By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld (US)
August 4, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - As promised, Microsoft today issued an emergency patch for the critical Windows shortcut bug attackers have been exploiting for several weeks.

Also as pledged, Microsoft did not deliver a fix for users running Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) or Windows 2000, which were retired from support three weeks ago.

There was little in Monday’s accompanying bulletin that wasn’t already known, noted Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security.

“This was almost entirely public at this point,” said Storms. “The only question I had was whether Microsoft would try and release a patch for unsupported operating systems.”

Storms’ reference was to XP SP2 and Windows 2000. “There’s a ton of people still running SP2, and it just went end-of-life,” Storms argued. “And SCADA systems typically run on older versions of the OS. I thought Microsoft might be strong-armed by SCADA vendors into releasing a fix for SP2.”

But Microsoft stuck to its long-standing policy and did not provide patches for machines running Windows XP SP2, Windows 2000 or any other off-support version.

The vulnerability addressed today was first described in mid-June by VirusBlokAda, a little-known security firm based in Belarus, but attracted widespread attention only after security blogger Brian Krebs reported on it July 15. A day later, Microsoft admitted that attackers were already exploiting the flaw using the “Stuxnet” worm , which targets Windows PCs that manage large-scale industrial-control systems in manufacturing and utility firms.

Those control systems are often dubbed SCADA, for “supervisory control and data acquisition.”

The flaw was in how Windows parsed shortcut files, the small files displayed by icons on the desktop, on the toolbar and in the Start menu that launch applications and documents when clicked. By crafting malicious shortcuts, hackers could automatically execute malware whenever a user viewed the shortcut or the contents of a folder containing the malevolent shortcut.

Exploit code went public last month, and Microsoft and others have spotted several attack campaigns based on the bug. When the company announced last Friday that it would patch the shortcut bug today, it also said that it had seen the virulent “Sality” malware family using the shortcut exploit.

Microsoft patched the problem by “correctly validating the icon reference of a shortcut,” according to MS10-046 bulletin.

The company also told users who had deployed a recommended workaround — which involved disabling the displaying of all shortcuts — to undo that workaround after applying the patch. Scattered reports on the Web, however, have noted problems unless the workaround is reversed before the patch is applied.

Because Microsoft’s patch results in a new version of Shell32.dll being pushed to users, the quality of the update will be important: Shell32.dll is a crucial Windows library file that contains numerous Windows Shell API (application programming interface) functions. If it’s flawed, or incorrectly updated on some machines, PCs will lock up with the notorious Blue Screen of Death.

Storms didn’t think there was anything to worry about. “They patched a Windows kernel bug in 20 days back in January,” Storms pointed out. “They probably understand the risks here by going out-of-band.”

Jason Miller, data and security team manager for Shavlik Technologies, said he wasn’t expecting a rush patch because of the proximity of August’s regular security updates.

“It’s not uncommon for Microsoft to release out-of-band,” said Miller, “but Patch Tuesday is just a week away. I expected that they would just wait until then.”

Microsoft’s regularly-scheduled monthly updates are to ship Aug. 10, a week from tomorrow.

According to Miller, out-of-band updates are usually released in-between a pair of Patch Tuesdays, in other words, approximately two weeks before the next slated release.

“Microsoft must have seen something in this that prompted them to release now,” said Miller, referring to last Friday’s announcement that Sality had begun exploiting the shortcut bug. “I’d bet that they’re probably expecting that we’ll see an additional uptick in attacks as other viruses add this [exploit] to their payloads,” Miller concluded.

The patch, which is available for all still-supported versions of Windows, including XP SP3, Vista, Windows 7 , Server 2003, Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2, can be downloaded and installed via the Microsoft Update and Windows Update services, as well as through Windows Server Update Services.

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By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld (US)
February 24, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - In the five months since its release, Microsoft’s Windows 7 has captured twice the usage share than did Vista in the same time period, a Web metrics company said today.

According to NetApplications.com of Aliso Viejo, Calif., Windows 7 accounted for 9% of all operating systems in use online for the month through last Sunday. By comparison, Vista had a 4.5% share five months after its late-January 2007 release to retail.

Microsoft shipped Windows 7 on Oct. 22, 2009.

Windows 7’s trajectory has been faster than Vista’s ever since the former’s release, with the newer operating system beating Vista to the 4% mark by several months. By the end of January 2010, Windows 7’s usage share was 7.5%, also double the 3.75% that Vista enjoyed by the end of its fourth month.

“Looking at the trends, the [Windows 7] growth rate seems to be strong and consistent, with no visible decline,” said Vince Vizzaccaro, executive vice president with NetApplications.

Vizzaccaro also noted that the difference in Windows 7’s weekend and weekday scores has been increasing, a sign that, “personal usage is growing faster than corporate usage, which fits the expectations,” he said. In the past, Vizzaccaro has explained that the usage share of newer versions of Windows climbs on weekends as a greater percentage of computers online are home machines. Enterprises traditionally lag behind consumers in the uptake for new versions of Windows.

Microsoft’s operating systems accounted for a combined 92% of all OSes powering computers that went online last month. The bulk of that, 66.3%, was Windows XP, with Vista at 17.4%. Apple’s Mac OS X controlled just 5.1% of the usage market.

If the trends of the last three months persist, Windows 7 will overtake Vista as the second-most popular operating system — and grab the No. 2 spot behind XP — by June.

NetApplications measures operating system usage by tracking machines that visit the 40,000 sites it monitors for clients, which results in a pool of about 160 million unique visitors per month.

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By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld (US)
September 11, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - Microsoft late Tuesday confirmed that a bug in Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and the release candidates of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, could be used to hijack PCs.

The vulnerability in SMB (Server Message Block) 2, a Microsoft-made network file- and print-sharing protocol that ships with Windows, was first disclosed late Monday, when a researcher posted exploit code he claimed crashed Windows Vista and Windows 7 systems, causing the dreaded “Blue Screen of Death.”

Later in the day, several researchers, including Tyler Reguly, a senior security engineer of nCircle Network Security, vouched that tests showed the attack code crashed machines running Vista, Server 2008 and the Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 release candidates, but not the final, or RTM, versions of the latter two. Also on Tuesday, another researcher, Ruben Santamarta , said on the Bugtraq mailing list that the vulnerability was not only a denial-of-service flaw, but also allowed remote code execution, security-speak for a bug that could be used to jack a machine.

In a security advisory issued around 9 p.m. ET Tuesday, Microsoft corroborated both Reguly’s and Santamarta’s findings.

“An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system,” Microsoft’s advisory said. “Most attempts to exploit this vulnerability will cause an affected system to stop responding and restart.”

Microsoft also noted that while the release candidates of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are vulnerable, the RTM, or release to manufacturing, editions are not.

The RTM versions of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are the ones that were handed over to computer makers in late July, and issued to volume license customers, and some developers and IT professionals in early August.

The release candidates, on the other hand, have been widely distributed, with millions of users downloading Windows 7 RC during the three and a half months it was available to the public.

“This vulnerability was reported after the release of Windows 7 Release Candidate,” Microsoft’s advisory noted. “Customers running this platform are encouraged to review this advisory and follow the steps listed here.”

Earlier versions of Windows, including Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003 are also safe, since they do not use SMB 2.

Microsoft said it is working on a patch for the SMB 2 vulnerability, but did not spell out a timeline. Its regularly-scheduled September updates were issued Tuesday about 1 p.m. ET; the next expected batch of patches isn’t due until Oct. 13.

Until a patch is available, Microsoft recommended that users disable SMB 2 by editing the Windows Registry — a task too daunting for most consumers — or block TCP ports 139 and 445 at the firewall. Doing the latter will cripple several important services or applications, including the browser, Microsoft acknowledged.

