Windows 8: More Roadmaps

Well, on this day of PDC 2009, since I won’t hear anything about Windows 8, I took it upon myself to see what I could scrounge up.

It looks like a bit more is being announced to partners where Windows 8 Server is concerned… well, in the context of a roadmap, at least.

The information all says the same thing I’ve been reporting via other roadmaps: Windows 8 being released around a time frame of 2012. Perhaps the whole, “end-of-the-world” thing in 2012 really has something to do with Windows 8. Or not. lol. Either way, here are the additions to my ginormous roadmap collection:

Source: Microsoft Kitchen

Microsoft’s newest attempt to appease the EU is to create a system in which end users can choose their browsers. (Imagine that! Choice!) This is a change from Microsoft’s previous offer to remove Internet Explorer completely from Windows 7.

It was decided that Microsoft’s “Hey! We’ll just leave all browsers out completely!” would result in headaches for some consumers who would struggle to download any browser without being able to use Internet Explorer to do so. The new approach is to sell Windows PCs with Internet Explorer as the default browser, but to present users with a “ballot screen” which allows them to select and “easily install competing browsers from the Web.” That’s not all though:

In addition, (computer makers) would be able to install competing Web browsers, set those as default and disable Internet Explorer should they so wish. The Commission welcomes this proposal, and will now investigate its practical effectiveness in terms of ensuring genuine consumer choice.

There’s a catch of sorts in that there aren’t any specifics on how competing browsers will be selected for the “ballot”, so the jury’s still out on just how accommodating Microsoft is really being.

Source: GIZMODO & CNET News

Microsoft Corp. today announced the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, the next versions of its flagship desktop and server operating systems.

With the completion of this development phase, industry partners are readying products in time for the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 worldwide general launches. Windows 7 will be generally available to customers around the world on October 22, and Windows Server 2008 R2 will be generally available on or before that date. As always, current customers of the Windows Volume Licensing program, Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) subscribers and TechNet subscribers will be among the first to get customer access to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 in the coming weeks.

Microsoft will make the announcement on its Windows Team and Windows Server Blogs later today. More information about today’s news is available via the following links:

• Windows Team Blog, http://windowsteamblog.com
• Windows Server Blog, http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver
• Partner Web sites, http://readyset7.com and http://talkingaboutwindows.com/Default.aspx
• Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 for businesses, http://www.microsoft.com/windows/default.aspx and http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/R2.aspx

Source: Microsoft Co.

Apparently, organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful will require a new operating system.

Google has long worked on expanding its reach beyond mere Internet search. And as many had suspected, it confirmed late Tuesday night that it plans to develop a lightweight operating system based on Linux and Web standards for personal computers.

Why? Well, Google’s standard response to any question about why it’s working on something other than search is to declare that any product that helps people get on the Web, and enjoy their experience on the Web, benefits Google’s advertising customers in that more Web users equals more Google searches.

Yet, Chrome OS represents something more. There’s a competitive impact that can’t be ignored, no matter how often Google insists that it’s in this world to do good rather than inflict pain on other corporations.

Few details were available Wednesday concerning one of the most important and ambitious projects Google has ever undertaken. Sources familiar with the Chrome OS project say Google engineers have only been working on the project in earnest since the beginning of the year, so there’s likely a lot that still needs to be ironed out.

Chrome OS is the byproduct of Google thinking it can do better than Windows, Mac OS X, the various flavors of Linux, and even its own Android operating system. It’s long been obvious that the world has changed from a personal computing model built for individuals working offline or businesspeople sharing files across a workplace to one where the consumer/business lines have blurred and people are expected to be online anywhere and everywhere.

Accompanying that shift has been the decreasing importance of processing power and operating system complexity. For years, the dirty secret of the computer industry has been that most people don’t use nearly the amount of headroom provided to them by modern microprocessors and operating systems.

