Articles about Windows

Mozilla has made the third beta of Firefox 4 available for download and testing this week, and the popular browser has received two major updates: one is very visible, one is not.

The less outwardly visible improvement in Firefox 4 beta 3 is the improved JavaScript engine, which now supports 64-bit "Fat Values." This promises more efficient code execution for complex graphical and animated content, among other things.

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Usage of Windows 7 has eclipsed that of its predecessor Vista for the first time, data from research firm NetApplications indicates. Regardless, Windows XP remains the most commonly used operating system.

Share of Windows 7 in July hit 14.46 percent, a hair above Vista's 14.34 percent share for the month. This was nowhere close to Windows XP, which saw a 61.87 percent share, which has declined slowly over the past year as adoption of Windows 7 rises.

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As announced at Tech Ed 2010 in New Orleans a little more than a week ago, Invitations for the first beta of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) have reportedly begun arriving in potential testers' mailboxes.

The beta of SP1 is expected to begin in July, with the release to market some time in the fourth quarter.

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Denver-based technology research firm Janco Partners, Inc. today released a study profiling the international browser and operating system market.

The study shows that in the less than seven months that Windows 7 has been available, it has already attained a 14.8% share of the international OS market.

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In March, the Windows team announced the upcoming release of Service Pack 1 for Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2, but did not set a date of availability.

At the time, Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc said, "For Windows 7, SP1 includes only minor updates, among which are previous updates that are already delivered through Windows Update. SP1 for Windows 7 will, however, deliver an updated Remote Desktop client that takes advantage of RemoteFX introduced in the server-side with SP1 for Windows Server 2008 R2."

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Could someone please give back Steve Ballmer's brain? He really needs it. The Web is buzzing about a Microsoft executive telling APC Magazine that existing Windows Mobile handsets will not be eligible for Windows Phone 7 Series upgrades. Is Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, out of his fraking mind for letting this happen? Oh, right, someone took away his brain. Please return it.

What's all the fuss about? Firstly, the no-upgrade policy gives every possible Windows Mobile buyer every reason not to purchase. Secondly, the hottest WinMo phone, the HTC HD2, is suddenly a Windows Phone 7 Series brick. According to Natasha Kwan, Microsoft's Asia-Pacific region Mobile Communications Business GM, the HD2 "doesn't qualify because it doesn't have the three buttons." The smartphone has too much of a good thing--five buttons.

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Normally, Betanews doesn't like to do "inside baseball" stories, that deal with the individuals in the technology journalism business and all the insights as to "how the sausage is made." I'll try to make this one as painless as possible, but it needs to be done, because the individual involved had been cited by me in Betanews stories in the past.

Yesterday morning, ZDNet Editor-in-Chief Larry Dignan revealed the results of research showing that a blogger for IDG publications, and the CTO of a testing and research firm cited by that blogger, were actually the same person. Blogger Randall C. Kennedy, a trusted InfoWorld contributor up until yesterday, was Devil Mountain Software Chief Technology Officer "Craig Barth," the author of reports over the years claiming that Windows Vista performance was slower than Windows XP, and recently that Windows 7 performance was slower than Windows Vista.

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On Monday, a US District Court in Seattle dismissed with prejudice a class action case originally brought by Los Angeles native Brian Johnson in the summer of 2006. Johnson's claim at the time was that, when Windows XP used Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) feature to validate his rights to use a newly purchased XP, Microsoft not only employed software not covered by the end-user license agreement, but used it to transmit his personal information to Microsoft against his wishes.

His allegation was that XP violated California's and Washington state's statutes regarding spyware -- separate software that transmits personally identifiable data back to a source.

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Since Windows 7's final release last fall, some testers have been reporting that dual-boot network computers seem to consume power more efficiently running Windows XP than Windows 7. One example came last October from JKOnTheRun's Kevin C. Tofel, who saw his own Toshiba notebook battery die 45 minutes sooner running Win7 than Windows XP. But even then, Tofel was skeptical of a few curious facts, including that Toshiba changed its power management utilities.

