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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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Right, so this is a weird one: we're getting tons of reports—tons—about failing Zune 30s. Apparently, the players began freezing at about midnight last night, becoming totally unresponsive and practically useless.
The crisis has been dubbed by Zune users 'Z2K9', due to the apparently synchronized faceplantings across the country. According to tipster Michael, the Zune users experienced something like this:
Apparently, around 2:00 AM today, the Zune models either reset, or were already off. Upon when turning on, the thing loads up and... freezes with a full loading bar (as pictured above). I thought my brother was the only one with it, but then it happened to my Zune. Then I checked out the forums and it seems everyone with a 30GB HDD model has had this happen to themThis report is consistently corroborated by literally hundreds of others across the various Zune support and fan forums.
What hasn't emerged yet, largely due to the fact that MS's support lines aren't yet open for the day, is why these devices are failing. The evidence seems to point to a software glitch, but simple resets aren't providing any relief. Some reports indicate that only Zunes with the latest firmware are affected, but this hasn't yet been confirmed.
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The rumor that Microsoft was set to lay off people on January 15th, 2009 is no longer a rumor but a fact. Staff at Microsoft have been informed that the company is readying major layoffs to its worldwide operations and it's not a small cut, either.
Currently Microsoft employs about 90,000 people across the world and from what we're hearing, some 15,000 of those are expected to be giving marching orders come January 15th. That's almost 17 percent of Microsoft's total work force, not exactly a small number.
So far, we haven't managed to confirm what departments or regions will be hit the worst, but we're hearing that MSN might be carrying the brunt of the layoffs. We're also hearing rumors about the possibility of somewhat larger staff cuts at Microsoft EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa).
Like many places we’ve spent the past few weeks under quite a bit of snow, which is pretty unusual for Seattle! Most of us on the team took advantage of the snow time to install test builds of Windows 7 on our home machines as we finalize the beta for early 2009—I know I felt like I installed it on 7000 different machines. We’re definitely looking forward to seeing folks kick the tires on the beta when it is available. For more information on the beta, please stay tuned to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7 which is where we will post information about participation.
This post is about a Windows 7 feature that covers a lot of territory—it is about networking, user interface, sharing, media, printing, storage, search, and more. HomeGroup is a way of bringing all these features together in a way that makes it possible for a new level of coolness in a home with multiple PCs running Windows 7. A lot of us are the sysadmins for our own homes and for many others (friends and family). We set up network topologies, configure machines, and set things up so they work—HomeGroup is designed to make that easier so it can be done without a volunteer sysadmin. It makes for some challenges in how to describe the feature since the lack of such a feature has each of us creating our own private best practices or our own techniques for creating and maintaining a home network. HomeGroup is about making this easier (or possible for everyone else) and at the same time giving you the tools to customize and manage—and no matter what, under the hood the file and printer sharing, media sharing, and networking you are already familiar with is there should you wish to stick with the familiar ways. HomeGroup is a deep feature that builds on a lot of new infrastructure/plumbing new to Windows 7, though in this post we’ll talk about it from the experience of setting up a network.
This is a feature that is one you should just use and see it working, rather than trying to read about it as it covers so much territory in writing.
This post is by Jerry Koh a lead program manager in the Core User Experience team, with help from a number of folks across the dev team
With the recent flood of information surrounding Windows 7 and its official status of Beta 1, I thought I would take a moment to shed some light on some of Microsoft's current plans for the Office 14 Beta. As some of you know, Microsoft begins collaborating very early on in its development process with select customers via a program called TAP (Technology Adoption Program). The next tier of testing much later down the road is a program called a Technical Beta. A Technical Beta is much more far-reaching with testers than participants of a TAP, but even then, the number of people on a Technical Beta is drastically less than the third tier of testing; a Public Beta. Both Windows and Office have followed these testing tiers, though it's questionable as to if the recent Windows 7 Beta invites sent to select people are merely a formality or if they're truly an invite to a Technical Beta program to be distinguished from that which the public will be able to participate in. Regardless, here is a detailed breakdown of the tiers of customer interaction with Office 14:
TAP (Technology Adoption Program)There are two phases of the Office 14 TAP: PV (Product Validation) and RD (Rapid Deployment)
TAP - PV: Extending from Alpha builds through Beta 2 builds, TAP - PV customers interact directly with their very own Microsoftee(s) to "provide actionable feedback throughout the product development cycle and commit substantial resources for the duration of the program." To be eligible for this phase of the TAP, you are required to have a sponsored business solution/POC (proof of concept), architectural and deployment plans readily reviewable, and a pilot deployment at Beta 2 (based on POC status). Alternately, you can just hope you happen to work for and have access within a company who goes through this process and gets nominated. That, or you can write the script for "Ocean's 14" and make the payload that of builds galore. Your choice.
