Windows 7 Release Candidate: how and when download it!!

By now is official Windows 7 will be released between last week of April and second week of May!!

Many sites (http://www.engadget.com, http://www.hwupgrade.it/, http://blogs.msdn.com,…) report these weeks, but for now there isn’t a fixed day because Microsoft doesn’t want repeat the errors of first public beta and it is preparing a more efficient download system.

How will it can download? Microsoft didn’t decided if RC version will be downloadable for all, but for now it’s sure that tester which submitted a number minimum of feedback will can download new version.

Windows 7 RC will stop to work 1 September, only one month after first beta. The reason of this choice is that Microsoft received good feedback and thinks that RC fixed bug of first beta. It might be thought that Microsoft wants anticipate Windows 7 launch at January 2009.

The some changes between Beta and RC are reported on this page: Some Changes Since Beta for the RC.

Bye.

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Taskbar versus Dock, are they really the same thing?!

Today I won’t write anything about my experience using Windows 7 Beta 1 on my MacBook cause it goes to well and there are no problems to report.

Today I’m posting a link to a wonderful article I read in which the author talk about Windows’s taskbar, Windows 7’s “superbar” and Mac OS X’s dock. I couldn’t be that much clear to expose the exact same idea and to prove that the brand new Windows 7’s “superbar” isn’t a copy of Mac OS X’s dock.

Paradigms lost: The Windows 7 Taskbar versus the OS X Dock

See you!

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Windows 7 natively installed on my Mac

Since the first day Microsoft publicly released Windows 7 Beta 1 I've started playing with the new operating system.

Although I was convinced to try the 64-bit version I downloaded both Windows 7 Beta 1 32-bit and 64-bit. First of all I created a virtual machine hosted by VMware Fusion (which is my favorite virtualizer for Mac OS X) with two 2.0 GHz virtual cores, 1 GB of main memory and 64 GB of hard drive.

I was truly amazed due to performances which were better than what I experienced with the same virtual machine equipped with Windows Vista SP1 32-bit. After the installation of VMware Tools the configuration was completed. Unfortunately the use of a virtual machine prevents me to try some useful improvements to Aero (my Intel GMA 950 isn't sufficient in a virtual environment) and to completely try some interesting new feature such as HomeGroup.

I had come to the decision to uninstall the useless native Windows XP SP3 installation (sorry tciddaniw we can't play GP4 together any more) and to substitute it with a native Windows 7 Beta 1 installation. Following Apple's guidelines I erased and created a free partition with Boot Camp Assistant and after the insertion of Windows 7 Beta 1 64-bit DVD my Mac restarted. And here we are with the first problem... this isn't the first version of Windows 64-bit I tried to install on my Mac, I tried Windows Vista 64-bit too and it works well (although my Mac doesn't support Windows 64-bit according to Apple). So, which is the problem? The problem is none other then EFI. Windows Vista SP1 64-bit and consequently Windows 7 Beta 1 64-bit introduces full support to UEFI (un update of EFI 1.1 used by Macs) so my Mac stoped asking me which boot method I prefer, UEFI or BIOS (which capabilities are emulated by EFI on Macs); as expected the keyboard wasn't working (this is a problem I already encountered few times) so the installation couldn't precede.

I didn't have the time to play around and to find a solution to this problem so I inserted Windows 7 Beta 32-bit DVD (which doesn't support UEFI) and stated a new installation that worked fine. Windows 7 Beta 1 32-bit was installed in 23 minutes. During the first configuration before making the login my WiFi network was found and both standard sharing and HomeGroup sharing were configured in an instant. Few seconds after the first login Windows Update informed me that 2 new updates were available and in addition 1 updated driver was found (the wired-network card device driver).

The configuration of the operating system is as always simple (I think I know Windows very well) but the Control Panel is always that much "big", only Windows Search permits me to find what I want in an instant; I think it needs a deep revision (I like Mac OS X's System Preferences pane). Talking about new features, I liked playing with the brand new taskbar, which is indeed similar to the dock - I have to admit it - but it introduces an interesting method to switch between applications and windows (surelly applications need to be modified in other to take advantage of this new way to operate - for example, Internet Explorer 8 Beta permits to switch between tabs even from the taskbar, Firefox 3.1 Beta doesn't). Moreover I found useful both Aero Peek and the gestures to manage windows' dimensions and pinning (I love them). I downloaded the Live Suite to try the integration between Live Messenger and jump lists; it's already good but a found a glitch with Flip3D integration, my Live Messenger pictures is shown in Flip3D even if Live Messenger window is closed, that's a bug that needs to be corrected (why can I switch to an window that doesn't exist?). The renewed management of widgets, ops... gadgets, is interesting; no more sidebar (I'm happy) and an invisible grid to ping gadgets, I miss it on my Dashboard on Mac OS X.