After all, if you’re searching the Web, sending e-mail, typing up documents, touching up photos, and updating your Facebook status–hardly an uncommon usage model–you’re more concerned with speed and battery life than raw power. Those still playing Doom or editing video will always need something more robust, but most people do spend an awful lot of time in the browser and have embraced smartphones and Netbooks as a way of staying online on the go.

Google’s general idea seems to be twofold. First, it wants to make it easier for regular people to use a computer by making an operating system that is fast, secure, and lightweight enough to run on portable devices.

Sources familiar with Google’s plans for the Chrome OS said that the company is working on a new method of “windowing,” or switching between multiple applications. Google also believes that the whole idea of storing your files and applications in folders is an archaic way of organizing your data, and plans to unveil a new user interface that handles things a little differently.

Secondly, Google believes that through the use of Web standards like HTML 5–promoted heavily during its recent Google I/O conference as the development platform of the future–software development on a browser-based OS will be easily understood by developers reared in the Web 2.0 era.

This is not a new idea. Palm is betting its future on such a strategy, having introduced WebOS on the Palm Pre as a Web-friendly development environment based on a browser engine running atop Linux. Sound familiar?

Google brings much more to bear than Palm, however. It has an entire suite of Web applications and services that already form much of what you want a computer to do: send e-mail, compose documents, edit photos, and, of course, browse the Web.

But why does Google think it needs two operating systems to address this evolving usage model? Much of the language used to introduce Chrome OS could have been pulled from a blog post two years ago introducing Android, Google’s lightweight Linux-based open-source smartphone operating system.

Just a few months ago Google’s Andy Rubin declared Android to be “a revolution” that would help Google conquer the write-once, run-anywhere goal that has eluded the non-Microsoft software community for so many years. And Google executives have endorsed the concept of other companies building things other than phones based on Android.

However, Android appears to now occupy a different role in Google’s thinking. According to Tuesday night’s blog post, “Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems.”

As noted, there are an awful lot of details that still need to surface before we can glean Google’s true intent with Chrome OS, not to mention the potential impact. Google said it plans to release the code for Chrome OS later this year, with the expectation that devices based on the OS could arrive in the second half of 2010.

But one thing is for sure: Google’s ambitions are boundless. The company is proposing to do nothing less than rewrite the rules that govern personal computing.

Source: CNET News

Microsoft Corp. said Thursday that prices for the Windows 7 computer operating system are largely in line with those for Vista, and that people who buy PCs before the new system goes on sale in October will get free upgrades.

To drum up demand among people who aren’t in the market for a new PC, Microsoft also said it is taking limited pre-orders for Windows 7, selling some for as little as $50.

People who buy Windows Vista Home Premium, Business or Ultimate computers starting Friday can contact their manufacturer for a free upgrade when Windows 7 becomes available on Oct. 22.

As a result, Microsoft said it will defer recognition of an expected $200 million to $300 million in Windows revenue until later quarters.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker said it will cost people $120 to upgrade their existing machines to the Windows 7 Home Premium version, $10 less than the comparable Windows Vista package. Upgrades to the Professional and Ultimate versions will cost $200 and $220 respectively, the same as Vista.

The cost is identical regardless of whether the upgraded machine was running Windows XP or Windows Vista.

Versions meant to be installed from scratch on a computer will cost $200, $300 and $320 for Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate.

By comparison, Apple Inc. said in early June that upgrades to its newest operating system, called Mac OS X Snow Leopard, will cost $30.

For customers buying new machines, the cost of the Windows software is typically included in the purchase price. The prices announced Thursday are for people who buy Windows separately or upgrade from older versions.

Microsoft is hoping Windows 7′s debut will be much smoother than Vista’s. The current operating system was plagued by delays; when it finally launched in January 2007, many people complained it was sluggish and didn’t work with existing devices and programs.

This time, to goose early sales and build buzz, Microsoft is cutting the price by about half for people who pre-order upgrade software for Home Premium ($50) and Professional ($100).

The sale will start Friday in the U.S., Canada and Japan, and on July 15 in the U.K., France and Germany. It will last for about two weeks, or as long as allotted copies of the software last.

