Now Microsoft has a series of guided tours for Windows 7 too. Similarly to the recent iPhone 3GS video, the Windows 7 videos too feature a charming employee who introduces and narrates the videos, in this case, Latika Kirtane.

If the face looks familiar to you, that’s because you probably watched Latika sing in the now infamous Microsoft Research Songsmith video. Interestingly, according to her LinkedIn profile, she has since moved on from the Windows team to now work on Windows Internet Explorer. In terms of the video production, it’s fascinating to see the use of Sims-like figures in the introduction of the videos. Each of the four videos feature slightly different themed scenarios related to the topic of the video.

Continue At Source

Microsoft's half-price promotion for Windows 7 upgrades have attracted the attention of Amazon shoppers, according to the company's sales rankings

As of Friday afternoon, the $49.99 Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade was the top seller in Amazon's software section, followed by the Professional upgrade. The Windows 7 Ultimate upgrade, which is not included in the promotion and costs $219.99, was at number four behind Microsoft Home Office and Student 2007.

Continue At Source

Microsoft is considering offering Windows 7 on a thumb drive to allow Netbook owners to more easily upgrade their machines, a source tells CNET News. The move, which is still under consideration, is one of several things Microsoft has looked at to try to make it convenient to upgrade machines that don't come with a CD or DVD drives.

Microsoft executives have said that they recognize that upgrading Netbooks poses a challenge and are exploring ways that the company can make it easier. In an interview on Thursday, Senior Vice President Bill Veghte said that Microsoft had nothing to announce on that front.

The challenge of getting Windows 7 on to older Netbooks threatens to cast a shadow over the technical work Microsoft did to get Windows 7 running on Netbooks. Its predecessor, Windows Vista, proved ill-suited to Netbooks forcing Microsoft to continue selling Windows XP as its answer to the low-cost notebook phenomenon.

Although a USB flash drive could offer the simplest way to move a Netbook to Windows 7, there are other options. Buyers with an external drive could hook up that to their Netbook, while another option would be an upgrade through a service such as Best Buy's Geek Squad. Microsoft also sells a downloadable version of Windows today, so, in theory it could do the same with Windows 7, allowing buyers to put the OS on their own thumb drive.

Continue At Source

In May, after months of anticipation and rumors, Microsoft finally confirmed the existence of the Zune HD. The official confirmation was more or less a "let's get this out of the way for E3" move. Microsoft wanted to be sure the Xbox 360 and its Natal controller would be the star of the show.

Like all journalists, I tend to be wary of news tips from people I don't know. Such was the case when I was contacted way back in March by someone claiming to have inside info on upcoming Zune hardware. The tipster told me that the new Zune would be a full touch screen device. I thought this was interesting, so I passed it along on to Twitter much to the delight of my followers.

A few weeks later Engadget published the very first leaked photos of what has come to be known as the Zune HD. The first thing I did after reading the post was to IM my tipster for confirmation that it was indeed real.
His exact words to me were "Yes that is the Zune HD running on Tegra." At this time I had little-to-no idea what Tegra even was. So I dug a little deeper to find out that it was a new "system on a chip" solution from Nvidia that was capable of decoding high definition 720p video and presenting it via HDMI

Full Story At Source

 

Today we have some news to share around Windows 7 including answering what may be some of the “hottest” questions people have as we head toward General Availability (GA) on October 22nd.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Brad Brooks, Corporate VP for Windows Consumer Marketing, to talk about today’s announcements.

 Special thanks to Brad for taking the time to talk through these details with me. You’ll find a transcript of the video here.

As Brad discussed in the video, today we’re announcing details for the Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program, pricing, and a special pre-order offer for select markets.

But first, I want to talk a little bit more about GA and the worldwide availability of Windows 7. We’ve really focused a lot of our efforts on getting the product out to as many people around the world as quickly as possible. OEMs will start shipping PCs with Windows 7 in all language versions beginning on GA, October 22nd.

And for our retail software, we’ve made significant strides in terms of timing. Gone are the days when it could take months for all language versions to be available. In fact – we’ve narrowed the gap to just over ONE week!

On October 22nd, Windows 7 will be available in the following 14 languages: English, Spanish, Japanese, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Chinese (Hong Kong).............CONTINUE AT SOURCE for PRICING , Other details and video

 

Neowin recently reported that on June 26 Microsoft could RTM Windows 7 and possibly announce upgrade and pricing options. We originally reported citing our own source and we have now learned that on June 26th Microsoft will be launching https://windows7upgradeoption.com.

What will be provided on Friday is unknown but we may finally find out pricing options for Windows 7 upgrades or it could possibly show the paths you have to upgrade to Windows 7 but leaving out the pricing options.

Microsoft also plans to release final versions of its Windows 7 keyboard and mice drivers on June 26.

Continue At Source

Did anyone else notice? When NXE launched, it was pretty quick. But it's just gotten slower...and slower. (Thanks ads!) Luckily, Microsoft is admitting there's an issue and has a plant to fix it.

During his last podcast, Xbox spokesperson/kind guidance counselor Major Nelson revealed that a "faster" dashboard update would be coming later this year with "a lot of very cool new features." (We're guessing those features include apps like Twitter and the capability to stream 1080p content—both shown off at E3—though some other unexpected goodies would be welcome.)

Continue At Source

What is Hohm?