Even though the flaw exists and exploit code is in circulation, some researchers were upbeat. “At the moment I think the default configurations are going to provide enough mitigation for most users, those being the default firewall configurations since Windows XP SP2,” said Andrew Storms, nCircle’s director of security operations, in an instant message late Tuesday.

Hackers who manage to get within the perimeter of a network, however, may find easy pickings. “The key to a good attack would be to get in on the inside, where enterprises have host-based firewalls disabled,” he said.

The SMB 2 vulnerability isn’t the only Microsoft bug that’s gone public, but has not been patched. Last week, Microsoft announced it was working on a fix for a flaw in the FTP (file transfer protocol) server included in the company’s popular Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server.

Microsoft has confirmed that hackers are already using exploits of the FTP bug to attack Web servers.

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By Elizabeth Montalbano
IDG News Service (New York Bureau)
September 11, 2009

NEW YORK - Despite efforts from Microsoft over the years to simplify its software licensing for businesses, a new analyst report said it’s more complex than ever for companies to figure out the most cost-effective way to acquire products from the vendor.

A new report by Directions on Microsoft analysts Paul DeGroot and Rob Horwitz called “5 Reasons Why Microsoft Licensing Is Hard” claims that Microsoft licensing isn’t likely to get any easier any time soon, mainly because Microsoft is not motivated to make it so. The report is available online and is connected to a series of “boot camps” the firm hosts to help companies get up to speed on Microsoft licensing.

“Microsoft doesn’t think there’s a problem,” report co-writer DeGroot said in an interview Wednesday. “The money keeps rolling in … Microsoft looks at the numbers and the reality is that most customers don’t have a choice.”

Indeed, in a talk at the Citi Annual Global Tech Conference on Wednesday, Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell did not report anything amiss with enterprise licenses that were up for renewal earlier this year. Many companies sign these multiyear contracts to purchase software from the vendor.

Liddell reiterated what Microsoft said on a July conference call reporting fourth-quarter fiscal 2009 earnings — that enterprise license bookings were more or less the same as they’ve ever been. “It’s clearly a tough economic environment, so we’re incredibly happy the renewal rate was in line with what we’ve achieved historically,” he said.

If this remains the case, there is no real impetus for Microsoft to change its licensing, which remains difficult to understand for companies beyond the largest enterprises that have dedicated staff members to handle contracts, DeGroot said.

In fact, changing the licensing would require an investment from Microsoft and would cost the company revenue, further discouraging Microsoft from simplifying its licensing, according to the report.

Though there are many reasons for the complexity, DeGroot narrowed it down to a few major issues. One is that Microsoft’s licensing programs have evolved over the years to suit the needs of different types of companies as issues arose, but no one has ever gone back to revise the myriad programs to streamline them to help companies figure out what might be best for them.

“There’s this evolution of Microsoft programs and they rarely kill a licensing program — so you’ll have a licensing program that is 15 years old that is still there,” he said.

This has resulted in a mass of outdated programs with more exceptions than rules to them, so it’s a morass of complexity for most customers to slog through, DeGroot said.

Microsoft also has misleading labels on its licensing programs and markets them according to what will be easiest and most cost-effective for the company and its resellers to handle, not according to what provides the most value for customers, DeGroot said.

For example, he said Microsoft’s enterprise agreements (EAs) — which are for Microsoft’s desktop software, Windows and Office — might make sense even for small companies that only have about 250 desktops and are not technically considered “enterprise” customers. However, those companies might overlook EAs as an option because of the labeling.

Furthermore, Microsoft markets its Open License program to small companies, which often don’t have dedicated staff on hand to examine licensing contracts, DeGroot said.

While it’s true signing up for the Open License program might be easy for them, customers get only 20 percent discounts on products versus 40 percent, which is what some other programs offer, he said. But neither Microsoft nor a reseller would want to explain to a small customer that isn’t spending a lot of money on software how they can save more with a different license.

“The customer is not getting the best deal,” DeGroot said. “The complexity of the thing makes both Microsoft and the reseller disinclined to explain to the customer how they can save more money.”

DeGroot said he doesn’t believe Microsoft is willfully trying to mislead customers with its licensing, but since the company itself has never been in the position to have to license its own products, the people in charge don’t really understand what customers are going through.

Unfortunately, the situation is likely only to get worse as Microsoft begins combining subscriptions to hosted services with its traditional per-CPU licensing models, he added. “My very distinct impression is that licensing is getting more complicated,” DeGroot said.

And despite Microsoft’s rosy view of things, he said that some enterprise customers have chosen not to renew their contracts this year because “the customer doesn’t understand the value of what they bought or how they bought it,” DeGroot said.

“If you’re in a company and you don’t understand why you’re paying someone money, you’re inclined to stop paying,” he said. However, until a critical mass of customers comes to the same conclusion, Microsoft will not be motivated to change its course, DeGroot added.

In an e-mailed statement through Microsoft’s public relations firm Wednesday, Stacie Sloane, a director of licensing at the company, said Microsoft has made “significant strides over the past few years in balancing customer choice with flexibility” to simplify its licensing agreements and reduce the number of programs from 74 to nine.

She said the company also has provided new tools to help customers navigate the complexity of its licensing, including Online PUR, a way to search on the Web to find out about software use rights in Microsoft’s licensing programs.

“We continue to look for ways to make the purchasing experience simpler for customers, including our current multi-year investment to ultimately shift the customer experience to one purchasing platform and a single agreement for any type of offer,” Sloane said.

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By Dan Nystedt
IDG News Service (Taipei Bureau)
September 9, 2009

TAIPEI - Foxconn Technology plans to launch its first smartbooks next year, which are mini-laptops that use microprocessors from Arm Holdings normally found in smartphones.

Smartbooks are similar to netbooks except that they don’t use Intel’s popular Atom microprocessor nor other x86 processors.

Foxconn has been asked by telecommunications companies in China and elsewhere to develop smartbooks due to their low prices, said Young Liu, special assistant to the CEO at Foxconn, on the sidelines of an Intel press conference in Taipei.

They’re attracted to the price range of a smartbook, US$100 to $200, he said. “That’s a lot lower than a netbook,” he said. “There will be a lot of demand for a sub-$200 device.”

His company is working on “less than five” smartbooks right now, he said, declining to name a specific number. The devices, codenamed Qbooks, use a few different Linux operating systems, including one similar to the Intel-backed Moblin OS and one developed by Foxconn. The company is currently looking into Google’s Android mobile OS for possible use as well, he said.

The smartbooks his company is developing will have screens between 7 and 10 inches, the same size as standard netbook screens.

He said Foxconn’s first smartbook will likely be available next year, but added that if Intel puts out a microprocessor that can compete with Arm’s chip on price, his company may use that instead and make netbooks.

Foxconn is the trade name for Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer. The company owns several subsidiaries and affiliates operating under various Foxconn names, including Foxconn Electronics and Foxconn International, under the group umbrella, Foxconn Technology Group.

Smartbooks from several Taiwanese contract manufacturers were displayed at Computex Taipei in June, including Pegatron, the contract arm of Asustek Computer; Wistron, formerly Acer’s contract manufacturing operation; and Elitegroup Computer Systems.

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By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld (US)
August 24, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - A Microsoft Windows 7 installation disk can be tweaked to install any version of the operating system, giving users a “try-before-buy” opportunity before upgrading to a more expensive edition, a popular newsletter revealed.

By deleting one small text file from a Windows installation DVD, users can choose to install any of five different editions, according to Woody Leonard, a contributing editor to the Windows Secrets newsletter.

Leonard published step-by-step instructions Thursday that walked users through the process on Windows 7 RTM, or release to manufacturing, the final build of the operating system that Microsoft has already shipped to computer makers and distributed to IT professionals and developers.