So, I've come to a conclusion. I like Windows and I think about Windows Vista as an improvements over Windows XP so Windows 7 is indeed another step further. Windows 7 is faster, simpler and more beautiful than its predecessors, I think I'll it a lot and come back to Windows after using Mac OS X won't be a problem after all. Next step, installing Boot Camp driver to make keyboard and touchpad more usable and to enable BT (I like my new BT full-size mouse).

See you!

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Microsoft Zune reinvents the Millennium Bug

There are many people that strongly believe that the Zune is a valid substitute for the iPod; unfortunately some of its defects are convincing me that Microsoft clearly isn't putting much energy into its product. After cracking screens and a seriously injured customer it is now time for a "new Millenium Bug": every single Zune on earth has frozen because of a bug in the way the Zune handles leap years. Luckly this time no one was injured! But I still can't stop thinking about what the next bug will be.

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Microsoft thinks to WEB 3.0

All know what is WEB 2.0, but Microsoft already thinks to WEB 3.0.

 

Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web culture communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, video sharing sites, wikis, blogs and tags. Web 2.0 websites allow users to do more than just retrieve information, but they want do a high-interaction user-to-website and user-to-user.

 

In the future this high-interaction will be not only user-to-user but also user-to-machine and machine-to-machine: WEB 3.0. Microsoft is studying how use internet technologies for communicate between machine: we'll can buy metro ticket or restaurant by our phone, but also control our house thermostat. All this is only the first step of the innovation that WEB 3.0 wants introduce in our lives.

In WEB 3.0 era, all is interconnect, we'll not open refrigerator to see what buy for lunch, but refrigerator will give us shopping list or send it directly to supermarket.

To support WEB 3.0 our phone and other common used devices will became "intelligent".

 

Maybe someday, while I'll have breakfast, I'll talk about my coffee pot :) .

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Are you ready for PDC?

I hope you are knowing that next week Microsoft is presenting new things at PDC. The main thing that will be presented is Windows 7, and this is the real reason you should follow what will happen in Los Angeles.

To follow it live the right links are:

Ed Bott

Mary Jo Foley

Kip Kniskern

Rafael Rivera

Paul Thurrot

Tom Warren

Long Zheng

Check their sites out and you can discover what is the next big thing form Redmond.

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Microsoft tells us to become pirates!

No, I’m not joking. I’m just watching the banners of the new Microsoft advertising campaign.

I hope that at Redmond nobody is thinking that the only way to have Vista installed on more computers is allowing users to crack it. I think that this isn’t the clue of this banner, but I’m sure that not telling that being a pirate is still cool would have been a better choice.

I’m not a pirate, and I think that Vista is good, so for me the Earth isn’t flat anymore! I’m also writing about new Vista’s banner, so maybe at Microsoft someone wanted us to talk about this banner just to get some viral marketing effect. Am I right?

Thanks to Thomas Hawk

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Spotlight on Windows 7

This week Microsoft unveiled multi-touch capability of Windows 7.

Looking at the video we can see a well-working multi-touch demo, but nothing on how that technology would be used in every-day works. So far looks like more an advanced mouse replacement than a brand-new way to use pc. I hope that other interface changes, that should enable users to enjoy multi-touch even when working and not only when looking at photos, are Top-Secret classified information and Microsoft choose to perform that demo just to show something to who is asking an early release of Windows 7.

In the last days Steven Sinofsky said that Windows 7 kernel would be an evolution of Vista's one. This is a bad news for the I-will-jump-to-Windows-7 boys that have to update their claim in I-will-jump-to-Windows-8 (or somewhere else). Vista users should be happy of this because of the total compatibility between the 2 OS drivers and software since nothing, especially the driver model, will change.

I was dreaming Windows 7 as a fully .Net based OS, with the old Win32 system virtualized just for old applications support so I feel a bit disappointed. On the other side Vista kernel is already a very good piece of software with the only problem that users aren't feeling this. Hopefully Windows 7 would allow the user have a better configuration on what system loads as already happens in Windows Server 2008, a OS that shares huge part of code with Vista, but surprisingly is not considered as bad. Maybe it's because Apple never choose a character for the server in their stupid advertisements.

The last thing I want to show you is this useful Mary-Jo Fooley post where she wrote what we know about Windows 7. But be careful, don't believe everything you're seeing about Windows 7.

p.s. In the title Spotlight meaning is this, not this.