People can buy the software on Microsoft’s download site or at retailers including Best Buy Co. Inc., which said it is limiting sales to three per customer.

Microsoft would not say how much it will cost to upgrade from a lesser version of Windows 7 to a more robust one. The company also declined to say what effect Windows 7 prices will have on netbooks, a popular category of small, inexpensive laptops. The low prices are possible in part because they run the older, cheaper Windows XP.

Microsoft said this month it is making a version of Windows for Europe that does not come with Internet Explorer, its Web browser, in an attempt to ward off sanctions from antitrust regulators there.

Brad Brooks, a corporate vice president for Windows marketing, said Microsoft hasn’t had time to polish upgrade software for Europe, so it plans to sell the full version of Windows 7 to European Union consumers at upgrade prices at least through December.

Source: Yahoo News

After a lengthy development cycle that included delays and furious testing, Microsoft has finally given the public Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (final build is 6.0.6002.18005). You can download the installer from the Microsoft Download Center: 32-bit (348.3MB), 64-bit (577.4MB), and IA64 (450.4MB). There’s also an ISO image (1376.8MB) that contains these installers. The installers will work on English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish versions of either Vista or Server 2008. Other language versions will arrive later. Those interested in slipstreamed versions of Vista and Server 2008 with SP2 will need to get an MSDN or TechNet subscription.

If you have any beta versions of SP2 installed, they must be uninstalled prior to installing the final version. To do this, use the Control Panel applet called Programs and Features, select View installed updates, and then under Windows look for KB948465. SP2′s main requirement (assuming no incompatible drivers are detected) is that SP1 is already installed. During the beta phase, it was speculated that this is because SP2 is not yet finalized, but the truth is that SP1 is a prerequisite even now.

The reason for this is size: Microsoft wants the size of SP2 to be smaller (if SP2 was cumulative, it would make for a huge download). Server 2008 shipped with SP1 already installed (meaning SP2 is actually the first service pack for Server 2008), including the contents of the SP1 client code.

SP2 applies to both the client and server versions of Windows because Microsoft adopted a single serviceability model to minimize deployment. Also, by releasing one single service pack, Microsoft has less testing to do, since Vista and Server 2008 have the same binaries for all common files, making for a quicker release (SP1 was released 14 months ago).

There are a few significant additions that are included in SP2: Windows Search 4.0, Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack, the ability to record data on to Blu-Ray media natively in Vista, Windows Connect Now (WCN) is now in the Wi-Fi Configuration, and exFAT file system supports UTC timestamps. The service pack contains about 800 hotfixes. For those interested in a more complete changelog, I’ve included one below:

* Hardware ecosystem support and enhancements
o SP2 adds support for the 64-bit central processing unit (CPU) from VIA Technologies, which adds the ID and vendor strings for the new VIA 64-bit CPU.
o SP2 integrates the Windows Vista Feature Pack for Wireless, which contains support for Bluetooth v2.1 and Windows Connect Now (WCN) Wi-Fi Configuration. Bluetooth v2.1 is the most recent specification for Bluetooth wireless technology.
o SP2 improves performance for Wi-Fi connections after resuming from sleep mode.
o SP2 includes updates to the RSS feeds sidebar for improved performance and responsiveness.
o SP2 includes ability to record data to Blu-Ray Disc media.
* Operating system experience updates
o SP2 includes Windows Search 4.0, which builds on Microsoft’s search technology with improved indexing and search relevance. It also helps find and preview documents, e-mail (including signed e-mail messages), music files, photos, and other items on the computer. The search engine in Windows Search 4.0 is a Microsoft Windows® service that is also used by programs such as Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007 and Microsoft Office OneNote® 2007. Autotuning Diagnostics in SP2 now interprets current network conditions when implementing Windows scaling. This feature includes full netsh support.
o SP2 improves Windows Media Center (WMC) in the area of content protection for TV.
o SP2 removes the limit of 10 half open outbound TCP connections. By default, SP2 has no limit on the number of half open outbound TCP connections.
* Enterprise improvements
o SP2 provides the Hyper-V virtualization environment as a fully integrated feature of Windows Server 2008, including one free instance with Windows Server 2008 Standard, four free instances with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and an unlimited number of free instances with Windows Server 2008 Datacenter.
o SP2 increases the authentication options for WebDAV redirector, enabling Microsoft Office users greater flexibility when authenticating custom applications using the WebDAV redirector.
o SP2 provides an improved power management (both on the server and the desktop), which includes the ability to manage these settings via Group Policy.
o SP2 improves backwards compatibility for Terminal Server license keys. Windows Server 2008 changed the licensing key from 512 bytes to 2,048 bytes which caused clients using older Terminal Server versions to fail. SP2 allows legacy license keys on Citrix applications to work with Windows Server 2008 Terminal Server.
* Setup and deployment improvements
o Provides a single installer for both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.
o Includes the ability to detect an incompatible driver and either block service pack installation or warn users of any potential loss of functionality.
o Provides better error handling and descriptive error messages where possible.
o Improves manageability through logging in the system event log.
o Provides a secure install experience.
o Includes the ability to service the installer post release.

