most significantly, Microsoft said applications that are compatible with Windows Vista will work with Windows 7 because the two operating systems share the same basic architecture. "Windows 7 extends developers' investments in Windows Vista," the company said in a statement.

Upon its debut in January of last year, Vista was roundly criticized for its lack of compatibility with applications built for the older Windows XP operating system. The problem was partly to blame for the fact that few businesses have upgraded from XP to Vista, even though Vista has now been on the market for almost two years.

Consumers and enterprises alike also complained about Vista's heavy hardware and memory requirements, and intrusive security measures that added extra steps to even routine computing tasks. Microsoft no longer mentions Vista by name in its latest Windows ads and appears to be accelerating efforts to bring Windows 7 into production.

"With our new approach to planning and development we now have a great foundation for our partners to start learning and innovating on this exciting new version of Windows," said Steven Sinofsky, senior VP for Microsoft's Windows Engineering Group, in a statement.

A brief on Windows 7 beta EULA

2008-12-31T17:11:00.000+05:30

Here’s a summary of some other interesting additions:

You can install as many copies as you want. The agreement specifically waives any restriction on the number of copies you can install:

You may install and use any number of copies of the software on your premises to design, develop and test your programs for use with the software.

I expect this wording is from a build specifically released to software developers. This wording might change to a more general “for evaluation only” clause in the public beta release.

Don’t use it in a production environment. That’s generally good advice for any product with a beta label on it, but in this case it’s explicitly covered in the agreement:

You may not use the software in a live operating environment unless Microsoft permits you to do so under another agreement.

The software expires on August 1, 2009. Although I’ve read reports from other testers of a different expiration date, the copy I looked at includes a “Time-Sensitive Software” clause that reads in part: “The software will stop running on August 1, 2009. You may not receive any other notice.” That timeout date adds further credence to the notion that the final release will be ready in May or June.
It’s OK to install in a virtual machine. The license agreement for the original release of Windows Vista includes some truly opaque wording about installing in a virtualized environment. This wording was significantly cleaned up for the Vista SP1 license agreement, and this same language appears in the Windows 7 EULA. The “Use with Virtualization Technologies” section is straightforward:
Instead of using the software directly on the licensed device, you may install and use the software within only one virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system on the licensed device.

You’ll need to take a few extra steps to lock down your privacy. In section 4, the license agreement specifically notes that some features that normally require you to opt in are instead turned on by default:

Because this software is a pre-release version, we have turned on some internet-based features by default to obtain feedback about them […] You may switch off these features or not use them.

Most of the services on the list are fairly benign and involve little risk of divulging personally identifiable information. However, if you work with sensitive data files you might want to turn off the Customer Experience Improvement Program and automatic error reporting options.

Activation and validation are alive and well. Anyone who was hoping that Microsoft would back off from its hard-line antipiracy initiatives might be disappointed. The license agreement specifically describes activation and links to a privacy statement that says activation is required for Windows 7. The lengthy section on validation is identical to the one in Vista SP, including the bold-faced warning: “You are not permitted to circumvent validation.”
No benchmarks allowed. As in previous beta releases of Microsoft operating systems, the license agreement includes a prohibition on speed tests:

You may not disclose the results of any benchmark tests of the software to any third party without Microsoft’s prior written approval.

Of course, most people don’t bother to even read license agreements, so it’s unlikely that this one will be followed strictly. In fact, I suspect that some people have been clicking their stopwatches feverishly over the past few days in anticipation of another round of benchmark results, regardless of what the EULA says.

Windows 7 may add spice to CES

2008-12-31T17:00:00.000+05:30

Downloads of pirated Windows 7 beta candidate soar

2008-12-31T16:59:00.000+05:30

Downloads of a new build of Microsoft Corp.'s upcoming Windows 7 operating system have soared in the past two days, with thousands of systems now pulling pirated copies from BitTorrent sites.

Searches today on the Pirate Bay BitTorrent site, for example, returned multiple listings of Windows 7 Build 7000, which Microsoft identifies as a beta candidate in the file name. The torrent is a disk image of the 32-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate; a 64-bit version is not yet available.

The most heavily trafficked Windows 7 BitTorrent on Pirate Bay showed more than 4,300 "seeders" — the term for a computer that has a complete copy of the torrent file — and about 7,500 "leechers," or computers that have downloaded only part of the complete torrent. Less popular BitTorrents of the file on Pirate Bay claimed an additional 1,000 seeders and more than 3,000 leechers.

On Saturday, a day after the first copies of Build 7000 appeared on BitTorrent, Pirate Bay's prime listing showed less than half as many seeders as it did today.

Similar increases could be seen on other BitTorrent sites. For example, Mininova listed almost 20 Windows 7 BitTorrents — some of them duplicates of the ones that appeared in searches of Pirate Bay. Two of the torrents on the Mininova site had more than 4,500 seeders each.

