The Europeans have had fun with Microsoft. An anti-trust suit filed in Europe in the late 90′s forced Microsoft to open it’s Operating system to other browsers besides the Internet Explorer. Now with Windows 8 in the mix,  and especially with Windows 8 RT a potential anti-trust investigation is possible.

First the US Senate is poised to investigate Microsoft for its actions to see if it is in violation of the agreement it entered in the late 1990′s on its monopoly activity. (funny…it was found to be a monopoly but what happened…not much…big deal…See the CNN Summary.)

Europe in 2003 also went after Microsoft for it’s OS and media player connection. A judgement forced Microsoft to detach the media player from the OS.  And later, the “Browser” deal went into affect, which untied Internet Explorer from the Operating System, allowing other browsers to run on the OS.

Now  a new look at Microsoft is underway, because the question is a tablet a PC? The original judgement applied to PC’s and Servers, not tablets. Microsoft now has tablets in the works, and there are two variations, Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT (or ARM). There are investigations questioning how much compliance is necessary to the judgement. But one problem with this is that the ARM version, comes from a new design in Chip technology.

What is ARM?

ARM refers to devices that use technology  from ARM Holdings PLC, a company based in the United Kingdom. It develops intellectual property  for semiconductors.  But instead of manufacturing actual semiconductor chips, ARM develops the technology and then licenses its intellectual property to partner companies that produce the semiconductors, chips, and devices. So ARM partners utilize ARM technology to produce system-on-chip designs, paying ARM a license fee for the original IP, plus a royalty on every chip or wafer produced. Right now it is a technology is currently being used in 90% of smartphones, 80% of digital cameras, and 28% of all electronic devices.

Windows 8 and ARM

Microsoft will release two versions on Windows 8, one running ARM, and one without. ARM devices will feature a Metro mode, that is a tile-based, touch-optimized interface, as well as a more traditional Windows desktop mode. Now here is the important part. Apps designed for the Metro interface will be supported on both ARM and Windows 8 on x86/64, and ARM includes support for hardware-accelerated HTML5. It will offer desktop versions of the key apps in the new Office 15 like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

But the kicker is that legacy Windows apps will run under Windows 8 on PCs, but not on ARM devices. This means that developers will not be able to recode their current Windows apps for ARM, under desktop mode. And that is where the problem comes in for other software manufacturers. This is the original problem they had with Microsoft 10 years ago. Can their software run on the Microsoft platform, or are there restrictions, and are these restrictions in violation of the 2004 agreement?

That is what the Europeans will try to determine.

Source: zdnet

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Some folks have had their doubts that Nokia, along with Microsoft, could make a comeback and specifically make one in the United States – a region that has long since forgotten about the Finnish handset manufacturer. The Lumia 900 is Nokia’s comeback and by large opinion, it is their one and only chance to make a dent into the smartphone market that has long eluded them. Is the Lumia 900 worthy of it’s “hero” status and massive marketing campaign that is just beginning to roll out? Here’s my review of the Lumia 900 and my own opinion on whether the device is solid enough to compete with the iPhone and Android super-phones.

Hardware & Design

There is perhaps no phone more striking to the eye than the Nokia Lumia 900. Taking its cue from the original N9 and Lumia 800, the big brother sports the same uni-body polycarbonate design and rounded edges. Measuring 2.7 inches across by 5.03 inches from top to bottom and 0.45 inches thick, the device feels great in the hand and substantial, like a premium device should. The only flaw in design that I could see is with the pop-out door which hides the micro SIM card. The door sits flush with the devices body, but seems to wiggle a bit instead of snapping in nice and tight. A minor issue, but one that should have been caught by Nokia.

The 900 sports all of its buttons on the right side of the unit. A camera marks the bottom and the power/unclock key lies in the middle with the volume rocker up top. The hardware buttons are solid and feature a rounded, chrome-finished design. They serve their purpose, but do not feel as premium as those buttons found on the HTC Titan II or iPhone 4s.

The Lumia 900 comes initially in two colors: black and cyan with a white version to be available on April 22nd and a rumored magenta version for Mothers Day.

Simply put, the Lumia 900 is the most unique-looking device on the market and is sure to turn heads.

Specs

Unlike most other platforms, the internals on Windows Phone devices do not matter nearly as much. This is because Microsoft has optimized the mobile OS to run on lower hardware just as fast as it does on high-end hardware. The Lumia 900 is no exception.

Sporting a 1.4GHz Qualcomm processor and 512RAM, the device simply screams. The 4.3-inch Clear Black AMOLED display holds a resolution of 800×480 and looks absolutely stunning running the Windows Phone OS. While high resolution support would be a welcome addition, it’s really not necessary in order to appreciate the 900. Text and graphics look crisp and vibrant and the blacks are so deep it has the illusion that the Start screen tiles are just floating over a vast empty space.

Camera

Before using the Lumia 900, early reviews panned the camera as being a mediocre effort on Nokia’s part. My own experience with the camera on the Lumia 900 is pretty decent. This camera is no slouch, but it’s also not quite on par with the cameras found on the Titan I & II and the iPhone 4 and 4s. The front camera is a 1.3MP shooter and does the job admirably. The rear camera is an 8MP shooter with Carl Zeiss optics. The pictures taken in sunlight or in areas with a good dose of light are comparable to those you might see on the iPhone 4s and HTC Titan, however, it’s when you are snapping pictures in low-light situations that reveals the faults of the camera. There are some noticeable artifacts in low-light pictures and it’s a shame. Overall, the camera is still in the upper echelon of smartphone shooters and will suit most any user.

Battery

The battery life on the Lumia 900 is surprisingly well for it being an LTE device. In most use cases, the battery would still be plenty full by the time I was ready to call it a day. Realistically, one could go a full day with heavy use and maybe a day or two on light to moderate use.

Phone

It seems kind of odd to talk about the phone aspects of a smartphone these days. Most tech blogs focus on how many cores a processor has or how high the resolution is, but forget that the device is used to make phone calls. Without going into a ton of detail, the call quality for both incoming and outgoing calls on the Lumia 900 is superb. Callers sounded crisp and loud and those on the other end noted the same. It may also be important to note that you can hold the Lumia 900 however you see fit without degradation in service or call quality. The phone just works.

Final Thoughts

To wrap up my own review of the Lumia 900 I’ll say that this is going to be my everyday smartphone for the foreseeable future. Coming from an HTC Titan, I worried that the smaller size of the device and polycarbonate shell might not feel as premium as the Titan did, but my worries were quickly laid to rest. The Lumia 900 feels great in the hand and has the look that will undoubtedly turn heads.

Every phone has it’s flaws. Some devices lose signal when you hold them in a human hand and some shatter when you accidentally drop them from just a few short feet up. The Lumia 900′s flaws are minor and unnoticeable for most users. In just a few short months, Nokia was able to craft a smartphone that people will enjoy and show off to their friends. Not only is the device capable of competing with the likes of the iPhone 4s and Galaxy Nexus, the Lumia 900 even surpasses those handsets in a number of ways. This is the Windows Phone device to have and it’s my belief that others who see this device in action will believe so as well. In the end, it will come down to personal preference. I’m a fan of the Windows Phone OS, so combining the software with a great piece of hardware makes sense for me, but I would highly recommend stopping by an AT&T or Rogers retail store and demoing a device to see if it fits you.

Note: Nokia is making the Lumia 900 globally available to other carriers and in an unlocked version very soon.

Nokia Lumia 900 Review was posted on Everything Microsoft - Latest Microsoft News, Guides, Reviews & Themes. If you are not reading this content in an email newsletter, it is being used without permission.

The Pirate Bay is the most visited torrents site on the web, it’s also one of the sites that has caused the most controversy and attracted the most media attention. A large number of ISP’s have blocked Pirate Bay, but of course there’s plenty of ways around that little inconvenience.

Now it looks like Microsoft are next in line to begin censoring the torrent site. A Microsoft spokesperson has confirmed with the Inquirer that the software giant is now going to start blocking links to the site which users post in its MSN chat client.

Microsoft use a SmartScreen filter in it’s chat client to help block links that it deems to be spam, offensive or unsuitable to be sent. It uses a variety of algorithms to check if the link is suitable, otherwise it’s blocked. Users will now see the following when they try to send a link to Pirate Bay.

Credit:TorrentFreak

“We block instant messages if they contain malicious or spam URLs based on intelligence algorithms, third-party sources, and/or user complaints. Pirate Bay URLs were flagged by one or more of these and were consequently blocked.”

However, it appears that this block may not be permanent. In the statement, Microsoft said that this ban on Pirate Bay links could be lifted if it’s algorithms change. This is done regularly and is based on user activity. So in theory the ban on Pirate Bay links could be automatically lifted at some stage

Source: The Inquirer

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One of Microsoft focuses in Windows 8 is the operating system’s touch capabilities. A new blog post over at the official Building Windows 8 blog highlights some of the challenges that Microsoft is facing, and solutions the company came up with to overcome hardware limitations.

Microsoft basically divides touch hardware into two groups. First hardware that is built for Windows 8, and then touch hardware that has been available before, and hardware that is not meeting the quality standards of the new operating system.

While Windows 8 will run on today’s hardware just fine, Microsoft notes that the user experience may differ due to hardware limitations. A set of default touch interactions have been created that third party app developers can use in their applications as well.

Windows 8 Touch Interactions

You will notice that all eight touch interactions require no more than two fingers. This ensures compatibility with past and future touch based devices, and a more comfortable user experience. Hardware designed for Windows 8 on the other hand is required to support a minimum of five fingers.

This is why Windows 8 PCs require digitizers that support a minimum of 5 fingers. The reason we went in this direction is a response to developer feedback. Developers do not want their creativity to be limited, and in particular, they let us know that they want to be free to use whichever multi-finger gestures or controls are useful. They do not want requirements for a minimum number of fingers that may not make sense for their application. As such, we focused on a minimum of 5 fingers to enable scenarios like whole hand interactions (all 5 fingers) or multi-finger/multi-hand scenarios. This will address the feedback, and unlocks opportunities for developers to push the envelope with multi-touch applications.

Microsoft is designing the Windows 8 operating system to be more forgiving when it is running on PCs designed for Windows 7. This is done to improve the overall user experience.

• Making gestures like press and hold and pinch to zoom more forgiving – On some touch screens, the information reported from the screen is not consistent. We call this “jitter.”., When “jitter” happens, it’s hard for the system to know if the finger is actually moving or stationary. In some instances, a simple gesture like “press and hold” becomes extremely hard to calculate.
• Determining user intent for sloppy or imprecise touches – Although larger UI elements help improve touch targeting, we don’t have that luxury within the Windows desktop, especially with existing desktop applications. For this, we developed new ways to remap touch targets using the geometry of the finger, such that it becomes easier to invoke any UI that is within the radius of your finger contact.

Video showing some of the inconsistencies

Topics discussed in the video include:

• Individual taps do not always work
• Swipe to select is inconsistent on hardware that does not detect small touch deltas fast enough
• Swipe and slide can be misinterpreted as a tap
• Swipe from edge does not always work, especially with faster swiping

Microsoft did a lot of testing on Windows 7 hardware, and according to the blog post, what they found “was encouraging” but also varying a lot.