The procedure hinges on deleting the “EI.cfg” file on the installation media, said Leonard. According to Microsoft documentation, “EI.cfg” is a Windows Setup-specific configuration file used to determine what edition and license will be used during installation. Earlier versions of Windows used a file called “PID.txt” for the same purpose.

“If you have a physical Windows 7 installation DVD … [you can] use either gBurner or ISO Recorder to rip the DVD into an .iso file,” said Leonard, “then follow the instructions above to delete the EI.cfg file and burn a new DVD.”

Leonard recommended a pair of CD/DVD tools, including gBurner System’s gBurner and ISO Recorder 3.1, for transforming the installation DVD into an .iso file. Once they have an .iso in hand, users can then delete the “EI.cfg” file and then burn the .iso file to a new, blank DVD for installation.

Although the process is elaborate, and probably only for the technically astute, Windows Secrets editor Brian Livingston said it was really the only way for users to try different versions of Windows 7 before they plunk down their money.

“I think this would be of great interest to corporate IT administrators,” said Livingston in an interview late Wednesday. “They will be able to put [Windows 7] Professional on one machine, and Home Premium on another to test each out before deciding which to buy for what group of employees.”

The procedure also offers a way to try out a more expensive edition of Windows 7 before paying for an Anytime Upgrade, the in-place updates that let users bump up to a higher version. Microsoft sells an Anytime Upgrade from Windows 7 Home Premium to Professional for $90, but doesn’t provide any trial or grace period; users must pony up the money to obtain the key that unlocks the Professional-only bits within Windows 7.

Leonard’s try-before-buying stratagem isn’t original; other users posted instructions on how to delete the “EI.cfg” file to bring up a Windows 7 installation edition choice screen within weeks of the launch of the OS’s public beta last spring.

He was, however, one of the first to confirm that the tactic still works on the final build of Windows 7 that will go on sale Oct. 22.

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By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld (US)
August 21, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - Microsoft will offer Windows 7’s ribbon-style application interface to Windows Vista users in an update this October, according to the company.

As first reported by Long Zheng, the blogger who writes the popular istartedsomething.com, Microsoft will provide Vista users an optional update that installs the code necessary to display Windows 7’s Ribbon framework on its predecessor.

The framework, called “Scenic Ribbon,” is a derivation of the ribbon-esque “Fluent” user interface that debuted in Office 2007 two years ago. Both feature a wide ribbon-like display at the top of a window that replaces the traditional drop-down menus, small icons and toolbars that have standardized Windows applications’ look-and-feel for decades. Office 2007 faced serious resistance from some users over the ribbon when it launched, although that has subsided over time.

More recently, complaints mounted over plans by OpenOffice.org to overhaul the interface of that open-source productivity suite. Some have blasted the organization for parroting Office 2007’s ribbon.

“The Office ribbon sucks. Please don’t copy it,” wrote one user in a comment to a Sun Microsystems blog. Sun contributes engineering and developer time to OpenOffice.org.

Earlier this year, Microsoft said the ribbon interface would be used by both Microsoft and third-party developers to distinguish new applications for Windows 7 from older versions that ran, say, on Windows XP or Windows Vista.

“This is one of the things we think will differentiate apps written for Windows 7, as opposed to those for earlier versions of Windows,” said Mike Nash, the head of Microsoft’s Windows product management, in an interview with Computerworld last January.

That plan seems to be in tatters now. Starting in October, application developers will be assured that new software they’ve crafted to include the Scenic Ribbon interface will also run on Vista.

“A Windows 7 interoperability pack, known as the Windows 7 Client Platform Update, is to be released alongside Windows 7 in October of this year,” said Karl Bridge, a Microsoft programming writer, in a message posted last week to a forum on the MSDN (Microsoft Developers Network) site. “This update provides down-level support for the Windows Ribbon framework and will be made available from the Microsoft Download Center and as a ‘Recommended update’ on Windows Update.”

Bridge added that the update will support all versions of Vista, including the entry-level Home Basic and Starter, which for Vista has been sold only in a limited number of markets overseas.

Application developers who build software with Windows 7’s ribbon interface will have to point users to Windows Update or Microsoft’s download site to grab the Client Platform Update, or silently call Windows Update as part of setup, Bridge said.

Microsoft’s most visible “ribbonized” Windows 7 applications are the revamped Paint and retooled Wordpad, the basic image editor and word processor, respectively, bundled with the OS.

Windows XP users will be out of ribbon luck, however, as the October update will not apply to the eight-year-old operating system.

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By Agam Shah
IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)
August 18, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO - Those wanting to try out Microsoft’s next OS before its official release need to act fast: The download period for the Windows 7 Release Candidate ends Thursday.

Users who download the release candidate can use it until the software expires on June 1. However, the OS will start shutting down every two hours from March 1 — Microsoft’s way of nudging people toward a paid, supported version of the product.

The Release Candidate allows users to try Windows 7 ahead of its commercial release on Oct. 22. It also gives Microsoft a way to gather more feedback on the OS and make sure it has fixed the bugs that were identified in the beta version. The software automatically sends that information back to Microsoft’s engineers.

The OS is considered an important step forward from the Windows Vista OS, which was panned for being sluggish and resource-hungry. Beta testers have so far praised Windows 7 for being faster and more resource-friendly.

Nevertheless, the RC, while largely feature-complete, is still unfinished software, and Microsoft recommends installing it on a back-up system rather than a user’s primary PC.

Users will need to back up their data from Windows 7 RC before upgrading to the commercial release of the product. Microsoft is not providing a direct upgrade path to the final version of Windows 7, according to a document outlining OS upgrade paths.

Microsoft has already released a follow-on to Windows 7 RC, the Windows 7 RTM (Release To Manufacturing), but it’s available only to a select audience, including Microsoft Developer Network and TechNet subscribers.

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By Frank J. Ohlhorst
Computerworld (US)
August 7, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - Picking a laptop can be a complicated ordeal that amounts to balancing features against portability against price — and with Windows 7 on the way, the choice gets tricker. Here are some tips for purchasing a notebook computer that will work well with Windows 7.

You’ll need a notebook with a 64-bit processor to guarantee compatibility with the 64-bit version of Windows 7, which will be the preferred version of the OS. Choosing an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU pretty much guarantees that Windows 7 will run fine. All Core 2 Duo processors support 64-bit applications, and even the slowest of the current batch (the T7200) clocks in at 2.0GHz, which is plenty fast enough for Windows 7.

Windows 7 is very visual and offers a lot of eye candy, from the ability to play HD content to showing fancy desktop themes with active content. Because of this, most users will want at least a 14.1-in. display that offers 720p compatibility, meaning WXGA (1280 x 800) resolution.

With RAM, more is always better — 2GB is a good starting point, 4GB is better.
For most users, integrated graphics will offer more than enough performance for the visual elements of Windows 7 and associated applications; however, gamers should consider a notebook with a discrete graphics card, which offers improved 3D performance.

You’ll also want a large hard drive — 250GB or more — with a rotational speed of at least 5400 rpm. (7200 rpm will be a little faster, but may not be worth the increased price for most users.)

An internal optical drive that offers DVD compatibility helps to turn the notebook into a portable movie theater, always a plus for travelers.

When it comes to overall travel weight, buyers will need to consider how much traveling they are going to do with the notebook and how much they are willing to spend — lighter notebooks are usually more expensive.

Keeping these simple guidelines in mind, there are dozens of notebooks that will fit the bill. Savvy buyers should be able to buy a great notebook for less than $900 once Windows 7 arrives in October. If you must buy now, look for a model that includes a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it ships.

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By Jason Whittaker
PC Advisor (UK)
August 6, 2009

LONDON - Netbooks have soared in popularity over the past year, offering consumers portable PCs for word-processing and web browsing at rock-bottom prices. Such mini laptops use inexpensive processors that consume a minimal amount of power and thus offer a far longer battery life than most portables.

