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Windows 7 for XP ProfessionalsUpdating Support Skills from XP to Windows 7by Bink.nu's Raymond Comvalius
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In the 1960s & 70s the idea of a home computer was unheard of outside of science fiction circles. Before the late 1980s home networks were unheard of.
In 1975 Microsoft was founded with the vision of putting "A computer on every desk and in every home...". Microsoft led the charge in creating a world where a "home computer" something you expect to see in a home.
By including great support for networking technologies (particularly TCP/IP) in Windows 3x and 95 Microsoft ensured ubiquitous networking in businesses and homes. Today there are over 100 million households with a "home network" and Microsoft led the world in making this happen.
When we set about building Windows Home Server we knew we were going to be defining a new category of products and solutions for consumers. We thought long and hard about what we should call the product. As you would expect, there was no shortage of opinions. In fact some very, very senior executives at Microsoft were quite forceful in saying "whatever you do, don't call it a server".
This week we started an online advertising campaign for Windows Home Server that, in a humorous way will help explain how Windows Home Server can help families. The campaign complements a range of other communications efforts including events, webinars, online and in-store demonstrations and more.
This campaign will drive home (pun intended) the idea that just as Microsoft was the leader in making "home computer" and "home network" common household terms it is doing it again for "home server".
You can find the landing site for the campaign at www.stayathomeserver.com. Over the next few weeks we will roll out more funny video vignettes that will help families understand why they should have a home server in their household.
We've also commissioned a funny fake children's book titled "Mommy, Why is there a Server in my House?" which will help parents explain why there is a new member of the family. We are sure the book will become a best seller! Check out a teaser of the book on www.stayathomeserver.com right now.
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On the one-year anniversary of the launch Internet Explorer (IE) 7, the IE team posted yet another “stay tuned” message to the IE team blog, regarding an informational update on IE 8.
Tony Chor, Group Program Manager, posted that IE 7 is now used by 300 million individuals, according to data from Visual Sciences. According to this data, IE 7 is the second most popular browser, after IE 6. IE 7 already is the most popular in the U.S. and the UK and Microsoft expects it to surpass IE 6 worldwide “shortly,” Chor said.
Chor added:
“While we’re happy with how well IE7 is doing, as always, we continue to listen to our customers and find ways to further improve Internet Explorer. Look for more news on this front in the coming weeks.”
Commenters on the November 30 IE Team Blog post quickly voiced their opinion that Microsoft is overdue in providing information on IE 8. Users have been clamoring for an IE update for months to no avail.
Poster “LorenzoDV” said, “While IE7 is (was) a big step ahead, we really need to move on, especially towards full CSS 2.1 (and even 3.0) compliance. Please update us on IE8.”
Continue At Source
When Microsoft Corp. released Windows Vista to businesses exactly one year ago, near-term expectations weren't high.
Experts widely predicted that Vista, even if it was bug-free and proved to be an immediate hit with consumers, would only slowly catch on with corporations. For instance, Gartner Inc. forecast at the time that fewer than 5% of PCs worldwide would be running a business version of Vista by the end of this year.
One year later, it's unclear whether Microsoft has met even those pessimistic projections. In July, Microsoft said companies had renewed 42 million Windows licenses that made them eligible for Vista. Trouble is, Microsoft also admitted that the vast majority of those 42 million PCs were likely still on XP, though the company claims it has no accurate way of tracking this. Microsoft has not provided a more up-to-date figure in the last four months.
According to another estimate of Vista's uptake, a Forrester Research Inc. survey of 565 North American and European PC decision-makers, after six to eight months, only 2% of corporate PCs were running Vista. By the end of this year, only 7% of respondents plan to even start deploying Vista at all, said Forrester analyst Ben Gray in that report.
Microsoft shipped a release candidate for Vista SP1 earlier this month. It still plans to release the final version in the first quarter next year. And Microsoft isn't standing still. The company is actively pushing a slew of free tools designed to help companies more easily plan for and deploy Vista.
Collegiate Housing Services used the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment tool and the Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 to help it upgrade to Vista, Evans said. The tools helped his IT team upgrade nearly three times the number PCs in half the man-hours, he said.
