Windows Archive

For the past several months, Microsoft has engaged in an extended public mea culpa about Vista, holding a series of press interviews to explain how the company's Vista mistakes changed the development process of Windows 7, InfoWorld reports. Chief among these changes was to 'define a feature set early on' and only share that feature set with partners and customers when the company is confident they will be incorporated into the final OS. And to solve PC-compatibility issues, Microsoft has said all versions of Windows 7 will run even on low-cost netbooks. Moreover, Microsoft reiterated that the beta of Windows 7 that is now available is already feature-complete, although its final release to business customers isn't expected until November.

eWeek has taken a look at the recently released RC of Windows Vista/Server 2008 SP2. "Microsoft fulfills its promise of a quick delivery of a Release Candidate for SP2 for Windows Vista and Windows 2008 Server. Unfortunately, enterprises will see few worthwhile upgrades. There are some hardware and wireless improvements, but users and administrators will see the most beneficial upgrades to the search capabilities."

"Shadow Copies is the informal term for Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), also known as 'Previous Versions'. All three names point to the same feature: the automatic saving of copies of files. The purpose of the service is to allow you to restore these backups of files that you have lost for any reason - file corruption, for example. VSS works in conjunction with both System Restore and Windows Backup. If it's properly set up, simply right-click a file name from within Windows Explorer and choose Restore Previous Versions to access this feature. Vista - or Windows 7, for those already using the beta of Microsoft's new OS - will open the Properties dialog for the selected file or folder, and from there you'll select the previous version you want to restore. Some users won't have to set up VSS, but in case your system isn't already configured to save versions of files, here's how to get started."

For Windows 7, Microsoft has made some changes to User Account Control to counter the criticism that UAC was too intrusive. It didn't take long before several holes were poked in Windows 7's default UAC settings, and now one is left to wonder: is it wise to sacrifice security for (perceived?) usability? Ars has an editorial that deals with this question.

The Engineering 7 blog has a post on how Microsoft hopes to ensure application compatibility between Windows Vista and Windows 7. "Delivering a new release of Windows includes a major effort to insure that applications continue to function as well on the new release as they have on the previous release. At the PDC we talked about some of the new areas of Windows Vista that reduced this level of compatibility, such as changes we made around the OS security model. With Windows 7 we renewed our engineering efforts to maintain compatibility. As with device testing, compatibility testing is an effort that spans the entire engineering organization, though we also have a group that is dedicated to this effort."

It's been nearly two months since the beta of Windows 7 was officially released to the general public, and some of us have been getting fidgety to know just what bugs have been reported and what will be fixed. Microsoft was biding its time, letting the information collect and nearly stagnate, when we finally got official word on some of the results of the testing process.

Microsoft plans to release "something akin to" a netbook version of Windows, but for servers, not PCs, over the next month or two, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said on a call with members of the financial community on Tuesday. He said that although there is not high demand at the moment for netbook-like server hardware, declining prices in the server market make a low-cost OS an attractive option for customers. "We don't exactly have a netbook phenomenon, but if somebody can buy a $500 server, they're a little loathe to spend $500 for the server operating system that goes with it," Ballmer said. He described the software as a "low-cost, low-price, low-functionality Windows Server SKU" called "Foundation Edition," but did not offer more details.

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to Betanews this afternoon that the first release candidates (without numerals) for Service Pack 2 for both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 will be released to the general public for testing next week. This after private testers with the MSDN and TechNet services receive their copies first.

Windows Mobile is a relic of the past. Especially compared to Apple's iPhone operating system, it becomes painfully obvious just how outdated, clunky, and unfriendly Windows Mobile has become. Today, Mictosoft has taken its first step in modernising the platform by releasing a sort of alpha release of Windows Mobile 6.5, with a completely revamped interface.

With more and more information regarding the various upgrade paths to Windows 7 becoming available, Ars Technica compiled a handy guide detailing the upgrade paths Microsoft offers to its customers. Are you wondering if you can buy a cheaper upgrade version of Windows 7 once it's released? Read on.

M:N threading, in which a single kernel thread is multiplexed to run multiple logical user mode threads, has long been a feature of some Unix systems (Solaris and FreeBSD have had it for years). Even Windows NT has had "Fibers" for several releases, though they suffered from the same problems as other M:N schemes and were incompatible with many Win32 APIs. Join Windows Kernel Architect Dave Probert for a discussion on the new User Mode Scheduling Feature which solves these problems while allowing applications fine grained control over their threads.

You have to hand it to them: Microsoft has made an excellent marketing move the last couple of days. Remember the UAC issue we reported on earlier? It turned out that changing UAC settings did not actually trigger a UAC dialog, allowing scripts and malware to disable UAC altogether without the user ever noticing anything - obviously leaving the system wide open. After stating numerous times the company wouldn't do anything about this issue, they have now done a complete 180, and will fix UAC to work as many had already advised. A brilliant marketing ploy right there.

Windows 7 was causing quite a bit of hype months before its release, and now that it's finally out into the void, you'd think people would be contentedly beta-ing the system and be happy to wait until the wrinkles are smoothed, right? Apparently not, at least for a certain Kelly Poe and now over 2,500 Windows 7 enthusiasts.

One of the biggest problems with Windows Vista was its rather convoluted and complicated SKU scheme, where there were far too many different versions of Vista to figure out. To make matters worse, the Home Basic version left out several defining parts of the operating system leaving customers with a sense of being lured in by certain features that in the end turned out not to be there. With Windows 7, the company will still offer a myriad of different versions, but according to Microsoft Senior Vice President Bill Veghte, it will be a lot less problematic than with Vista.