But there’s one problem: Windows Vista is a resource-hungry operating system (OS), and it will run painfully slow unless your system has plenty of memory and processing power. Installing Windows on a netbook also adds a significant amount to the machine’s overall cost.

To get around this, netbook manufacturers tend to favour Windows XP, Microsoft’s older, cheaper and less resource-hogging OS. But you may find that Linux, which this runs perfectly well on just 512MB of RAM, is a better alternative.

Linux will be unfamiliar to most users, but it’s a far more attractive proposition than it used to be. While most of us are put off by our lack of knowledge of the OS, the addition of graphical user interfaces to its various distros and the widespread availability of free Microsoft-compatible applications, such as OpenOffice.org, mean you no longer have to compromise on usability.

Over the following pages we aim to demystify Linux. It’s not just netbook owners who will benefit from using this alternative to Windows; as a free, open-source OS, Linux is also a great option if you want to breathe life into an elderly machine.

You can install Ubuntu alongside your existing OS, too, so if you don’t want to dump Vista entirely, you can keep it as a secondary option. You’ll find it’s faster than Vista Home Premium and less restricted than Vista Basic.

If you’ve tried Linux before and were put off by the setup process, fear not. If Windows is already installed on your PC, adding Linux is a simple, two-step process, with no drive partitioning required.

There are, of course, a few differences between the Ubuntu Linux distro we’ve installed here and the Windows interface, you can get to grips with most features very quickly. We’ll show you how to set up Ubuntu and get started with the most common apps.

Installing Ubuntu Linux

1. Ubuntu is available in server, desktop and netbook editions. The easiest way to get the latest version is to use Wubi. This installs Ubuntu as a standard Windows application. Simply indicate the drive where you want to load the OS, then click the Install button.

2. Ubuntu will appear as an option in your boot menu; select this and log on. The OS’s Gnome interface is similar to that of both Windows and Mac OS X. At the top left you’ll find menus to access Applications, Places (folders and drives) and System (tools and settings). To turn off your PC, click the symbol at the top right.

3. To modify the interface, go to System, Preferences, Appearance. The resulting dialog box contains separate tabs for Theme, Background, Fonts, Interface and Visual Effects. The last of these lets you alter visual settings, whether for aesthetic reasons or to speed up performance on a low-powered system.

4. Because Linux mounts drives before you can access files, no disk drives are displayed on the desktop when you first log on. Files, folders and drives are accessed via the Places menu at the top of the screen. For some of these you’ll need to provide your password before you can access the contents.

5. To set up a web connection, go to System, Administration, Network Connections. In the resulting dialog box, click either Wired or Wireless and hit Add. Enter your setup details in the next window. Click the Security tab and select the encryption type. Enter the key that you need to get online, then click Close.

6. To customise Ubuntu’s Applications, Places or System menu, right-click it and select Edit Menus. From here you can select icons and choose which apps should appear in the menu by ticking the box next to them. To add a new entry, go to File, New Entry, enter a name and browse to the command that launches it.

Get to grips with Ubuntu Linux

7. Much like Windows’ Toolbar, Ubuntu’s panel allows you to load applets for helpful tasks such as keeping an eye on the weather or storing ’sticky’ notes. You can run multiple panels on one screen. To add an applet, right-click the panel and select Add to Panel. Select an applet and click Add.

8. Several applications come preinstalled with Ubuntu. The Firefox web browser is accessible via an icon next to the System menu; Pidgin instant messaging and the Evolution email client can be accessed via Applications, Internet. To use Evolution you’ll need to enter a username, password and details of your email server.

9. OpenOffice.org is another application that’s preinstalled with Ubuntu. To use this productivity suite, go to Applications, Office and select Writer, Calc or Presentation. OpenOffice.org is compatible with Microsoft Word and has a similar interface. Those migrating from Windows should find it extremely easy to use.

10. Ubuntu also preinstalls The Gimp, a highly capable image editor that gives Adobe Photoshop a run for its money. Go to Applications, Graphics to launch it. As well as offering the basics for cropping, drawing, painting and adding text to images, The Gimp includes a number of filters and support for multiple layers.

11. To add new programs, right-click the Applications menu and select Add/Remove Applications. The Application Manager displays applications that are guaranteed to work with Ubuntu. Tick the box next to any you wish to install and then click Apply Changes. The app will be downloaded and automatically installed.

12. To access Ubuntu’s multimedia options, go to Applications, Sound & Video. Brasero Disc Burner creates discs for data, audio or DVD; Rhythmbox is a fantastic audio player that supports internet radio; and Totem is a fairly versatile video player. If you wish to play DVDs on your PC, follow the instructions at help.ubuntu.com.

13. Like Windows, Ubuntu requires regular updates. To check whether any updates are available for your PC, go to System, Administration, Update Manager, then click Check. Select the updates you want, then hit Install Updates. Click the Settings button if you’d prefer for your PC to be updated automatically.

14. To share your desktop with other Linux PCs on your network, go to System, Preferences, Remote Desktop and tick ‘Allow other users to view your desktop’. To access your desktop from another machine, go to Applications, Accessories, Terminal. Enter the command vncviewer -fullscreen and the IP address provided.

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By Eric Lai
Computerworld (US)
August 5, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - Windows 7 may loom, but Nvidia Inc. is bucking the trend, releasing a second member of its ION graphics platform targeted at netbook and net-top PCs running Windows XP.

The ION LE is technologically identical to the existing ION technology, which is an Nvidia 9400M mobile graphics chip typically paired with Intel Corp.’s Atom CPU.

The difference is that ION LE will support, at best, the DirectX 9 graphics technology in Windows XP, not Vista’s DirectX 10 nor Windows 7’s DirectX 11, which will be able to spread processing work better to multiple CPU cores for better multimedia performance.

That would seem to be a disadvantage, with Windows 7 launching in late October, although it plans to continue letting PC makers install XP on low-end netbooks for a year after that.

Matt Wuebbling, senior product manager for notebook GPUs at Nvidia, says that the vast majority of games still run on DirectX 9, as well as all high-definition (HD) video content.

“For a $400 netbook, does [having] DirectX 11 really matter?” he asked, because ION LE will otherwise provide the same graphic performance and 1080p HD video as ION.

Despite ION’s graphical capabilities, it has had limited success due, Nvidia says, to Intel’s aggressive, unfair discounts for its Atom CPU when paired with Intel’s graphics chip.

ION LE doesn’t solve that dilemma, but it will enable netbook makers to release XP-based netbooks that perform as well or better than Windows 7 netbooks at a cheaper price, Wuebbling said. That’s mostly due to Microsoft’s lower price for Windows XP than Windows 7.

Wuebbling declined to give a price for ION LE. He said the platform will be available only to PC makers, not to motherboard makers offering boards to hobbyists building their own PCs, although that could change depending on demand.

But he said to expect lower prices for netbooks and net-tops mainly because of Windows XP’s lower cost.

Nvidia, however, won’t restrict the screen sizes of netbooks using ION like Microsoft and Intel both try do, he noted.

Wuebbling said that ION LE is not “not really an answer one way or another to Intel’s Pine Trail,” the next-generation Atom platform that Intel is expected to release by year’s end.

Nvidia’s next-generation ION 2 platform could be the answer to Intel’s Pine Trail, but Wuebbling declined to comment on it.

He did say that ION LE doesn’t herald any new support for netbook CPUs from Via Technologies Inc. or AMD Corp. “We haven’t announced support for any CPUs but Intel,” Wuebbling said. “That might be something that comes in the future.”

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By Elizabeth Montalbano
IDG News Service (New York Bureau)
August 5, 2009

NEW YORK - Microsoft Tuesday released software that uses virtualization to allow people to run applications in Windows 7 as if they are running in XP, making it easier for applications written for older versions of the OS to run on Windows 7.

