Microsoft hopes people like Windows 7 more than its predecessor, Vista

By Jessica Mintz

AP

SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp. put a new edition of Windows on sale Thursday, hoping for a fresh start after a bad reception for the previous version of the software that runs most of the world's personal computers.

Windows 7 is now available on new computers, and as a software upgrade for some older PCs.

A Fry's Electronics store in Renton, Wash., several miles south of Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, opened at midnight to give customers an early shot at buying a new PC or a disc that they could use to put Windows 7 on their existing computers. Such upgrade discs start at $120.

"We're geeks, that's what geeks do. This is our excitement," said Mike Naramor, 55, who runs a consulting business called My Computer Guy and was one of about 50 people who were waiting outside the store when it opened.

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photo: A salesman works behind new Windows 7 software in a store in Rosenheim, southern Germany. Microsoft Corp. put a new edition of Windows on sale Thursday, hoping for a fresh start after a bad reception for the previous version of the software that runs most of the world's personal computers.(By Christof Stache / AP)

By Jennifer Bergen

ZDNet.com

Do not attempt to adjust your screens. Acer is planning to launch a 15.6-inch 3D notebook at the end of October 2009. It will have software for you to covert your boring old 2D movies into exciting new 3D adventures. It will also directly support 3D movies.

You won’t need any wonky headgear for it either, just a pair of steroscopic glasses. According to Digitimes, Campbell Kan, vice president of Acer’s mobile computing business unit, says Acer is developing a model that won’t even require glasses.

The 3D notebook will come with Windows 7 installed, which means Microsoft will not officially announce this product until it launches the OS.

photo by Digitimes

By Chris Dannen

FastCompany.com

InformationWeek published results from an 1100-company survey suggesting that businesses will be extremely reticent to upgrade to Windows 7.

According to the report, 83% of the companies surveyed will delay their Win-7 upgrade until at least 2011, which means Microsoft might suffer another Vista-level adoption debacle if it doesn't move decisively to convince users to upgrade. Support for Windows XP, Microsoft's popular legacy OS, officially ends tomorrow, April 14.

The data cited by InformationWeek, which was collected by KACE, suggests that Microsoft's version confusion could be contributing to its incremental slips in marketshare. Linux, meanwhile, has seen adoption inch upward, likely at Windows' expense.

"Only a small percentage of businesses plan to migrate to Windows 7 in its first year of availability," says the KACE report. "Economic concerns and worries about compatibility" will be chief factors to blame. Only 42% of the businesses surveyed said they'd use Windows 7 after 2011, and 17% said they'd wait longer than three years before adopting.

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image by FastCompany.com

Late September, early October

By Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor

February 26, Softpedia

When it comes down to the deadline for the general availability of Windows 7, Microsoft has been undeterred from its initial claims that the next iteration of the Windows client would ship within three years of Windows Vista's GA. However, this is not exactly the case, revealed a computer-industry executive from Asia. In fact, Microsoft seems keen to beat its three years from Vista GA estimate for the delivery of Windows 7. A report via Bloomberg indicates that the Redmond company is actually planning to wrap up Windows 7 well ahead of the 2009 holiday season, namely in the September – October 2009 time frame.

“According to current planning, it should be late September or early October,” revealed Ray Chen, president of Compal Electronics, a company from Taipei. And Chen is in a position to know. Microsoft is collaborating closely with its original equipment manufacturers with the development of Windows 7, emphasizing efforts superior to those made for Vista. Compal Electronics builds laptops for both Hewlett- Packard and Acer, OEMs that have undoubtedly let in at least on a vague Windows 7 product roadmap, more than can be said for the general public.

The Windows 7 delivery deadline indicated by Chen fits the roadmap leaked for the operating system at the start of this month by Lotta Bath, from the Microsoft Sweden Partner team. Bath also indicated that Windows 7 would be released to manufacturing in October 2009. However, RTM and GA are two entirely different milestones.