Bloggers who have downloaded the pirated operating system — such as ZDNet.com's Ed Bott — are reporting that its end-user licensing agreement labels the new build as the beta that Microsoft has promised it will open to the public in early 2009.

Although Microsoft hasn't specified a release date, information published on its own Web site earlier this month hinted that the beta would become available no later than Jan. 13. And with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer slated to deliver a keynote speech Jan. 7 on the evening before the opening of the International CES trade show in Las Vegas, speculation has been brisk that he will not only talk about Windows 7, but possibly also announce the immediate availability of the beta.

Today, however, Microsoft stuck to its earlier vague timetable. "The Windows 7 public beta is still expected in early 2009," a company spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail. She declined to respond to questions about what actions Microsoft would, or could, take against BitTorrent sites that list the pirated build.

Windows 7 is scheduled to ship late next year or in early 2010, according to statements made previously by Microsoft.

Windows 7 Fails to Play Nice with Legacy USB Network Adapters

2008-12-30T11:30:00.001+05:30

According to Microsoft, pre-Beta development milestones of Windows 7 fail to play nice with USB network adapters that rely on pre-Windows Vista drivers. The symptoms involve NDIS 5.x USB network adapters not being displayed in the Windows 7 Performance Monitor. NDIS refers to the Network Driver Interface Specification library, which, following the transition from Windows XP to Windows Vista, evolved to version 6.0. Version 5 of NDIS was used by Windows operating systems before Vista.

“Perfmon only shows adapters that indicate that they have a physical, hardware connector. Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 introduced a new Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS) known as NDIS version 6. Network driver developers are encouraged to move their drivers to this new specification,” Microsoft revealed.

The Redmond company does not have an update to resolve the issue, nor does it indicate that it plans a resolve. With not even a workaround made available for Windows 7, Microsoft is only advising users to make sure that the network adapter comes with drivers updated for NDIS version 6. The Redmond company explained that Windows 7 would be aware of all physical connectors as long as they were plugged in via NDIS miniports built especially for NDIS 6. Only in this context would Perfmon be able to display all physical connectors. Fact is that NDIS in Windows 7 comes with limited support for legacy USB Network Adapters, but only limited.

“While NDIS supports NDIS 5 drivers, it does so in a legacy, compatibility layer and does best-effort to determine if the adapter has a physical connector. If the adapter does not have any hardware resources assigned to it, which is the case for USB NICs, NDIS assumes that the NIC does not have a connector. Perfmon, as a result, will not list the NIC as an available network interface,” Microsoft added.

new Windows 7 taskbar look like the KDE 4 taskbar?

2008-12-30T11:27:00.002+05:30

Microsoft's reaction on Windows 7 build 7000 leak

2008-12-30T11:25:00.000+05:30

This past weekend, Windows 7 build 7000 leaked to torrent sites. It's not the first build of Windows 7 to leak, but it definitely is the most important one so far. You see, the first 7xxx build marks the entrance of Windows 7 into beta phase (6xxx builds were pre-beta builds). Microsoft planned to release this build to a select number of beta testers, as well as to MSDN and TechNet subscribers. Unfortunately for Microsoft, and fortunately for everyone who couldn't, but wanted to, get access to the beta, this led to a leaked build. The company pulled the release off of MSDN and TechNet, and also removed the "Windows 7 Beta" entry from the next quarterly update kit for those part of the Microsoft Action Pack Subscription (MAPS), which is slated to be sent out to subscribers on January 5, 2009. Thanks to Google's cache, you can see that Microsoft also referred to build 7000 as "Windows 7 Beta" on MSDN.

According to the license terms that you must accept to install build 7000, the EULAID of this release is "Win7_B.1_PRO_NRL_en-US." This further confirms that this build was meant to be Beta 1, which Microsoft is expected to release to its testers early next year (with a public beta following soon afterwards). If we were to take a page from Redmond's history book, the software giant will likely stick to its plan and give the same Beta 1 build (6.1.7000.0.081212-1400), which was compiled on December 12, 2008, at 2:00PM, to its testers, subscribers, and MDC attendees. It does not have to, and could instead give out a later build, and I would not put it past them (especially considering the compilation date).

In addition to noting that this is a pre-release version that will not be the same as the commercial version, Microsoft's EULA mentions a few interesting facts. For example, "You may install and use any number of copies of the software on your premises to design, develop and test your programs for use with the software" and "The term of this agreement will expire on August 1, 2009." Here's a section of the EULA that I think everyone who installed the build should read:

You may not

disclose the results of any benchmark tests of the software to any third party without Microsoft’s prior written approval;
work around any technical limitations in the software;
reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the software, except and only to the extent that applicable law expressly permits, despite this limitation;
use components of the software to run applications not running on the software;
make more copies of the software than specified in this agreement or allowed by applicable law, despite this limitation;
publish the software for others to copy;
rent, lease or lend the software;
transfer the software or this agreement to any third party;
use the Potentially Unwanted Software definitions separately from the software; or
use the software for commercial software hosting services.
When installing build 7000, there are options for Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate, of which you can only choose Ultimate. My guess is these are leftover bits from Vista, because a) we already expect that Business is will be renamed to Professional and b) at one point you can click on "What to know before installing Windows 7" and you'll see an article detailing Windows Vista's installation, and not Windows 7's.