Microsoft made the Windows XP Mode Release Candidate available for public download from the Microsoft Download Center, Microsoft Connect and on the Windows home page, the company said.

It also detailed some of the release’s changes from earlier versions in a post on the Windows Team Blog. A release candidate in Microsoft’s product-development cycle means the product is near completion.

Windows XP Mode is an optional feature of the Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions, and is aimed at helping small- and medium-size businesses upgrade to Windows 7 by giving them a virtual Windows XP environment capable of running business and productivity applications compatible with XP.

The feature is similar to Apple’s Classic mode, introduced on Mac OS X, that allowed people to run legacy Mac applications on OS X, which was a drastic change to the platform and would not have run older Mac applications without the feature.

Like Mac OS X, Microsoft’s Windows Vista also was a major architectural shift from previous versions of Windows, and Microsoft ran into a massive application-incompatibility problem with the OS. This led many people — particularly business users dependent on legacy Windows applications — to stay on XP or downgrade to XP after buying a Vista machine. By the time Vista had been released, XP had been available for more than five years, so even applications build for older versions of the Windows client OS — such as Windows 2000 — run fairly well on it.

When discussing Windows XP Mode publicly, Microsoft executives have said that Windows XP Mode was created to remedy this problem. At the company’s recent Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans, Microsoft Senior Vice President of Windows Bill Veghte acknowledged that Vista’s architectural changes came at the cost of compatibility, and described XP Mode as a way to ensure the same thing would not happen with Windows 7.

Windows 7’s release to manufacturing is expected later this week, and its worldwide general availability is slated for Oct. 22.

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IDG News Service (New York Bureau)
August 5, 2009

NEW YORK - Microsoft for the first time has named Linux distributors Red Hat and Canonical as competitors to its Windows client business in its annual filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The move is an acknowledgement of the first viable competition from Linux to Microsoft’s Windows client business, due mainly to the use of Linux on netbooks, which are rising in prominence as alternatives to full-sized notebooks.

“Netbooks opened Microsoft to the possibility that some other OS could get its grip on the desktop, however briefly,” said Rob Helm, director of research for Directions on Microsoft. “Now it’s alert to that possibility going forward.”

In its annual Form 10-K report for the fiscal year ended June 30, Microsoft cited Red Hat and Canonical — the latter of which maintains the Ubuntu Linux distribution — as competitors to its client business, which includes the desktop version of its Windows OS.

Previously, Microsoft had only noted competition from Red Hat to its Server and Tools business, which includes the Windows Server version of the OS for server hardware, in its 10-K reports.

“Client faces strong competition from well-established companies with differing approaches to the PC market,” Microsoft said in the filing. “Competing commercial software products, including variants of Unix, are supplied by competitors such as Apple, Canonical, and Red Hat.”

The filing goes on to note, in a thinly veiled reference to netbooks, that Linux has gained what Microsoft characterizes as “some acceptance” as an alternative client OS to Windows, in particular in “emerging markets” where “competitive pressures lead OEMs to reduce costs and new, lower-price PC form-factors gain adoption.”

It also mentions the work of Microsoft’s own OEM (original equipment manufacturer) partners Hewlett-Packard and Intel to support Linux on PCs.

Seattle-based blogger Todd Bishop called attention to Microsoft’s acknowledged change to the competitive landscape in a blog post on the TechFlash Microsoft Blog. He also posted a link to Microsoft’s 10-K filing.

While Linux on servers is a well-established market among business customers, Linux as a viable alternative to Windows on PCs has never taken off. However, the emergence of the netbook as a low-cost, smaller form factor to the traditional notebook PC has certainly changed that, so much so that Microsoft lately has been pushing a lightweight notebook as an alternative to netbooks, Helm said.

“Microsoft would like the netbook to go away and be replaced by lightweight laptops — ones with long battery life that cost enough to justify running full Windows on them,” he said.

Helm added that Microsoft is trying to discourage the production of inexpensive computers where Windows becomes the most expensive component because it can’t make as much money on Windows on these devices, and they could drive down the price of Windows.

Microsoft’s current Windows client OS, Windows Vista, had too large a hardware footprint and was too expensive for netbooks, giving Linux an opening in that market when it emerged late last year. However, Microsoft’s eight-year-old Windows XP OS is still the dominant system for netbooks, and the release of Windows 7 in October will feature a Starter Edition that is especially geared toward that market as well.

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By Elizabeth Montalbano
IDG News Service (New York Bureau)
August 3, 2009

NEW YORK - Microsoft on Friday let users who want to upgrade from one version of Windows 7 to another know how they can do so.

The company also unveiled pricing for the previously announced Windows 7 Family Pack, a version of the OS for households with multiple PCs. The family pack allows people to upgrade three PCs from earlier versions of Windows to Windows 7 Home Premium for US$149.99, saving more than $200, Microsoft said. An upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium for one machine costs $119.99.

Microsoft expects many people will purchase their preferred version of Windows 7 when they buy a new PC with it pre-installed, and is already allowing people to pre-purchase Windows 7 — which is scheduled to be available globally Oct. 22 — through a Technology Guarantee Program when they buy new PCs now.

However, for those who purchase Windows 7 but then want to upgrade to a version with more features, Microsoft is offering a Windows Anytime Upgrade program, which can be launched from within Windows 7, the company said.

Once Windows 7 is available, people in the U.S. can buy a retail package that contains an upgrade key, which will give them the ability to upgrade on any of three paths: from Windows 7 Starter to Windows 7 Home Premium for $79.99; from Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 7 Professional for $89.99; and from Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 7 Ultimate for $139.99.

People can use the key to upgrade through a series of screen prompts on their Windows 7 PC; the process takes about 10 minutes and will not disrupt a user’s current programs, files or settings, Microsoft said.

In Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K. or the U.S., people can purchase the upgrade from Microsoft online directly within Windows 7.

By way of comparison, upgrade pricing from an earlier version of Windows, such as XP or Vista, for Windows 7’s consumer versions is: $119.99 for Windows 7 Home Premium; $199.99 for Windows 7 Professional; and $219.99 for Windows 7 Ultimate.

Microsoft envisions several scenarios in which customers may need to upgrade from one version of Windows 7 to another. For example, a person may purchase a netbook with Windows 7 Starter on it primarily to use the device for e-mail, but then find it’s more suitable as an everyday PC. In that case, the user may want to upgrade that netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium, the company said.

For a person running Windows 7 Home Premium, upgrading to Windows 7 Professional would give them the ability to join a business network and also take advantage of a feature called Windows XP Mode that allows them to run applications written for Windows XP on a Windows 7 PC seamlessly, Microsoft said.

Windows 7 Ultimate is the most fully featured of Microsoft’s consumer OSes and includes security features that some power home users might want, the company said.

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By Dan Nystedt
IDG News Service (Taipei Bureau)
July 30, 2009

TAIPEI - Acer remains on track to launch a version of its Aspire One netbook with Google’s Android mobile operating system in the third quarter of this year, a company representative said Wednesday.

The company decided to reiterate its commitment to the project after news reports said the project had been delayed or changed.

The world’s third-largest PC vendor plans to debut Android in an Aspire One with a 10-inch screen and an Intel Atom microprocessor. A similar Aspire One is currently available from Acer but it comes with Microsoft Windows XP.

At the Computex electronics show in Taipei last month, Acer displayed an Aspire One running both Windows XP and Android, prompting questions on whether the netbook would be a dual-boot machine or not. Executives at the show said the Aspire One with Android would not come with Windows XP installed.

Acer became interested in Android due to its growing popularity and the strong development movement behind the software. The PC vendor announced the Aspire One with Android a day after saying its first Android-based smartphones would launch in the fourth quarter of this year.

