Windows Archive

In what is surely news that will blow your mind because of its unexpectedness, Microsoft has announced the upcoming releases of service pack 1 for both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. The company had nothing to say, yet, about release schedules or possible test releases.

"We're announcing an update to Windows XP Mode today that will make it a more accessible to PCs in small and midsize businesses who want to migrate to Windows 7 Professional but have applications that still require Windows XP. Windows XP Mode will no longer require hardware virtualization technology to run. This change makes it extremely easy for businesses to use Windows XP Mode to address any application incompatibility roadblocks they might have in migrating to Windows 7."

Finally, we're getting to the meat of the matter. Windows Phone 7 Series really made major headlines when it was announced a few weeks ago, but despite the big splash, little to nothing was revealed about the developer environment. Similarly, it was unclear how third party applications would integrate with the operating system. At MIX10 today, Microsoft revealed all. Update: A lot more information, including photos and videos, at Engadget.

"Few people understand Microsoft better than Tandy Trower, who worked at the company from 1981-2009. Trower was the product manager who ultimately shipped Windows 1.0, an endeavor that some advised him was a path toward a ruined career. Four product managers had already tried and failed to ship Windows before him, and he initially thought that he was being assigned an impossible task. In this follow-up to yesterday's story on the future of Windows, Trower recounts the inside story of his experience in transforming Windows from vaporware into a product that has left an unmistakable imprint on the world, 25 years after it was first released."

"Back in November, we officially announced a new Windows product called Windows MultiPoint Server 2010. Today we are launching Windows MultiPoint Server around the world. Windows MultiPoint Server is available for purchase through OEMs and Microsoft Academic Volume Licensing customers on March 1, for schools and educational institutions (mainly for use in classrooms, labs and libraries)."

It must suck to be a Windows developer. So you already have an entire legion of misguided folk hating your work for no reason (on top of the people hating your work for legitimate reasons), and then a company comes along spreading clear misinformation about Windows' memory usage, based on that company's performance monitoring software. To make matters worse, when said company is called out on its errors, it decides to publish the usage information of an Ars Technica editor's computer. As such, it is advisable to uninstall the software in question.

Since I'm a little under the weather at the moment, posting is a bit slow on OSNews (yes, a story about Notion Ink's Adam is upcoming!). I'm kind of picking the simple and easy-to-write items for now, and this is most certainly one of them. As some of you might know, Microsoft unveiled Windows Phone 7 Series yesterday, a complete reboot of its mobile operating system. While little is known about its internals, it's most likely based on Windows Embedded CE 6.0.

So, after much, much speculation and many, many rumours, Microsoft finally took the wraps off Windows Phone 7 Series, its newest mobile operating system. Hold on to your hats, because uncharacteristically for the Redmond giant, they've rebuilt everything from the ground up - this system has little to no connection to the Windows Mobile of yore. I don't say this lightly - but dear lord, Windows Phone 7 Series is full of win. Update: Hands-on video from Engadget inside. Update II: There is no sync application. It's all done over-the-air, to the internet. Only videos and music are synced via the Zune software. Update III: Since I didn't mention it clearly, here it goes: Windows Phone 7 Series is a clean break. There is no backwards compatibility at all. Update IV: Channel9 has a 22-minute in-depth demonstration of Windows Phone 7 Series.

"Every few months I make a pilgrimage to the Sysinternals website to look at its superb collection of tools. It's now hosted inside the Microsoft Technet monster since its authors joined Microsoft as employees some while ago, but the value of their site is still as strong as ever and the tools are now guaranteed not to be ignored or left to rust."

The past few weeks or so, there's been a lot of interest in a supposed battery status report bug in Windows 7. After installing Windows 7, some users reported seeing "consider replacing your battery"-warnings in systems that appeared to be operating just fine on Windows XP or Vista. After extensive research, Steven Sinofsky has now explained on the Engineering 7 blog that the fault is not with Windows 7 - it really, really is your battery.

Heck, Microsoft really weren't kidding when they said Windows 7 was the fastest-selling operating system in the world. NetApplications released its figures for January 2010, and it seems that after only three months of availability, Microsoft's latest baby has already hit the 10% market share mark.

"Microsoft says it is investigating reports of notebooks with poor battery life with Windows 7, as first reported by users on Microsoft TechNet. These users claim their batteries were working just fine under Windows XP and/or Windows Vista, and others are saying it occurs on their new Windows 7 PCs."

An intrepid web developer has re-created the entire Windows 3.1 experience within a browser window, including games, notepad, and a web browser. Truth be told, the included web browser is a major anachronism, since it's apparently standards-compliant in 2010.

I guess it's Windows-flaw-week or something. First, we had the Internet Explorer vulnerability used in the Google attack, and now we have a bug that's been sitting undetected in Windows NT for 17 years. The bug can be used to escalate privileges, but from what I understand, it only works locally (although that isn't made clear).