Monday, September 6, 2010
Windows Phone 7 Code Finalized
"Our OEM partners and mobile operator partners have had test builds for quite a while; we'll turn it over to them and say we're done. Mobile operators will put their tiles on the home screen, and add their settings within the framework of our UI," said Microsoft senior product manager Greg Sullivan.
Unlike with Google's Android OS, wireless carriers and manufacturers can't heavily customize Windows Phone 7. Their contributions will be limited to their own "hubs," which appear as snap-in squares on the Windows Phone 7 home screen.
We spent some time with an earlier version of Windows Phone 7 running on a Samsung phone in July. At the time, our editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff said the OS seemed to be flexible and powerful.
While Microsoft has primarily been working on bug fixes and performance optimizations, Sullivan said the company added a few new features between the technical preview and the final code. Users will be able to filter out Facebook contacts that don't also appear in other address books. They'll be able to "like" Facebook items and post on their friends' walls, and there will be a more obvious search button in the overall address book.
Also recently, Microsoft showed top-notch games for the Windows Phone 7 platform and said the final version of the developer tools will come out September 16.
Sullivan declined to say exactly when Windows Phone 7 devices would be coming out, except to reiterate that they would be in stores for "the holiday season." But Microsoft's chief operating officer, Kevin Turner said that Windows Phone 7 will appear in "October likely across Europe, November likely across the U.S."
Here in the U.S., AT&T will be the "premier partner" for Windows Phone 7, though Sullivan cautioned that "premier" doesn't mean "exclusive." A wide range of possible Windows Phone 7 devices have been appearing on rumor Web sites.
By PC Magazine
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Windows 7 Tricks: 3 Amazing Keyboard Shortcuts Navigation
Suppose you are working on an important document but the other inactive but open windows are sneaking in from behind. It may be very distracting however silly may you find. So, what do you? Do you minimize all with Windows+D and then resurface the current one? No. There is a shorter way in Windows 7.
Simply hit Win+Home to minimize all the non-active background windows, keeping the window you’re using in its current position. When you’re ready, press Win+Home again to restore the background windows to their original locations.
2. Use Hot Keys for Applications
Did you know that you can rearrange the icons in the taskbar of Windows 7. What’s particularly nice is that once they’re reordered, you can start a new instance of any of the first five icons by pressing Win+1, Win+2, Win+3 etc I press Win + 5 and there comes my GOM player! Very cool.
3. Launch Administrative Privilege for any Application through Shortcuts
Suppose you are working on some program and suddenly you see that you don't have administrative privileges to do that particular operation. What do you do then? Switch account? No.
Just press CTRL+Shift and then click the icon you want to have admin privilege of. It will come up with full administrative privilege assuming you have the permission or the security rights.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Good Experience With Windows 7 Professional
After experimenting with a series of operating system form Microsoft and others, I have concluded that there is no alternative for Windows 7 Professional in the present date. Once, I had installed it I took a sigh of relief as it is much stable and user-friendly and miles away from software conflictions. I am pretty much sure that its features, like JumpList, Aero, HomeGroup, Domain Join and XP Mode are enough to challenge any OS.
Usability
Windows 7 Professional has simplified my task. Now, I can easily connect my PCs at home to share files, music, video and even my printer without any hassle. Earlier, it was never possible without help of technicians. In addition, I can maintain my privacy too with the password protection feature. I don’t face difficulty while working with multiple Windows because Aero Shake minimizes unessential applications within an eye blink by just shaking them with the mouse. I can access file located in remote section of my computer network easily and quickly with smart search of Windows Search option. When I just enter an alphabet in the search box, it gives a list of relevant files. It was never so easy with Windows Vista’s “Instant Search.” With the Tab Group feature in Internet Explorer you can easily manage multiple tabs, which was not possible in earlier versions of IE. Hence, it’s a totally a never-before experience with Windows 7 Professional.
Limitation
Although, I have a good experience with Windows 7 Professional, but I think Microsoft should have been a bit liberal with the users on the compatibility front. I faced issues while doing custom install on one of my old computer. It showed software conflicts a number of times, when I had to do install device drivers.