What we found was encouraging: the vast majority of Windows 7 touchscreens can be used with Windows 8. This means that touch drivers continue to load, and you can perform the basic touch interactions in Windows 8 with a reasonable degree of success. But, as described in the previous section, we did see significant variability in how touch interactions were interpreted across different Windows 7 touchscreens.

Microsoft Reveals Information About Touch Hardware and Windows 8 was posted on Everything Microsoft - Latest Microsoft News, Guides, Reviews & Themes. If you are not reading this content in an email newsletter, it is being used without permission.

It’s been a while since we’ve run a competition, but we’ve got a doozy for you today.  We’ve teamed up with TrendOY! to give you a chance to win a Nokia Lumia 900!

TrendOY! is designed to put a smile on your face every morning. You see, TrendOY! is a daily email publication that will help you discover one new gadget daily in your inbox. They discover some of the coolest, most interesting gadgets from around the globe that you’ve never seen.

We’ve partnered with them on a giveaway for you. Head over now, sign up with them and you’ll be entered into a drawing to win a Nokia Lumia 900.

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It’s been a lot of work over the last two weeks migrating 5 sites across 3 different domains (3  wordpress sites and 2 forums) onto this new url, but we’ve finally finished!  We’d like to thank all users and the team of Windows7News.com, Windows8News.com and Windows9News.com for their patience during the move.

To our much larger community we’d like to say welcome and we hope that you will enjoy the greater range of topics that Everything-Microsoft.com will produce going forwards all under one roof.  The new site will continue to cover Microsoft OS releases, but will also increase coverage of other Microsoft topics.

New Features

• New Forum with over 15,000 members
• Wider site layout with bigger, better quality images
• Expanded Download Center
• Improved images and new image galleries
• Clearer site navigation
• Better Subscription - subscribe to all posts or chose only the categories you want to subscribe to (under construction)
• Easy Social Network Sharing buttons

We Need Your Help!

1. Commenting: 
• Join over 15k users in the new forums – a great place to get Windows 8 Help, or to just chat about Everything Microsoft
• Leave comments on posts – nearly 1m users visit this site each month, so your views will get heard
2. Sharing: One of the drawbacks of the domain name changes is we’ve lost all of our social network shares (sob):
•  Please help restore some of our ‘social’ pride by sharing any posts that you read – it only takes two clicks using the new buttons
• In particular, please take the time to ‘+1′ and ‘Like’ the new site using the buttons at the top of the sidebar
3. Twitter: We have a new twitter account – join the list of followers:Follow @EverythingMSFT
4. Facebook: We have a new facebook page - join the discussion!
5. RSS: If you’re currently subscribed to one of our old feeds, you will still receive updates from this site.  However, to avoid duplication and potential issues in the future please unsubscribe from the old feeds and subscribe to the new feed
6. Teething errors: There are bound to be some teething problems with redirecting the old sites. If you see an error or just want to send feedback, please contact the team

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Microsoft TechNet is a resource site and service that is aimed at IT professionals and developers. Some of the information on the site are publicly accessible, while others only for subscribers.

Subscribers get for instance access to beta and development releases that may not be released to the general public at all. They on top of that get access to full-version software for the time of subscription and other benefits.

Microsoft distinguishes between a standard and professional subscription. Both share the following features:

• Access full-version software for 12 months with no time or feature limits (including Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows versions)
• Microsoft E-Learning access
• 24/7 online chat
• Priority support in TechNet forums

The professional version on top of that gets access to Microsoft infrastructure products (including Enterprise software), and two complimentary support calls.

Here are the current subscription fees

• TechNet Standard: $199 for one year, $149 renewal
• TechNet Professional: $349 for one year, $249 renewal
• TechNet Professional with Media: $599 for one year, $449 renewal

Before September 2010, TechNet Professional subscribers received 10 product keys for every version of Windows, Office and other Microsoft products they were eligible for. This got slashed to five product keys in that month, and has now been slashed again to three product keys according to ZDnet.

Beginning in mid-March 2012, subscribers to TechNet Subscriptions (excluding TechNet Standard which are entitled to 2 keys per product) may access a maximum allocation of three (3) product keys for Microsoft Office and Windows Client products in connection with their subscription. The allotted keys may only be used for software evaluation purposes. Once the maximum keys have been activated, no more keys will be made available. Additional product keys may be acquired through the purchase of an additional subscription.

The system has been abused in the past, as some subscribers (maliciously) began to sell some of the product keys off. With ten licenses for every Microsoft operating system and Office product available (think windows 7 Pro, Ultimate and Home Premium, plus Office 2010 and other products) for the price of a single $349 subscription, they were bound to make a huge profit with every subscription they signed up for.

As of mid-March, TechNet Professional subscribers get three product keys for Microsoft products that are offered to subscribers. According to Microsoft, additional subscriptions need to be made if additional keys are needed.

Are you a TechNet subscriber? If so, what’s your opinion on this?

Microsoft Slashing TechNet Subscription Product Keys, Again was posted on Everything Microsoft - Latest Microsoft News, Guides, Reviews & Themes. If you are not reading this content in an email newsletter, it is being used without permission.

The new Everything-Microsoft.com site is the new merged domain for our three sites:

1. Windows 7 News - already migrated
2. Windows 8 News - moving soon
3. Windows 9 News - already migrated

We’ve taken this bold decision in order to make it easier for our readers to access the great content that our team has been producing.  No longer will you have to visit three sites to keep up to date with the latest Windows OS developments – all of our content will be found in one place.

This will be the last post on this site and all new posts will be published on Everything-Microsoft.com - in a few days we will redirect this site to the new url.

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Touchscreens these days are pretty much becoming part of nearly every device we own. In recent years the quality of touchscreens has increased dramatically but Microsoft’s Applied Sciences Group have shown that we are still a long way off from perfection.

In general today’s touchscreens have a latency of around 100ms. This doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but once you’ve looked at Microsoft’s video you’ll probably have formed a different opinion on the matter.

With that latency of 100ms it means that you’ll find that the screen is never completely up to speed with your finger movements. It’s always going to be 100ms behind what you’ve done. To be honest a lot of the time you probably won’t notice this because we’ve become quite used to it. But as demonstrated in the video below, if you’re drawing you’ll find that the screen is quite a bit behind the movements you’ve made.

The demo that Microsoft have put together shows the massive differences in performance between a touchscreen device with a latency of 100ms and that of one with just 1ms.

The performance differences are actually quite staggering and would really make for a much better and realistic user experience. There’s zero delay between the users input and the reaction of the display.

It’s quite revolutionary stuff this, and I’d love to see it being rolled out to all touchscreen devices as soon as possible. But obviously it isn’t quite that simple otherwise we’d already have it. I’m sure it costs a lot more to have a 1ms latency touchscreen and I’m not sure if it there’s enough demand from the mainstream consumer for this.

Sadly we might never see this sort of technology come to the market, but with a bit of luck we will. Microsoft have proven that it can be done, now it’s up to the hardware manufacturers to implement it.

Microsoft Cuts Touchscreens Lag To Just 1ms was posted on Everything Microsoft - Latest Microsoft News, Guides, Reviews & Themes. If you are not reading this content in an email newsletter, it is being used without permission.

Welcome!

To our new site name, Everything-Microsoft.com! 

This new site and domain name will (eventually – we are going to stagger the site migrations to minimize the impact) merge together our three current sites:

1. Windows 7 News
2. Windows 8 News
3. Windows 9 News

We’ve taken this bold decision in order to make it easier for our readers to access the great content that our team has been producing.  No longer will you have to visit three sites to keep up to date with the latest Windows OS developments – all of our content can now be found in one place, with a larger combined userbase to increase the chances to air your views with other readers.

More Topics

We will also be expanding the focus of the site to cover Everything Microsoft (sic) and not just consumer OS releases, increasing the depth and breadth of the posts available.  Look out for more posts on other Microsoft topics!

Other benefits of the new site

• Cleaner navigation and grouping of subjects
• Better content discovery with several new site widgets
• Improved images and new image galleries
• Better Subscription options – subscribe to all posts or chose only the categories you want to subscribe to
• Easy Social Network Sharing buttons

We Need Your Help!

1. Sharing: One of the drawbacks of the domain migration is we’ve lost all of our social network shares (sob):
•  Please help restore some of our ‘social’ pride by sharing any posts that you read – it only takes two clicks using the new buttons
• In particular, please take the time to ‘+1′ and ‘Like’ the new site:

1. Twitter: We have a new twitter account – join the list of followers:

1. Facebook: We have a new facebook page – join the discussion!
2. RSS: If you’re currently subscribed to one of our old feeds, you will still receive updates from this site.  However, to avoid duplication and potential issues in the future please unsubscribe from the old feeds and subscribe to the new feed
3. Teething errors: There are bound to be some teething problems with redirecting the old sites. If you see an error or just want to send feedback, please contact the team

We hope that you enjoy the new site!

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Now that there are (literally) millions of users now running Windows 8, we’re keen to get your views on what Windows 8 is doing well, what features you like or don’t like, tips that you want to share with other Windows 8 users.

One way of sharing your tips, views and opinions on Windows 8 is in our new Windows 8 Forum, however we are also willing to publish good quality posts on the main site which is read by over half a million readers each month.

Interested?   Then please read our Guest Post Guidelines.

Share Your Windows 8 Experiences – Submit A Guest Post! was posted on Everything Microsoft - Latest Microsoft News, Guides, Reviews & Themes. If you are not reading this content in an email newsletter, it is being used without permission.

Windows 7 News has been one of the leading Windows 7 news sites for many years now.  We have a strong editorial team, but we’d still like to offer our readers an opportunity to see their work included on the site.

If you wish to submit a guest post to help build your own online profile, or just fancy doing a post for fun, then please read our Guest Post Guidelines.  You can write about the topic of your choice… as long as it’s related to Windows 7 or Windows 8!

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Have you ever had the problem that the sound volume of an application or game in Windows 7 was to high or to low? This happens to me quite often when I start games for the first time after installation. The music is often to loud, which can be especially troublesome if you are hanging out in voice chat with a few buddies at the same time.

If you cannot hear what your friends are saying, you know the sound of the game is to loud. Some applications and most games let you change the sound volume right in their preferences, while other’s do not offer these options. There may also be situations where an app or game is making annoying sounds that you want to mute completely.

One useful feature that Microsoft integrated into Windows 7 is the ability to control the sound volume per application, and not only globally or per sound output device.

A left-click on the volume icon in the system tray area still displays only the global sound control which you can use to change the volume of sounds for all apps and games that run on the system.

A right-click on the icon and the selection of Open Volume Mixer displays the global mixer and application specific mixers.

Here it is now possible to increase or decrease the sound volume of specific applications, or even mute them completely to block all sounds from that app automatically.

The global slider moves all other sliders in relation. If you increase the global sound for instance, all application specific volumes are moved by the same amount to their new positions.

I personally use the feature to mute specific applications completely, and reduce the sound of apps that have their volume set to loud by default.

Have you used the feature before? If so, for what purpose?

Quick Tip: Control the Sound Volume Of Specific Applications was posted on Everything Microsoft - Latest Microsoft News, Guides, Reviews & Themes. If you are not reading this content in an email newsletter, it is being used without permission.

One of the most requested features for Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud storage and syncing service, which already comes with a healthy 25Gb of free space. appears to be almost ready for release.  Brazilian website gemind.com has released some screenshots that show extra storage of 20Gb, 50Gb and 100Gb for an additional $10, $25 and $50 per year.