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image by windows

Analysts have lowered their estimations for the two chip makers

By Ionut Arghire, Windows Editor

November 12, Softpedia

The previous financial estimations for Advanced Micro Devices and Intel Corp. have been reduced by many industry analysts. According to them, the demand of personal computers is expected to lower during the fourth quarter of the year, while also continuing on a down road during 2009, which means that the financial performance of the two central processing unit makers will be affected.

During the next year, the total available microprocessor market will see only a 2 percent growth, says analyst Tim Luke from Barclays Capital. The analyst has made a previous estimation of 5 percent growth for the market, also adding that the Atom processor designed for the ultra low-cost personal computers would raise the estimation to a 6 percent growth. According to Tim Luke, the industry revenue is expected to drop 2 percent next year amid unit sales growth.

"The supply chain is telling us that there is strong concern for demand decline, probably into the low- to mid-single digits on a unit basis for total PC processor growth in the year 2009," Shane Rau, an analyst at IDC, is reported to have said in an interview.

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At PDC2008

By Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor

September 24, Softpedia

Microsoft is gearing up to showcase Windows 7 for the first time in 2008, and the company is planning to do so to a global audience. According to Tim Sneath, Microsoft Client Platform Technical Evangelist, the Redmond giant is planning to introduce the next iteration of the Windows client at the Professional Developers Conference. Scheduled to take place October 27-30, 2008, in Las Vegas, PDC2008 will be an event largely focused on Windows, and the conference where Microsoft plans to give the world its first taste of Windows 7.

“The soul of PDC is still Windows, and this year more than most, Windows is a dominant theme. We’ll unveil Windows 7 to the world for the first time this year, and there are some exclusive surprises for conference attendees that mean you’ll be frustrated to miss out on being at the PDC in person. Although we’ve not yet unleashed the full set of tens of Windows 7 breakouts on the session planning tool, you can be sure that this will be a very significant part of the overall event,” Sneath revealed.

Speculations indicate that the Redmond company is planning to deliver at least a preview build of Windows 7, a release following Milestone 3, with the first Beta reportedly planned for December 2008.

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image of Windows 7 by Microsoft

'Halo effect' of iPod, iPhone sales help bring new users to Apple

By Suzanne Choney

August 28, MSNBC

More home users, and a growing number in the small business sphere, are opting to move to Apple’s computers, their interest driven by positive experiences with Apple's other products, as well as disenchantment with the Windows world.

Analysts say the appeal of Macs is in part due to a “halo effect,” created mainly by Apple’s iPod, which has 71 percent of the digital music player market in the United States, as well as from the iPhone.

“The popularity of other Apple products, particularly the iPod, has drawn more users to the Apple platform,” said Charles Smulders, Gartner’s managing vice president, client computing. “As a result, you see this halo effect of people buying Apple computers in addition to their iPods. Quantifying the halo effect is difficult, but we certainly believe that effect exists.”

What is quantified is Apple’s growth in the last two years in the home and small business areas, with sales of its iMac desktop computers, and MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops.

“If you look at just the U.S. home market, Apple had a 10.4 percent share at the end of the first quarter of this year, compared to 7.5 percent for the first quarter of 2007, and 5.4 percent for the first quarter of 2006,” Smulders said.

Among small businesses, defined as having 100 or fewer employees, Apple has been “gaining some ground, too,” he said.

The company had a 4.4 percent share of the small business market in the United States at the end of the first quarter this year, compared to 2.4 percent in 2007, and 2.1 percent two years ago, according to Gartner.

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photo:Apple's line of desktop and laptop computers, including the MacBook Pro, shown, and the MacBook, have had growing appeal to those who already are using the company's iPod digital music player or iPhone. (By Apple)

The green company paid a $25 million fee for the advanced power management suite

By Ionut Arghire, Windows Editor

August 8, Softpedia

Transmeta Corporation recently announced that it included Nvidia into its group of LongRun and LongRun2 low-power technologies licensees. It looks like this licensing might keep the company alive for quite a long time. Nvidia had to pay a "one-time, non-refundable license fee of $25 million", which granted
the Santa Clara company a "non-exclusive license to Transmeta’s Longrun and Longrun 2 technologies and other intellectual property".

