June 5th, 2009
Microsoft confirms the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 release date for the holliday shopping season.
Those waiting anxiously for the next version of Windows now have a date to anticipate. Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 7 will be launched on October 22, 2009. This date, which is referred to as General Availability (GA), is in line with Microsoft's previous statement saying that it would have Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 ready by the holidays. After the software giant unleashed the official Release Candidate on May 5, it became apparent that development on the follow-up to Vista was close to wrapping up. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: microsoft, Microsoft Windows 7, operating system, Server, Server 2008 R2, windows
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May 11th, 2009
When news of Windows 7's "XP Mode" came out recently, there was much rejoicing among those who were concerned about legacy support in Microsoft's upcoming OS. But now we learn that Microsoft and Intel have contrived to make XPM unavailable to many Intel users.
We knew it was too good to be true! Just when we expected Microsoft to make major inroads to loosen the grasp of reluctant users to their Windows XP OS came the news that Windows XP Mode for Windows 7 will only run on virtualization capable CPU's. "This new wrinkle was the discovery that Windows 7's recently announced XP Mode would only work on processors that supported either Intel's VT or AMD's AMD-V. The vast majority of AMD's lineup, except for Sempron, has AMD-V and will work, but the Intel situation is much more complicated, and in some ways, worse." Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Intel, Microsoft Windows 7, virtual pc, Virtualization, windows, xp mode
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April 30th, 2009
Microsoft made the first release candidate of Windows 7 available for free download on Thursday. In an unprecedented move for the company, the software will run on a user's PC for more than a year.

Windows 7 RC1 can be downloaded now by MSDN, TechBeta and TechNet subscribers, and the general public will be able to download it on May 5. There is no limit to how many copies can be downloaded. The software will run until June 1, 2010, in what a Microsoft marketing manager described to ZDNet UK as a "try before you buy" scenario.
"There is no cap on the amount of downloads [of Windows 7 RC1]," Laurence Painell said in a prebriefing session on Wednesday. "However, we only recommend that people with a reasonable amount of IT knowledge use it."
Windows 7, the successor to Vista, brings new features such as multitouch interaction, Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: download, Download Glitch, Intel X86, Microsoft Corp...., Microsoft Developer Network, Microsoft TechNet, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows 7, Operating Systems, release candidate, Servers
Posted in Windows 7 | 1 Comment »
April 29th, 2009
Note: See an important update at the end of this post. Contrary to some published reports, Internet Explorer does not get special treatment in Windows 7 Starter Edition.
If you’ve read anything about Windows 7 Starter Edition, your first reaction was probably the same as mine: Is Microsoft nuts? This ultra-cheap edition is intended for use on netbooks, but its biggest restriction sounds like a complete deal-breaker: it only runs three applications at once.
But I prefer to form my opinions based on facts, not press releases. So, for the sake of research, I’ve spent the last three weeks running Windows 7 Starter Edition on an ultra-portable Sony notebook. Here’s what I learned. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Construction, Desktop Gadget, Hardware, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows 7, Netbook, Netbooks..., Nettops & MIDs, Operating Systems, Software, Window
Posted in Windows 7 | 1 Comment »