Posted by alect on January 29th, 2010 in
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Microsoft’s gotta be pretty happy with its second quarter results, especially after two previous quarters of somewhat downtrodden reports. The company’s posting a record $19.02 billion in revenue, a 14 percent increase year-over-year. Net income / profit was $6.66 billion. Buoyed by all that is $1.71 billion in deferred revenue for Windows 7 pre-sales, which in laymen’s terms means money the company made before the fiscal quarter began but couldn’t then claim it because the product (Windows 7) hadn’t yet been delivered to the consumer. Speaking of the platform, Microsoft is claiming to now have “the fastest selling operating system in history” with 60 million licenses sold. A much better way for the gang in Redmond to the start the year, so now let’s see how the rest of 2010 plays out.
Microsoft reports $6.66b Q1 net profit, Windows 7 ‘fastest selling OS in history’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Posted by alect on January 28th, 2010 in
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No CommentsThis week Microsoft released an update for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 with a utility for restoring backups made on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 to computers that are running Windows 7 and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2.
This utility has been available for Windows Vista and Server 2008, but did not work on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
Posted by alect on January 26th, 2010 in
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No CommentsLooking to diversify as it seeks to advance its position from the #2 to the #1 PC manufacturer in the world, Taiwanese manufacturer Acer has laid out a long list of ambitious products slated for launch in 2010. The list…
Posted by alect on January 26th, 2010 in
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No CommentsLooking to diversify as it seeks to advance its position from the #2 to the #1 PC manufacturer in the world, Taiwanese manufacturer Acer has laid out a long list of ambitious products slated for launch in 2010. The list…
Posted by alect on January 26th, 2010 in
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No CommentsLooking to diversify as it seeks to advance its position from the #2 to the #1 PC manufacturer in the world, Taiwanese manufacturer Acer has laid out a long list of ambitious products slated for launch in 2010. The list…
Posted by alect on January 26th, 2010 in
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No CommentsThe HP Slate — has there ever been a more iconic, more groundbreaking, more life-altering device? Oh, there has? Well anyway, HP CTO Phil McKinney has been friendly enough to share some of the history behind the development of his company’s newly announced tablet, which is set for a release at some point later this year. Starting with e-reader prototypes five years ago, he tells us, HP steadily built up an idea of the sort of “rich media experience” modern consumers are lusting after. It’s only now, however, in a “perfect storm” of innovation, that HP finds itself capable of pairing the right hardware with the mainstream-friendly price point it was shooting for. Join us after the break for the full dose of education on this multitouch Windows 7 machine.
Continue reading HP Slate teases us with another video appearance
HP Slate teases us with another video appearance originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Posted by alect on January 26th, 2010 in
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No CommentsAaron Dietrich's job was far from glamorous: making Windows 7 start faster than its predecessor. He was floored when reviews touted the new operating system’s start-up speed.
Months before Windows 7 launched, Aaron Dietrich's boss forwarded him an early product review from CNET, an online technology news site. Until then, Dietrich hadn't heard an outsider's take on the new operating system. When he read the article, he found a prominent—and glowing—mention of lightning-fast start-up times.
“I always viewed myself as just one piece of the whole Windows puzzle,” Dietrich says. “It's really when we brought it all together that we got such a great product.”
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"It gave me a really good feeling," Dietrich says. "I thought, 'Wow, it's not just that we're on the right path, but we're really making a change in perception for reviewers and the general public here.'"
As senior development lead on the Windows Client Performance team, Dietrich had toiled to make sure Windows 7-based PCs would fire up like rockets. But he was surprised again and again when praise for the faster start-up performance popped up repeatedly in the press and in the blogosphere.
"It's not a fancy new UI feature," he said. "It's not that thing in your face all the time like a desktop feature or window switcher or something like that." Still, he took pride in the kudos that Windows 7 was receiving.
Dietrich, who came to Microsoft nine years ago after completing graduate studies at Rochester Institute of Technology, worked with Windows 7 features teams to keep the operating system lean enough to clock significantly faster start-up times. He said it really did take a village to build Windows 7.
"I always viewed myself as just one piece of the whole Windows puzzle," he said. "It's really when we brought it all together that we got such a great product."
The Microsoft News Center talked recently with Dietrich about his work on Windows 7.
The News Center: What was your role working on Windows 7?
Dietrich: For Windows 7, I was on the Windows Client Performance team. Rather than owning a specific feature, we kind of work as a liaison with many different teams within Windows to help them analyze and resolve performance issues with the operating system.
The News Center: How did you increase start-up performance in Windows 7?
Dietrich: There were a couple of key features that allowed us to get better boot times. The first was we introduced what we call the fast boot feature, which allows some parts of boot to happen in the background while Windows is discovering and initializing devices. That helped us gain up to 25 percent of our boot time over Windows Vista, depending on the hardware.
The other big one was that we significantly reduced the size of the operating system required to be read from disk in order to boot. Whereas Windows Vista required somewhere on the order of 220 to 240 megabytes of operating system code to boot, Windows 7 requires anywhere from 140 to 180 megabytes, depending on the configuration of the system.
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The Man Behind Windows 7’s Fast Start Aaron Dietrich's job was far from glamorous making Windows
Posted by alect on January 26th, 2010 in
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No CommentsSince Windows 7 went gold, the Internet has been abuzz with little tips and tricks to improve the end-user experience. One of these tips, originating from back when Windows 7 was still in beta, outlined how to access Super Secret Hidden Wallpapers in the %windir%\Globalization\MCT folder. Sadly, nobody seemed to really understand what these folders are for – and worse, never challenged the steps to gain access the wallpaper. (It’s super easy, keep reading.)
Before we go forward, we need to define some acronyms, clear up some fancytalk, and tie everything together with a simple picture:
- Theme: A collection and configuration of elements – wallpaper, screensaver, sounds, and colors – that work together to provide a specific look and feel.
- MCT: A Market-Customized Theme is merely a Theme tailored for a specific locale (e.g. South Africa).
- Local Pack: A collection of locale-specific elements, typically links, RSS feeds, and a MCT.
Continue at WintinWindows.com how to activate your local pack:
Demystifying Windows 7 Local Packs and the MCT folders – Within Windows
Posted by alect on January 23rd, 2010 in
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No CommentsYou either love it or hate it, and ever since Chrome and Safari upped their games, we’ve been getting a little burned out by Firefox. Hopefully that will all change now with version 3.6 — new and improved (fingers crossed)…
Posted by alect on January 22nd, 2010 in
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We learned back in November that Windows 7 was having a much (much!) better first few days in retail than Vista did when it launched, but now that the system has had a full quarter and change to make an impression, it looks as if that growth isn’t slowing down. According to new figures from Net Application, Win7 is achieving a higher level of market penetration in a faster amount of time than Vista did; after a month, Vista was stuck at 0.93 percent, while Win7 nailed the 4 percent mark. After two months, Win7 jumped to 5.71 percent, while Vista was barely over 2 percent after the same amount of time. ‘Course, the newest version of Windows had a holiday season to help it out right from the get-go, but there’s still no denying that people are flocking to the system even now. What’s most interesting, however, is that the overall market share of Windows 7 alone has now surpassed all OS X versions that are being tracked (10.4, 10.5 and 10.6), so put that in your pipe and smoke it. Smoke it long and hard.
Windows 7 way hotter than Vista off the line, now more popular than all OS X versions originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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