It is also rumoured that Microsoft are set to raise the file size limit for uploads from 100Mb to 300Mb, which will make SkyDrive much more suitable for video storage.  Lastly there is talk of the company preparing Windows and Mac-specific versions of a SkyDrive app, though it is already that some basic SkyDrive functions are already part of Windows 8.  These will be necessary though as the current web-interface for uploading files to SkyDrive is unfriendly and featureless.

Microsoft is clearly aiming their sights at DropBox, the current market leader in cloud storage and it should do well, especially if the Live Mesh file sync client is allowed to use all of the available space, rather than the current 5Gb limit for cloud storage.

There is still along way for SkyDrive to go before it becomes a no-brainer for users, including the ability to strip attachments out of Hotmail (both sent, received and old and new) to help people who use Windows Live Mail or the Outlook Hotmail Connector plug-in, but this is a very welcome start.

There’s absolutely no word yet on when the extra services will be launching, but it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that they’re definitely coming and that they will be rolled-out gradually as usually happens with Microsoft products.  Usually countries such as US, UK and some major European countries get the first call with others rolled out within a few months.

It is also rumoured that Google is planning a similar service, though GDrive rumours have been around for some considerable time now.  Google have had difficulty with their non-search and advertising products, especially when it comes to integration.  Microsoft conversely is the current king of the integrated service and clearly this move with SkyDrive is intended to keep them at the top.

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Well there’s Facebook, Twitter, Google+, now Microsoft is entering the social contact medium with msnNow.

Microsoft looks at the situation like this did you ever feel like you have to jump from site to site in order to piece together what’s happening in the world? So msnNOW, is a new service from MSN at now.msn.com. It will help you stay in the connected and in the know. It is the first service to put together the latest buzz from Facebook, Twitter, Bing and BreakingNews.com, all in one place.

Who Gets What, Where and When

If you are into social media, then you would be one of a quarter of Americans under the age of 30 who get their information from various social media sites.  Trying to keep up with the latest news and information can be challenging…What is relevant? What is important? Getting the information in a timely manner can be challenging to ensure you’re seeing the relevant and credible content that matters most to you.

Furthermore, this view applies to everyone, not just generation Y.

Main Categories

Here are the main topics covered with the new service:

The point is that now.msn cuts through the clutter of the Web, providing an up-to-the-minute view of breaking trends and the hottest social conversations, what people are saying about them, and why they matter.

Rumors? Sure, but also facts and important information are covered. Microsoft uses Bing to access the information to provide users with a one source location to go to.

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You have Windows 7 operating system and want to enjoy your high speed Internet connection on many computers or you want to share it with your friends who live nearby you? Windows7News will show you how to use this functionality in Windows 7 with the help of Connectify. This software will indeed transform your computer into an internet access point, the only thing you need is a WiFi card. Here are the steps you have to follow to make this work:

Step 1: Make sure first that your WiFi card is enabled by going to Control Panel, Network and Internet, View Network computers and devices, right click on your WiFi card and then choose Enable. If you WiFi card is already enabled don’t change anything and continue to next step.

Step 1: Download Connectify for Windows 7.

Step 2: Run the installation file and accept the license agreement, the installation in simple and only takes a few seconds. During installation your computer will probably have to restart few times so don’t worry about that.

Step 3: Now once installation is finished, start Connectify. If an update for Connectify is available, make sure you download it and update the software. Then run the program.

Step 4: Your previously enabled wireless device is automatically detected. Then you must enter the name of your wireless network.

Step 5: A password of at least 8 characters is required. This will serve users to connect to your access point.

Step 6: Once the password is set, below password field you will have to choose which internet connection you want to share, click on dropdown men and select one.

Step 7: Then click Star a Hotspot button. It may take a minute or two until its setup.

Step 8: Once it’s done. Windows Security Alert may popup, choose Allow Access.

Here you are now with your own WiFi access point type WPA2-DSK. It is accessible from the list of wireless networks Network and Sharing Center, make sure you provide the password to people you want to share the connection with!

Note for those users with an Intel WiFi card, a simple driver’s update can in most cases, activate Windows 7 Virtual WiFi so you can benefit from the ability to turn your computer into an Internet Access Point without having to go through Connectify. Also make sure your WiFi network is secure, and always pay attention who is connected on your network and who is using your internet connection.

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Windows 8 is being developed with more portable devices in mind, tablets more so than anything else. While it will still retain the traditional desktop interface somewhat, the new Metro UI has been designed specifically with touch screen devices in mind. Some tablets are pretty small and portable, but none of them are quite as portable as a watch.

So can you imagine having a watch powered by Windows 8 on your wrist? Well a creative designer came up with a watch concept that is just that, check it out below.

It certainly looks like something from the future and wouldn’t look too out of place in a high tech spy movie. It was designed by Mithun Darji and he’s managed to do a pretty good job at porting the Windows 8 Metro UI onto the watches screen. Of course it’s only a concept and the chances that we will ever see it are probably pretty slim, but then again we have seen some android powered watches recently so you never know.

This concept comes with built in Wi-Fi, doubles as a phone and even comes with a bluetooth headset for the times when you don’t want to do a James Bond on it and talk directly into the watch. Other features that we can see are the dedicated media buttons along the top of the device as well as volume keys and four buttons along the bottom of the device.

So will we ever see a watch like this? Probably not because Microsoft has laid down certain hardware requirements for Windows 8 which would be very hard to replicate on a device as tiny as a watch.

But it’s a pretty cool concept none the less.

Would you wear a watch like this if it actually came to market?

Let us know in the comments below.

Source:

Ubergizmo

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File management is and always will be an essential task for all computer users. It includes file storage, accessibility and visibility among other things. Microsoft in a new blog post on the official Building Windows 8 blog has highlighted file management changes of the upcoming operating system. You probably know already that Microsoft intents to improve file management processes in Windows 8. This includes a better way to resolve conflicts. Conflicts occur for instance when you try to copy a file into a directory where the file name is already occupied by another file. Windows 8 adds visual information, e.g. thumbnails if you are moving photos to a new file conflict screen to give users more control over the process.

Windows 8 systems benefit from faster network throughput, for instance when you start a copying job over Wi-Fi and later on plug in a network cable. Jobs furthermore will automatically pause if the computer enters sleep or hibernation modes. The job can be resumed once the machine wakes again.

One of the many changes to Windows Explorer is the file manager’s ability to respect EXIF orientation, which means that you will always see your photos in the right orientation on the screen.

The padlock icon has been removed from Windows Explorer as it was causing delays in the file manager. They have been replaced by a sharing status column that is now displayed in the file browser.

Another new addition is the ability to pin folders to Start. This feature is accessible under the Easy Access menu in Windows Explorer’s new ribbon interface. It is furthermore possible to pin executables to the Start menu as well.

Please note that when I say Start, it means the Metro UI interface and not the original Windows Start Menu.

The announcement that Windows Explorer would ship with a ribbon interface has caused quite the controversy among users of the Windows operating system. Microsoft as a response has decided to minimize the ribbon interface in the Windows 8 beta release by default.

Ribbon minimized by default: With the ribbon maximized in the Developer Preview, we’ve been able to learn a lot about how people interact with it, which has enabled us to tweak and fine-tune it. With the beta, we will be making a major change that brings Explorer in line with our design principles for Windows 8. As in our copy dialogs, Task Manager, and Metro style experiences, we will be reducing distractions and trusting users to discover functionality on their own, by minimizing the ribbon by default.

According to an internal non representative study “heavier” Windows Explorer users make use of the Ribbon more often than lighter users. Users who prefer to work with a minimized ribbon interface on the other hand had a strong preference for hotkeys. To further encourage the use of hotkeys, Microsoft has added tooltips to many functions in Windows Explorer that highlight their hotkey.

Personalized Windows Explorer settings, like a maximized ribbon bar or actions in the Quick Access Toolbar, are now synchronized via Windows 8′s roaming feature.

The majority of changes make sense from a user perspective. Especially the ability to synchronize Windows Explorer customizations with other PCs running the operating system is an excellent option. What’s your take on the changes?

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If you thought that Windows 8 would improve the personalization features of Windows 7, then you are only half-right. While the operating system certainly offers its fair share of customizations, it has now been confirmed that Windows 8′s new Metro start screen will not offer as many customization options as users may have hoped for.

Instead of allowing users to pick the color scheme or background image they want, selection is limited to eight different styles currently. While it is fairly certain that we will see custom hacks to overcome the limitation, it is likely that many users will be disappointed by the lack of options.

Windows 8 director of communications Chris Flores mentioned in a Tech Radar interview that users would not want photographs as the background, as the photo would not stretch or scale with the start screen, and that it would be covered up mostly as well so that it would be barely visible.

He is basically saying that Windows 8 users lack the intelligence to make this personalization decision on their own, and that Microsoft has to step in to protect their Metro interface from ugliness.

We here at Windows 8 News do not like this restriction at all for a number of reasons. There is certainly nothing wrong with offering official styles that users can switch to. But offering eight styles, and maybe more when the final version comes out, is not enough from a personalization perspective. What if I want to have a photo as the background and do not care if it is repeated or stretched out? What if I have configured Metro for a set amount of apps that won’t change in the near future? Why would Microsoft block the use of a fitting wallpaper image or photo?

What Microsoft should do to resolve the issue? Add a switch to the Control Panel so that users can remove the restrictions, or even better, remove the restriction completely and let users personalize their desktop the way they want to.

What’s your take on the issue? Lets discuss in the comments.

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Microsoft will introduce a Windows Store in the Windows 8 operating system that can be accessed directly from within the operating system. Navigation of the store will be consistent with the Metro UI, and the store layout has been designed with touch interfaces in mind. The store on first look looks like a horizontal copy of Google’s Chrome web store. Apps are displayed in rectangles with the logo making up the majority of screen estate, while the apps title, costs and ratings are displayed in a smaller area at the bottom of the screen.

The store landing page will be the first page that users see when they open the store. Microsoft intents to feature interesting apps there, but also app categories that are easily reachable by scrolling horizontally in the store window.

The store has been designed with touch in mind, which becomes apparent in this paragraph:

Navigation is simple and consistent with Windows 8 Metro style UI, so it will be familiar and easy for Windows 8 users to find their way through the Store. Store categories are presented across the top of the screen, with compelling apps featured in each category. To browse, you simply pan to the right or left—with a flick of the finger it’s incredibly easy to see new and interesting apps across all categories and the overall breadth of the Store. If you’re interested, you can also drill down to the apps in a specific category with a single tap on a category name.

Mouse and keyboard users, the majority of Windows users right now, can use those input devices to navigate the store. The experience won’t be that pretty though, considering that scrolling pages horizontally is not that common with these input devices.

The store front categories will feature “a set of apps that are editorially chosen based on a variety of factors, including whether they do a great job on the platform or a great job expressing Metro style design principles”.

It is possible to use the pinch gesture to zoom out of the store interface to get a zoomed out view of the store to pick specific categories right away. You may remember that this is also possible in the Metro UI to quickly get an overview over all installed apps on the system.

Searching the store, unsurprisingly, uses the same mechanics that Metro UI search uses. Just tap on the search charm to display the search sidebar on the right. This feature is available in all Metro UI windows and apps.