Conclusion:
Above and all, Windows 7 professional is a good presentation from Microsoft. There are some new features, which will be soon adaptable for me. I liked it mostly on account of its enhanced performance with least of software conflicts and strong security features, which were tough challenge in earlier versions.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Windows 7 is just Vista with small alterations
A new Microsoft Windows operating system is always big news, especially for the federal government, which irresistibly depends on Windows of one stripe or another to execute just about everything. The last really stable operating system to find widespread acceptance was Windows XP. Vista added a lot of user-friendly choices but was more or less branded as a consumer product that is not really suitable for business. And now we have Windows 7, which is examining to keep most of the shades of Vista while maintaining the businesslike status that XP enjoyed. The Windows 7 desktop seems suspiciously like Vista, but there are a few new things executing behind the scenes.
When loading of the install was done and were stormed that it could execute from the drive like a normal program and not need to be booted. Once it scanned the test computer, it asked if you want to upgrade your existing operating system or install a clean edition of Windows 7. Because you are migrating from Vista, you chose the upgrade option, which did keep all of the existing programs in place. A lot has been written about how XP users are out of luck in terms of holding their old programs. If you are moving to Windows 7 XP, you must select a clean install.
At this point, the program admonished that the install could take hours and that the system would reboot several times. On these points, it was correct. The time from when we clicked OK to the time Windows 7 was ready to go was 1 hour, 40 minutes on the tested system, which had a 1.6 GHz dual-core processor. There is a nice progress bar at the bottom of the install screen that shows how far along you are. It’s a guess at best given that the actual status percentages for each element seem to rush ahead and then stop for half an hour at an odd spot, such as 72 percent. But at least it gives some reading as to what’s going on.
Here’s the dirty little secret that Microsoft is definitely not telling anyone. If you hated Vista because of the interface, then you are going to hate Windows 7, too. Vista totally changed the look and feel of Windows from XP, but Windows 7 only marginally modifies the look and feel from Vista. In fact, 90 percent or more of the interface is exactly the same as identical. Going on just the look and general behavior, Windows 7 is little more than what Microsoft could have pitched in a free service pack to the Vista operating system.
On the bad side, most of Vista’s annoyances have remained intact, even if Windows 7 is executing an internal process. Performance is also unaltered overall on a system executing Vista compared with Windows 7. The systems executing Vista and then benchmarked them again once they changed to Windows 7. They were unchanged. Going from Windows XP 7 resulted in a little performance decrease, much like when going from XP to Vista.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Listening to Music and Watching DVDs in Windows 7
You can play Media files in new windows 7 using Windows Media Player. On computers, the term media refers to something other than text: Audio and video are examples of media. Audio is a term that has wide variety of items for music and other sound files, such as books on CD. Music is often entirely digital nowadays. You can use Media Player to play the sample music included with Windows 7. You can play your audio CD on your computer using Media Player. If you want to make that CD playing more convenient then you can copy the audio files to your computer. You can create your own CDs with a library of music copied from your CD collection and you can also combine tracks. You can also copy audio files to an MP3 player.
Play Music with Windows Media Player
1. To start Windows Media Player, click its icon which appears as a white triangle on an orange circle on a blue square in the taskbar. The initial settings screen will appear the first time you start Media Player. Now click Recommended Settings and then click Finish.
2. Now, the Media Player Library shows music that comes with Windows 7 and any other music that you have already copied to your computer. The toolbar at the bottom of Media Player’s window provides the following controls:
• Shuffle: To turn on shuffle, click this button. This option randomly mixes the tracks you play. A second click on shuffle turns it off and the tracks play in the order in which they appear onscreen.
• Loop: Click this button to turn on loop which means repeat. This option will continuously play all the tracks again after all have played.
• Stop: Click to stop a track.
• Previous: This button jumps to the previous track.
• Play/Pause: To pause play mid-track, click the button with two vertical lines. To resume playing from the point you paused, click the same button which is now with a triangle pointing to the right.
• Next: This button jumps to the next track.
• Mute/Unmute: To silence the player, click this button. Although the track will continue to play but you won’t hear it. A red circle and slash appear next to the speaker icon when mute is on. You need to click the button again to hear the track.
• Volume: To decrease or increase the volume of track, click or drag the slider to left or right respectively. Your speakers may also have manual volume control. Windows 7 also has a separate volume control in the taskbar.
• Now Playing: It is located far to the right of the toolbar, to reduce the player to a small size, click this button.