More details on SP2 are available on TechNet. According to this document, SP2 is scheduled to begin arriving via Automatic Updates on June 30, 2009. If you don’t want to download it from the Microsoft Download Center, try checking manually for updates on Windows Update.

Source: ars technica

Improving performance is one of Microsoft‘s design goals with Windows 7, and many early reviewers (including ours) have said that the new OS seems peppier than Vista. But tests of the Windows 7 Release Candidate in our PC World Test Center found that while Windows 7 was slightly faster on our WorldBench 6 suite, the differences may be barely noticeable to users.

We loaded the Windows 7 Release Candidate on three systems (two desktops and a laptop) and then ran our WorldBench 6 suite. Afterward we compared the results with the WorldBench 6 numbers from the same three systems running Windows Vista. Each PC was slightly faster when running Windows 7, but in no case was the overall improvement greater than 5 percent, our threshold for when a performance change is noticeable to the average user.

The largest difference was 4 points–102 for Vista versus 106 for Windows 7 on an HP Pavillion a6710t desktop. Our other two test machines showed similarly minor performance improvements: A Maingear M4A79T Deluxe desktop improved by 1 point (from 138 on Vista to 139 on Windows 7), and a Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop improved by 2 points, from 97 on Vista to 99 on Windows 7.

WorldBench 6 consists of a number of tests involving ten common applications, including Microsoft Office, Firefox, and Photoshop. On the individual tests, the benchmark results were generally within a few percentage points of each other. One notable exception, however, was Nero 7 Ultra Edition, where Windows 7 made significant improvements, ranging from a 12 percent speedup to a 26 percent speedup, depending on the PC we used in our tests. Although we have yet to confirm it, PC World Test Center Director Jeff Kuta notes that this difference may be due to updated hard-disk drivers in Windows 7. Any improvements to Windows 7′s disk support will be more noticeable in an application like Nero, which uses the hard drive heavily. The test involving WinZip, another hard-drive-dependent task, also showed marked improvement under Windows 7.

We also measured a noteworthy 7 percent speed increase in our Autodesk 3ds max 8.0 SP3 (DirectX) test on the HP Pavillion desktop, which had an nVidia GeForce 9300GE graphics board. nVidia’s drivers appear to be better optimized for Windows 7 than Windows Vista.

In contrast, however, each of the systems took slightly longer to perform the tests in Microsoft Office and Firefox when they were running the new operating system than when they were running Vista.

Of course, it’s important to remember that we performed these tests with the release candidate of Windows 7. Though the operating system’s features likely won’t change in the final version, Microsoft’s engineers may still find ways to tweak the code to improve performance.

If these test results remain consistent with those for the final version of Windows 7, the news will likely be disappointing to many Windows users. One of the major complaints about Windows Vista was the fact that it was consistently slower than Windows XP. If Windows 7 doesn’t significantly improve that situation, it may fail to convince people to move away from Windows XP.