TAP - RD: Getting involved at the end of Beta 2/beginning of the RC (Release Client) phase, TAP - RD customers "drive marketing evidence for launch" via requirements of production employment at Escrow and participation in launch activities. TAP - RD is "ideal for companies looking to showcase their involvement in leading edge industry efforts [and] engage in joint public relations efforts with Microsoft."
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A recently filed Microsoft Patent shows that Microsoft is planning for a pay-per-use PC model. The patent is titled as Metered Pay-As-You-Go Computing Experience.
The current business model requires users to purchase a PC that is suited for various needs which can vary from simple word processing or web browsing or high end gaming or network gaming. With the new business model - Metered Pay-As-You-Go Computing Experience - user will be able to select a level of performance related to processor, memory, graphics power, etc that is driven not by a lifetime maximum requirement but rather by the need of the moment. For example, the user might need more memory and advanced graphics for gaming applications whereas less memory for word processing.
Wow in a record time I managed to get my certification up to speed. I never did an upgrade exam from Windows 2000 to 2003, so for Windows 2008 I had to start over and do 5 exams. I had 5 days, so that was 1 exam per day (christmas in between). Today I had the final exam and passed it
According to the license terms that you must accept to install build 7000, the EULAID of this release is "Win7_B.1_PRO_NRL_en-US." This further confirms that this build was meant to be Beta 1, which Microsoft is expected to release to its testers early next year (with a public beta following soon afterwards). If we were to take a page from Redmond's history book, the software giant will likely stick to its plan and give the same Beta 1 build (6.1.7000.0.081212-1400), which was compiled on December 12, 2008, at 2:00PM, to its testers, subscribers, and MDC attendees. It does not have to, and could instead give out a later build, and I would not put it past them (especially considering the compilation date).
MICROSOFT will rip an estimated $70 million out of the aged care sector's IT budget over the next 18 months as it forces users to pay full commercial rates for previously discounted software.Aged care providers are shocked by Microsoft's decision to revoke their not-for-profit statusAged care providers are shocked by Microsoft's decision to revoke their not-for-profit status, which gave them access to its products at a heavily discounted rate. As a result, Microsoft's Office, Sharepoint and SQL server products are firmly entrenched in the sector's IT infrastructure.The Aged Care Industry IT Council says full commercial rates would hike annual licensing fees paid by users by about 400 per cent - and swallow half of the sector's annual technology budget."Like many other industry sectors, aged care has probably a 90 per cent-plus reliance on Microsoft infrastructure, so it's not difficult for the company to say the rules have changed, the fees will now be $X," IT Council spokesman Mark Barnett said."The difficulty for aged care providers is that they've bet the farm on a Microsoft strategy that they believed was consistent and reliable in price."The providers are saying they've spent millions on Microsoft products, and if they now need to pay additional fees their "whole strategy is pretty wobbly", he said.Mr Barnett said the IT Council had been talking to Microsoft over the past six weeks to reach a resolution.The software giant granted "a stay of execution" late last week ahead of an IT Council meeting. Mr Barnett said Microsoft had agreed to take no further action on the changes before Christmas.At least three technology projects were put on hold last Friday pending the outcome of discussions.A Microsoft spokesman said a recent review had uncovered "a number of ineligible entities, including a range of commercial organisations, that were using Academic Volume Licensing programs" under the belief they qualified."As such, we are beginning the process of transitioning these customers to an appropriate licensing program," the spokesman said."Also, we are developing a charity-specific volume licensing program in an effort to support the important work undertaken by not-for-profit organisations."However, we are not yet in a position to announce final details around this program."
Attendees at next month's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) could get the first public look at Windows 7, the next version of Microsoft's client OS.At its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles in October, Microsoft said it would release the beta early in 2009. Though nothing has been confirmed, signs are pointing to sometime in January and possibly the CES show in Las Vegas as a likely release date. CES is scheduled for Jan. 8-11.A member of Microsoft's public relations team in the U.K. said in an e-mail that at the show, "Microsoft will be making some significant announcements including Windows 7." She did not specify exactly what the news around the OS would be. But several blogs have reported that beta testers are expecting a Windows 7 beta any day.Furthermore, Microsoft wrote on a Web site for its Microsoft Developer Network Conferences (MDCs) that attendees of those conferences, some of which are scheduled for mid-January, can expect a Windows 7 beta DVD.
