Archive for category Software
Windows 7 officially releases October 22nd, 2009
Posted by The Right Guy in Software, Windows, Windows 7 on June 2nd, 2009
An early Q4 release in time for the holidays
In light of addressing a very confused press and establishing a concrete release date for a very significant milestone in its corporate history, Microsoft has finally announced the official day that the Windows 7 operating system will be generally available to the world at large.
Without further hesitation, (What hesitation, you already have it in the header.sub.ed.) the official release date for Windows 7 is going to be Thursday, October 22nd, 2009. One detail we should note however is the fact that Microsoft has complete control over this launch and may decide to change the date at any time. To reach the milestone, Microsoft plans to wrap up development of the operating system by the middle or end of next month, Senior Vice President Bill Veghte said in an interview.
“We’re locked and loaded for the launch,” said Phil McKinney, Chief Technology Officer of HP’s computer unit. “The quality of code is just absolutely stellar.”
Microsoft has also stated that it will offer a “technology guarantee” program to those people who buy machines installed with Windows Vista within the few weeks prior to the launch of Windows 7. The few people in this situation will either receive a free or discounted copy of the new operating system. On another note, there have been hints suggesting that Microsoft might offer some sort of lower-cost upgrade to those who are already using Windows Vista.
Even though we now have a sound release date available, the Redmond-based software maker has yet to announce an official pricing strategy for its new crown jewel operating system. Hopefully there will be an update on this soon.
Adobe Flash to be accelerated on netbooks
Nvidia and Broadcom promise
Since Flash obviously isn’t easy on the CPU which of course reflects on netbooks’ battery life, Nvidia and Broadcom announced full hardware Flash acceleration by upgrading Adobe’s plugin resulting in smooth playback of HD flash video and lower CPU usage.
Unfortunately, these improvements will initially run only on Nvidia’s Tegra solutions or Atom netbooks with Broadcom’s Crystal HD video acceleration add-on. This means that it’ll take a while before we see this in action and even longer before it becomes a mainstream feature.
We’re likely to see some other Flash acceleration announcements as well, but until we see this feature in action we can’t say more.
More here.
Microsoft releases Windows Vista SP2 and Server 2008 SP2
Posted by The Right Guy in Software, Windows, Windows Vista on May 26th, 2009
Microsoft has released a standalone installer for Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2 today.
The software giant posted some things to know about the service packs last month, one of the warnings is if “vLite” was used to customize your Windows Vista installation, you may have removed required system components which prevent Service Pack 2 from installing. Microsoft has a workaround for this issue.
Microsoft is expected to post the bits to Windows Update in the coming weeks but if you are eager to install SP2 today then the download links are listed below.
Download: Vista SP2/Server 2008 SP2 32 bit
Download: Vista SP2/Server 2008 SP2 64 bit
US Army will adopt Vista and Office 2007 by end of this year
Posted by The Right Guy in Software, Windows, Windows Vista on May 22nd, 2009
Corporate bodies, such as businesses and the government, have traditionally been rather slow when it comes to adopting new software and technologies. This is generally for security purposes, and because they don’t see the point in upgrading from something that works. This frame of mind is not going to change any time soon; Ars Technica is reporting that the US Army is going to finally be fully upgraded to Windows Vista and Office 2007 by the end of 2009, despite Windows 7 quickly approaching.
At the moment, Ars Technica believes that about half of the Army computers are running Office 2007, and 13% are powered by Vista. Marcus D. Good, who is the chief of the Army’s Information Technology Systems Support Division, has stated, “The Army has been testing Vista since its release and has run it through the Army Golden Master program. The Army Golden Master program is responsible for the release of the Army standard baseline configurations for commonly used computing environments within the Army Enterprise Infrastructure, the team responsible for making sure applications that ran on XP will run on Vista.”
It’s unclear how long it will take the Army to make the move from Vista and Office 2007 to Windows 7 and Office 2010 when they are released, but since the changeover will only be fully complete this year, expect it to take a rather long time. It’s not a bad thing, though; the Army is serious business, and they need to be 100% certain that their computers are secure and safe. Previews of Vista for members of the Army are available here and here, to help them get used to it, as well as more efficient.