That said, there may be other areas we didn’t cover in our testing–such as startup times–where Windows 7 may outperform Windows Vista by a wider margin. The best way for you to get a feel for Windows 7′s performance is to download the release candidate and take it for a test drive on your system.
How We Test

We used three PCs in our testing: a Maingear M4A79T Deluxe desktop, an HP Pavillion a6710t desktop, and a Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop. The powerful Maingear comes equipped with a 3.2GHz AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition CPU overclocked to 3.71GHz, 4GB of memory, and dual ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics processors. The Pavilion, a mainstream desktop, features a 2.6GHz dual-core Pentium E5300 with 3GB of memory and an nVidia GeForce 930GE graphics chip. Lastly, the Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop packs a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of memory, and an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3670 graphics card. On all three systems, we ran our WorldBench 6 benchmark suite on a clean installation of the 32-bit edition of Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1 and repeated the process with the Windows 7 Ultimate release candidate (again, the 32-bit version). We made both operating systems current with Windows Update, and we installed the most current hardware drivers available.

Source: PC World

If you’re feeling adventuresome, you can get a jump on the rest of the world by being one of the first to try out Windows 7. That’s the next version of Windows which Microsoft plans to release “when it’s ready,” probably by the end of this year.

I used the first beta version of Windows 7 over the past few months and have been testing for the past week the “release candidate” dubbed “Windows 7 RC” that was made available for public testing on Monday. My experience has been quite positive. Both the test and RC version of Windows 7 were more stable than Vista.

Microsoft is allowing anyone to download and install a free copy of the operating system so that it can be tested on wide range of machines. Microsoft is recommending that you install Windows 7 on a “dedicated test PC,” admonishing users not to test the it “on your primary home or business PC.”

Installing any new operating system — especially one that’s not officially released or supported — can be risky. Be sure you have a complete backup of your system and have a plan of action should something fail.

The release candidate is available for free “at least through July” for those willing to jump over a few hurdles. You have to download a 2.36 gigabyte file which could take a considerable amount of time depending on your Internet speed and how busy Microsoft’s servers are.

What you download is an ISO file which must be burned to a DVD before you can install it on

a machine, so be sure you have DVD burner and a blank DVD handy. Microsoft says that your machine will need a 1 ghz or faster CPU, at least 1 GB of RAM (I recommended at least 2 GB) and at least 16 GB available disk space (more is better). The 64-bit version has higher requirements.

You can install Windows 7 over Vista but not earlier versions of Windows. I recommend a “clean install” which requires that you re-install all your software when you’re done.

The installation process went very smoothly and most of my hardware worked properly thanks to Windows 7 built-in drivers. Most simply installed automatically. It discovered my Brother International laser printer on my network and installed it without me having to download any new drivers.

So far, all of the programs I’ve tested work. There were a few that gave me a bit of trouble at first, but right clicking on a program’s icon brings up the Windows 7 “troubleshoot compatibility” tool that usually takes care of things.

My favorite feature in Windows 7 is the taskbar, which not only displays running programs but lets you “pin” frequently used programs so you can run or switch to them with a single click. When you hover your mouse over an icon of a program that’s running, you see thumbnails of all of the open windows for that program. If you move the mouse into the thumbnail, it grows much larger. Click on that larger window and you’re in the program. This feature makes it a lot easier to navigate between documents or Web sites.

Although an improvement over previous versions, it still retains some of Windows annoying attributes. For one thing, it will slow down over time. Still, it’s noticeably faster than Vista which is at least a step in the right direction. For more details on Windows, see Ed Bott’s excellent write-up on ZDNet (http://tinyurl.com/cf4m7j).

Source: San Jose Mercury News

How long does Microsoft plan to keep selling copies of its Windows Vista operating system after the upcoming launch of Windows 7? The company isn’t saying.

With previous versions of Windows, Microsoft used a transition period when old and new versions of Windows were available to help corporate customers manage their transition to the new version of the operating system.

