Tag: windows 7

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Windows 7: Vista but Better


Windows 7: “Vista but Better” is the description given by Steve Ballmer at the Gartner Symposium.

While he still stands by Vista-pointing out that it’s adoption rate at the 2 year mark is twice that of XP-he also said Microsoft are prepared for people to skip it and go straight to Windows 7.

Choice quotes from Ballmer include:

“Our next release of Windows will be compatible with Vista. The key is let’s get on with it. We’ll be ready when you want to deploy Windows 7.”

“It’s not (a) minor (release) because it’s a lot more work than a minor release. It’s a major release.”

“It’s clear Yahoo didn’t want to sell. They probably still think it’s worth more than $33 a share. I still think it makes sense for their shareholders and ours.”

More can be found over at ZDNet.

Microsoft are in a tricky position with Vista & Windows 7 really…no matter what they do, they’ll be accused of eithe rgiving up on Vista and “admitting” it’s not brilliant OR flogging a dead horse. Very close to the original Catch 22..

Personally I think Vista is a great OS. I use Vista @ home and XP @ work (I know!) and Vista wins hands down each time..it’s easier, faster, slicker, more user friendly but some people just don’t go for it. Certainly not friends but I’d guess that one day Vista & Betamax will be casual acquaintances in the “Why didn’t they like me” bar in Techsville, TW..

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Microsoft WinHec 2008 sessions


Microsoft WinHEC (Windows Hardware Engineering Conference) 2008 starts November 5th (05/11/08) and as with the PDC, Windows 7is a big focus. WinHEC attendees will also get an alpha copy of Microsoft’s next desktop OS, but WinHEc is fast becoming the forgotten sibling!

The Session list for PDC gave us some interesting tidbits to speculate over such as Windows Strata, so I’m hoping the WinHEC listing will too. Here’s what I’ve spotted so far:

Windows 7 Device Experience Overview – CON-T531:

It summarizes the new Windows features for portable devices such as mobile phones and cameras, printing and imaging devices, and networked consumer electronic devices like media servers and digital picture frames.

Windows 7 Device Services for Media Transfer Protocol – CON-T568:

“Device services are the building blocks that enable new extensibility opportunities for Windows-compatible portable devices and align new experiences for portable devices in Windows 7″

The two sessions above give a good indication of some of the new features, and the general direction, of Windows 7.

The Manycore Shift: Microsoft Makes Parallel Computing Personal – COR-T522:

“We’ll highlight efforts in Visual Studio and Windows as examples of how Microsoft is addressing the problems that concurrency introduces through rich support in future tools and operating systems for threading, synchronization, scheduling, and resource management.”

This links in with other info we’ve seen that MS are doing what they can do increase parallel computing in Windows 7 without changing the kernel. Interesting to see Visual Studio mentioned too..

Directions for Virtualized I/O in Windows – ENT-T590:

This session discusses areas of technologies that are being investigated for future Microsoft virtualization offerings. These include PCI Single-Root I/O Virtualization, those technologies that enable it, and their implications to the Windows Driver Model. Improving storage area network (SAN) support and other I/O-related virtualization capabilities are also discussed.

Improving Networking Performance for Hyper-V Virtual Machines – ENT-T589:

Windows Server 2008 R2 will deliver new networking features and enhanced support of stateless and state-full offload technologies to Hyper-V virtual machines.

Microsoft Hyper-V – ENT-T587:

This session includes highlights of “selected features in the next release of Hyper-V.”

The three sessions above all point towards there being a clear(ish) definition of the features for Hyper-V R2..I’ll be interested to see what these are and how much closer Hyper-V gets to VMWare in terms of enterprise features…Live migration ala VMotion anyone?!

**Update** Seems everyone’s wish is coming true..it looks that Hyper-V 2.0 will have Live Migration…see more here

Windows Server Support for More than 64 Logical Processors – ENT-T554:

This session discusses the architecture and support of more than 64 logical processors in Windows Server 2008 R2.

This is a big advance for the Enterprise level/HPC end customers.

Windows Boot from One Image Format – ENT-T606:

“This session discusses native support of VHD in Windows Server 2008 R2” which “creates opportunities for lowering operational costs by enabling customers to use a single image creation, deployment, and maintenance process and toolset across virtual and physical environments.”

Windows 7 Network Optimization for Branch Offices – ENT-C659:

“..new capabilities in Windows 7 that reduce wide area networking link usage and provide the potential reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO) by reducing WAN link usage, providing faster downloads in the branch office, and requiring no networking infrastructure changes”.

This is an interesting sounding sessions and I’d bet that these features will speed up the adoption of WIndows 7 into corporate environments upon it’s release.

There are also a number of sessions about Multi-Touch.

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Microsoft Windows 7-The Official Name!


Windows 7 is the official name for Microsoft’s next desktop OS!

Steve Clayton over at his Geek in Disguise blog has confirmed this. I think it’s a great name: simple, clean, easy, popular AND it’s what I’ve had my money on in the office 🙂

More info can be seen over @ the Windows Vista blog here.

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Windows 7-UAC fine tuned


Windows 7 will still contain UAC (User Access Control) but an easier to use, more friendly than the UAC currently in Vista. Over on her “All About Microsoft” blog, Mary Jo Foley has a statement from Ben Fathi, President for Core OS Development in which he states:

“We’ve heard loud and clear that you are frustrated. You find the prompts too frequent, annoying, and confusing. We still want to provide you control over what changes can happen to your system, but we want to provide you a better overall experience. We believe this can be achieved by focusing on two key principles. 1) Broaden the control you have over the UAC notifications. We will continue to give you control over the changes made to your system, but in Windows 7, we will also provide options such that when you use the system as an administrator you can determine the range of notifications that you receive. 2) Provide additional and more relevant information in the user interface. We will improve the dialog UI so that you can better understand and make more informed choices.”

This can only be a good thing 🙂 I do think that the UAC, in principle, is very good idea.

There are a lot of users who aren’t always able to tell that something is potentially dangerous and when the UAC pops up, they tend to cancel the action “just in case”-preventing accidental deletions, virus infections etc.

However, I do agree that the prompts are too frequent and not always clear. As an experienced Windows user, I do get annoyed with the prompts for things such as changing various settings, installing things etc as I know what I’m doing and the UAC just slows me down.

So the ability to alter the scope of the prompts will be good…as long as the settings can be different for each account on the machine…I don’t want the missus to have the same permissions as me..it’d all be on fire within 10 minutes 😉

For an in depth look, head over to the Windows 7 Engineering blog here.

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Microsoft Windows 7-Parallel Processing


Windows 7 is Microsoft’s next hotly anticipated release and there is now information that changes will be made to help it support Parallel Processing.

Microsoft have already stated that deep-level changes between Vista & Windows 7 will be get to a minimum as a way to ensure driver and application compatibiity; and if they pull it off,  Windows 7 will have a much better start to life than poor old Vista 🙂

The downside to this is that they can’t play around with Win32 (Windows Core) too much, and that is going to limit what can be down with regards to Parallel Processing. However, at this year’s PDC (Professional Developers Conference), there is a session entitled “Parallel Symposium: Addressing the Hard Problems with Concurrency” and the session decription contains the phrase “Hear about the key architectural changes Microsoft is making to Windows to enable the efficient execution of parallel software.”, which shows the Redmond giant has clearly got something up it’s sleeve.

Many thanks to Mary Jo Foley over at ZDNet for this info. She’s also got some words from Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s Chief Research and Strategy Officer as to what’s on the drawing board.

Again, anyone attending the PDC please feel free to leave some comments if you hear anything blog worthy!

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