Acer was the first company worldwide to show an Android-based netbook with an Intel Atom microprocessor. Other companies have shown Android mini-laptops they call smartbooks, with chips from Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Freescale Semiconductor that have ARM processing cores.

Acer worked with a Taiwanese Linux outfit called Insyde Software to port Android over to a netbook with an Atom microprocessor.

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By Eric Lai
Computerworld (US)
July 23, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - The much-maligned Windows Vista operating system runs on almost one out of eight corporate desktops 28 months after its release, according to a Forrester Research report released today.

Apple Inc.’s Mac OS X also made gains, partly at the still-dominant XP’s expense, but that will start to change in the fall after the release of both Windows 7 and OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard,” according to the analyst firm.

Vista’s share grew to 11.9% at the end of March, up from 7.3% nine months earlier. Vista was made available to large organizations and businesses on November 30, 2006, and to consumers and small businesses two months later. Growth, while slow to pick up among businesses as with all new Windows releases, is now “steady,” wrote analyst Benjamin Gray.

Forrester’s figures today appear to support an earlier report showing that despite Vista’s bad reputation, North American and European IT managers were “slowly warming” to Vista.

Now, “desktop operations professionals who have already standardized - or are in the process of standardizing - on Windows Vista are comforted by the fact that these investments will ultimately pay off with greater compatibility with Windows 7,” Gray wrote.

Overall, Windows’ share of corporate desktops remained a dominating 96.2%, slightly down from its 96.8% share in July 2008.

XP’s share was 86%. It is “the OS that just won’t quit,” wrote Gray, despite “signs of extremely advanced age.”

“Although Windows XP use continues to slowly fade, we expect the majority of Forrester clients to stick with it until they’re ready to make the jump to Windows 7, despite Windows XP SP2 having already entered its extended support phase and Windows XP SP3 following suit on July 7, 2010,” Gray wrote.

Apple Inc.’s Mac OS X ran on 3.6% of corporate desktops, up from 2.7% nine months earlier.

“As impressive as this growth is, just imagine the possibilities if Apple actually formulated an enterprise strategy - something it seemingly has no intention of doing,” Gray wrote. He also said these statistics are probably an undercount because of the many Macs primarily running Windows XP under virtualization during work hours that are then counted as Windows machines, not Macs.

Gray wrote that many businesses are “in a holding pattern,” waiting for the arrival of Windows 7, which Microsoft was expected to be released to manufacturing today, as well as the release of OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” in September.

Gray expects large enterprises to start deploying Windows 7 in late 2010 to early 2011, or 12 to 18 months after its release. Many of those deployments will be “big bang or forklift” ones, rather than rolling refreshes, Gray said, due to the many companies that have been holding off on upgrading their desktop PCs due to the economic downturn.

Forrester’s numbers come via its quarterly survey of 85,000 desktop PCs at 2,600 companies.

Windows 2000 was on 1.2% of business desktops at the end of March, with other versions of Windows holding 1%.

Linux continued to decline, falling to just 0.1% of the corporate market. Gray said there was some hope for Linux in the form of thin clients and netbooks.

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By Shane O’Neill
CIO.com
July 23, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - Microsoft made it official today: both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have been released to manufacturing, following through on the software giant’s promise to “RTM” Windows 7 in the second half of July.

The RTM milestone is not earth-shattering news to consumers, as most of the end-user Windows 7 features have been on display in beta and release candidate form for months. But it is an important step for Microsoft partners and developers. OEMs (original equipment makers) will now have final code to get PCs ready, software development partners can test new applications, and independent hardware vendors can prepare new hardware.

Windows 7 marks the first time since Windows 2000 that the client and server versions of Windows will release simultaneously. The networking features that bind the client and server such as DirectAccess and BranchCache have been well-documented at this point, as have the popular Windows 7 desktop features on the client side such as a revamped taskbar and the Aero graphical interface.
What’s most compelling about Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 RTMs is the sense of closure. The development of both has been completed and the final code is ready to be sent off to partners, OEMs and developers.

Here’s a rundown of how the RTM of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 will affect everyone from PC makers to IT managers.

What Win 7 RTM Means for Business Users and IT Pros

Volume license customers that have an SA (Software Assurance) license with Microsoft will be able to download Windows 7 RTM in English on August 7 through the VLSC (Volume License Service Center). Microsoft says the rest of the languages for Windows 7 RTM should be available within a couple of weeks after that.

Volume License customers without an SA license will be able to purchase Windows 7 through Volume Licensing starting on Sept. 1.

IT professionals who want Windows 7 RTM have a few options. If they have TechNet subscriptions, they can download Windows 7 RTM in English on August 6 and in the remaining languages on Oct. 1.

If your company has an SA license with Microsoft you can download Windows 7 RTM in English on August 7 through the VLSC (Volume License Service Center). If your company does not have SA, you will have to wait until Sept. 1.

Microsoft also has a resource called The Springboard Series that helps IT pros with Windows deployments. The company said it will allow IT pros to access RTM code for evaluation from the Springboard site “shortly after RTM” but did not give a specific time.
What it means to PC Makers (OEMs)

OEMs will have access to Windows 7 RTM software images as early as this Friday, July 24, as Microsoft works to release and distribute the images. OEMs can then start preparing images for new PCs that will ship with Windows 7 pre-installed on Oct. 22.

“During the next two or so months, OEMs will be finishing the integration and testing of their systems with Windows 7,” says Bill Laing, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Server & Solutions Division.

Mike Angiulo, GM of the Planning and PC Ecosystem Team for Windows, added in an interview that OEM testing of Windows 7 is ahead of schedule compared to predecessor Vista.

“OEMs have been testing Windows 7 on consumer PCs since the release candidate [which launched in early May],” Angiulo says. “We have 40 percent more Windows 7 logos that we’ve signed off on for compatibility hardware than we did for Vista at the same point in time because we started testing earlier. OEMs will start actual manufacturing right away.”

One OEM, Hewlett-Packard, which has done early adoption and engineering work on both the client and server side for Windows 7, is now taking on the role of an advisor to customers at the RTM phase.

Tom Norton, HP’s Global Practice Lead of Microsoft Consulting Services, said in an interview: “We had early access to Windows 7 and know how it can be deployed in enterprises and customers are looking to us to help guide them through that.”

What It Means to Partners

Independent Microsoft hardware and software partners can download Windows 7 RTM from Microsoft Connect or MSDN on August 6. Microsoft recommends that if you are a partner that has been testing Windows 7, now is the time to complete your testing.

Microsoft Partner Program Gold/Certified Members will be able to download Windows 7 RTM in English through the MPN (Microsoft Partner Network) Portal on August 16. The remaining languages will become available to download on Oct. 1.

Starting August 23, Microsoft Action Pack Subscribers will be able to download Windows 7 RTM in English. By October 1st, the remaining languages will become available to download.

What It Means for Developers

MSDN subscribers and TechNet subscribers will be the first customers to get access to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, on August 6 in English and by Oct. 1 for the remaining languages.

Microsoft has offered two sites to help developers who are developing or updating applications for Windows 7, the Windows 7 for Developers Blog and the Windows 7 Developers Guide.

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By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld US
July 22, 2009
Microsoft will likely announce that Windows 7 has reached “release to manufacturing,” or RTM, status on Wednesday, sources said.

The company would neither confirm or deny that Windows 7 will RTM Wednesday; a spokeswoman on Tuesday simply repeated the company’s earlier pledge that it would move the new operating system into its final pre-sale phase sometime “in the second half of July.”

“RTM almost seems like a non-event,” said Michael Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, who stressed that he had no special knowledge of when Microsoft would declare Windows 7 finished. “But it’s got to be any day now.”