This time Microsoft aims to put the ghosts of its Vista troubles to rest as soon as possible, and could stop selling Vista as soon as Windows 7 is released.

“We are still not sure if [computer makers] will be able to ship Vista once Windows 7 is made available. Having said that, an enterprise customer that purchases a PC with Windows 7 pre-installed is allowed to downgrade to Vista should they desire, similar to what we have today on Vista to XP,” wrote Richard Francis, general manager and Windows client business group lead at Microsoft Asia-Pacific, in an e-mail.

Microsoft will stop supporting all versions of Vista in April 2012, Francis said.

The launch of Windows 7 could take place within a few months from now. Last week, the company released the final beta version of the software, one of the last steps before locking down the code and sending the finished operating system to computer makers.

Microsoft had high hopes for Vista, but users found the OS sluggish on some computers and they complained about the number of permission prompts required for some tasks. Dissatisfaction with Vista kept user demand high for Windows XP, but many companies — including Eastman Chemical and Continental Airlines, among others listed on Microsoft’s Web site — decided to roll out Vista within their organizations.

Microsoft appears to be betting that Vista won’t be missed once Windows 7 is released.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve had a version of Windows that will actually run better [than the previous version] on the hardware that most customers have,” said Mike Nash, corporate vice president of the Windows product management group at Microsoft, during a conference call with reporters last Thursday.

Compared to Vista, Windows 7 will be faster and work better on systems such as netbooks, which have less powerful processors and less memory than other computers, he said.

While Microsoft hasn’t detailed plans for Vista after the launch of Windows 7, Nash said Windows XP will continue to be available on netbooks for one year after the launch of the new operating system.

Source: PCWorld

Although Microsoft Corp. refuses to name a delivery date for Windows 7, it could launch the new operating system as early as August, according to timeline comparisons of significant dates for Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Those calculations bolster speculation that Microsoft has already set a ship date. Earlier this week, for example, a senior Microsoft executive said that a release in time to make 2009′s crucial holiday selling season was “accomplishable,” a departure from policy that has only promised to deliver Windows 7 within three years of Vista’s appearance.

Yesterday, the gadget site Pocket-lint went even further as it said Acer Inc.’s Bobby Watkins had pegged Oct. 23 as Windows 7′s launch date.

Watkins confirmed that Acer customers who buy a Vista-powered computer in the 30 days leading up to Oct. 23 will receive a free upgrade to Windows 7. “October 23 is the date that Windows 7 will be available,” said Watkins, managing director of Acer’s U.K. operations in an interview with the site. “There is a 30-day upgrade time so that customers don’t wait to buy a new computer, so if you buy during that 30-day period, you’ll get a free upgrade to Windows 7.”

Comparisons with XP’s and Vista’s development pace show that Watkin’s Oct. 23 date is feasible. In fact, if Microsoft adheres to a schedule similar to XP, it could roll out Windows 7 as soon as late August.

In 2001, Microsoft issued its first Windows XP release candidate (RC1) 115 days before it shipped the operating system on Oct. 25. Five years later, Microsoft publicly unveiled Windows Vista 138 days after it delivered that OSs’ first release candidate.

Applying the 115- and 138-day spans to the May 5 public availability of Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) puts the new operating system’s launch date somewhere between Aug. 28 and Sept. 20, 2009, assuming Microsoft follows a trajectory like it did with XP or Vista.

Microsoft today declined to comment on a Windows 7 ship date. A company spokeswoman stuck to the official, and well-practiced line. “We are currently in the development stages for Windows 7 and expect it will take approximately three 3 years from Windows Vista Consumer [general availability] to develop,” she said in an e-mail response to questions. “The specific release date will be determined once the company meets its quality bar for release.”

Windows 7 RC was made available yesterday to subscribers of the for-pay Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN) and TechNet services. After several hours of problems early Thursday that blocked subscribers from downloading the RC, Microsoft had fixed the trouble and put both sites’ download pages back online.

Source: Computerworld