I'll be taking a closer look at Beta 1 (either build 7000 or a later one if Microsoft decides to change it) once I get access to it through official channels.

Windows 7 beta

2008-12-27T14:51:00.000+05:30

The Windows 7 is the next version of client’s operating system after Windows Vista.

No concrete base is there to ground such speculations but, in October, Microsoft promised to bring beta version by early 2009. With no confirmations, market watchers are speculating that Microsoft can bring beta version sometime in January and possibly the CES show in Las Vegas as a likely release date. CES is scheduled for Jan. 8-11.

The insiders report that significant announcements are coming from the beta testers indicating that Windows 7 beta can be expected any day.

The attendees will receive a Windows 7 beta DVD.

Microsoft expects to release Windows 7 in early 2010. But observers have the feel that it will be released earlier than the announced date as many business customers have skipped Vista and run XP until Windows 7 is available.

First Official Video - Windows 7

2008-12-27T14:37:00.000+05:30

Squeezing Every Drop of Performance Out of Windows 7

2008-12-27T12:39:00.001+05:30

Microsoft is Squeezing Every Drop of Performance Out of Windows 7 In accordance with users’ expectations. In the sense in which Microsoft is building Windows 7 as the evolution of Windows Vista, the next iteration of the Windows client will perform as if on steroids, compared to its precursor. Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president, Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, along with Michael Fortin, one of Microsoft’s Distinguished Engineers and head of the Windows Fundamentals feature team, revealed that the Redmond company had a strong focus on delivering a high level of performance for Windows 7, comparable with end users’ expectations. And Microsoft should make no mistake about it, Windows 7 performance expectations are as high as they can be.
“We’ve been building out and maintaining a series of runs that measure thousands of little and big things,” revealed Sinofsky and Fortin. “We’ve been running these before developer check-ins and maintaining performance and responsiveness at a level above which all that self-host our builds will find acceptable. These gates have kept the performance and responsiveness of our daily builds at a high enough level that thousands have found it possible to run their main systems on Windows 7 for extended periods of time, doing their normal daily work.”

Microsoft underlined that the perception of performance was just as important as the actual performance delivered by the operating system. In fact, what managed to hurt Vista the most was this perception of poor performance compared to Windows XP, despite the fact that benchmarks from the software giant placed the two operating systems on par.
“We’ve been driving down footprint, reducing our service costs, improving the efficiency of key code paths, refactoring locks to improve scalability, reducing hangs, improving our I/O efficiency and much more. These are scenario driven based on real world execution paths we know from our telemetry to be common,” Sinofsky and Fortin added.
In addition to the actual efforts poured into building the Windows 7 bits, Microsoft is also collaborating closely with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), independent software vendors (ISVs) and independent hardware vendors (IHVs) in order to ensure that Windows 7 will deliver a top performance in concordance with the hardware resources it is made available with. But at the same time the Windows developing team is keeping a close eye on the milestones of the operating system as they are deployed internally.
“Within the Windows dev team, we’ve placed a simple trace capturing tool on everyone’s desktop. This desktop tool allows each person to run 24×7 with performance tracing enabled. If anything seems slow or sluggish, they can immediately save the last minute-or-so of activity and send it for automated analysis. Additionally, a team of people visually inspect the traces for new issues or issues not yet decipherable by our automation. The traces are incredibly rich and allow us to get to the root of top issues most of the time,” Sinofsky and Fortin said.
In the end, Microsoft does not rely exclusively on monitoring tasks performed as an integral part of the dogfooding of Windows 7. The company is also centralizing telemetry from the testers participating in the Windows 7 pre-Beta program and will continue to do so throughout the Beta and Release Candidate stages. In addition, the software giant will take into account micro-benchmarks and specific performance scenarios for Windows 7, on top of the system tuning it is already introducing.
"For all Pre-Beta, Beta and RTM users, we’ve developed a new form of instrumentation and have used it to instrument over 500 locations in the operating system and inbox applications. This new instrumentation is simple in concept, but revolutionary in result. The tool is called PerfTrack, and it has helped confirm our belief that the client benchmarks aren’t too informative about real user responsiveness issues," Sinofsky and Fortin stated.