3. You can use these controls to play the music. You can adjust the volume with the slider. Mute and unmute the music. You can also pause the music and resume playing. To stop music use Stop button.
4. To shrink Media Player to a smaller window, click the Switch to Now Playing button to the right of the toolbar. Click the Switch to Library button to return to the larger window.
You can also buy music online and download the tracks directly to your computer using this media player.
Why Prefer Windows 7 Over Vista
Many of my relatives and friends completely denied to make the switch to Windows Vista when it was released. Some who purchased new machines with Vista installed immediately downgraded the OS. A few said that they would give up XP only when you pried it from their cold, dead hands. But even in the last category, many of them are impressed with what they’ve seen in the Windows 7.
Reasons why to choose windows 7 over windows vista
While some tech professionals are saying Windows 7 isn’t really all that different from Vista and indeed, one of the plus point for Vista users is that Windows 7 can generally use the same drivers and run the same applications as Vista.
Microsoft redesigned the UAC in Windows 7. Most of the people feel this on-going effort has been successful.
Microsoft has reduced the actions that prompt you making it less annoying for the users. The software giant has made several changes, but the biggest change is the User Account Control “slider” setting which results in less annoyance and more security.
User Account Control safeguards your computer against hackers and protects it against malicious software. The tool prompts the user for the permission, if any application wants to make any changes to your computer. UAC is more flexible in Windows 7 than in Windows Vista. Now, every task doesn’t require your consent in Windows 7, and if you have administrator privileges, you can easily fine tune to UAC’s notification settings from the control panel.
Vista made the left navigation pane in Windows Explorer a constantly moving target. As you navigate your mouse, it will automatically scroll back and forth.
You can avoid the auto-scrolling by dragging the pane to make it wide enough to accommodate the entire tree.In Windows 7, the navigation pane stays still, so you no longer risk getting seasick from all the swaying back and forth.
In Windows XP, you could use pretty much whatever graphics cards you wanted for multiple monitors. According to reports, that to use multiple graphics cards, you would have to all use the same driver. That meant I couldn’t use cards from different vendors together. I had to shell out a few bucks to get more ATI cards before I could use all my monitors again.
According to reports, Windows 7 has added support for multiple heterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors. Now this probably doesn’t mean you can combine ATI and NVIDIA cards in an SLI-configuration, but it sounds as if we can have our multi-vendor multi-monitor setups back.
Another common issue about Vista has been the inordinate amount of time it can take to boot up. This might not be a problem for those who leave their systems on all the time, but if you shut down your system every night, waiting around forever for it to get started in the morning can turn into a major annoyance.
A Microsoft official indicated that the company’s goal for Windows 7 is a 15-second boot time, whereas three quarters of Vista users report boot times of more than 30 seconds.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
How and from where to install Windows 7?
As Microsoft prepares to launch Windows 7 on October 22, people are getting more and more curious about the prospect of the new operating system. But they are confused about how and from where to install the OS.
Follow the steps for Windows 7 installation:
Step 1 Visit Microsoft websites in order to download Windows 7. You are required to sign in with your Windows Live account or any MSN Hotmail, MSN Messenger, or Passport account. After that you will have Windows 7 Beta 32-bit Product key. Click download at the link at the bottom of the page. The file size should be around 2.43 GB so you need a fast Internet connection. Once you are done with downloading, you will have a single ISO file that you need to be burned using any data burning software.
Step 2 Put the CD in CD-ROM and reboot the system in order to start the setup. Press any key when Windows Prompt that boot from CD. After the media loads the first setup screen will come up for Windows 7. Select the Language, Time & Currency, and Keyboard or input method here. Select Next to proceed with the setup.
Select Install now from the center of the screen. Look over the EULA then select I accept the license terms from the check box below. Select Next to proceed. On the “Which type of installation do you want?” screen select Custom (advanced). Next you have to decide where you will install the Windows it could be any drive. After that you will see Installing Windows screen. The setup will go through the process here and copy files, expand files, install features, install updates and complete the installation. Do not interrupt the setup give it some time. It will take around 45 minutes and can be same as Vista setup. Enter your User & Computer Name when prompted then select next. Enter your Product Key. Select your update settings. Change Time & Date settings, if necessary, and then select your Wireless network from the list and security key if applicable. Select your computers current location.