If you happen to think of an app while browsing the web or using another app, you can just tap the Search charm, type in your search term, and select the Store to see search results for your query.

Suggestions are displayed while you type the search phrase into the form. Windows 8 will display a search results page in case no app matches what you are looking for.

The very same layout is also used for all category pages in the store. Users can filter results in a variety of ways. It is for instance possible to only display free apps, sort by newest or display only a specific subcategory that is available.

Individual app listing pages follow all the same layout. The pages use visual elements of the apps brand color and logo on the app pages which means that colors will vary widely across the board.

Microsoft notes that it takes one tap on an app listing page to install free or trial apps. A password prompt is displayed for paid apps that acts as a confirmation to go ahead with the purchase. Users are automatically taken back to the previous page they were looking at while the app is downloading and installing in the background.

A progress indicator is displayed and the app is automatically added to the start page, so that you now that everything is going along as planned.

Update checks for new app versions are performed once a day according to Microsoft. These updates are automatically downloaded in the background when the computer is idle. They won’t be installed without user input though. This behavior can be turned off in the Store settings.

All apps can be installed on a total of five different PCs running Windows 8. This sounds as if information about installed apps are synchronized with other PCs of the user automatically.

Here is a short video that offers additional information and details:

You can find out more about the Windows Store user experience on the official Windows Store blog.

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Microsoft certainly seems to want to get developers on board to speed up the development of Kinect on Windows. Microsoft recently released an official SDK for Windows which will allow developers to come up with apps that make use of Kinect and its motion sensing technology in Windows 7. The company recently announced the Kinect Accelerator program.

The aim of this program is to allow Microsoft to support entrepreneurs, engineers and innovators to take advantage of the “limitless possibilities Kinect enables”.  Ten finalists will be chosen for this unique three month incubation program that will run from March to May, 2012. Every company that takes part in the Kinect Accelerator program will receive an incredible investment of $20,000, an Xbox development kit, the Windows Kinect SDK, office space, all the resources of BizSpark, technical training and support, and mentorship from entrepreneurs, investors and Microsoft executives who are intensely focused on making their business a success. Quite frankly, you’ll be given all the finance and resources you could possibly ever want to make your idea work!

So what qualifies for the Kinect Accelerator?

• Any Kinect-enabled application on Windows or Xbox that can be a commercial business
• Manufacturing to retail, education to healthcare, art installations to gaming, social to interactive play…hmmm, the possibilities
• Can be cloud-hosted, on any platform, but needs to be an application
• Could be one view of an application that may also have a web UI, mobile UI, etc
• Kinect-controlled applications, like what you have on your phone, but on a big screen or a computer screen
• Content you might expect to consume in your living room or in an operating room
• Go ahead, surprise us!

This really is a great opportunity for anyone or any company that has great ideas but just hasn’t got the resources to put them into practice as of yet. If you are participating in this program, it is almost certain that you will see your idea brought to reality.

If you’re interested in applying, be sure to check out this page

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We don’t have an official podcast here at Windows 7 and 8 News… at least not yet, but I have just recorded a pilot podcast with veteran author and ZD Net blogger Ed Bott.  The new podcast is called “The World of Windows” and you can listen to the pilot recording here.

The Digital Lifestyle who have put the whole thing together say…

I am really excited to bring you a new podcast called The World of Windows with Ed Bott and Mike Halsey.

In the pilot episode Ed and Mike talk about a range of Windows topics including Windows 7 sales, the death of mobile Flash, Windows Phone 7.5 launch, Samsung to ship Windows 8 tablets and Apple kicking out a developer from the developer program for revelling security vulnerability. Mike also talks about using System Restore with Windows 7

Mike has a fantastic giveaway including “The Windows 7 Resource Kit”, 1 copy of “Windows 7 Inside Out Deluxe Edition” and a signed copy of “Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out” with a chance at winning the Windows 7 Tablet computer. More details on Mike’s Facebook page.

What we really want though is not just listeners but feedback.  We want to make this the Windows podcast that you want to hear so we want as much feedback as possible.  What do you think of the format?  Is the content what you want to hear?  Anything you have to contribute to make any future shows we make fantastic will be extremely well received 

In the mean time I urge you to pop along to TheDigitalLifestyle and check out the pilot, thanks all.

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With Windows 8, Microsoft introduces the optional capability to sign in to your PC with a Windows Live ID and, by doing so, gaining the ability to roam a broad range of settings across all of your PCs.

Working on a PC is about customization to a large extent. It is what makes you confortable as you go about your work or pleasure on the computer. So each Windows user wants to have the ability to set up and use a PC in a way that is unique to them.

Problems

But this can be challenging. For instance, in a work environment, shared PC usage is common and switching between multiple accounts can be cumbersome. The difficulties associated with managing multiple accounts often leads to the sharing of a single account on a PC, and a less personal and even a less private experience for each user.

Users are utilizing multiple devices more often now, and setting up a new PC can be inconvenient and time consuming. In Windows 8, Microsoft has set out to ensure that each PC user has a truly personal experience that seamlessly bridges their online and offline tasks, is simpler to set up and use, and persists across their set of Windows 8 PCs.

To do this, Microsoft introduced the ability to log in to Windows with a Windows Live ID that works across devices, apps, and services, allowing you a uniquely personal experience with Windows. Logging in with a windows Live ID is not required but there are advantages if you do so.

Benefits

Signing in with an ID allows you to:

• Easily reacquire your Metro style apps on multiple Windows 8 PCs. The app’s settings and last-used state persist across all your Windows 8 PCs.
• You can associate the most commonly used Windows settings to your user account. In this way, the saved settings are available when you sign in to your account on any Windows 8 PC. So your PC will be set up just the way you are used to.
• You can also save time with sign-in credentials, because now the same credentials are available for the different apps and websites you use and you can easily get back into them without having to enter credentials every time.
• You can automatically sign in to apps and services that use Windows Live ID for authentication.

With this new configuration, Microsoft is taking the computing experience to a different level. While the iPad, and the iPhone have made their impact, this new login style will certainly show users that Microsoft can also provide a dynamic PC experience. Apple doesn’t have it all.

MSDN Blog

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With the focus lying heavily on optimization for low screen resolutions, touch devices and mobile devices in general, Microsoft had to find ways to optimize the operating system’s power consumption and saving features. During the introduction of the Windows 8 developer preview Microsoft did not really reveal that many information about battery life, power consumption and new power saving options that the company build into the operating system.

One of the new features that we have not seen mentioned explicitly yet on the Internet is called Zero-Power Optical Disk Drive. It refers to a feature of the SATA Revision 3.1 specification (or short SATA 6GB/s). The official feature description is as following:

Zero-Power Optical Disk Drive (ODD) – eliminates the power consumption of an idle SATA ODD, resulting in increased energy savings

Microsoft supports SATA ODD in Windows 8. This basically means that optical drives will not consume any power when they are idle. It has to be noted though that the feature is only available if the computer supports SATA 6GB/s. If it does not, Windows cannot make use of the feature to reduce the power consumption of the operating system.

We have not seen any data yet on how much power this new feature will save on average. It is however likely that Microsoft will eventually publish an article on the Building Windows 8 blog that details all the improvements the company made when it comes to making the operating system more power efficient.

It will also be interesting to see if the new technology has an impact on the responsiveness of the disk drive.

Windows users who want to disable the feature in the operating system can do so in the Registry. For that they need to open the run box with Windows-r, type in regedit and hit enter.

They then need to display the Registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicescdromparameters and locate the responsible parameter ZeroPowerODDenabled on the right side. Changing the value of the parameter to 0 disables Zero-Power Optical Disk Drive on the system. A restart is required afterwards.

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We take for granted these days that Windows is stable, secure and reliable.  We even don’t see the blue screen of death very often any more.  It’s easy to forget then that long before Windows even made the transition to 64-bit, it was far from reliable.  In fact it could safely be said that pre-Windows XP a typical user could face the prospect of having to reinstall their operating system every couple of months (it’s little wonder then why so many people liked XP!)

Nobody ever captured the essence of what it was like to use Windows in the last century better than James Cliffe who’s Windows RG (Really Good Edition) animation went as close to viral as anything in the pre-internet age was able to get.

With Windows 8 now just around the corner having a play with Windows RG is a fun romp.  It’s a fully functioning, interactive experience showing just how bad those early versions of Windows were by parodying them in the most imaginative way.  Who can forget the immortal message “Paperclip.exe has performed 94,708 illegal operations and will now be shot”?

It’s all there, Windows Media Player, Explorer (both Windows and Internet), Word, Windows Update, Solitaire, Paint and an imaginative application that never made it into any final Windows release called Crash.

Windows RG can be found hosted all over the Internet to keep the dream alive, but has its own dedicated website at windowsreallygoodedition.com, where you might expect to find it.

So the next time you fire up the Developer Preview of Windows 8, think back to the days before XP and have a play with Windows RG… it’s really good!

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The Windows 8 Developer Preview has been out for some days now. If you have been living under a rock, you may be interesting in our Windows 8 screenshots tour for a visual impression of the operating system, Jason’s first impressions of Windows 8, a list of mouse and keyboard shortcuts, Windows 8 Download links and Mike’s take on Windows 8.

If you have already installed the operating system, you’d probably noticed that the installation is straightforward and fast. Windows 8 users who try and reinstall the operating system or use the new reset feature to reset it may be in for a surprise, as they may be asked to enter a product key for the operating system to proceed with the installation.

The problem here is that Microsoft has not officially published a product key for the OS. A forum thread at the Microsoft Developer Network forum has the answer. A user is asking Microsoft there about the product key that needs to be entered during reinstallation of Windows 8.

Microsoft responds with the following answer:

If you need to reinstall Windows Developer Preview or use the Reset functionality, you might be asked to enter this product key:

6RH4V-HNTWC-JQKG8-RFR3R-36498

If you’re running a server version of Windows Developer Preview, you can use this product key:

4Y8N3-H7MMW-C76VJ-YD3XV-MBDKV

Note: These product keys are only for use with the Windows Developer Preview version of Windows 8.

Both the Windows 8 product key and the Windows 8 Server product key are mentioned in the answer.

Users who encounter similar difficulties can use those product keys to reinstall or reset the Windows 8 developer preview.

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We already know that Microsoft is working on improving the file management capabilities of the Windows 8 operating system. Back when we published the story we suspected that Microsoft would improve other core areas of the operating system as well. Today, Alex Simons posted a large, and I mean very very large, article on the Building Windows 8 blog that demonstrates how the new Windows Explorer will look like in Windows 8.

Microsoft engineers basically took a look at how Windows Explorer is used under Windows 7 to come up with a streamlined version of the program that will improve the workflow for the majority of users. In particular, the goals where the optimize the program for file management tasks, to create a streamlined command experience and to respect Explorer’s heritage.

After evaluating several user interface concepts, Microsoft made the decision to go with a ribbon style UI that many Windows users are already familiar with. The interface is not without criticism though, and it will be interesting to see how users react to the new layout of Windows Explorer. Lets take a look at one of the screenshots that Alex posted in the announcement.

You see the ribbon interface at the top. It is only natural that the interface takes up more screen estate with the possibility to minimize it with a click on the minimize button.

The most common commands are displayed as buttons in the interface, from copying and pasting information and files to deleting and renaming them. Microsoft has created a screenshot that demonstrates how often select commands are used in Windows Explorer.