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World Wide Telescope released: space is on our desktops!

Today Microsoft released World Wide Telescope. With that 2.0 application you can have a telescope directly on your PC form where you can access to terabytes of data form the best ground and space-based telescope.

This project is amazing for scientists who can access to a impressive database, to educators who can teach science using a wonderful tool and to students that may discover their passion for astronomy.

Let's go crying without forgetting to take a screenshot.

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Live Mesh: my first impressions.

After having received an invite for Live Mesh and installed the software I played with the technical preview. Here is what I noted on the weeks I tried Live Mesh instead of studying for my mid-term exams.

I'm going to analyze Live Mesh component by component and then to give an impression about the whole technical preview.

Web Desktop: you can put your files in a web directory and share it with your friends. Both you and your fiends will have the files synchronized into the devices with Live Mesh Client installed. Frankly I can't understand the difference between this service and Windows Live SkyDrive that offers nearly the same things. SkyDrive with a sync client (As Live Mesh Client is) would have been a perfect Web Desktop without the need to make this new service. Since SkyDrive is also a file repository I'd like to prefer it but I think I'm going to use Web Desktop in order to exploit the client. Another time seems that teams in Redmond don't know what another team does.

Desktop client: to install it I had to change my system locale to English US and date in the US format as described by Is started something. The setup was painless on Vista and XP. Everything worked perfectly and the shell integration is good. To share a folder I had just to right-click it and add to Live Mesh. When I open a shared folder I get all the information about last files added or modified in a dedicated panel. The client works perfectly and it is easy enough even for beginners. Desktop Client is definitely a good software.

Other clients: is planned to support also Macs and Phones but aren't not implemented yet, so I have to leave this space blank. Probably since I don't have a Mac nor a Windows Mobile Phone I would have to leave it blank even in the case I could try this feature :-)

My first impression is quite good, the software although is only a Tech Preview works perfectly and now I can access my shared data from every PC connected to Internet and I can also have my files sync' ed on my PCs.

I think that Live Mesh is a great thing but still isn't enough. How can I read and modify my files while I'm using Web Desktop? I think that some Silverlight or AJAX web application would be really useful, otherwise Live Mesh is only a file repository with data synchronization that isn't exactly the killer application I was expecting.

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Leopard vs Vista: the OS war is back

It is strange to say but, once in his life, Steve Ballmer is right.

Recentely he said that "Vista is still a work-in-progress OS"; today Popular Mechanics has posted a comparison between Mac OS X Leopard and Windows Vista.

The result is that Apple's operating system has blown away the unsuccessful and much criticized competitor: on Macs every tasks is performed faster, programs run quicker and even Windows Vista becomes more responsive than on a PC with the same technical specifications.

Last but not least, Popular Mechanics shows that Macs are even cheaper than most PCs!

Here is their verdict:

The Verdict

Mac: In both the laptop and desktop showdowns, Apple’s computers were the winners. [.....] In our speed trials, however, Leopard OS trounced Vista in all-important tasks such as boot-up, shutdown and program-launch times. We [...] found that both Apple computers ran Vista faster than our PCs did.

PC: Simply put, Vista proved to be a more sluggish operating system than Leopard. [.....] the Gateway One actually costs $300 more than an iMac. That means for the price of the Gateway you could buy an iMac, boost its hard drive to match the Gateway’s, purchase a copy of Vista to boot—and still save $100.

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Is Microsoft making the crystal ball?

I'm talking about Surface Sphere, check the links for more information and enjoy the rumors.

Mary Jo Foley

Ars Technica

I'd like to see the user interface used on the sphere, it is too different than classic input devices to be something similar.

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Guess what: Vista SP1 worst than Vista

For those of you still running Windows there is no good news: users from all around the world are reporting that the first "major" Windows Vista update is causing more headaches than it is solving.

Users are reporting crashes, drivers problems, increased slowness (especially in copy operations) and incredibly long update times.

Since it first came out, Windows Vista hasn't received a warm welcome from the PC community: clearly things haven't improved with researchers at University of Penn advising not to update and security experts even suggesting Microsoft to "throw Vista away".

On the other side Apple is exploiting this phenomenon with a new commercial and some are speculating that this could be the right time for Apple to license its new operating system, Mac OS X Leopard; I personally don't think that Apple will take such way but Steve Jobs moves have always been hardly predictable (remember the switch to Intel?) and I guess that... only time will tell.

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Not built on a 30-year old technology

Technorati Tags: Future, Microsoft, Singularity

This is real innovation, a OS based on new technologies, not another useless UNIX clone.

Here you can download (For non commercial and academic use only) Singularity, and enjoy this new OS.

