Windows Archive

Wait, news on an actual operating system? What, no H264 news? It's not even Apple-related? Yes, you're not the only one who's cynical. Anyway, we always assumed that Windows Phone 7 would be built on top of Windows Embedded CE 6.0, but as it turns out, that's not entirely accurate - it actually uses the next version of Windows CE: Windows Embedded Compact 7. No information has been made available about this new version as of yet. Update: And here's an article on how the rumour mill suggests the future of Microsoft's mobile strategy includes replacing Windows Embedded Compact with... Windows NT. Yeppers.

So, what's up with Windows Phone 7? Luckily for us, we're not left in the dark, since Microsoft regularly posts updated developer tools and emulator images for us to download. The latest release includes the new Microsoft Office functionality and integration, and after a little magic to unlock this functionality within the emulator image, you'll find Microsoft has taken an interesting approach to Office on the phone.

"Microsoft will formally launch Windows Embedded Standard 7 at this month's ESC (Embedded Systems Conference) in Silicon Valley. A keynote by Kevin Dallas, the company's general manager for Windows Embedded, will introduce the new OS and "outline a refreshed product roadmap for the embedded market", according to an email sent to beta testers this week."

We already know quite a lot about Windows Phone 7, but there's also a boatload of stuff we do not yet know. Dutch (oh yeah) technology news website Tweakers.net managed to get hold of a number of confidential internal Microsoft documents regarding Windows Phone 7, and they contain some intriguing stuff.

Ah, Intel's IA-64 architecture. More commonly known as Itanium, it can probably be seen as a market failure by now. Intel consistently failed to deliver promised updates, and clock speeds have lagged behind. Regular x86-64 processors have already overtaken Itanium, and now Microsoft has announced that Windows Server 2008 R2 is the last version of Windows to support the architecture.

As geeks, we're well aware of the importance of running as a normal user instead of as root (UNIX/Linux/BSD) or administrator (Windows). However, while this should be common knowledge to anyone reading OSNews, it's often hard to illustrate just how important it is - until now, that is. A report by BeyondTrust looked at how many security bulletins issused by Microsoft are mitigated by simply... Not running as administrator.

"Search has become an integral part of Windows, particularly in later versions. While the major search improvements began with Windows Vista and were backported to Windows XP, it's really only with Windows 7 that the larger majority of users are discovering the search bar all over in the operating system. Search is built into every aspect of Windows 7 to help users cope with the increasingly rapidly growing number of files, be they work documents and e-mails, personal photos and videos, or music collections. Many users perform searches without thinking nowadays: it's an ingrained habit of using the operating system. Like many habits, this one is worth breaking in order to to develop an even better one. Here we take a quick look at a few basic search techniques and a few more advanced ones. Force yourself to use them and you'll soon become a master of Windows Search. A bit of extra time now will save you loads of effort in the long run."

So now that the hype machine has been filled with petrol and all fired up, running on all cylinders, what on earth is going to happen to Windows Mobile 6.5? The Next Best Thing has been announced and demoed extensively, the developer tools and emulator are out there, but devices aren't expected to ship until after the summer, probably around the holiday season. This means that Microsoft must still get phone makers to buy Windows Mobile 6.5.

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.