Rumor: three options for upgrading from Vista to Windows 7

2008-12-27T12:38:00.001+05:30

Back in November, I explored the number of editions of Windows 7 that Microsoft was working on. While the company has not officially given a list yet, it was clear that Windows 7 Enterprise Edition and Windows 7 Ultimate Edition were definitely coming. Furthermore, there was an obvious avoidance of naming a Windows 7 Business Edition, though there was a mention of a Windows 7 Small Business Edition. While doing a little more digging, I stumbled on the following upgrade paths for Windows Vista to Windows 7. These are not confirmed, but I am told they are what Microsoft is currently considering:

Windows Vista Home Premium Edition => Windows 7 Home Premium Edition
Windows Vista Business Edition => Windows 7 Professional Edition
Windows Vista Ultimate Edition => Windows 7 Ultimate Edition
Does anyone else find it mildly interesting that Microsoft has gone back and renamed Business to Professional, just like it was with good old XP? These three upgrade paths "confirm" two more editions: Home Premium and Professional. These two are the ones that most customers will likely be buying, whereas the average geek will likely go ahead and grab Ultimate.

It's not yet clear whether Microsoft will have an upgrade path for XP users, but I would not hold my breath. Currently there is still no word about Starter or Home Basic editions for Windows 7. We'll keep you posted when Microsoft finally does reveal the official edition list.

In related news, WinFuture and Neowin have screenshots of the leaked Windows 7 6.1.7000 build. Rumor has it that select users will get Windows 7 Beta 1 on January 5, 2009, and a public beta will follow sometime afterwards.

Windows 7 Leaked Screenshots

2008-12-27T12:28:00.000+05:30

Source: Neowin

Microsoft May Release Windows 7 Beta at Show

2008-12-25T11:34:00.000+05:30

Attendees at next month's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) could get the first public look at Windows 7, the next version of Microsoft's client OS.

At its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles in October, Microsoft said it would release the beta early in 2009. Though nothing has been confirmed, signs are pointing to sometime in January and possibly the CES show in Las Vegas as a likely release date. CES is scheduled for Jan. 8-11.

A member of Microsoft's public relations team in the U.K. said in an e-mail that at the show, "Microsoft will be making some significant announcements including Windows 7." She did not specify exactly what the news around the OS would be. But several blogs, including All About Microsoft, have reported that beta testers are expecting a Windows 7 beta any day.

Furthermore, Microsoft wrote on a Web site for its Microsoft Developer Network Conferences (MDCs) that attendees of those conferences, some of which are scheduled for mid-January, can expect a Windows 7 beta DVD.

Some of the MDCs were this month and the site gave Microsoft an out if the beta wasn't released in December, saying that "the DVD will be shipped to attendees when it becomes available." A Windows 7 beta was not released at those conferences, and the next MDCs are scheduled for Jan. 13 in Chicago and Minneapolis.

Microsoft expects to release Windows 7 in early 2010, although some industry observers expect it may be out by the end of 2009 because of lackluster customer response to Windows Vista. Many business customers in particular have opted to skip Vista and run XP until Windows 7 is available.

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Pressure mounts for Microsoft to deliver with Windows 7

2008-12-23T11:25:00.000+05:30

Nearly two years after introducing Vista, Microsoft (MSFT) is grappling with an unanticipated phenomenon: The latest version of its flagship Windows computer operating system remains a rarity in corporate settings. As a result, the software giant finds itself under acute pressure to stay on track with plans to replace Vista with the next version of Windows, code-named Windows 7, perhaps as soon as late 2009.

With the global economy stalling out — and with Apple Macs increasingly replacing Windows desktops and laptops in workplace settings — Microsoft can ill afford a repeat of the delays that beset the introduction of Vista. "They have to get Windows 7 right — and get it right the first time," says Laura DiDio, principal analyst at tech research firm ITIC

ITIC and Sunbelt Software surveyed 700 senior executives and found only 10% had deployed Vista in their organizations. Windows XP remained the primary desktop PC operating system for 88% of the respondents. Meanwhile, 77% reported some use of Macs, and 50% said they plan to permit wider use of Apple products, including the iPhone.

Monday, in a nod to those who don't want to switch to Vista now, Microsoft said it would continue letting smaller PC makers order XP through Jan. 31 for delivery through May.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Microsoft | PCs | iPhone | Windows XP | Gartner | Windows Vista | Charles King | Apple Macintosh | Michael Silver | Laura DiDio | Sunbelt Software | Pund-IT
Even so, revenue from Microsoft's client division, which includes Vista, rose 13% to $16.9 billion in its 2008 fiscal year, ended June 30. Operating income rose 14% to $13.1 billion. That's partly because corporations paid Microsoft to access Vista but then chose not to use it.

Many tech managers remain wary of Vista's reputation for crashing programs. "Vista's main problem is lack of compatibility with other applications," says DiDio.

Shanen Boettcher, general manager of Windows product management, says Vista has been refined and now works well with most business applications. Today, "nearly nine of 10 people who actually run Windows Vista say they enjoy it and are favorable," he says.

Microsoft's big challenge: Get corporate buyers to embrace Windows 7. The economic slowdown won't make that any easier, says Charles King at tech research firm Pund-IT. "As money tightens and the recession deepens, both consumers and businesses will do everything they can to avoid purchases," says King.