Paste is the most used command with 19% of all activities in Windows Explorer followed by Copy and Properties with 11% each, Delete with 10% and Rename with 8%.

The tabbed design means on the other hand that some elements are only accessible after switching tabs.

The share tab lists sharing options that include zipping, emailing or printing files.

The View tab lists all common view modes settings, for instance to hide or display the preview pane, change the file listing mode or hide or display columns in the listing.

Some of those features are not as easily accessible anymore as before, which includes the ability to change the view mode of a folder.

Depending on the folder, other tabs may be displayed. This includes a Library Tools, Picture Tools or Disk Tools tab. It will be interesting to see how users get along with the Disk Tools tab for instance when they open computer, as it allows them to format, cleanup or optimize a drive.

Windows Explorer under Windows 8 displays more visible files and folders than Explorer on Windows 7. This is mainly due to the minimalistic status bar. Microsoft has furthermore changed the font to a more readable one judging from the screenshots.

Here is a video that announces the new Windows Explorer.

Even better, power users get their way as well. They can minimize the ribbon ui if they want to save up space, use one of the more than 200 keyboard shortcuts for nearly every function of the file management software and customize a quick access toolbar with buttons that they want to access.

You can read the whole announcement over at the Building Windows 8 blog.

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Occasionally I like to update my “What I use” article so you can see what hardware and software Windows7News editors prefer in their own lives, especially as we’re reviewing it all the time.  Since I last wrote about the hardware and software I use back in February this year much has changed, at least on the hardware front.  In that time I’d say that my software usage hasn’t changed much at all.  I’ve upgraded to Internet Explorer 9, jumped ship from Windows Live Mail to Outlook 2010 because of add-ins like the LinkedIn social connector and returned to Microsoft Security Essentials after a brief, and frustrating, flirtation with Norton Internet Security.

But what computing hardware have I chosen to take me up to the launch of Windows 8?

Desktop PC (Self-Build)

My main PC is one I built myself and if you have a copy of my book, Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out and check out pages 296 to 300 you can see it yourself in various states of assembly. It’s a Core i7 860 (pre-SandyBridge) running at 2.8GHz but overclocked to 3.07GHz.  This is backed up by 6Gb of DDR3 RAM overclocked from 1,600MHz to 1,768MHz.  Windows is installed on an Intel X25-M 80Gb SSD and it’s coupled with two Samsung SpinPoint S3 1Tb hard disks.  Finally there’s a Sapphire Radeon HD6850 graphics card with 2Gb of GDDR5 memory running Call of Duty Black Ops on a Dell 23.1 inch screen with a resolution of 2048 x 1152.  This machine runs a single installation of Windows 7 Ultimate.

Acer Aspire L5100 (Main TV / Media Centre)

I’ve used a Media Centre PC as my main way of receiving television in my living room now since 2003.  This Acer L5100, which is probably going to expire soon has an AMD Athlon64x2 processor, 3Gb of DDR2 ram and a 500Gb hard disk.  This PC came with Vista but has since been updated with Windows 7 Home Premium.  What’s more it includes a DVB-T television tuner and is only the size of a hardback book.  This is annoying as these types of PCs are becoming very difficult to find new, so I’m open to suggestions if you know of a good replacement for it.

Office Desktop (Self Build)

This machine is soon to be retired.  It’s served me well though with a 2.66GHz Core2Duo processor, 4Gb of 800MHz DDR2 RAM, an nVidia GeForce 9400GT graphics card (not for gaming this one) and a couple of hard disks of 750Gb and 400Gb capacities.  This machine runs two installations of Windows 7, one main copy of Ultimate and one minimalist copy of Professional that I use for making webcasts.  This is connected to a, now ageing, 24 inch montior running at 1920 x 1200.  This machine is now being replaced by…

Dell Precision M6600 Laptop

My main work PC is now a laptop, something I’ve previously resisted having but now have to for presentations.  It’s got a SandyBridge Core i7 processor running at 2.5GHz with 8Gb of 1,333MHz DDR3 RAM and nVidia Quadro 4000M graphics with 2Gb of GDDR5 memory.  It’s got a 750GB hard disk and space for a second hard disk.  The machine has a 17.3 inch multi-touch screen with a full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080.  The laptop has a TPM chip and fingerprint reader and will be set up for three copies of Windows 8 next month (fingers crossed).  One for daily work, one clean one for video production and webcasts, and another clean copy for presentations.  This laptop was procured because I’ll be doing a great many Windows 8 and other events in the coming year, and it was chosen for it’s power and features.

ExoPC Slate 64Gb

I have two tablet computers, one needing to be a Windows device for work.  This machine (also known as the ZooStorm, jsTAB, SL8, WeeTab, Ciara Vibe and bModo Slate it’s been rebranded so much) has an Intel dual-core Atom N450 running at 1.66GHz backed up with 2Gb of DDR2 RAM.  It sports Intel’s on-board graphics and a two point multi-touch screen running at a resolution of 1366 x 768.  It contains a 64Gb SSD and I have an additional 32Gb of storage on an SDHC card.  Most importantly for me this tablet includes a 3G SIM card slot, making it very useful on trips away.  This tablet is here ready for Windows 8 so I can test it and write about it fully.

HP TouchPad 32Gb

I’ve been a fan of the WebOS tablet operating system for ages now, describing it as the only tablet OS “capable of giving Apple a bloody nose”.  Well that now looks unlikely to happen with my own TouchPad being bought in the recent fire sale.  This is my day to day, lightweight tablet for using at home when I’m relaxing.

HTC Mozart Windows Phone

I like the connectedness that the Microsoft ecosystem offers, and I especially like my contacts, emails and calendar automatically synchronising across all my devices so it’s not something I have to think about.  Add to this the fact that the new Mango release, which my phone is currently upgraded to, allows me to access documents stored in my Office Live account, and getting a Windows Phone was a no-brainer.  Of the handsets available in the UK at launch I felt the Mozart was the best for size, build quality and screen-quality.

xTreamer eTRAYz

My main home storage is an xTreamer eTRAYz NAS drive with two 2Tb Samsung Spinpoint S3 drives.  I find this is an extremely small, quick and light NAS solution.

Lexmark X543DN Colour Laser

I’ve changed my laser recently from a Samsung which was constantly jamming.  The Lexmark X543DN is a great networked colour laser.  It has a scanner on the top with a sheet-feeder, though on this model alas its only single-sided scans and copies, and it also has built-in duplexing, but all this comes in at under £190 ($240) which is a bargain for all this and full high-yield toner cartridges when its new.

What else caught my eye

I’ve also been fortunate to review and use a great many hardware devices this year and there are a couple of devices that definitely caught my attention.  First of these was the Samsung Series 9 Ultraportable laptop.  I was hugely tempted by this as it’s powerful and incredibly thin and light.  In the end I plumped for the M6600 because of the additional storage it offers and also because the lack of a VGA socket and only a mini HDMI on the Series 9 might have caused difficulties with presentations.

The other piece of hardware that caught my eye was the ASUS EP121 tablet, a Core i5 Windows 7 tablet with 4Gb of DDR3 RAM.  You need deep pockets to be able to afford either of these, but for what they offer they’re both by far the best on the market currently.

Also I’m currently testing the HTC HD 7 Pro Windows Phone with a slide out (sideways) full qwerty keyboard.  It’s frustrating that too many aspects of the Windows Phone OS don’t rotate but for working on, this handset; which still isn’t available in the UK for some odd reason despite being launched late last year, is a worthy contender for my favourite smartphone.

So that’s my equipment here aside from a few minor extras such as a Netgear Powerline AV networking kit to attach my printer and computer in my home study to the network, the wi-fi not being able to properly penetrate the walls.  I’ll update this again around February or March next year.

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Some Windows 7 features have received a great deal of coverage in the last few years.  Aero snap and Aero shake being some of the highest profile.  But have you even ever heard of “SideShow”?  This is a real Windows 7 feature, it’s built into every edition of the operating system and it pops it’s head up and says Hi if you have compatible hardware.

SideShow was first introduced with Windows Vista.  In Microsoft’s complicated way of putting things “The Windows SideShow platform enables compatible devices to communicate with computers that are running Windows,” though is simpler terms it allowed you use your laptop computer via an external screen and controls when it was asleep.

The idea behind SideShow was that laptops would come with a small external LCD panel and new control buttons.  You could use this screen and buttons to read your email, play music, view photos and more with the laptop closed and asleep.  On the face of it this was a fantastic idea as you could conserve power and still check your email, do things more quickly and easily because you no longer had to wait for Windows to start up and on the move just by looking at your laptop’s case.

Alas hardware manufacturers didn’t share Microsoft’s vision, and very few SideShow-compatible laptops were ever produced.  The reasons for this would have varied from manufacturer to manufacturer but they probably included concerns over power usage, build cost, the actual usefulness of the feature and the strength of the screen and controls.

Windows is set to automatically detect SideShow panels on computers, which can also include desktop machines with in-built displays on the case, and make the controls available for SideShow in the Windows Control Panel.  Other hardware could include SideShow as well and it still has some niche usage with Logitech’s G19 gaming keyboard sporting a SideShow-equipped LCD screen.

The SideShow architecture was expandable to allow third-party software vendors and hardware manufacturers to plug their own software into the feature.  By default SideShow just shipped with Windows Mail, Windows Media Player and Windows Photo Viewer.  Again, no software vendor was prepared to pick up the development costs for software that would be used by so few people.

In the end SideShow became forgotten, and still languishes somewhere deep in the bowels of your Windows computer, forever imprisoned in the dark, murky depths (you get the idea) which is a tremendous shame as, while power management and battery life on laptops might not have been good enough when Windows Vista was released, the advent of Netbooks could potentially have given SideShow a whole new lease on life.

In fact SideShow was so badly supported by Microsoft’s hardware and software partners that I’m willing to bet you’re having one of three reactions reading this article.  1) Really, I’ve never heard of this before?  2) Is that actually in Windows 7?  or 3) I’d forgotten all about that!

The question remains to be asked then if support for SideShow will be dropped completely by Microsoft for Windows 8, and on this I’ll try and get an answer from them.  The alternative is that Microsoft try again to plug it as a great feature, which could of course backfire on them this time as it’s not new at all, it’s been around since 2006.  At least with Vista SideShow disappeared quietly into the mist and by the time Windows 7 was released it was only spoken about in hushed whispers.

So would you like to see sideshow screens on your Windows 7 and Windows 8 laptops and netbooks, are you indeed bothered about such functionality, or is the big screen of a tablet the best way forward for you?  Personally my view is that SideShow was a fantastic idea when Microsoft first announced it and it’s still a fantastic idea today.  I’d personally love to have a small external screen on laptops on which I could quickly check email or play music on the move.  Alas it looks like this bright future is something that will never happen.

SideShow, the forgotten Windows 7 feature was posted on Everything Microsoft - Latest Microsoft News, Guides, Reviews & Themes. If you are not reading this content in an email newsletter, it is being used without permission.

One of the biggest issues facing social networking these days is online privacy, and nowhere is this more of an issue than Facebook.  The world’s biggest social network has three quarters of a billion registered users and has been repeatedly criticised in the last couple of years for the lax way in which it treats its users privacy.  Indeed at one point Facebook make everybody’s profile completely public unless they changed their settings otherwise.  This caused uproar and the company very quickly had to back down and make the settings more private by default.  Things are better now with Facebook, but there is all too much personal and sensitive information there that’s available for everybody to see, and that’s searchable by Google and Bing.