Pirated copies of a Windows 7 build pegged by many as the beta Microsoft Corp. will release next month have leaked to the Internet, according to searches at several BitTorrent sites today.A search on the Pirate Bay BitTorrent site, for example, returned two Windows 7 Build 7000 listings, both of which had been posted Friday.As of Saturday afternoon, one torrent on Pirate Bay showed more than 1,800 "seeders" -- the term for a computer that has a complete copy of the torrent file -- and about 8,500 "leechers," or computers that have downloaded only part of the complete torrent. The torrent is a disk image of the 32-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate, Build 7000, according to users commenting on the site and elsewhere on the Internet.Pirate Bay and other BitTorrent sites, including Mininova, listed the beta build as a 2.44GB download.This is not the first time Windows 7 has escaped from Microsoft's limited testing pool. Just hours after the company unveiled an earlier version at its Professional Developers Conference in late October, the alpha edition hit BitTorrent.
Microsoft generated plenty of negative headlines in 2008. We watched as it struck out in its attempts to acquire Yahoo. And Microsoft-haters grew smug when the confusing Seinfeld-Gates commercials were quickly pulled and replaced with the "I'm a PC" campaign. Microsoft's attempts to out-market Apple and reverse the negative press of Windows Vista simply didn't work out.Such debacles received the lion's share of press. But in reality the software giant had several successes. Most every other iteration of Windows had a strong year, either with good execution (Windows Server 2008, Windows XP) or good buzz (Windows 7, Windows Azure). And from the ashes of the Yahoo failure emerged some smart hires for Microsoft that could boost the company's search business and set the tone for a possible future deal with Yahoo.Here are four areas where Microsoft executed well in 2008, areas that will help set up the company for success in '09.
In the midst of a holiday shopping season in which online retail sales might fall for the first time, the general manager of Microsoft's online store said sales and traffic are "really good."Then again, Larry Engel said the point of his site, microsoftstore.com, is not just to post robust sales figures. And Engel does not have much to compare this year's results with: There was no online Microsoft store last year.In mid-November, Microsoft quietly announced that for the first time all of the company's consumer products -- from "Flight Simulator X" to Windows Vista -- could now be bought directly from Microsoft online in the United States. (It launched similar sites in six other countries this year.) Most of the software is available for download. All of it is also available in a box.Engel said the store extends a "direct connection" between the company and its customers. Currently, he said, such a connection exists with Microsoft's Zune music player and its Xbox 360 video game console, which feature online marketplaces.One analyst said direct connections like those could become more important as Microsoft moves into providing services such as a Web-based version of Office to consumers, instead of just software in a package or for download."The name of the game in the end is finding ways to own the customer, to be able to not only sell them the operating system but (also) recurring revenue-based services," said Tim Bajarin, the president of consulting firm Creative Strategies.Microsoft's Engel said the company decided to open microsoftstore.com for a simple reason: Customers wanted Microsoft to launch a store."Customers have been asking us to do it for years now," Engel said. "We are responding to something our customers have asked us to offer: An option for them to purchase directly from Microsoft."
A small Indiana company has sued tech heavyweights Microsoft, Apple, and Google, claiming that it holds the patent on a common file preview feature used by browsers and operating systems to show users small snapshots of the files before they are opened.Cygnus Systems sued the three companies on Wednesday saying that they infringed on its patent with products such as Windows Vista, Internet Explorer 8 and Google Chrome, which allow users to view preview images of documents on the computer. Mac OS X, the iPhone and Safari also infringe, the company said in court filings. Apple uses this technology in its Finder and Cover Flow Mac OS X features, the filings state.While Cygnus has sued three very high profile companies, there may not be the only vendors in Cygnus’s sites. “They were a logical starting place for us,” said Matt McAndrews, a partner with the Niro, Scavone, Haller & Niro, law firm, which is representing Cygnus. “We’ve identified many other potentially infringing products that we’re investigating,” he added.Cygnus’s owner and president Gregory Swartz developed the technology laid out in the patent while working on IT consulting projects, McAndrews said. The company is looking for “a reasonable royalty” as well as a court injunction preventing further infringement, he said.The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Arizona, where Swartz resides, McAndrews said.
The world's top software firm Microsoft has been asked to cut its workforce by 10 per cent, or about 9,100 employees, to tell themarket that profits are more important than revenue growth in difficult times.Brokerage firm Oppenheimer & Co's analyst Brad Reback has said in a report on Microsoft that such layoff exercise "would be a healthy move for the company."The move would be well received by the market and would "signal that profitability is more important than revenue growth during this very difficult time," Reback added.Calling for a 10 per cent reduction on the company's payrolls, Reback said in his report for the institutional investors of Microsoft that this would result in an approximately 10 per cent gain in its earnings per share.The software giant had close to 91,000 employees on its payrolls at the end of July-September quarter.