Tech buyers who postpone replacing aging PCs risk cutting themselves off from newer software designed for Windows 7, says Michael Silver, Gartner tech industry analyst. "You could end up with too much Windows XP, too late in its life," he says.

"There is a very good probability of Windows 7 shipping early, in time for holiday sales in 2009," Silver says. "Strong sales of new PCs will allow Windows 7 to get off to a good start."

Windows 7 - The Linux Killer

2008-12-23T11:21:00.001+05:30

Microsoft has long been worried about Linux competition in the server market. When it came to ordinary PCs and laptops, however, it knew it had little to fear.

But that was then. Now Microsoft may fear Linux on the desktop as much as it does the Mac. It's finally taking Linux seriously as a desktop operating system, and it has designed Windows 7 to kill it.

The threat to Windows comes entirely from "netbooks" -- lightweight, inexpensive laptops that typically use Intel's low-powered Atom processor and don't come with substantial amounts of RAM or powerful graphics processors. They're designed mainly for browsing the Web, handling e-mail, writing memos, and taking care of simple word-processing or spreadsheet chores.

Netbooks will account for about a third of all PC growth this year, according to Citigroup. Shipments will rise at an annual average rate of 60% to reach 29 million netbooks in 2010, compared with 18% growth for standard notebooks, says a September BNP Paribas report.

Clearly, the future is in netbooks. And that has Microsoft worried. Netbooks can't handle Vista's hardware demands, so XP is the only Microsoft operating system that runs on them. But Linux is ideally suited for lower-powered netbooks.

The result? Acer and Asustek, which account for 90% of the netbook market, are using Linux on about 30% of their low-cost notebooks, according to Bloomberg. Making matters worse, if Linux is used on those netbooks, it means that Microsoft Office isn't. So Microsoft takes a double hit every time someone buys a Linux netbook.

Microsoft isn't just worried about ceding 30% of the netbook market to Linux. It's also worried that if people get used to running Linux on netbooks, they'll consider buying Linux on desktop PCs as well. Here's what Dickie Chang, an analyst at IDC in Taipei, told Bloomberg: "It's a real threat to Microsoft. It gives users a chance to see and try something new, showing them there is an alternative."

Microsoft may fear Linux on the desktop as much as it does the Mac. Microsoft, though, has a not-so-secret weapon against Linux: Windows 7. Its new operating system, slated to be introduced sometime next year, is designed to work fine on netbooks. In fact, at Microsoft's recent Professional Developers Conference, where the pre-beta of Windows 7 was unveiled, Windows Senior Vice President Steve Sinofsky showed off Windows 7 on his Lenovo S10 and said it used less than half of the netbook's 1GB of RAM.

When Windows 7 ships, expect a massive marketing blitz pushing it on netbooks with special deals, and netbook hardware taking advantage of Windows 7 capabilities, including touch screens.

Despite Microsoft's killer instincts, I don't think Linux netbook sales will stop dead. There will always be a niche for them. But within a year of the Windows 7 launch, Linux market share will drop. The high point for Linux netbook sales will be from now until the launch of Windows 7. After that will come the inevitable decline.

Windows 7 build 7004

2008-12-23T11:08:00.001+05:30

Windows 7 Build 7004

A screenshot of Windows 7 build 7004 appeared on the Internet. It was uploaded by Scott Wylie, NZ Director of Developer & Platform Strategy. He mentioned that he installed this pre-beta release of Windows 7 and started playing around with it. Now this interesting tidbit could either mean that the planned beta release will have a build number higher than 7004 or that Scott got it confused and was already working with a post-beta 1 build.

Extend Windows 7 Trial Period

2008-12-19T18:34:00.001+05:30

If you got your hands on a copy of Windows 7 (pre-beta or beta) you should have also received a Windows 7 product key with it to test the new operating system extensively. If you did install it without entering the product key you might have noticed by now that the operating system can only be tested for a period of 30 days before it requires registration.

There is however one simply command that can extend the trial period by another 30 days in case you need the extra time to find the key or to evaluate the Windows 7 operating system. To use it you need to load the command prompt in Windows 7 as an administrator and enter the following command:

sysprep /generalize

You can alternatively try the following two commands which should do the same:

slmgr.vbs –rearm
rundll32 slc.dll,SLReArmWindows

Reboot Windows 7 so that the changes can take effect. If everything worked out you should be able to test the Windows 7 operating system for another 30 days.

Windows 7 Public Beta

2008-12-19T18:33:00.000+05:30

We have got some news about the public Windows 7 Beta that was expected to be released in early 2009. According to our sources the public beta will be made available on January 7. The full build string for the beta of Windows 7 will be 7000.0.081212-1400 which in other words means that the build 7000 will be the public beta. The beta will not only be available in English language but also in localized editions

Die Vorbereitungen für den Beginn der Betaphase von Windows 7 laufen auf Hochtouren. Die Auslieferung an ausgewählte Partner von Microsoft beginnt bereits morgen. Die öffentliche Beta soll in den ersten Tagen des neuen Jahres starten. That’s good news for everyone who wants to test the new operating system extensively.