Microsoft said Windows Vista Hardware Assessment has been downloaded 329,000 times, Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 340,000 times and the Business Desktop Deployment 2007 kit 283,000 times.
All this to say that things should start to pick up in the coming year. By the end of 2008, one quarter of corporate PCs in North America and Europe will be running Vista, according to Forrester's Gray. Linux will make continue to make minor inroads, but Gray is unequivocal that corporations will eventually standardize upon Vista the same way they have on XP.
You and your kids can now talk to Santa on Windows Live™ Messenger! Tell him what you want for Christmas, talk about life at the North Pole, and play holiday games with Howard the Elf.
As promised, Microsoft is bringing some early gifts to your Xbox 360® just prior to the holiday season. Beginning at 0200 A.M. PST on December 4, 2007, the Xbox 360 Fall Dashboard Update will be available for all connected Xbox 360 consoles free of charge, bringing an array of new features and enhancements to the leading gaming and entertainment system.
Among the key new enhancements are the previously announced Xbox Originals game download service, Family Timer parental control feature, and expanded social networking experiences. Xbox 360 owners can also look forward to enhanced navigation, profile, and video features and Xbox LIVE® Arcade Hits.
This free update will be digitally distributed over Xbox LIVE to the more than eight million Xbox LIVE members worldwide (Xbox LIVE Silver and Gold) with no disc or hard drive required. If you don't have an Xbox LIVE account, you can easily sign up for the free network by connecting your console to a broadband internet connection. New features and enhancements include:
MORE DOWNLOAD OPTIONS
Find out what's new at Xbox.com from your dashboard.
NEW WAYS TO KEEP UP TO DATE AND CONNECTED
ENHANCED OVERALL EXPERIENCE AND CONTROL
This month’s online video stack-up saw a major reshuffling with 3 of the Top 5 players trading places amid heavy shifts in traffic. YouTube continued to outperform the market, growing 1% in October to 213M visits on nearly 52M unique visitors. The Top 20 video sites as a set contracted 6% in October.
Extraordinary gains were realized by the Microsoft family of video sites, which includes MSN Video and Live Search Video, catapulting the Redmond rival into 2nd place, three spots ahead of its rank in September. MSN/Live Video grew 25.3% to 35M visits on the strength of 21M visitors.
Meanwhile, major losses struck Yahoo! Video, MySpaceTV and Heavy.com. MySpace’s decline is particularly troublesome given that it’s the 3rd straight month of double-digit losses for the social networking giant. Since July 2007, MySpace has seen its online video market share halved to 7.6%.
At Yahoo! Video, unique visitors held relatively steady while visits declined 27.5%. The drop indicates that visitors to Yahoo! Video were less inclined to return than they were in September and August.
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. Sweepstakes begins at 12:01 p.m. Pacific Time (PT) on November 29, 2007 and ends at 11:59 p.m. (PT) on January 31, 2008 (“Promotion Period”). The winners will be selected in a random drawing from among all eligible entries received.
HOW TO ENTER/SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: There are two ways to enter this sweepstakes, online and by U.S. mail. Online Method: During the Promotion Period access the IE7 Shop with More Confidence website online at http://www.microsoft.com/ie/confidence and click the sweepstakes link as instructed. You will be presented with a short video presentation about the security features of Internet Explorer 7 and at the conclusion of the video presentation you will be presented with the sweepstakes entry form. Complete and submit the entry form as instructed to receive one (1) entry. In order to access the sweepstakes entry form, you must have installed and are running Microsoft Internet Explorer 7. You will be prompted to download and install Internet Explorer 7 if you attempt to access the sweepstakes entry form with any other browser platform. You may also go to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/ie/getitnow.mspx and follow the instructions provided to download and install the software. You may be prompted to reboot your computer to complete the installation process. Upon successful installation of Internet Explorer 7 (if required), launch the browser software and click the special sweepstakes tab provided to access the sweepstakes entry form.
Good news is on the way for those of you who with to use Windows Home Server with x64 home computers.