Since 1999, the system that has reported battery capacity and relative power levels to the operating system has been the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI), developed by industry leaders such as Intel, Phoenix Technologies, and Toshiba. But ACPI was developed with the BIOS in mind; and as PC architecture evolves, as even Phoenix will readily concede, the conventional BIOS is becoming an historical remnant. And history has also shown that as a lithium-ion battery degrades, its capability to report its own health degrades with it. Only now have batteries become capable of reporting their capacity -- how much charge they can hold -- as compared to their manufacturers' specifications.

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During his CES 2010 keynote Wednesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spent a little bit of time showing off the slate (or tablet, if you prefer) form factor, and Windows 7's integration with it. In addition to the top secret HP tablet which Microsoft told me was flown in just hours before the event and flown right back out again, Ballmer mentioned other slates with large screens.

One of them is the forthcoming Pegatron Slate, which I had the fortune of spending a good deal of time with this afternoon.

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The key to a huge plurality, if not a majority, of exploits that have plagued Microsoft Windows over the past two decades has been tricking the system into executing data as though it were code. A malicious process can place data into its own heap -- the pile of memory reserved for its use -- that bears the pattern of executable instructions. Then once that process intentionally crashes, it can leave behind a state where the data in that heap is pointed to and then executed, usually without privilege attached.

Yet it doesn't take a malicious user to craft a heap corruption. Multithreaded applications that make use of collective heaps become like multiple users of a single, distributed database. Without intensive methodologies to maintain vigilance, making sure one thread doesn't corrupt an application's heap for all the other threads, the app collapses into something more closely resembling the more colloquial meaning of the metaphor "heap." Microsoft would like to present its development environments and runtime frameworks as providing these vigilance services on behalf of the developer, so she can concentrate on her application. But in recent years, what developers don't know about what's going on under the hood, has come back to bite them.

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Download Opera 10.5 "Pre-alpha" for Windows from Fileforum now.

How's this for a Christmas miracle: We've been saying that if Opera wants to get back in the game -- if it truly wants to earn a place among the Top 5 positions on Europe's forthcoming "Choice Screen" -- then it has to pick up the pace in the performance department. Apparently while we were writing that, the developers at Opera Software were a little ahead of us on that count.

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In response to a Saturday story from Betanews contributor Joe Wilcox, a Microsoft spokesperson told Betanews this afternoon that "the offer has not been 'pulled'" -- specifically, that it did not revoke anything with regard to its three-license Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack offer. It simply sold out, as Microsoft says its "while supplies last" offer clearly indicated as early as last July.

"The Windows 7 Family Pack was introduced as a limited time offer while supplies last in select geographies," the spokesperson told us. "Response has been very positive and, in some cases, the offer has sold out. Customers interested in upgrading their PCs should purchase Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate upgrade products."

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I've got a new spelling for "Scrooge." M-i-c-r-o-s-o-f-t. The company has ended the Windows 7 Family Pack promotion, which is a nice Ba Humbug to you and yours for the holidays. Sure, it could be good for Microsoft's bottom line and perhaps partners' PC sales. But for the masses considering upgrading existing Windows XP/Vista PCs to 7, a good thing is suddenly bad.

Maybe Microsoft executives looked at Apple charging so much for Macs and thought, "Why discount Windows 7?" Perhaps, but generally companies offer greater discounts as the holidays approach, not take them away. Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack offered three upgrade licenses for the tidy sum of $149.99. Now the upgrade price is $119.99 per license.

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They say that confession is good for the soul -- or the mind. I'll make mine but insist that you read no further unless you're willing to make yours in comments. Deal?

My confession is the real reason for running Windows 7. In September, I wrote "Why I chose Windows 7 over Snow Leopard (and why you should, too)." In that post, I explained about Windows 7 being my primary operating system since January on two different Sony VAIO notebooks (I see from comments how many Betanews readers remember the Sony rootkit and just love the company for it). As I explained in that post, two primary reasons led to my picking the newer version of Windows over Mac OS X: Windows 7's fresh, new user interface and VAIO Z720 hardware features -- mainly higher-resolution display -- compared to 13-inch MacBook Pro. But neither of these reasons is why I stuck with Windows 7, even for the productivity gains realized from using the operating system over Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

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