If the company does put its seal of approval on Windows 7 on Wednesday, it would be able to note that it successfully met the deadline when officials hold their quarterly earnings call with Wall Street analysts Thursday afternoon.

In Cherry’s eyes, the importance of RTM has ebbed since Windows Vista. “You really have to give a lot of kudos to Mr. Sinofsky, who controlled the schedule,” said Cherry, referring to Steven Sinofsky, who led Windows 7 development and was recently promoted to president of the Windows division. “We know what day it’s going to be available, and it looks to be a decent product. In the end, he delivered.”

Contrast that with Vista’s rollout, Cherry continued, when “you wondered if they were ever going to finish it, and what they might drop along the way.”

In a long entry to a company blog, Microsoft spokesman Brandon LeBlanc spelled out who will get Windows 7 RTM when. One of the few things he wouldn’t say was the actual RTM date. “While I have nothing new to add regarding RTM today, I do, however, have more precise information to give on when you will be able to get RTM,” said LeBlanc.

Microsoft’s hardware and software partners will receive copies of Windows 7 RTM starting Aug. 16 or Aug. 23, depending on which partner program they’re assigned. OEMs, or original equipment manufacturers — in other words, computer makers — will have Windows 7 in hand approximately two days after Microsoft’s announcement. Assuming RTM is announced Wednesday, OEMs could receive final code as early as Friday.

Volume licensing customers, normally large organizations and companies, will be able to grab Windows 7 RTM starting Aug. 7 if they have an existing Software Assurance plan, or on Sept. 1 if they do not.

Developers and IT professionals who subscribe to MSDN (Microsoft Developers Network) and TechNet, respectively, will see Windows 7 RTM show on those services’ download pages Aug. 6. Oddly enough, Microsoft said that IT professionals would also be able to grab Windows 7 from the Springboard Series site “shortly after RTM.” Microsoft was not available to clarify who would have access to the RTM, and exactly when.

Springboard is a public site that targets IT workers, and has in the past offered downloads of Windows 7’s beta and release candidate at the same time those were issued to the public.

Consumers and other customers will have their first shot at Windows 7 on its official launch day, the previously-announced Oct. 22.

LeBlanc also confirmed that Microsoft will sell a three-license “family pack” upgrade from earlier editions of the OS to Windows 7 Home Premium, but did not flesh out that notice with pricing or timing information. Reports have circulated for two weeks that Microsoft would reprise the multi-license upgrade pack it offered for Windows Vista; at least one reseller has posted the suggested list price as $149.99 on its Web site.

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By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld (US)
July 14, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - If Microsoft wants Windows 7 to succeed, to do better than limp like Vista, it has to convince the majority of users to ditch their comfortable-as-an-old-shoe — older than an old shoe, actually — OS.

Microsoft has to beat itself by one-upping its most successful OS edition of all time: Windows XP.

That’s going to be tough. Even Microsoft knows that. Last month it conceded to critics, including Gartner’s Michael Silver, who had complained that the company’s policy for continuing XP “downgrades” was a “real mess.” In response, Microsoft actually extended the availability of XP until April 2011.

So the pressure’s on to make an XP-to-Windows 7 upgrade as painless as possible. But is a pain-free process what you’ll face if you make the move? Not exactly.

Where are the bumps in the upgrade road? How difficult will the migration really be? Excellent questions.

We’ll try to answer them.

Can I upgrade from Windows XP straight to Windows 7? You betcha. And no, you don’t have make Vista a middleman.

There’s always a catch. What’s the catch this time? Unlike people running Vista, you can’t do an “in-place” upgrade from XP to Windows 7 (even though that was offered as an upgrade choice to Vista, and Microsoft’s bragged numerous times about how Windows 7 “is Vista, a lot better.”

Presumably, Microsoft doesn’t want to repeat the drama — and complaints — that XP users generated when they threw up their hands over in-place upgrades to Vista. It hinted as much in an April post to the “Engineering Windows 7″blog: “We realized at the start of this project that the ‘upgrade’ from XP would not be an experience we think would yield the best results. There are simply too many changes in how PCs have been configured (applets, hardware support, driver model, etc.) that having all of that support carry forth to Windows 7 would not be nearly as high quality as a clean install.”

Whatever the reasons, you’ll have to do what’s called a “clean” install of Windows 7, which means you’ll need to restore backed up data, recreate settings throughout Windows and reinstall all applications. (”Clean install” isn’t a choice on the Windows 7 install-type selection screen; you’ll pick “Custom” from the two-option list.)

What are the system requirements for Windows 7? They’re very similar to those for Vista. According to Microsoft, here’s what you need:

* 1GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
* 1GB RAM (32-bit) or 2GB RAM (64-bit)
* 16GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
* DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Take those with a grain of salt. Vista runs slowly on a PC with just 1GB of memory; Windows 7 may do better, but you’re still likely to be disappointed.

How do I know if my XP machine can handle Windows 7? Run the “Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor,” which as of July, was in beta. Start here, download and install the advisor, then run it.

The advisor will give you a bottom-line appraisal of your XP-based hardware and give you the green light, tell you the machine won’t make it as is or spell out what you need to beef up.

Can I buy the cheaper Upgrade edition of Windows 7, or do I have to fork over a small fortune for the “full” version? Yes to the first, no to the second.

Windows 7’s Upgrade editions, such as Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade — $120 suggested list — check to see if there’s a legitimate, activated copy of Windows on the PC before it lets you proceed. At the least, Windows XP and Windows 2000 qualify here. (Even older editions, such as Windows 98 may be eligible — Microsoft’s not been clear — but it’s very unlikely that hardware that old will take the Windows 7 strain.)

I’m running XP Home now. What are my Windows 7 choices? You can upgrade to Home Premium ($120), Professional ($200) or even Ultimate ($220) if you want.

If you were smart, you bought your upgrade during the two-week sale that Microsoft ran from June 26 through July 11, when Home Premium was priced at $50, Professional at $100. Unfortunately, those discounts are done.

I’m running XP Professional. What are my Windows 7 choices? Same as if you were running XP Home now: You can upgrade to Home Premium ($120), Professional ($200) or Ultimate ($220).

What’s the process going to be like? We won’t know for sure until Microsoft makes final Windows 7 Upgrade discs available, but the company will help you back up and then restore settings and data with the Windows Easy Transfer utility it includes on the Windows 7 DVD.

The process is too long to spell out here, but Microsoft posted a step-by-step back in January, while BlogsDNA added screenshots to those instructions.

What should I do before I start the upgrade? Tops on our list: Make a disk image of your XP machine as it exists now so that, if you later decide Windows 7 isn’t worth the disc it’s written to and you want to revert to the ancient XP, you can do so without a lot of hassle.

There are scads of free and for-a-fee backup programs for XP, some of which create a disk image, a bit-for-bit copy of the hard disk. Among the free choices are Macrium Reflect and DriveImageXML, which run on XP and let you create an image on a CD/DVD, external drive or flash drive.

I hear that the Windows 7 media comes on a DVD. I don’t have a DVD drive, just a CD-ROM drive, on my XP PC. What do I do? Start crying.

Microsoft recommends that you “rent, borrow, or buy one if you want to do the installation yourself. Alternatively, you can take your PC and DVD to a service provider that has a DVD drive available that can be used to do the upgrade.”

Right. The $50 to $120 you’ve laid out for Windows 7 Home Premium just wasn’t enough to spend, was it?
Rumors have circulated that Microsoft may offer Windows 7 Upgrade on a flash drive — a 4GB thumb drive has more than enough room — but, so far, it’s only wishful thinking on the part of the drive-less, like people running netbooks.

You can do it yourself by buying Windows 7 as a download from Microsoft’s own e-store — the only one that now offers that delivery method — then build a bootable USB drive. There are several how-to-do-that guides on the Web; our favorites are by noted Windows blogger Long Zheng, and this step-by-step.