As many of you know, the Windows Home Server Connector does not currently support x64 home computers, which has caused a lot of frustration and angst amongst early adopters of the x64 platform. Microsoft have previously announced that they would provide x64 support for machines running Windows Vista (check out our Q&A with the WHS Team for more) - those of you running Windows XP x64 will have to upgrade, unfortunately.
The connector has been undergoing internal private test for the last few months, but I can confirm Microsoft will be making an announcement about x64 Connector availability at the International CES Show in January 2008.
[Please note: This does not mean the x64 Connector will be made available at the CES show in January, but you will hear when it will be made available].
Microsoft Corp. on Thursday reported U.S. sales of 310,000 Xbox 360 game consoles for the Thanksgiving week, trailing Nintendo's Wii console but leading Sony's PlayStation 3 at the start of holiday shopping.
The release of the numbers also brought some controversy.
In a statement distributed to the media, Microsoft claimed that Xbox 360 sales were twice those of the PlayStation 3 for the week, which included the key "Black Friday" shopping day after Thanksgiving. Sony didn't disagree that the PlayStation 3 came in third, but said it wasn't by the margin Microsoft cited.
Sony traditionally doesn't disclose game console sales figures until the NPD Group research firm releases monthly numbers, Kimberly Otzman, a spokeswoman for Sony Computer Entertainment America, said.
"However, I can assure you that Microsoft's estimates of our PS3 unit sales numbers are way off and they did not outsell PS3 2:1 during Black Friday week," Otzman said.
Microsoft continued to stand by its claim, which it attributed to "estimates from top retailers." An NPD analyst, Anita Frazier, said the firm makes data available only monthly, not weekly.
Nintendo reported earlier this week that it sold 350,000 Wii consoles in the U.S. during the Thanksgiving week. Overall, Nintendo of America said it sold "more Nintendo products than at any other time in its history" last week, including the Wii consoles and 653,000 Nintendo DS hand-held video-game systems.
Without releasing specific sales figures, Sony said this week that PlayStation 3 hardware sales were up 245 percent last week, when compared with the same week last year, among the top 10 North American retailers.
I've long been trying to figure out how to get Master Chief to promote HD View. Lucky for me, Torgeir Holm has done it using the screen shot feature on Bungie.net. He uploaded 33 screen shots of a 360 environment and stitched them in PTGui (image below), then using Photoshop added 13 more zoom-in screen shots for the more interesting details. The HDView results can be found here: http://www.katode.no/egz/sandbox/lastresort/ , http://www.katode.no/egz/sandbox/hornet/ Bungie stores a rolling buffer of a user's last 40 screen shots. For the time being, you can still see some of the original screenshots here: http://www.bungie.net/stats/halo3/screenshots.aspx?page=0&gamertag=Doglet , http://www.bungie.net/stats/halo3/screenshots.aspx?mode=pinned&gamertag=Doglet -Matt
I've long been trying to figure out how to get Master Chief to promote HD View. Lucky for me, Torgeir Holm has done it using the screen shot feature on Bungie.net. He uploaded 33 screen shots of a 360 environment and stitched them in PTGui (image below), then using Photoshop added 13 more zoom-in screen shots for the more interesting details.
The HDView results can be found here: http://www.katode.no/egz/sandbox/lastresort/ , http://www.katode.no/egz/sandbox/hornet/
Bungie stores a rolling buffer of a user's last 40 screen shots. For the time being, you can still see some of the original screenshots here: http://www.bungie.net/stats/halo3/screenshots.aspx?page=0&gamertag=Doglet , http://www.bungie.net/stats/halo3/screenshots.aspx?mode=pinned&gamertag=Doglet
-Matt
If you’re a fan of the Outlook 2007 To-Do Bar, but wish your upcoming appointments and tasks could be shown even when Outlook was minimized, I’ve got great news for you, you can do this today with the Outlook Sidebar Gadgets.
One of the new features introduced in Windows Vista is the Windows Sidebar, an application that allows gadgets—small applications that provide quick access to useful information or commands—to be displayed on your desktop or in the Sidebar.