How to install Windows 7 Beta
In order to install the Windows 7 Beta, it is recommended to get it downloaded directly from the Microsoft website.
The Windows 7 installation process is simple with little effort. One just needs to have an eye for details. To initiate this installation process straight away, first go to the Microsoft website http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx. You will need a I 80 GB blank hard driveHYPERLINK \l “” partition into 240 GB. After partitioning this with the completed download of 2.4 GB, you will have to burn a DVD of the downloaded image. This can be done by burning the software that supports .ISO images.
We are still managing the settings and looking at the compatibility of the hardware to support this installation. After the DVD has been created, the computer has to be restarted. Quickly after this, go to BIOS settings and boot it from the CD/DVD drive. The downloading process is now in motion. In the process, you will be prompted with a question on where to install Windows. At this point, select the empty Hard Drive and simply allow it to install by itself. If you are using or installing this OS at home, you will have to select Home when another prompt pop-up asking you what kind of network is needed of you.
However, there are few things which should be kept in mind before the installation process. You should write the Product Key on some paper to easily locate it later and to shut old windows before the install. It is also important to back up old hard drives before you start.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Windows 7: You Can Leave Complaining Now
Windows 7 is obviously not a "Vista service pack. Windows 7 has a lot of new features and is clearly designed to fix all bad things people said about Vista. This means that Windows 7 is what Vista should have been in the people eyes.
Windows 7 will totally feel like a revelation from the glazy future if you are coming from Windows XP. You'll definitely say that Windows 7 is much better than Vista if you are upgrading your computer or laptop from Vista.
The bad effect of Windows Vista
Clearly, the public opinion of Windows Vista has left a deep impact on Microsoft. However, based on the biggest Windows 7 beta testing process in history, we can say that it sure won't look like the upset Vista launch at all.
There was a solid chance that your computer ran like crap or your programs didn't work if you installed Vista on your PC within the first month of its release as the drivers compatible with Vista were not available. But that's not the case with Windows 7. Windows 7 hardware requirements are basically the same as they are for Vista and it runs better than Vista on that hardware.
The results suggested that there is little difference between Vista and Windows 7 performance when we ran Vista and Windows 7 on two test machines.
Windows 7 actually ran beautifully during the test, even on netbooks. So, the difference isn't based completely on feelings. Even Microsoft never offered Vista for netbooks, but is happily offering Windows 7 to the netbook category.
Windows XP was a great OS of its time. Windows Vista failed to wind people hearts. But what people said about Windows 7 was that its more fast, solid and the easiest Windows yet. Windows 7 launch on October 22nd is a good chance for Microsoft to win people heart again, but it's exactly what Microsoft needs right now. Windows 7 is something people can grab without fear.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Windows 7 Freezes - How Can I Fix Windows 7 Freezing Quickly and Easily?
Therefore, it is important to perform regular maintenance on your computer. Also, if you have Windows 7 installed on your system, the need to care for it becomes even more critical. This is because Windows 7 is a new operating system and computer experts, very few know how to fix it if it starts to give errors.
One of the best ways to resolve Windows 7 freezing problem is getting a registry cleaner for your computer. The software ensures better cleaning of Windows 7 the performance of the following ways:
* The software performs routine maintenance cleaning of the Windows backup and ensures that your system is free of errors. This is because most of the problems of Windows 7 is due to problems in the archives. With a large number of files, settings and options, the database is huge and is susceptible to errors. These errors occur due to lost or damaged files and settings in the registry. A cleaning program scans the Windows registry, find and fix these errors. This ensures that Windows 7 for solving freezing.
* The cleaning software also ensures that you have a faster computer Windows 7 by deleting all unused files in the Windows registry. These files accumulate to install and uninstall hardware and software. These orphaned files are not unnecessarily use and take a much needed space. By removing these files, a cleaning expert says Windows 7 to get rid of the freezing problem.
* Another advanced feature of a cleaner is its ability to defragment your system periodically to continue to give optimum performance.
* The cleaning experts also keep all the security log files to keep a backup of these files before scanning and repair process. Therefore, even if some information is lost, you can easily recover.
Tired of slow PC performance? Want to fix Windows 7 to freeze quickly and easily? You can scan the error log on your computer to avoid failure for free and fix it using the best registry cleaner on the market. When you install and run a regular cleaning expert, you can be sure that your computer continues to consistent and outstanding performance.