The final release of Windows 7 is expected to hit the shelves in November 2009.

Windows 7 Beta 1 Invitations Being Sent

2008-12-19T18:30:00.001+05:30

On Decemeber 16, Microsoft selected a group of beta testers and mailed them invitations to participate in Windows 7 Beta 1. Yes, the beta release is pretty near, although they haven’t let out any word on when they are planning to make it public.

The lucky folks who received these invites are being called as “tech beta testers.” Below is some part of the note that Microsoft sent to the invitees.

While (the Windows 7) beta will not be available until early 2009 we, know you are excited to get started so we have opened the microsoft.beta.win7.lobby (on the Microsoft Connect site) so you may begin renewing acquaintances with previous participants as well as meeting new testing peers. After accepting the invitation, you will be able to sign into Microsoft Connect and click on the ‘Windows 7 Beta Program’ link for more information on accessing the newsgroups.

“As well, to better understand our audience and how we are asking you to complete the following three surveys to tell us about yourself. Each survey has 20-40 questions and each should take you approximately 20-30 minutes to complete. You don’t have to take them all at once nor do you have to do it right now. We ask though that at some point you find time to complete them. As a thank-you for completing these prior to the end of the calendar year (Prior to January 1st, 2009) each participant who completes all three surveys (or indicates ‘already taken’) will be put into a drawing and five winners selected to receive some Windows 7 logo’ed toys!”

According to earlier rumours, Windows 7 beta 1 was suppose to hit the Internet yesterday, on December 17. Another source mentioned it to be on Christmas, but looks like Microsoft doesn’t want to make the public release official till early 2009. And since this is just the first wave of invites, we can expect more from Microsoft.

Just like always, devil strikes, and I now wish to see a leaked version of Windows 7 Beta 1 in the next couple of days! I just hope one of the beta testers do it. Good bless him – in advance! ;)

Windows 7 FAQ and Rumours

2008-12-08T13:43:00.000+05:30

Windows 7 FAQ and Rumors
This page is constantly updated with new information. Last updated December 8, 2008

What is Windows 7?
Windows 7 is the codename of the upcoming operating system in development by Microsoft. It’s called 7 for now probably because it’s the 7th version of Windows (Vista was Windows 6.)

Windows 7 Build 69xx Leaked?
Although these were the builds shown at PDC and WinHEC, they have not been leaked.

When will Windows 7 Beta 1 come out?
We’re looking at a January 13 release.

How can I get Windows 7 Beta 1?
Attending MSDN Developer’s Conference will guarantee you a copy.

(although TPB will probably have it released before they have been mailed out to the attendees.)
Is Windows 7 really Vista’s twin?
It’s hard to say now because Windows 7 is not even considered a beta yet. Any claims made now are probably inaccurate. Your best bet would be to wait until Beta 1 is released to find out.

So Windows 7 Build 6801leaked then?
It’s already been leaked on dozens of torrent sites.

Should I use Windows 7 as my main OS if I get my hands on it?*
It is still in pre-beta stage so you are sure to face some hiccups on it. I’ve already had trouble with a few games and applications. It has also randomly shut down on me without asking me if I want to restart after updates, which is very annoying. Also, a public beta is coming out in December so you may want to wait before “fully” switching, which I don’t recommend anyway.

Is Windows 7 the same as Windows Blackcomb or Vienna?
Yes. Vienna and Blackcomb were old codenames.

When will Windows 7 be released?
Microsoft plans to release Windows 7 three years after Vista’s release date. Windows 7 should be released sometime between late 2009 - early 2010. Microsoft also recently confirmed their focus is for a Q4 2009 release.

Will Windows 7 be available in 64-bit only?
No. It will be available as a 32-bit and 64-bit version.

Will Windows 7 utilize a new kernel?
Nope. Previous rumors about Microsoft creating a new kernel that is one-sixth of the size of Windows Vista’s kernel were not true.

Is Windows 7 a major or minor release?
Windows 7 will be a major release. (For example: Windows XP SP2 was a minor release)

Will Windows 7 use the same driver device model as Vista?
Yes it will, meaning that existing drivers will work with Windows 7. No need for headaches over updates. Kudos to Microsoft for this one.

Why does Windows 7 look awfully like Windows Vista?
No one is sure yet, but Microsoft is known to get the technical aspects and features done correctly first, before reworking the GUI.

What’s the whole deal with the Ribbon?
The Ribbon is what Microsoft believes as the future of navigation for programs. If you take a look at the Notepad Look-alike screenshots here that’s what Microsoft wants to implement for programs to come. There’s not a whole lot of detail about this yet.

Virtual Hard Disks?
There were rumors of Microsoft posting a job listing for someone that can work on their virtualization features. However, an updated WinHEC 2008 agenda shows that the seminar on VHD will only be for Windows Server 2008.