"LongRun2 Technology is a suite of advanced power management, leakage control and process compensation technologies that can diminish the negative effects of increasing leakage power and process variations in advanced submicron geometries. LongRun2 Technology addresses these challenges with a broad set of solutions that include advanced algorithms, innovative circuits, unique devices and structures, process techniques, software and manufacturing optimization methods," said Transmeta in the press release.

All of today's trends point to power management, mainly in what concerns graphics cards and processors for ultraportable devices. The industry is aware of the fact that extended run-time for portable machines can be achieved through power efficient devices that use the battery rather than accelerating the battery technology to a point where it can offer more working time.

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photo: Nvidia licensed advanced power management suite from Transmeta (Credits: slashgear)

Even for refurbished PCs

By Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor

June 18, Softpedia

Licenses for Windows come in various flavors from Retail to Volume, but perhaps the most common of all is provided by original equipment manufacturers together with operating systems preloaded on new computers. Since over 80% of the revenues of the Windows Client Division come from sales of Windows on new machines, the OEM licenses are bound to represent the vast majority of EULAs. At the same time, the OEM End User License Agreement is the one offering the least amount of flexibility to customers because it irremediably ties Windows to
the PC.

"The original OEM Windows licenses that ships with the PC is bound to that PC. So, if you buy a PC with an OEM Windows license, that OEM Windows license stays with that PC. If you sell the PC, you have sold the OEM Windows license with it. If you donate the PC, you donate the OEM Windows license with it. If you burn and destroy the PC, you burn and destroy the OEM Windows license with it," explained Eric Ligman, Microsoft US Senior Manager Small Business Community Engagement.

Ligman revealed that this situation is also valid for OEM Windows licenses on refurbished computers. As long as the motherboard of a refurbished PC is not changed, customers will not need a new OEM Windows Desktop Operating System license. Since the Windows copy is intimately connected with the PC's motherboard, the OEM license for the operating system will be valid for the refurbished computer as long as that critical hardware component stays in place.

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photo by Dell

A number of companies are opting not to embrace Redmond's latest operating system and, like GM, are waiting for Windows 7 instead

By Aaron Ricadela

May 14, BusinessWeek

General Motors may take a detour around Vista, the latest computer operating system from Microsoft. The automaker has encountered so many speed bumps getting Vista to work on its machines that it may just wait for the next version of Windows, due in 2010 or 2011. "We're considering bypassing Vista and going straight to Windows 7," says GM's Chief Systems & Technology Officer Fred Killeen.

Vista taxes all but the most modern PCs with hefty processing and memory requirements. Many of GM's PCs can't even run the system. "By the time we'd replace them, Windows 7 might be ready anyway," Killeen says. Then there are compatibility problems with all the software that needs to run on Windows. GM's software vendors still haven't ensured all their programs will run on Vista trouble-free. So the company is sticking with Windows XP for now. Killeen figures GM could install Windows 7 in three or four years.

Equal Parts Rejection and Acceptance

Many of Killeen's counterparts across Corporate America are finding themselves similarly vexed by Vista. The resulting delay or rejection of Microsoft's flagship product is stepping up pressure on the company to expand other areas of its business, including online software. Vista was first released in late 2006, but the dismay with it has come into sharper focus as slower-than-expected uptake affects Microsoft's bottom line, Google spiffs up its own free versions of competing software, and corporate tech managers move to put more Apple Macs on employee desks (BusinessWeek, 5/1/08).

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image by BusinessWeek

By Scott Gilbertson

April 24, Wired

Microsoft believes in the cloud. The company has just unveiled an invite-only test of its new Live Mesh service, a "cloud computing" project designed to help you access and share your files from where ever you are.