Can I upgrade to a 64-bit edition of Windows 7? Yes, if the processor inside your PC supports 64-bit.

Retail copies and electronic downloads of Windows 7 will ship with both the 32- and 64-bit versions of the operating system, and since you have to do a clean install anyway — also a requirement if you’re moving from, say Vista 32-bit to Windows 7 64-bit — you can move up to 64-bit if you want.

Download and run the free “SecurAble” utility to see whether your processor supports 64-bit; as an added bonus, it also says whether you’ll be able to run the Windows XP Mode available to users of Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate.

Will I be able to run my old Windows XP software? Yes, if you bought the upgrade to either Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate.

Those two editions let you run Windows XP Mode, an add-on (and separate download; it doesn’t come on the DVD), that creates an XP virtual environment running under Virtual PC, Microsoft’s client virtualization technology, within Windows 7.

XP Mode comes with a fully-licensed copy of Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), so you don’t have to spring for an additional license. The mode, however, requires processor-based virtualization support. To determine whether your PC’s CPU provides that support, download and run the free “SecurAble” utility.

A beta of XP Mode can be downloaded from here and run with Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC).

I’m not forking over another $80 to Microsoft just to run programs in XP mode. What are my options? You have several.

First, you can wait until you upgrade to Windows 7, then install and try out the software you’ve been running on XP. It might work fine. (Most likely to have fewest problems: Products from Microsoft and other major vendors.)

If the program won’t run, you can try to run it in “compatibility mode.” Right-click on the program’s shortcut, select “Properties,” then click the “Compatibility” tab. Next, check the “Run this program in compatibility mode” box, and in the drop-down list, choose the version of Windows, in this case Windows XP.

Or you can run free virtualization software on Windows 7, such as Sun’s VirtualBox, with a copy of Windows XP as the “guest” OS within the virtual environment. You’ll need an XP license to install inside the virtual machine.

That may be your biggest hurdle, since if the copy of XP you’re now running came with the PC, you’re not allowed to transfer it to another system, even a virtual one (even if that PC is now running Windows 7). And if you’re upgrading from XP to Windows 7, no matter how you acquired the license for XP, the activation key on the XP CD will probably not work. (During the upgrade, the PC sends a key-cancellation request to Microsoft’s servers to nullify the XP activation/product key and link the machine to the new Windows 7 key.)

You can still buy copies of XP, but they’re pricy. On Newegg, for example, we found a copy of XP Home (the OEM edition, designed for small computer makers, but you can use it, too) for $90.

What happens if I hate Windows 7. Can I revert to Windows XP? Yes, you can, but you’ll have to do another “clean” install, this time scrubbing the drive of Windows 7 and replacing it with XP.

Before you do that, you’ll need to back up your data files and note your settings. Don’t bother with Easy Transfer Utility, which is available for XP; it’s a one-way street and doesn’t help in “downgrade” scenarios, which is what we’re talking about here.

You’ll need to reinstall all your applications on XP, too.

If you thought of this before, you’d simply wipe the drive and restore from the disk image you made earlier.

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By Elizabeth Montalbano
IDG News Service (New York Bureau)
July 14, 2009

NEW ORLEANS - Business customers can start ordering Windows 7 beginning Sept. 7, slightly ahead of the general release of the OS the next month, Microsoft unveiled on Monday.

Microsoft and its partners will take orders for Windows 7 from volume-licensing customers on that date, Microsoft Senior Vice President of Windows Bill Veghte revealed in a keynote Monday at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans.

Microsoft also will offer a limited-time discount on the software to volume-licensing customers in the range of 15 percent to 35 percent, depending on the size of the order, he said.

Windows 7 was one of several products highlighted at Microsoft’s annual partner confab. In his keynote, Veghte stressed for partners the opportunity to provide services based on the OS, which will be available worldwide to both businesses and consumers on Oct. 22, and will be released to manufacturing later this month.

Citing numbers from various research firms, including IDC, Veghte said that there are expected to be 77 million Windows 7 shipments by the end of 2010, and 59 percent of enterprises are expected to use Windows 7 in three years.

Microsoft will not be able to provide services and support for all of these customers, which is where partners come in. “We do not have the services capability to support that,” he said.

However, another research firm believes that Windows 7 adoption may not be as widespread as some analysts and Microsoft think, despite the fact that many businesses skipped over Windows Vista and are still using the nearly eight-year-old OS, Windows XP.

A new survey conducted by ScriptLogic, the results of which were revealed Monday, found that nearly 60 percent of businesses don’t currently plan to adopt Windows 7. The results were based on feedback from 1,000 IT administrators. ScriptLogic provides network administration software for Windows-based networks.

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By Dan Nystedt
IDG News Service (Taipei Bureau)
July 9, 2009

TAIPEI - Google is already working with several companies to develop devices around the new Chrome OS, including Hewlett-Packard and Acer, the company said in a blog post late Wednesday.

The list displays a vast regional spread among PC vendors, from the world’s largest PC maker, HP, to China’s biggest, Lenovo, and two of Taiwan’s top vendors, Acer and Asustek Computer. Noticeably absent was Dell.

Google also listed three mobile phone chip developers in the posting, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Freescale Semiconductor. The world’s biggest chip maker, Intel, was not on the list.

“The Google Chrome OS team is currently working with a number of technology companies to design and build devices that deliver an extraordinary end user experience,” the Google posting says.

HP could not immediately be reached for comment.

The new Chrome OS will compete against Microsoft Windows in netbooks, laptop computers and desktops. Google is developing the Linux-based operating system for heavy Internet users, and it will begin appearing in netbooks in the second half of 2010, the company has said.

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By John Fontana
Network World (US)
July 8, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - Just more than a year after it launches, Windows 7 will account for nearly half of all the client operating systems Microsoft ships to corporate users, according to forecasts by IDC.

In 2010, Windows 7 will account for 49.5% of Windows operating systems bought by corporations, or nearly 58 million copies, says IDC. Those numbers dwarf Vista, which will account for 15% of the 2010 Windows operating systems Microsoft ships that year (18 million units).

Windows 7 advance sales have been tearing up Amazon.com’s best seller list since the OS hit its pre-sale stage more than a week ago.

To characterize how fast Vista will fade, Windows XP, Vista’s predecessor, will account for nearly 35%, or nearly 41 million units, in 2010 even though the OS, which shipped at the end of 2001, will be a year into its extended support phase.

In 2011, Windows 7 will jump to nearly 75% of units shipped while Vista will slip to .5%.

IDC says that Vista will drop completely off the map in 2012, while XP will still account for 15 million units in 2012 and 8.4 million in 2013. Those units will be users who buy Windows 7 and downgrade the OS to XP via rights in their Software Assurance contracts, says Al Gillen, the IDC analyst who tabulated the Windows OS forecasts.

“What happens is Windows 7 comes along and it immediately co-ops Vista’s momentum. Vista momentum pretty directly shifts over to Windows 7,” says Gillen.

That Windows 7 momentum will translate in 2013 to the new OS accounting for 95% of the operating systems Microsoft sells to businesses. That percentage is up from 90% forecast for 2012.

“At some point users are going to want to move forward,” says Gillen. “All you need is demand for one application designed for Windows 7 and you can no longer use XP.”

Gillen says users are going to get “trapped” between two products [XP and 7], and once that happens it makes more sense to go forward not backward.”

Gillen says Windows 7’s XP Mode also will help the transition for users that still have XP applications.

“And for those customers that moved to Vista, it makes sense to me for them to move forward to 7 on a fairly immediate basis,” he says.

Microsoft is expected to push Windows 7 to the release-to-manufacturing stage next week and have the final code ready to ship on Oct. 22. Microsoft released the first public beta of Windows 7 in January and a Release Candidate beta in May.

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