Microsoft Hohm is a free online beta application that helps you save energy and money. With Microsoft Hohm you can better understand your home energy usage, get recommendations to conserve energy and start saving. As with any recommendation engine, Hohm will provide increasingly more accurate and relevant suggestions for energy conservation as its users contribute home energy input and feedback. One of the objectives during our beta period is to refine our tool and further increase the value our product can offer to you.

http://mshohm.orcsweb.com/

 

If you were not the first 75000 to join the beta it has been closed and not accepting additional participants. Here is what you see on the site. 

Alert!

Thank you for your interest in joining the Microsoft® Security Essentials Beta. We are not accepting additional participants at this time. Please check back at later a date for possible additional availability.

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

 

 

 

Well kind of old news as Bink.nu reported this on May 11th. by linking to a story from centrumXP.pl. Back then I was (initially) accused of posting false screenshots. Why is istartedsomething more authoritive than Bink.nu, I ask? Maybe when I post a story sourced by a Polish site I have another source to confirm it?

Well here you have it. Now officially from Microsoft

 

More at the Windows Blog

4 days earlier then I had in my previous schedule, Microsoft has now set July 13th for RTM “sign-off”

Sign off is the process where all divisions sign that they agree on the final code, which means the actual RTM build will be created a few days earlier, which is targeted on July 10th.

The general availability (GA) is set to October 22nd, this is when you can buy it in stores in a box or on new PC’s (OEM).

We can expect the RTM much earlier on MSDN, Technet and Volume Licensing download sites, probably a few days after July 13th.

Still on the Windows 7 Beta,? You need to move to the RC and fast. Starting July 1st, the Beta will start to reboot every 2 hrs and expire Aug 1st.

Want to download the RC? The RC download program closes August 15. After that, you won’t be able to get the download, but you can still install the RC and get a key if you need one. (To get a key, just go to the Downloads page and follow the instructions.)

Continue At Source

What is Microsoft Security Essentials

You're too busy to spend a lot of time worrying about protecting your PC. With Microsoft Security Essentials Beta, you get high-quality protection against viruses and spyware, including Trojans, worms and other malicious software. And best of all, there are no costs or annoying subscriptions to keep track of.

Security Essentials is easy to install and easy to use. Updates and upgrades are automatic, so there's no need to worry about having the latest protection. It's easy to tell if you're protected – when the Security Essentials icon is green, your status is good. It's as simple as that.

When you're busy using your PC, you don't want to be bothered by needless alerts. Security Essentials runs quietly in the background, only alerting you if there's something you need to do. And it doesn't use a lot of system resources, so it won't get in the way of your work or fun.

This beta is available only to customers in the United States, Israel (English only), People's Republic of China (Simplified Chinese only) and Brazil (Brazilian Portuguese only).Please visit the more information page to learn more about system requirements, our End User License Agreement and other important information.

How to get Microsoft Security Essentials BETA

To get the beta, just click here or on the button on the top of this page. This will take you to Microsoft Connect where you'll answer a few questions and then be able to download the Security Essentials beta.

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke at The Executive’s Club of Chicago today, discussing “the role of innovation in changing economic times.” TG Daily covered the event live from the Hilton Chicago. During his speech he addressed many economic issues, and touched on the importance of innovation. However, it was his Xbox announcement which has our publication excited.

Rumors can be confirmed, as Ballmer stated openly during a speech on the recession to those in attendance at the Executives Club in Chicago, a new Xbox 360 will hit the store shelves in 2010

Continue At Source

Last year, Microsoft announced that it was halting development of its highly regarded Windows Live OneCare product (see my review of Windows Live OneCare 2.0) and would instead release a free anti-malware solution codenamed Morro by the end of 2009. Since then, things have been pretty quiet on the Morro front, and with the OneCare retirement date of June 30, 2009 fast approaching, I've gotten a lot of email from concerned users. What was going on with Morro?

Trouble is, I couldn't say much. I've actually been using pre-release Morro code for over a month, and a few weeks back, Microsoft briefed me about its plans and asked if I would keep it quiet until they were ready to go public. I would have been better off not agreeing, in this case: News of the Morro beta quickly leaked online and, in recent days, more and more details have emerged, while I had to remain silent. Finally, Microsoft relented, and agreed it was time to go public, about a week earlier than originally planned.

So here we are. Morro, of course, will be called Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) when it ships later this year around the same time as the Windows 7 general availability (GA) milestone. It will be absolutely free and made available to all genuine Windows XP, Vista, and 7 users, and will come in both 32-bit and 64-bit variants (32-bit only on XP).

A lot of what you may have read about MSE online, however, is untrue. It is most definitely not a "cloud computing" AV solution, whatever the heck that was supposed to mean, though one aspect of MSE's internal updating mechanism offers nearly real time protection. Put simply, MSE is OneCare minus the stuff that's not related to fighting malware. It doesn't have a managed firewall, can't manage a "circle" of computers on a home network, doesn't help prevent applications from putting icons in the system tray at boot-up, and doesn't have any online photo backup capabilities. What it does have, however, is all good stuff: MSE is small, fast, light, and effective, and since it's built on the same award-winning underpinnings as Microsoft's other security products you know you can trust it.

Let's take a closer look and blow past the surface overviews you may have seen elsewhere. There's a lot going on here.

Full Story At Source