What about the sidebar and its gadgets??
Windows 7 will not have the sidebar like in Vista. However, gadgets are to play an integral part of the overall GUI, and will be “integrated” into the whole Windows system.

How do I get Windows 7 Beta?
The Public beta is due to come out sometime in mid-December. To get ready for it, make sure you have a Windows Live account and sign in Microsoft Connect and fill out your details. You can try looking for Windows 7 in the list but the last time I checked it wasn’t there (please let me know if you do see it there.) I’ll update you on when the public beta starts getting distributed.

Just how fast does Windows 7 boot up?
Just to give you an idea, let me give you my specs:
CPU: Intel Core2Duo e6750 - 2.66GhZ
Motherboard: Gigabyte P35 DS3R
RAM: 2GB Crucial at 733MhZ
HD: 640GB Samsung 16MB Cache

On Vista I boot up in about 35 seconds, and Windows 7 ranges from 20-25. It actually gets faster the more I use my computer.
On Asus EEE netbook tests, it takes 58 seconds to boot up. Lifehacker claims it is 20% faster than Vista in terms of boot time.

New Windows 7 Bitlocker additions:
Bitlocker will now support portable USB Flash drives as well

Windows 7 Features:
Screen Docking in Windows 7:
Screen docking is the ability for Windows to change shape or form through the way you move them. If you move a window up to the top edge of your screen, it will maximize automatically. Dragging it away will unmaximize it. Dragging it off to the left and right edges will automatically resize them to take up 50% of the screen.

The new taskbar “superbar” in Windows 7:
The new and improved taskbar looks a bit like the dock in Mac OS X. Microsoft wants you to recognize applications only by their icons, although you can still have it show text. It’s size has increased by 1.5 times, and you can now shift application boxes around. The new graphics engine also allows the application background box to change colour according to the hues in the application’s icon. There’s an entire article on how to unlock this hidden taskbar in Windows 7, and a preview of its features here.

Native HD codec support for Windows 7:
Windows 7 is to natively support DivX, Xvid, MKV, and H.264, as well as transcoding. This means you can watch any videos in these codecs right out of the box. Windows Media Center can also convert on-the-fly to a format your extender uses, meaning you can now stream these videos to your Xbox 360, or any other external device.

Device Stage:
Device stage is a new feature that allows device vendors to have a customizable interface that allows you to utilize your device from a control panel. Basically, when you plug in your device, a window will pop up listing its specs (battery life, firmware version, hard disk space, etc) and then give you many options as to what you can do with the device. This may eliminate the need to download or install 3rd party applications to use specific devices in the future.

Windows 7 Libraries:
Libraries are folders that allow you to access data of a specific category regardless of where they are located on your computer. For example, you can create a library for rock music and have access to all your rock music in that folder, even if you have rock music on 3 different partitions.

Customizable UAC in Windows 7:
You can’t completely customize UAC but there are now four different UAC behaviors you can select. You can choose for UAC to go into paranoia mode, or to not alert you at all.

Windows Sensors in Windows 7:
Windows 7 will have support for software and hardware sensors. This is very neat and there’s an entire article about it here. If you just want to know the basics, let’s just say that the sensors will have some of the following abilities: GPS, the ability to change monitor brightness and contrast depending on the amount of sunlight around you, the ability to change the GUI of an application depending on the time of day.

Desktop Slideshows in Windows 7:
Desktop slideshows allow your desktop wallpaper to automatically change in specified time intervals. You can also draw images from an RSS feed such as NASA image of the day, so your wallpaper change when that image changes, without actually having to store the files on your hard-drive. I have written an article on it here.

Windows Peeking:
Windows peeking allows you to look at a window without actually going to it. The purpose of this is to be able to view your gadgets lying on your desktop, without actually having to access your desktop. You can probably imagine how easy it is to get away with surfing on the net while at work.

Driver protection in Windows 7:
Whenever drivers are started, they are checked against a “Protection List” so bad drivers can be prevented from starting to avoid stability problems. The list is regularly updated by Microsoft.

IME Learning:
IME Learning or (Input Method Editor) Learning is a feature that will memorize the combination of words or characters you use with East Asian languages. This is different from what was seen in Vista or XP because these memorizations are permanently stored on your computer, whereas in past operating systems, memory was lost after shut down.

Windows 7 build 6956 leaked

2008-12-08T12:30:00.002+05:30

The first version of Windows 7 that leaked to various P2P networks was the released handed out at the Professional Developer Conference. The latest leak of build 6956 of Windows 7 happened during the WinHEC 2008 conference in Beijing. The release made its way on various torrent websites from where it can be downloaded. It is not supplied in ISO format but as a Virtual Hard Disk image. To run that image you would need one of the following programs: Virtual Server 2005, Hyer-V HyperVisor or Windows 7 Disk Management.