Live Mesh synchronizes and shares data across multiple machines — currently that means Windows PCs, but look for Windows Mobile as well as Mac OS X support to be added later this year. Mesh offers one-click sharing for desktop folders, remote desktop connections, web-based file access and a news feed to keep track of it all. Eventually Microsoft would like to add Xbox, DVR and other devices to the list of syncing/sharing possibilities.

The project announcement was made by Microsoft Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie, who calls the web “the hub of our social mesh.” That's quite a change for Microsoft and represents a significant step away from the desktop. Eventually Microsoft hopes, as Ozzie says, that “social mesh notions of linking, sharing, ranking and tagging will become as familiar as File, Edit and View.”

To interact with your files Live Mesh offers two separate interfaces: the desktop app and the web-based desktop. Regardless of which you’re using, you’ll be able to share, open and edit files via desktop applications just as you would with local files.

Live Mesh will be able to sync your data between PCs and can also share files between multiple users. However the sharing features are hampered by a lack of version control options. For now at least the sharing options are geared more toward the “send Mom some photos” notion of file sharing, rather than document collaboration.

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image by Wired

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor

April 11, Telegraph

The prospect of iPods that can hold millions of songs and PCs being able to turn on instantly, rather than taking minutes to "boot up", comes much closer today.

A Californian team has developed a new generation of memory that combines the high performance and reliability of solid state "flash" memory, stored in microchips, with the high capacity of the PC's hard disk drive, which is cheap but contains moving parts and is slow.

In two papers in the journal Science, Dr Stuart Parkin and colleagues at the IBM Almaden Research Centre in San Jose describe a revolutionary technology dubbed "racetrack" memory, or RM memory.

The team believes that it marks a milestone that could lead to electronic devices capable of storing far more data in the same amount of space than is possible today, with lightning-fast boot times, far lower cost and unprecedented stability and durability.

Within the next decade, racetrack memory, so named because the data "races" around microscopic magnetic "tracks," could lead to solid state electronic devices with no moving parts, and therefore more durable - capable of holding far more data.

IBM says this technology could enable a handheld device such as an mp3 player to store around 500,000 songs or around 3,500 movies - 100 times more than is possible today.

The devices would not only store vastly more information in the same space, but also require much less power and generate much less heat, and be practically unbreakable; the result: massive amounts of personal storage that could run on a single battery for weeks at a time and last for decades.

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image: Diagram of the nanowire shows how how an electric current is used to slide, or 'race', tiny magnetic patterns around the nanowire 'track' (Telegraph)

By Ryan Singel

April 10, Wired

SAN FRANCISCO -- Gangs of thousands of zombie home computers grinding out spam, committing fraud and overpowering websites are the most vexing net threat today, according to law enforcement and security professionals.

Today's botnet herders have hundreds of thousands of computers at their command and use technically sophisticated ways to hide their headquarters, making it easy for them to make millions from spam and credit card theft. They can also be used to direct floods of fake traffic at a targeted website in order to bring down a rival, extract protection money or less frequently, used to make a political point in the case of attacks on Estonia and the Church of Scientology.

Security pros and government officials are now describing the latter attacks, known as Distributed Denial of Service attacks, as serious threats to national security -- turning packet floods against public websites into the latest face of "cyberwar" hysteria.

Hence, the appearance Tuesday of a panel discussion at the RSA 2008 security conference entitled "Protecting the Homeland: Winning the Botnet Battle," which was marked by a mix of resignation, indignation and post-9/11 rhetoric.

Ronald Teixeira, the executive director of the non-profit National Cyber Security Alliance and the panel's moderator, began the discussion by describing botnets as "one of the largest threats we face on the internet today, and they can be used to attack critical infrastructure."

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photo: Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff speaks about computer security at the RSA Conference on information security in San Francisco, Tuesday, April 8, 2008 (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

By Daisuke Wakabayashi

Feb 22, Reuters

REDMOND, Washington - Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it would publish key software blueprints to let rival programs work better with its products and address some European antitrust concerns.

The world's largest software company said it would follow up with more actions to address European demands, although the European Commission said Thursday's move did not resolve a key issue about how Microsoft's products are tied together.