The Sidebar presented a great opportunity for Outlook to surface the same information that we show in the To-Do Bar. To this end, we developed two Outlook gadgets: Outlook Appointments and Outlook Tasks. These gadgets can be used independently or together to provide at-a-glance information without the need to bring up Outlook.
The calendar gadget shows 3 or 5 of your upcoming appointments just as they would appear in the To-Do Bar. Appointments are colored based on assigned categories and show the title, time, and location. You can even double click an appointment to open the appointment in Outlook and see more details about the appointment, or to respond or otherwise interact with the appointment.
The task gadget shows all the tasks from your task list and lets you scroll up and down through the list. You can customize the view of your task list as well. By default the gadget shows your tasks grouped by due date, however, through the gadget options you can group by category, due date, start date, or importance. You can also select which groups to show, so if you only want to see high priority tasks or those with a particular category you can filter the view accordingly. To edit the gadget options, move your mouse cursor over the gadget, and click on the small wrench icon that appears by the top right corner of the gadget.
The task gadget also lets you interact with your task list. You can quickly add a new task (when Outlook is running). Just click in the gadget, type a task name, and press enter and a new task is created. You can also mark a task complete by checking the box next to the task.
Because the gadgets are always running in the Sidebar, you can quickly see when your next appointment is and what your next tasks are. If you have a higher resolution monitor you can use the Sidebar options to make the Sidebar always on top so your gadgets and Outlook appointments and tasks are always visible. If you have a smaller screen, you can leave the Sidebar with the default setting and when you want to see have you have to do next, use a hotkey (Windows key + Spacebar) to bring the gadgets to the top of all applications
Both gadgets are available on the Windows Live Gadget Gallery, or by clicking the links below:
One other point I forgot to mention: If you change your Office theme, these gadgets will update (next time they refresh) to match the theme. Therefore, if you'd rather see black/gray gadgets instead of blue, just change your Office theme over and the gadgets will update.
Enjoy!
Ryan GreggProgram Manager, Outlook
As many web devs know, it’s relatively easy to build a site which results in memory leaks when viewed in Internet Explorer. IE team members have written MSDN articles on leak patterns, and other sites have posted articles with varying tone, depending on the author’s frustration with the problem.
These memory leaks often occur as a result of circular references between Jscript objects and objects within IE’s DOM (document object model). Since the Jscript engine and IE have independent memory management schemes, each side can’t see the entire cycle of these circular references.
Internet Explorer 7 improved the situation by releasing all references to Jscript objects attached to the DOM tree when IE navigates away from that page. This allows the Jscript engine to then garbage collect those Jscript objects and recover that memory. We’ve also made the same changes in IE6 on Windows XP SP2 (shipped originally with the June Update). However, as some web developers have pointed out, those changes don’t solve the problem entirely. IE still leaves behind anything not attached to the tree when we tear down the markup. In addition, sites that users keep open for extended periods of time, such as Web-based mail, can still cause IE’s memory usage to continually grow if the site doesn’t take care to avoid the leak patterns.
So no, it’s not perfect, but we’re also continuing to invest in improvements for future versions of IE.
In the meantime, tools and best practices can help web developers find and remove leaks today.
Drip and sIEve (joint SourceFourge site) are two such tools. Many of you may already be familiar with them, but a little extra visibility never hurts. Both applications host Trident – IE’s rendering engine – and add detection of memory leak patterns. They let you track memory and DOM usage while using a site and then detect any leaks when you navigate away from that page. Drip is an open source project under the BSD license. Based on Drip, sIEve improves the usability in a few ways including non-modal dialogs and a real-time graph of DOM usage instead of memory usage. If you have questions/comments about the tools themselves, try the documentation, forum, or mailing list. And if you’re interested in taking a more active role in the project, contact Matthias Miller through the forum or mailing list.
Those tools will you help find the leaks, and here are a few articles that provide more information about removing them, or better yet, avoiding them in the first place:
Thanks!