This is why I’ve written a FREE eBook on the subject aimed specifically at the Facebook users who might not know about these things, or who might not know how to protect their own privacy from other people, advertisers and malware writers.

The “Facebook Privacy Guide” is 36 pages long and includes a great many Quick Tips to help you get the best privacy setup possible in the shortest amount of time.  It’s full colour with large text and screenshots throughout so suitable for every age group including children, teenagers, adults and the elderly and is written using the same accessible and non-technical language I’ve received praise for with my Microsoft Press book, “Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out“.

Additionally the guide details how to stay safe from Facebook spam and malware, and covers how to create safe usernames and passwords, not just for Facebook, by every website you use on the Internet.  If you like the book please pass on this link to share it with others as privacy on Facebook is a problem that impacts on so many people worldwide.

You can download the Facebook Privacy Guide here directly from Windows7News and you can see some images from the book below.  Download this FREE eBook HERE.

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Steven Sinofsky is on fire, one could think. Three blog posts about Microsoft’s upcoming operating system Windows 8 in three days: This could be a new record. The Introducing the team that builds Windows 8 post on the Building Windows 8 blog lists the Microsoft teams and divisions that help build the new operating system.

A total of 35 feature teams with 25 to 40 developers each is working on the operating system, and that’s without the test and program management. If you look at developers alone, you come up with a number between 875 and 1400 that are working on various Windows 8 features.

Some features benefit from synergies with other Microsoft products.

I mentioned earlier that Windows contributes code to lots of other products and vice versa, so when you look at this list, keep in mind there are features from other groups (for example, our browser language runtime comes from the development tools group) and some of the work here goes into other products, too. For example, all of our kernel, networking, storage, virtualization, and other fundamental OS work is also part of Windows Server—that’s right, one team delivers the full Windows Client OS and much of the foundation for the Windows Server OS. And some features are built in the core OS but are ultimately only part of the Server product.

When you look at the feature team listing, you will notice the App Store team near the top of the screen. Until now, an integrated app store in Windows 8 was nothing but a rumor. Jason posted some leaked app store screenshots back in April but there was no way to verify that the screenshots were indeed from an early Windows 8 build and not a fake.

The App Store team listing is a strong indicator that those screenshots might have indeed be from the app store that Microsoft intends to ship with Windows 8.

The listing furthermore confirms without doubt that Microsoft will integrate an app store into Windows 8. It will be interesting to see what the store will have to offer. Will it include only Microsoft products? Or will it be an open store, that offers both commercial and free software?

We do not know yet but will update as soon as we get more information about the Windows 8 app store.

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I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no legendary hacker. In fact most, if any, hacking that I do involves finding work-arounds to buggy or rigid software. Which in a way (jokingly…kind of) is what I’m about to show you in this post.

Many software cracks usually allow you to run an application which edits your hosts file, effectively blocking your computer from accessing the software’s registry (or any other identification) server. However, some of these hosts-patching applications have problems doing their job. Some will actually alter your hosts file in a way that can harm your computer.

Luckily, you can patch the hosts file yourself. As long as you know the URL of the site you wish to block or redirect, it’s really not that difficult or challenging at all.

Modifying the Hosts File on Windows 7

1. Click on Start (Window button)
2. Click on Computer
3. Navigate through Windows Explorer through these folders:
   1. C:/ (or whatever drive you have Windows installed in)
   2. windows/
   3. system32/
   4. drivers/
   5. etc
   6. In the “etc” folder, select the hosts file and copy and paste it to your desktop.
   7. Open the hosts file on your desktop, selecting to open through Notepad.
   8. Make modifications to the file in Notepad.
   9. Save using Ctrl+S.
   10. Drag and drop the hosts file back into the “etc” folder
   11. Select “move and replace file” to overwrite the original hosts file.

Originally, your hosts file should look something like this:

How to Block Websites

Making the proper edits on your hosts file to block a website is simple. Just add the following to the bottom of the hosts file in Notepad:

127.0.0.1         websiteyouareblocking.com

So if I want to block Myspace.com, I would then type:

127.0.0.1         myspace.com

So now if you try to type myspace.com into a browser or click a link to myspace, you will run into this:

Lots of people edit their hosts file to simply block bad or unwanted websites that could harm their computer. Here is along, extensive list of bad websites that are already styled to be blocked in your hosts file. Just download the text document, copy the blocked website codes, and paste it into your hosts file as I directed above.

One concern with using long lists like this that are designed to patch your hosts file is that they could manipulate the file to forward you to unwanted sites. Make sure that all websites are preceded with the code: 127.0.0.1. That code is the IP address that defaults to nowhere, a blank page. If there is any other IP address in the code, I wouldn’t trust it as it could direct you to sites with viruses loaded up and ready to take your computer or log your keyboard.

Patching the Windows Hosts File: Release Your Inner Hacker was posted on Everything Microsoft - Latest Microsoft News, Guides, Reviews & Themes. If you are not reading this content in an email newsletter, it is being used without permission.

Want to see your name in lights?  We are now accepting guest posts from our readers.  You can submit guest posts either for this site, but also for our sister site Windows 7 News.

What are we looking for?  Anything related to Windows 7 or Windows 8, but especially submissions that are topical and encourage discussion amongst our readers.

If you’re interested, then read the Windows 8 guidelines here or the Windows 7 guidelines.

If you don’t have 300 or more words in you, and just want to share something quickly with readers then the new Windows 8 Forums are available.  Registering is just as easy – you can connect your facebook, twitter, google, wordpress, yahoo or OpenID account. Or, you can create a fresh account with this site.

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Here are some Windows 7 Games to download and play.  To download the games, click the link below.

Windows7 Games

Download

1. The Memory Game

You probably played a similar type of game when you were growing up. The idea is to test your memory. You just have to match two identical pictures to remove them from the board. When you remove all the cards, your time spent appears. You can select from three different sized game boards and three different sets of cards. (It is available for Windows, Mac, and the web.)

Well CraftedSoftware

2. Ghost Commander

Remember Pac-Man? Well this is a remake of Pac-Man. You can play for the ghosts, controlling each ghost the same way as you would control a unit in a real time strategy. Nice.

 Games by Igor Galochkin

3. Galaxy Strike

If it is alien combat that you are into, then this action-heavy shoot-em-all space arcade will challenges you to destroy the aliens.

4. Pirates – Attack of the Carribean

You attack enemy ships, earn gold, upgrade your fort, buy new weapons and become a pirate captain. Download this free pirate game and enjoy!!

5. Star-Gunner

The galaxy is in trouble and there is only one space tank to thwart the attacks of space alien shooters and save the galaxy.

Many games have the same theme, attack and destroy, fight aliens, save the universe or the human race. Well that’s a little long winded but they’re games after all. You can tell your wife, girl friend, or significant other that you are a hero for spending Saturday afternoon saving the world, and that you need a special Saturday night commemorative event as a reward. It probably won’t happen, women are like that…they don’t see the relationship of games to salvation. But if you are persistent, it might work out for you. With these games, you’ll have hours of entertainment.

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Windows 7 News & Tips has a very talented team of writers, but we’re still interested in supporting other writers and we’re now opening up the site to guest writers.  If you’e interested in writing the occasional post then read on!

To become a guest writer you preferably need to have some previous writing experience, or your own blog.  This isn’t essential, and maybe you just want to write a one-off post about a topic close to your heart or based on your personal experiences of using Windows 7.

If you are a blogger then writing guest posts is a good way to reach out to new readers, and to potentially get experience of writing for sites with a big audience like this one.

Want to give it a try?  Then please read our Guest Post Guidelines.

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According to a recent report from Windows8Italia, Windows 8 will include native support for 3D monitors. They’ve reported that after installing and running Windows 8 Build 7955 they’ve discovered that Microsoft has built in native support for 3D monitors into its latest OS

They found references to 3D transitions in the OS which would be similar to the “tilt” feature found in Windows Phone 7. 3D monitors are still very rare and I feel it will be a while before they actually catch on but Microsoft is clearly thinking ahead here.

However I still have some slight reservations about this. I’m not sure whether or not those “3D Transitions” are just 3D ones like what we already have with the aero flip function on Windows 7 (windows key +tab) or if they will be true 3D transitions that literally jump out at you. The report is rather unclear from this perspective and merely states “Native Support for 3D monitors” so I’m not completely sold on this.

Other things the report mentions include some other features they stumbled upon. They found references to a Windows Store which allows licenses to be synchronised across computers and devices. The Windows Store is apparently written in HTML which means it will be accessible via a browser, but at the moment it’s only accessible to those permitted by Microsoft.

A couple of other little features they discovered include support for hyphenation dictionaries, a SmartScreen feature for Windows explorer, the ability to synchronise passwords and credentials across computers , support for mobile networks as well as the ability to suspend and resume processes in task manager.

Most of these we’ve already covered here and Windows 8 News so there’s not a whole lot new there on that front.

It will be interesting to see how much of these features actually come to light, we actually posted on the latest Build 7989 the other day with more in it.

What do you think about 3D support? Will it be needed? Will it even be in Windows 8?

Let us know in the comments below

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It is sometimes the small things, the nuisances that you had to deal with for a very long time, that can make a huge difference. When it comes to Windows’ default file browser Windows Explorer, there have been lots of small things that users hoped would change with every new release of the Windows operating system.

One situation that got on my nerves constantly was the missing option to move files up in the folder structure. For that, I either had to have the destination folder open in the Explorer sidebar, use the copy and paste command or open two different Windows Explorer windows to move or copy files effectively.

Recent builds of Windows 8 get better drag and drop support in Windows Explorer, which makes it then possible to drag and drop files to the breadcrumb navigation in the Explorer address bar. This way, it is super easy to move or copy files to another folder in the folder structure. All that it takes is to drag and drop the files to the folder name in the breadcrumb navigation.

The original post over at the My Digital Life forum where the screenshot was posted is no longer available.

Windows 8 Explorer Finally Gets Better Drag And Drop Support was posted on Everything Microsoft - Latest Microsoft News, Guides, Reviews & Themes. If you are not reading this content in an email newsletter, it is being used without permission.

Another new Windows 8 feature was revealed yesterday, likely as a result of “playing around” with the leaked Windows 8 Milestone release. Roaming options are integrated into the operating system, which apparently are only available for users who have linked the operating system to an online account. It is very likely that Windows Live will be used for that purpose by Microsoft. This plays well into the rumor that users may use email addresses to log into the operating system.

The Roaming Options configuration page is a subpage of the User Accounts control panel applet in Windows 8. It reads:

When you use your connected password to log on to different computers and devices, the personal settings you care about will travel with you and automatically be available”

We have mentioned previously that Windows 8 will make use of a cloud syncing feature and this appears to be it. In the article Robert mentioned that Microsoft plans to allow syncing with third party providers as well.

Here is the data that gets synced:

• Personalization
• Accessibility
• Language Settings
• Application Settings
• Windows Settings
• Credentials

This basically means that you can use your desktop backgrounds, configurations and preferences when you log on to other Windows 8 systems that have the roaming options enabled.