Microsoft has been criticized for shutting out competitors by incorporating programs such as its media player closely into its Windows operating system, and by keeping secret product details that rival developers need to ensure smooth operation with Windows and other Microsoft products.

Thursday's move would open up to competitors some of the secret codes behind key products like Windows Vista. But the steps do not address the allegations of product tie-ups.

"Microsoft kind of kept its software products as a walled garden, and it is kind of opening the gates to the garden," said Toan Tran, a Morningstar analyst.

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photo: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, with general counsel Brad Smith (L) and Ray Ozzie (R), chief software architect, speak to reporters at a news conference at company headquarters in Redmond, Washington, February 21, 2008 (REUTERS/Robert Sorbo)

Get ready, you mortal, the Matrix needs you!

By Bogdan Botezatu, Hardware Editor

Feb 18, Softpedia

The computers will become more intelligent than the human beings within the next 20 years, if the computer industry keeps up with the actual progress. Scientific futurologists claim that the next 50 years will bring 32 times more technical progress than the entire 20th
century.

One of the most important achievements of the next 20 years will be artificial intelligence that will reach the human capacities. American computer guru Ray Kurzweil claims that the machines will rapidly become more intelligent than humans. The apocalyptic scenarios are out of discussion, and Dr. Kurzweil claims that their intelligence will be put to work in order to solve some of the most challenging problems of the 21st century.

Kurzweil is one of the computing pioneers that could be called a technology prophet. He is deeply related to multiple fields of computing, such as optical character recognition, optical storage and automatic speech recognition. The future he described is made of machines that are able to learn how to communicate, teach and replicate among themselves.

"The paradigm shift rate is now doubling every decade, so the next half century will see 32 times more technical progress than the last half century. Computation, communication, biological technologies – for example, DNA sequencing – brain scanning, knowledge of the human brain, and human knowledge in general are all accelerating at an ever-faster pace, generally doubling price-performance, capacity and bandwidth every year," Kurzweil claimed.

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Image by Great Dreams

By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN and MICHAEL J. de la MERCED

Jan 21, New York Times

Getty Images, the world’s biggest supplier of pictures and video to media and advertising companies, has put itself on the auction block and could fetch more than $1.5 billion, people briefed on the situation said Sunday.

The firm hired Goldman Sachs to advise it on a potential sale, these people said. The company has attracted interest from several buyers, mostly private equity firms, including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Bain Capital and others.

Final bids are due by the end of the month, but people briefed on the auction cautioned that it was unclear which firms would submit a final bid. A sale is not assured, because the tightening of the high-yield debt markets has cut off private equity firms from the lifeblood of their business, making it harder to finance deals.

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photo: Getty Images website (from internet)

International Herald Tribune, The Associated Press

Published: January 15, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO: Apple introduced Tuesday a movie rental service and an ultralight Mac notebook that could set a new industry standard for thinness.

The new Apple notebook, the MacBook Air, is about three-quarters of an inch, or about 2 centimeters, thick at its thickest point, small enough to fit in a manila envelope, which is how Steven Jobs, chief executive, demonstrated it to a crowd of Apple fans at the Macworld Expo. He said the price was $1,799.

"This is the world's thinnest notebook," Jobs said. The new notebook features a 13.3-inch screen and a five-hour battery.

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photo: Steve Jobs introducing the Macbook Air at Apple MacWorld Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday (Jeff Chiu/The Associated Press)

By Charles Babcock
InformationWeek, January 2, 2008 05:20 PM

Sage Research said 96% of the respondents use Windows on their virtual servers and 52% are running Linux.

Virtual machines need an operating system with which to run, and the operating system most frequently being used in the current wave of virtualization is Windows, according to a survey sponsored by Sage Research and published in its recent Sage/CMB market Pulse newsletter.

Sage Research is the technology practice branch of custom market research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey. Sage surveyed Chadwick Martin Bailey's panel of technology service providers and panel of professional technology users and found 96% of the respondents use Windows on their virtual servers.

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