Another possibility that is outlined would be the following:

extract HEC.rar, you can get a .VHD image.
Use WinMount3, extract .VHD image to a new ntfs disk.
Use VistaBootPro, add the disk to your boot menu.
Please note that those information have been directly taken from information supplied by people distributing those files.

Visit the following and download torrent
http://www.mininova.org/tor/2070433

But remember you can only use it for 30 days.

Windows 7 Build 6936 Hints At Windows 7 Beta

2008-11-25T13:51:00.001+05:30

The German online magazine Winfuture (German) got their hands on the latest Windows 7 build with the build number 6936 that got distributed to the small circle of pre-beta testers. The build is identical with the build that was used to demonstrate Windows 7 at the WinHec conference. That build was created at the end of October according to Winfuture.

The full taskbar functionality is now available in that build. The remarkable changes of build 6936 are:
Jumplists are accessible by right-clicking on a symbol in the task bar
The Start button seems more colorful when moving the mouse over it
The Start menu is now displaying icons next to the most used applications which lead to Jump Lists as well
They mention new and updated symbols but fail to provide details
The Zoom function is now available which can be used to zoom into parts of the computer desktop. The zoom works in multimedia files as well.
Hardware Detection seems to have been improved as devices that were not completely detected in the PDC build were not detected correctly.
Missing drivers were downloaded from Windows Update automatically
The Shutdown button is now showing in text form what it will do
Back to the title of the article. Why does this release hint at the Windows 7 Beta? Microsoft changed the default Windows 7 wallpaper to one entitled Windows 7 Beta Default Desktop Wallpaper. The difference is the fish that is shown in the middle of the wallpaper.

The species is called Betta..

Microsoft Considering Country Specific Editions Of Windows 7

2008-11-25T13:49:00.000+05:30

Many Windows Vista users feel that Microsoft did release to many different editions of the operating system which made it harder for consumers to pick the right product. Even though not all editions were available to anyone it still meant that consumers had the choice among several Windows Vista editions from Windows Vista Basic to Windows Vista Ultimate.
Microsoft on the other hand does not seem to be bothered as much as the consumers are. German news mag Winfuture is reporting that Microsoft is considering to sell country specific editions of Windows 7 in order to make it easier for them to pick the right product. A customer from Germany or France would then buy Windows 7 editions that have been translated to his language. According to the magazine this is just one possible line of thought.
First reactions are quite negative though because it would increase the Windows 7 editions tremendously. The computer magazine is also reporting that Microsoft is having plans to rename some of the editions of Windows 7 to make it easier for consumers to distinguish between the editions. A strong rumor is the reintroduction of a professional edition of Windows 7.

The Windows 7 Taskbar Superbar

2008-11-25T13:46:00.001+05:30

The Engineering Windows 7 blog is finally starting to integrate the operating system into their articles. Most of the previous articles that have been posted at the website were about theoretical aspects and things Microsoft learned from past operating systems.

It contains
Refreshed Look
Pinning
Unification
Interactive, Grouped Thumbnails
Aero Peek
Jump Lists
Custom Window Switchers
Thumbnail Toolbars
Notification Area
Overlay Icons and Progress Bars
Color Hot-track
Start Menu

The first thing that might catch the attention is the Color Hot-track feature. This is a visual aid that becomes active when the user moves the mouse over a Taskbar icon.
When a person moves her mouse over a running program on the taskbar, she will be pleasantly surprised to find that a light source tracks her mouse and the color of the light is actually based on the icon itself. We calculate the most dominant RGB of the icon and dynamically paint the button with this color.

Overlay Icons and Progress Bars have not been mentioned before as well:
Cleaning the Notification Area warrants us to consider other ways that programs can surface important information. We’ll always had overlay icons throughout Windows (e.g. to show shortcuts in Explorer) so we decided to bring this functionality to the taskbar. An icon can now be shown over a program’s taskbar button. Furthermore, programs can also give feedback about progress by having their taskbar button turn into a progress bar.

Advanced Start Menu Start++

2008-11-21T16:13:00.002+05:30

http://brandontools.com/files/folders/startplusplus/entry33.aspx

Surely Windows Vista has included a new look & functional Start Menu. But ever considered how much it could be advanced. Just check out the following link to experience it yourself.

Click on the link and download the new latest verison of Start++ and extend your navigation.

http://brandontools.com/files/folders/startplusplus/entry33.aspx

Windows 7 calculator for Windows X

2008-11-21T16:04:00.002+05:30

Wanna taste some pizazz of Windows 7 in previous versions like Windows Vista or Windows XP. Just download this brand new Windows Calculator to be included in Windows 7.

http://www.box.net/shared/y7tdnm9y2a#Windows7-calculator

This may be dupe of original one. But from the functions & looks point of view it rocks!

Just click on the link and install it to enjoy the new advanced calculator for Windows

http://www.box.net/shared/y7tdnm9y2a#Windows7-calculator

Windows Seven

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Windows 7 Discontinues Ultimate Extras

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