If you would like to see an operating system designed for the future forget every UNIX (I'm sorry for you, poor Linux, OS X, BSD adept), and have a look at Singularity or CosmOS (both C# based).

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IE8 will be "Super Standard"!

Following the IE team blog I have learnt that Microsoft have decided to listen to community words and this is not a normal choice for a big software house, thank you Microsoft.

The original Microsoft idea was to use an improved "IE7 Standard Mode" as a default rendering mode for IE8. Reading Microsoft last words seems that IE8 will use "IE8 Standard Mode" which was previously known as "IE8 Super Standard Mode" and leave to the Web developer the choice to use the previous version "Standard Mode".

What about compatibility which was the main point of the initial idea?

Microsoft decided to use "IE7 Standard Mode" in order to guarantee a good rendering for lots of Web pages and leave to the Web dev the choice to use the standard compliant rendering engine in order to improve compatibility with the legacy Web pages.

Now Web developers con chose "IE7 Standard Mode" using a http/header meta tag approach, so compatibility remains but the default choice is "IE8 Standard Mode" in in order to guarantee interoperability instead of compatibility.

Yes, interoperability. Microsoft is using this word so much in this period!

You can read the official announce: Microsoft's Interoperability Principles and IE8.

sirus

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Do you need an accompaniment for your songs?

It has never been so easy, just sing your song and MySong will do the rest.

If you want to know how it works have a look at this video.

From Is started something

Technorati Tags: Accompainment, Song, Music, MySong

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Turn that page

Technorati Tags: British Library

Here you can find some books from the British Library and look at them. Of course you have to turn the page, there are reproduction of books, not only look at their content.

Have fun

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Heroes Happens Here

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Comic

Have fun with this geeky comic series

http://www.microsoft.com/heroeshappenhere/comicviewer/default.html

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Is Cedega more DOS/95/98/2000/XP compliant than Vista?

Technorati Tags: GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Games

GNU/Linux guys can't stand that Windows Vista is better than their operating systems, and are searching the most improbable test.

diarrheaBot (OK, I shouldn't read such a shit) come into Slashdot with one of the most ridiculous test ever done.

Maybe he should have thought that testing Windows Vista and Cedega with games developed in the pre-Windows XP era.

I'm not doing to install this software on my machine, I'm going to trust the result I found on the Internet (For GNU/Linux I'm assuming that our friends did the right things).

Soldat: It is a 2002 game with some bugfix, and actually it seems that someone's Windows Vista is not freezing.

Darwinia: maybe there is a reason if a for Windows Vista version was released! On that update there was the porting from OpenGL to DirectX. Did you know that in Windows Vista the OpenGL layer completely depends on graphic drivers you have? So purely OpenGL performances depends on Nvidia, AMD (Ati), Intel and any other GPU maker.

You can criticize Microsoft idea to exclude an OpenGL layer not the OpenGL performances on Windows Vista which are not a Microsoft mistake.

Blackthorne: since you're running it with DOSBox I guess you read that and edited the configuration file.

Civilization 4: You got a compatibility warning. But if you patch the game guess what happens?

Conclusion:

You got your Slashdot quote, GNU/Linux fanboys are happy, Windows Vista users managed to get all work and even experience better performance on new games.

sirus's update:

I've noticed that diarrheaBot uses a GeForce FX graphic card. I've a GeForce FX 5600 Ultra (128 MB of VRAM) on one of my desktop PCs and and I can confirm that Nvidia has dropped driver support for this series before Windows Vista was released. The driver Windows Vista uses for these graphic cards is a legacy one. Another fault in diarrheaBot review.

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Get a BSOD with three keystrokes and became a youtube-star

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Windows, BSoD

If you're using Windows Vista or XP SP2 regardless of hardware problems you maybe never saw a Blue Screen of Death.

If you want to see what a BSoD looks like, or show the world how easily Windows crashes there is a simple trick to generate a memory dump with your keyboard.

To activate the superpower just follow this simple steps:

• Run regedit
• go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\kbdhid\Parameters if you have an USB keyboard or to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters if you have a ps/2 keyboard
• Add a new DWORD CrashOnCtrlScroll with 1 as value
• Reboot to apply changes
• Hold down right Ctrl and hit Scroll Lock twice

Now that your keyboard has this superpower why don't use it to became a youtube-star?

• Run notepad, flip3d, minesweeper or another Windows built-in program
• Do something
• Use the superpower of your keyboard
• Say WOW
• Make a link to www.apple.com/getamac

Congratulations, you are a youtube-star!

Links

How To Geek

MSDN - support page

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