John HrvatinProgram ManagerInternet Explorer
Some days back registration for @live.XX was opened up but @live.in was not there for people of India.Now, if you are living in India can get @live.inIn addition to India getting @live.in,people of Philippines can now get @live.com.ph e-mail addresses,and people of Spain can get @hotmail.es addresses.Just go here to get these Windows Live IDs.These are in addition to hotmail.com addresses already available in these regions.I already got mine, hurry up and get the mail IDs of your choice.
Many .NET developers are naturally interested in the next release, which is when we'll introduce support for C# and Visual Basic development based on the .NET Framework. Although we haven't released any new major updates to the alpha developer preview of this functionality since MIX07, we're opening the kimono a little today to provide a bit more transparency in our schedule.
Firstly, we're announcing today that we're renaming Silverlight 1.1 to Silverlight 2.0. As we've been building out the feature set for Silverlight v.Next, it's been becoming increasingly clear that this is a big release. Adding together the Common Language Runtime, Base Class Libraries, Dynamic Language Runtime, the UI Frameworks, DRM, and a bunch of other features I'm not going into at this stage, it's apparent that if this doesn't count as a major version release, the bar will be set so impossibly high that we'll never be able to name a Silverlight release as anything other than version 1.x! At the end of the day, this is just branding - it's not really "news" in its own right, but of course you'll see us start to refer to the v.Next release as Silverlight 2.0.
Secondly, I wanted to write a bit about where we are in the development process. Internally, we're just completing our third development milestone. We have just one more milestone to go before MIX, which is when we're going to have a new public release available. We'll also have a non-commercial go live license ready by then. For today, Silverlight 1.0 is the appropriate choice if you want to build a site that needs to go into production within the next few months, but by the time we ship our next public preview release, we'll be at a point when it will be appropriate for developers to start building .NET-based solutions.
So what's coming in Silverlight 2.0? I think the thing that excites me the most about this release is the scale and breadth of UI innovation going into Silverlight. In WPF, we have a really powerful platform for building Windows desktop applications, and it will remain the "Ferrari" that contains the highest level of graphical functionality. Silverlight takes that same UI framework and transports it to the web, enabling RIA developers to create web-based applications using all the same skills as they need to build sophisticated Windows client applications. This unification of the framework across web and desktop is not easy to accomplish; many of the breaking changes that you'll see between Silverlight 1.1 Alpha and the Silverlight 2.0 Beta have been introduced to bring about far greater consistency between Silverlight and WPF. The goal is to make it really easy to take a Silverlight application and bring it to the desktop: you shouldn't have to completely rewrite the code to reach across the barrier to an offline solution.
In the Silverlight 1.1 Alpha, the UI framework side was pretty limited. Although we had the likes of MediaElement, Path, TextBlock, etc., it was a small fraction of what WPF provides in this regard. We now have a extensible control framework, two-way data binding, templates, styles, all the standard controls (TextBox, ScrollBar, CheckBox, RadioButton etc.), multiple layout containers (Grid, StackPanel, Canvas). In short, if you're familiar with WPF today, you'll be right at home with Silverlight 2.0.
Moving forward, if you want to build a rich Internet application, Silverlight should absolutely be at the top of your list for consideration. No other platform will offer such a rich UI framework, and all the data templates and styling capabilities, coupled with the power of the .NET Framework and base class libraries, along with an easy migration path to a full unrestricted Windows desktop solution.
So how can you find out more about Silverlight 2.0? Well, it so happens that MIX08 registration has just opened. We're going to blast open the doors about Silverlight and a bunch of other new web products at this conference. Last year we sold out far earlier than most people were expecting. Don't miss out this year - now is the time to get signed up!
check out the beta of the microsoft download site. it is built on silverlight...some media streaming happening as well as some of the subtle interactions done in silverlight.
if you click on the browse downloads link you can see some of it as well as other new navigation areas...
good to see microsoft starting to implement it in broader sites.
"Get a sneak peek at new designs we’re testing for the Download Center home page and category pages. We’re using Microsoft Silverlight technology to spruce up the site and make it easier to discover and download Microsoft software. Follow the directions to the right to see how we’ve put it to use.
Note: This beta involves entry pages only. If you choose to download any items you see, you’ll be alerted that doing so will exit you from the beta."