Network options at the bottom indicate that roaming can be disabled on paid networks and low bandwidth networks. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft manages to distinguish those from standard connections.

Cloud syncing is a big usability improvement, especially for users who work on multiple Windows boxes, and users who sometimes work on computer systems that are not their own. Especially the option to sync the language settings could be interesting for people who travel a lot.

Windows 8 User Account Roaming, Cloud Authentication Revealed was posted on Everything Microsoft - Latest Microsoft News, Guides, Reviews & Themes. If you are not reading this content in an email newsletter, it is being used without permission.

It feels only natural that Microsoft continues updating core Windows modules and programs which they have started under Windows 7. It is safe to say that additional modules and features will be updated. One of the latest that we know of is the Windows Task Manager which will get a complete overhaul.

There are currently two images available of the improved Windows Task Manager which you find below.

The first screen shows the dashboard of the Advanced Task Manager. It displays the cpu, memory, network and disk load in graphs. Tabs are available that lead to the process and service listing.

The second screenshot shows the Modern Windows Task Manager which lists the programs, startup items and users.

It is not clear why we see two different task managers at the moment. It could be that Microsoft is experimenting with different versions of the task manager at this point in time.

The different program classifications will make it easier to distinguish core system processes from background programs and applications that have been started by the user.

The interface appears touch friendly as well, with little test and big icons. Some users have mentioned that this could be indeed the task manager for Windows 8′s touch edition, while the other could be the replacement for the standard task manager. (via)

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Microsoft has added a new feature called Hybrid Boot to current builds of the operating system which appears to be active by default. Hybrid Boot has been designed to reduce startup times after shutting down the computer. For that, the shut down has been turned into a hibernation like feature to speed up the next start of the operating system.

It appears as if only the data needed to start the operating system faster is put into hibernation, not the data that the user is working on. This could be achieved with the default hibernation option instead.

Hybrid boot speeds up the start of the operating system considerably. Windows 8 Italia, the site that discovered the new feature, mentioned that it took 20 seconds to boot. That is definitely less than a standard startup takes, but since we do not know which system the site used to test the feature, we cannot really make a judgement on the average gain.

Dual-boot, or multi-boot system users will not see the default boot manager when they have shut down Windows 8 with Hybrid Boot enabled.

They need to disable the feature to enable the old shut down option again.

This is handled in the Windows Control Panel under Power Options.

To sum it up: The shutdown button in Windows 8 uses a feature called Hybrid Boot to speed up the next start of the operating system using a hibernation like system.

What’s your take on the feature?

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IE 9 looks set to roll out to users via the Windows Update in late June and for many that could see improvements in their laptop battery life performance, at least that’s if the latest tests from Microsoft are true. Some may consider this a biased study since Microsoft carried out the tests, and inevitably IE came out on top.

However, I’m going to be the middle man in this case, and assume that the test was carried out fairly. Microsoft compared Internet Explorer 9, their latest browser with Opera 11, Firefox 4, Chrome 10 and Safari 5 on an Intel powered laptop. They then measure just how many watts the machine consumed with the browser idling, showing a news site and then running some graphic intensive web tasks.

The results? Well Internet Explorer came out as the most efficient web browser.

Obviously Microsoft were proud of this achievement, as IE 9 is said to be a big change from it’s predecessors, and that it is.

However there is plenty of factors which could affect the result. The tests were carried out on a Windows 7 machine with an Intel chip, both of which Internet Explorer is designed to run best on. If you we’re to try Safari on the Mac, a platform which Safari is optimised to run on, I think you could find some different results.

Also the test sites that Microsoft used may not be ones anyone else would care to use and all laptops have different rates of power consumption, in fact there is an awful lot of variables in this test which aren’t factored in.

In fairness to Microsoft though, we appreciate you for caring about power consumption and the environment, and I’m sure we’d all love to have a bit of extra battery life from our laptops

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If you’ve ever wondered where Windows first came from, you may want to keep reading. For me, the only versions of Windows that I’ve ever seen are Windows 2000, XP, Vista and of course Windows 7. But if you’re looking for a quick and easy way to see the evolution of the primeval Windows 1 to majestic Windows 7 of today, look no further.

With the title ‘Chain of Fools,’ the video is the chronicles of one man’s attempt to upgrade from every one version of Windows to the next, starting right back at Windows 1 and following every upgrade path with the exclusion of Windows ME.

The idea behind this is to see how well Windows deals with the upgrade process ie.whether settings and UI preferences are preserved and to see how well later, more modern versions of Windows deal with very old games (Doom 2 and The Secret of Monkey Island).

Personally I also think this guy had way too much time on his hand and must have spent at least a whole day just upgrading from one Windows version to the next.

Here is the complete upgrade process, that’s followed:
MS-DOS 5 > Windows 1 > Windows 2 > Windows 3 > Windows 3.1 > Windows 95 > Windows 98 > Windows 98 SE > Windows 2000 (NT!!) > Windows XP SP2 > Windows Vista > Windows 7. Windows ME isn’t included as its upgrade is mutually exclusive with Windows 2000.

I’ve never seen any actual footage of Windows 1 or 2, in fact I’ve never seen half of these, they were all before my time! So it’s cool to see how far Windows has come in these years. Check out the video below and let me know what you think

Windows From The Beginning To Now was posted on Everything Microsoft - Latest Microsoft News, Guides, Reviews & Themes. If you are not reading this content in an email newsletter, it is being used without permission.

With IE9 approaching release time, Microsoft is taking a slightly different approach to the apps it wants developed for it.  It is looking at HTML5 as the principal content creator for its apps. Microsoft is looking for native HTML5 built apps, those that aren’t based on plug-ins like Flash or Silverlight.

Dev Unplugged

To that end Microsoft is launching a contest called Dev Unplugged which will look for apps that meet its criteria. Here’s what’s interesting. The contest isn’t limited to just those apps that work best with IE9. Rather, the content must also render Apps correctly that run on the latest Chrome beta and Firefox beta. Submissions must stick to HTML/CSS/JS on the client-side, but there won’t be any restrictions on the server-side.

Games and Music

Microsoft is interested in two categories of development, games and music. Beyond that, there are specializations like what are the most innovative uses of geo-location, and pinned sites, which is an IE 9 feature, Canvas and SVG, and design/UX, which is based on user experience. Developers will build all of these apps under the rubric of HTML5.

Faster Browsers – Better Apps

Microsoft is committed to building apps given the fact that browsers are at a new stage. They are faster and more powerful, so Microsoft wants to take advantage, and get developers to fall in line with HTML5.

The Dev Unplugged Contest

The contest starts on March 1. The public will be able to start voting on the gallery apps on April 5. Microsoft plans to allow the user community to vote for the top 40 finalists. From there the judges will select the winners based on “creativity, quality of implementation and fit with the contest theme.” The final App submission deadline is May 9, and the winners to be announced on May 23. The grand prize? $9,000, plus a trip to the Future of Web Apps Conference in Las Vegas on June 27.

Source: Dev Unplugged

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Many people criticise Apple a lot for being to “locked down” to their own software. However many people aren’t actually aware that Apple does let you choose what you’re preferred operating system is. While this is not a well advertised feature, it is actually there. Boot Camp has been around since 2006 and has been included with OS X since 2007 with the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

It allows users to run Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 on Macbooks. However Zdnet have pointed out that the recent Macbook Pro’s and Macbook Air models that Apple refreshed, no longer support the older operating systems.

According to a release note from Apple

Note: Windows XP and Vista drivers are not supplied for these computers and are not supported.

The site says Book Camp will support 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional, or Windows 7 Ultimate. So if you’re running Windows XP or Vista (it’s probably XP) on an older Mac and are upgrading to one of the new notebooks, it looks like you will have to upgrade to Windows 7 as well. See even Apple want you to upgrade to Windows 7!

Another thing to note is that Windows 7 Starter and Windows 7 Enterprise edition do not appear to be supported.

And here’s the specs needed for running Windows 7 on Boot Camp

Window 7 running on Boot Camp requires:

-An optical drive (MacBook Air computers require an external optical disc drive to install Windows 7).
-A blank CD or USB storage device to contain the Windows Drivers created by the Boot Camp Assistant.
-For 32-bit versions of Windows, at least 16 GB of free space.
-For 64-bit versions of Windows, at least 20 GB of free space.
-Boot Camp Assistant, which is pre-installed in /Applications/Utilities/
-An authentic, 32-bit or 64-bit Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate disc.

New Macbook Pro’s Only Support Windows 7 was posted on Everything Microsoft - Latest Microsoft News, Guides, Reviews & Themes. If you are not reading this content in an email newsletter, it is being used without permission.

Imagine this. You start up your computer. You connect to the Internet. But instead of your browser going to the home page, you get a request for a certificate assuring that your computer is clean, and can therefore enter the Internet.

Sound unlikely? Anyway, that is one proposal being kicked around by Microsoft at the RSA Conference. It is called the “Global Internet Health model.” The goal is to identify computers that have malware and restrict what they can do on the Internet.

The original model, proposed last year by Microsoft’s Scott Charney was simple, if your computer is infected, you can’t get on the Internet until it is clean.

This year, the approach is a bit more sophisticated. If a device is known to be a danger to the Internet, the user should be notified and the device should be cleaned before it is allowed to have unlimited access to the Internet. This will minimize the risk of the infected device contaminating other devices or otherwise disrupting legitimate Internet activities.

Can this work with Current Technology?

Aside from the privacy issues, and the free quest available to the internet which is guaranteed, can this approach work today?

Quite possibly, yes. Try the certificate process for starters. Here, ISP’s would require a certificate of authentication to allow users into the internet. Now expand this to cover PC’s or laptops, and require that they show a certificate of “good health.” That would be a device that does not have malware, that has running virus protection software with the current updates, that current software patches are installed, and one that has a firewall installed and running. With the certificate of “good health” a user could go anywhere, but he would not be a carrier, at least not at the inception of the web surf, with malware.

Source: myce

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Back In August 2010 I ran a story on a new feature of Windows 8 called Direct Experience Mode which basically meant that the operating system would be able to load different modes depending on use. A basic example would be a video DVD inserted into the drive before boot. Instead of booting into the operating system to play the video DVD, the Direct Experience Mode would quick load a video player directly to speed up the user experience.

Microsoft back in January applied for a new patent. FAST BOOTING A COMPUTING DEVICE TO A SPECIALIZED EXPERIENCE appears to be a variant of the Direct Computing Experience patent.

The patent describes a booting process that loads a virtual machine manager which decides which general or specific purpose operating system module gets loaded. The chart shows four specific purpose modules including TV, Music and DVD usage as well as one general purpose operating system.

Described is a technology by which independent computing functions such as corresponding to separate operating systems may be partitioned into coexisting partitions. A virtual machine manager, or hypervisor, manages the input and output of each partition to operate computer system hardware. One partition may correspond to a special purpose operating system that quickly boots, such as to provide appliance-like behavior, while another partition may correspond to a general purpose operating system that may load while the special purpose operating system is already running. The computer system that contains the partitions may transition functionality and devices from one operating system to the other. The virtual machine manager controls which computer hardware devices are capable of being utilized by which partition at any given time, and may also facilitate inter-partition communication.

It is very likely that the patent is directly related to Windows 8′s Direct Experience Mode. Microsoft has not confirmed or denied the availability of the mode in Windows 8.

