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

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

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

Taking advantage of the “downgrade rights” offered as part of the Windows Vista license agreement, Hewlett-Packard and Dell both plan to offer machines loaded with XP well beyond June.

Technically, the computers will be Vista Business or Vista Ultimate machines that have been factory downgraded to XP at the customer’s request. In practice, they are more like XP machines that come with an already paid-for upgrade to Vista when and if the customer chooses to do so.

HP said it plans to continue selling the “pre-downgraded” desktops, notebooks, and workstations to its business customers until July 30, 2009. Dell is already pitching the same option on its Web site and promising the models will stick around long after it stops taking standard XP orders on June 18. Other computer makers tell CNET News.com they are still exploring what to do but also want to sell XP beyond June 30.

There are limits to the approach being taken by HP and Dell. Only the Business and Ultimate flavors of Vista come with downgrade rights, meaning consumer machines can’t be sold in a similar fashion.

While companies can offer pre-downgraded machines via their Web site, things get a little more complicated when it comes to buying a PC at retail stores. It may be possible for customers to buy such a machine, but just how this will work–and if stores will offer such an option–is not totally clear. The tricky issue is that, to stay within Microsoft’s terms, the customer has to somehow “request” the XP downgrade.

All of this prompts the real question: Why won’t Microsoft just extend the deadline? The company’s rationale that customers and computer makers aren’t demanding a longer life for XP seems to be increasingly implausible.

Kevin Kutz, a director in Microsoft’s Windows unit, said that the downgrade-rights option meets customer needs.

“While (computer makers) continue to see large numbers of customers making the transition to Windows Vista, there are some pockets–like small business–that need a little more time,” Kutz said in a statement. “And from what we’ve heard from our partners, the downgrade rights option fulfills that need.”

The pre-downgraded PC option is just the latest way that PC makers have responded to stronger-than-expected demand. After shifting largely to Vista after its January 2007 mainstream launch, Dell and others quickly began adding more XP options in response to customer requests.

For some time now, computer makers have been selling machines with an XP recovery disc as a downgrade option.

Lenovo, for example, plans to keep offering an XP recovery disc with some Vista models through January 2009, according to InformationWeek.

The latest twist is the machines, like the ones HP and Dell will sell beyond June 30, that have Vista rights but contain XP pre-installed.

As for whether a broader reprieve might yet come for XP, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has left the door open a crack.

“XP will hit an end-of-life,” Ballmer said in Belgium recently, according to Reuters. “We have announced one. If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter, but right now, we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments.”

CNET News.com