The patent application Summary offers details on the process. Microsoft describes that it is possible to load another partition, which is one of the available operating system modules, may be loaded while another is running. It is then possible to switch between the two partitions once they are fully loaded. An interesting option would be to load into a fast booting email client or messenger before switching to the fully loaded general purpose operating system. (via)

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They are minor changes, but recent shifts in the popularity of the major search engines could spell serious trouble for Google if they don’t act quickly.  The latest Experian Hitwise statistics show that not only is Bing’s popularity growing, but also that it seems to be doing this partly at the expense of arch-rival Google.

The figures show that Google’s search popularity has dropped by a little under 1%, which isn’t dramatic but is down nonetheless and that Bing is up.  Despite what I think are misleading figures in the table below, Experian are reporting that Bing is up 5% month-on-month  over the last quarter.

Google has tried several things to compete with Bing, which now also powers some Yahoo! searches too.  This has included allowing people to add a custom picture to their Google search background.  These users will already need to be registered with Google however and logged into their account for the feature to work.  Uptake has been slow as a result.

The next big thing in search will be HTML5 and Bing have already shown off a very flash and very advanced search engine using the new web standard.  We can be sure that Google will also be working on an HTML5-based engine ready for the launch of Internet Explorer 9 in a few months (Google’s own Chrome browser and the popular Firefox already support HTML5).

Google and Bing are very different search engines.  Google has concentrated on “pure search” with results ranking the popularity of websites.  Bing on the other hand has been marketed as a “decision engine”, trying to be smarter and anticipating what it is you really want.

In my own experience there’s room for both as I use Google for some jobs and Bing for others.  Google relies on search and advertising for almost all its revenue however and, no matter how large the company is, any downward trend in popularity will be enough to worry the company.  We can expect Google to take action to try and maintain it’s decisive lead over Microsoft.

Google Feels the Heat as Bing Rises was posted on Everything Microsoft - Latest Microsoft News, Guides, Reviews & Themes. If you are not reading this content in an email newsletter, it is being used without permission.

I’ve spent a sizable chunk of my new year reading about the future of computing, and I’ve read a lot of different things from a lot of different people. If I had to pick out a common thread, though, I’d say that by all accounts Microsoft has its work cut out for it. Tablets, smartphones, and cloud computing are all anyone wants to talk about, and the unfortunate reality is that Microsoft is struggling in most if not all of these markets. Now that I’m done reading, I want to spend a little time writing about the state of Microsoft, and just what its year could look like.

Windows: Worries on the horizon

On Monday we reported that, while Windows 7 share made a sizable jump over the holidays, total Windows market share was down slightly for the month of December to 90.29 percent. This is the latest evidence in a very slow, very gradual, but very definite decline for Windows, which stood at 92.21 percent market share a year ago. If we were taking bets I’d say that it will dip below 90 percent for the first time in years by the end of 2011.

I don’t think Microsoft needs to be wringing its hands just yet – Windows 7 is doing very well, and 90 percent of the market is still eighteen times higher than that of OS X, its nearest competitor. Many of the devices running Android and iOS, the operating systems to which Windows lost most of its share in 2010, belong to people who are also running Windows on their laptops and desktops. Windows is doing fine. It’s just that, well, 90 percent of the market can become 57.1 percent of the market distressingly quickly.

Internet Explorer: Continued decline

Yes, the bad news continues to roll in for Internet Explorer, which dropped below 60 percent share in September and has been losing share to Chrome, Firefox and Safari all year. For as long as computers are around, Internet Explorer is going to have a sizable share of the browser market cornered – my completely unscientific prediction that it will have above half the market for quite awhile and will stop losing share so quickly when IE6 is finally banished – but this rapid drop in market share from its total domination of the market just a few short years ago could be a prediction of things to come for Windows if things continue to go poorly.

That being said, Internet Explorer 9 is a pretty excellent browser, and its release may stem the flow of defectors. It’s a vast improvement over the poky Internet Explorer 8, and for the first time in quite awhile Microsoft is bringing some speed and innovation to the table instead of playing catchup with everyone else.

Windows Phone 7: A silver lining

Where Microsoft also needs to impress in 2011 is in its new Windows Phone 7 OS, which faces stiff competition from iOS and Android. The OS made its debut to decent sales numbers and generally positive reviews, and a few updates should give it most of the functionality that its competitors have. Virtually the same thing could be said for Android when it launched. In my view, Windows 7 has a couple of important advantages over Android that could help it succeed in the long run, if Microsoft can play its cards right: its more centralized update mechanism, and its more consistent interface across different phones and carriers.

Android updates are largely left up to the manufacturer, which means that many phones get updates belatedly or not at all. Android is also subject to a lot of vendor customization – phone manufacturers and carriers get the base Android OS from Google and slaps a bunch of carrier-specific customizations and skins over top of it. These two things have led to market defragmentation that’s only going to hurt the platform going forward, and if Windows Phone 7′s consistency can help prevent this, 2011 could be the year that Windows on phones stops being a joke and starts being a success story.

Tablets: The final frontier

I think a real, serious tablet competitor from Microsoft is on everyone’s wishlist for CES. I’m not talking about Windows 7 on some anemic Atom-powered slate, which everyone has already passed on, and I’m not talking about a glimpse at Windows 8, which may be too little and will be too late. Microsoft needs to showcase a tablet OS that runs on ARM hardware and is months away from shipping, not years. Using Windows Phone 7, an OS designed from the ground-up for touchscreens, as a base is a no-brainer, and I have no idea why Microsoft has been so reluctant to do so.

The iPad basically has the market to itself. Android tablets are trickling out, but they suffer slightly from the aforementioned fragmentation problems and it seems that true tablet support features are eternally destined to come in “the next version.” If Microsoft is serious about competing in this space, it needs to do it now.

Conclusions

Right now, Microsoft is a company with generally good products but sometimes poor marketing and execution. This is the company that used the ridiculously overwrought phrase “Always Delightful, Wonderfully Mine” to debut the do-or-die revamp of its phone OS. Try harder, guys. Or, better yet, stop trying so hard.

As is the case with any prediction or forecast, there’s no way to tell what will actually happen but sit and wait patiently. Windows is doing pretty well and Microsoft Office still fails to have a serious competitor – these are the markets in which Microsoft has traditionally dominated. These markets are where Microsoft will continue to perform well for some time to come. But if Microsoft wants to remain a serious competitor in 2011 and beyond, it’s going to need a slam dunk. Preferably several.

What Will 2011 Bring for Microsoft? was posted on Everything Microsoft - Latest Microsoft News, Guides, Reviews & Themes. If you are not reading this content in an email newsletter, it is being used without permission.

When last we left our story (see yesterday’s post for Part One), I had finally gotten the HTPC that I wanted when I started building it – it was quiet, it was fast enough, it played most of the video that I wanted it to play, and it was easy enough for my girlfriend to use – it had been a long journey, but I was finally where I wanted to be. Wasn’t I?

Update hell

The thing was, my victory was mostly an empty one. It had taken me about a year to finally get the hardware and software working together in a tolerable way, and I’d spent at least twice as much as I’d originally wanted (the budget for the original build was just a bit over $400). Windows Media Center integrated fairly well with all of the different apps and plugins (Hulu Desktop for streaming TV, Cyberlink PowerDVD for Blu Ray playback), but things still weren’t perfect. Hulu Desktop gets a particular shout-out here for using completely different buttons for pausing and seeking than every other program on the PC.

And then, the updates: Keep Flash and Silverlight up-to-date, and also install new nVidia drivers at every possible opportunity in an effort to improve the ION chipset’s hardware-accelerated video playback. Download periodic updates for the Cyberlink player from their slow awful server so that I can keep playing current Blu Ray titles. Keep Adobe Reader, Java and the rest updated so that the computer can still function as a general-use PC, and suppress their update notifications so that they don’t interrupt your Mad Men marathons. Do the same with Windows Update and, oh yeah, because this is Windows, you’ll also want to throw an antivirus product on there for good measure. Use Intel’s tools every couple of months to keep the SSD running at peak efficiency.

I think you get my point.

I’m completely fine with doing all of these routine maintenance tasks on my desktop and my laptop – on those machine, these tasks are second nature. As I mentioned yesterday, though, my needs are simpler in my entertainment center, and I want my setup to be simpler too. These updates and maintenance tasks could usually all be done in the space of an hour or so, and they usually only needed to be done every couple of months, and Remote Desktop even removed the need to dig the keyboard out most of the time. That wasn’t my ultimate problem with the setup, though – the entertainment center mentality says that, as with any old DVD player, you should be able to push a button to turn the thing on and start doing what you want almost instantly. At least, that’s how my brain works.

And so it was that after a couple of years of trying, I determined that even the best-case scenario wasn’t quite what I was looking for. I declared the experiment a qualified failure, took the computer apart and set to getting some of my money back by selling its components.

The Dream is Over: The Death of my HTPC, Part 2 was posted on Everything Microsoft - Latest Microsoft News, Guides, Reviews & Themes. If you are not reading this content in an email newsletter, it is being used without permission.

I don’t think I was asking that much.

Some people dream of moving the world with their HTPCs, all-in-one DVRs and streaming media servers that give every computer in their homes instant access to their complete music, picture, and video libraries. I’m a relative power-user, but in the entertainment center my needs are simple: All I wanted was a relatively price-conscious Blu Ray player that would also stream Hulu and Netflix, enable Web surfing and some very (very) light gaming. It was supposed to help me reduce the number of boxes under my TV.

This is my long, twisted, frustrating tale.

The Journey

In its final incarnation, it was close enough to what I wanted, but it took me a long time to get there.

Before you make fun of my component choices in the comments section, I’ll freely admit that part of my trouble was simply inexperience. I’ve built many computers in my day, but they’ve been mostly full-size gaming PCs or light-use micro-ATX computers for family members. This HTPC project, I thought, would be just as much fun to put together as it would be to use. I’d get to build another computer, a hobby I greatly enjoy, and I’d get to learn a lot in the process!

In the spring of 2009 I dropped a bit less than $400 on a Mini-ITX computer case, a Zotac motherboard with built-in nVidia GeForce 8200 graphics, a low-power dual-core processor from AMD, 4GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, a DVD burner, a wireless keyboard and mouse combo and a DVI to HDMI cable. A spare copy of Windows XP (seriously, who didn’t have one or two licenses for this laying around a couple of years ago?) completed the ensemble.

On paper, it looked pretty good. I wasn’t looking for a Blu Ray player just yet, but I knew that the GeForce 8 series chips would accelerate high-definition content and (one day) Flash video when Adobe got around to adding the functionality.

In practice, things went downhill fast. The processor and motherboard I had chosen wouldn’t fit underneath the case’s power supply, and so when I put the thing together the power supply had to be set outside of the case, instantly uglying up my TV stand (as a just-out-of-college twenty-something just setting up his bachelor pad, naturally my TV stand was the only nice looking piece of furniture I owned at that point). Keeping a full-sized keyboard and mouse under the TV was also sub-optimal, as was the fact that Windows XP Professional came with no Media Center app. It did what I wanted, sort of, but it wasn’t very good at it.

The Dream is Over: The Death of my HTPC, Part 1 was posted on Everything Microsoft - Latest Microsoft News, Guides, Reviews & Themes. If you are not reading this content in an email newsletter, it is being used without permission.