Week in Microsoft: Windows Phone 7 Series arrives

Windows Phone 7 Series arrives:

This week at Mobile World Congress, Microsoft showed off its new phone platform for the first time. Everything that we knew and loathed about Windows Mobile is gone. Even the name is different. It's now 'Windows Phone 7 Series.'

One of the many unanswered questions about Windows Phone 7 Series is what the application development situation will be like. A few details have started to emerge; through both official and unofficial channels and the big news is that application development will use managed code more or less exclusively.

Windows 7 growing faster than Vista, overtakes Mac OS X

Windows 7 sold well during the 2009 holiday season, and the results are showing up, not only in sheer revenue, but in the OS market share numbers as well. Nevertheless, in December 2009, Linux was the only operating system to show positive percentage growth in market share.

Between November and December 2009, Windows market share dropped 0.31 percentage points (from 92.52 percent to 92.21 percent), Mac OS dipped 0.01 percentage points (from 5.12 percent to 5.11 percent), and Linux edged forward 0.02 percentage points (from 1.00 percent to 1.02 percent).

Strong sales from Windows 7 and Snow Leopard were not enough to stop both Windows overall and Mac OS overall from dropping. When putting this into perspective across the whole year, though, we see that Windows was actually sliding steadily throughout 2009 (93.66 percent in January 2009), while both Mac OS (4.71 percent in January 2009) and Linux (0.90 percent in January 2009) have been gaining.



You can see the market share pie for December 2009, according to Net Applications, at the top of this post. The graph directly above this paragraph shows how things at Ars are different from those elsewhere, but the differences aren't as significant when it comes to the browser market: our Mac OS share is more than five times greater than the rest of the world, while Linux is six times more. Nevertheless, more than half of our users are on Windows.



Even if Windows is slowly losing share, Windows 7 is doing phenomenally well. Above, you can see how quickly the OS has been gaining share in its first few months compared to Windows Vista's first few months.

While Vista was at 0.93 percent after a month, Windows 7 was at 4.00 percent; when Vista jumped to 2.04 percent after two months, Windows 7 hit 5.71 percent.

There are many reasons for this, including the fact that Vista had to compete with XP, which was on the market for an abnormally long time. Furthermore, Windows 7 arrived in time for holiday sales, while Vista did not. In addition, Windows 7 had a very successful beta program, both private and public. Most importantly though, Microsoft managed to generate the kind of hype around Windows 7 that it hasn't generated around any of its operating systems in years.



In terms of OS versions, Windows saw the following changes between November and December: Windows XP dropped 1.28 percentage points (from 69.05 percent to 67.77 percent), Windows Vista dropped 0.68 percentage points (from 18.55 percent to 17.87 percent), and Windows 7 gained 1.71 percentage points (from 4.00 percent to 5.71 percent), meaning it has passed all versions of Mac OS. Speaking of which, Mac OS saw the following progress: version 10.4 dipped 0.04 percentage points (from 0.84 percent to 0.80 percent), version 10.5 dipped 0.14 percentage points (from 2.61 percent to 2.47 percent), and version 10.6 moved up 0.22 percentage points (from 1.38 percent to 1.60 percent).

Taking the historical perspective, we can see that Windows Vista and Windows 7 together have just over a third of Windows XP's market share, while Mac OS 10.5 and 10.6 together have more than five times the market share of Mac OS 10.4.

Before the end of 2010, we're expecting to see Windows 7 pass Windows Vista, Windows XP to drop below the 50 percent mark, and Mac OS X 10.6 to pass 10.5 and 10.4 combined.

Document Source : arstechnica.com

Windows 7 already bigger than Snow Leopard and Linux combined

Windows 7 already bigger than Snow Leopard and Linux combined: "It's only been a couple of weeks since Windows 7 was released, but Microsoft's new OS has already captured a larger percentage of the market than Apple's OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Linux (yes, all of Linux). This doesn't come as a huge surprise, considering how many Windows users were clamoring for Win7 after the flop that is Vista. Microsoft says Windows 7's launch outdid Vista's by 234%. Those brisk sales have already netted Windows a 2% share of the world's OS business, compared to just over 1% for Snow Leopard, and just under 1% for Linux.

Despite the strong sales of Win7, Windows as a whole dropped a quarter of a percentage point in October, with Mac and Linux both making small gains. That quarter of a point hardly matters when you've got 90% of the OS market and your new operating system is being adopted quickly, though.

I expect to see Windows swing back up after Windows 7's been available for a while. I mean, we're talking about an operating system that outsold Harry Potter in the UK. Right now, it's only got a 2% share, compared to 19% for Vista and 70% for XP, but that's after only two weeks. Expect that number to zoom upward by the end of November.

[via Ars Technica]

Windows 7 already bigger than Snow Leopard and Linux combined originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

SkyDrive Explorer - Lets User's Add 25 GB Of Secure Online Storage To Windows Explorer

SkyDrive Explorer - Lets User's Add 25 GB Of Secure Online Storage To Windows Explorer: "

Microsoft SkyDrive offers a generous 25 GB of free online-storage but lacks the simplicity of having the online-storage mounted as an local disk-drive for easier access like the one offered by ZumoDrive and LiveDrive, however, the same can now be achieved by using free Windows utility - SkyDrive Explorer.

SkyDrive Explorer enables users to use SkyDrive online-storage like a local disk-drive attached to the computer, user's can perform all the actions as they are working on a local disk-drive including full drag-n-drop support and multi-operations like renaming objects or deleting a group of files/folders.

read more

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Evereybody Loves Windows 7 - Part 2 (RMS Error)

Even Linus Torvalds loves Windows 7 (see Jason Perlow).

Microsoft Security Essentials is a Free Antivirus Utility

Microsoft Security Essentials is a Free Antivirus Utility: "

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free utility that provides real-time protection to identify and eliminate harmful viruses and other malware from your PC. Today we’ll take a look at how it performs and the protection it has to offer.

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is free Anti-Malware protection that replaces their previous “pay for” utility One Care. It has left beta and version 1.0 was released to the public yesterday. As with the beta we showed you before, this version provides real-time protection and runs quietly in the background. It actually runs a lot like the beta version and the user interface is the basically same.

Before installation make sure there is no other Antivirus or spyware application running on the machine. However, you don’t need to turn off Windows Defender, because MSE takes care of it for you.

You will have to validate your copy of Windows to be able to install and use Security Essentials.

The user interface is basic, simple, and easy to use. After installation it will update the virus definitions right away. After that it will update itself automatically in the background so once installed it truly is a “set it and forget it” process.

After the database is updated the computer status turns green. There are 4 tabs at the top that allow you to control different functions.

Under Settings you can choose what actions it should take with malware based on its threat level.

By default Real-time protection is enabled but if you want to disable it you want. The Real-time protection is light on system resources and doesn’t slow down other processes at all.

It shows a green icon in the notification area letting you know your system is protected.

Progress is displayed while a manual scan takes place and tells you the amount of time it takes. Scan times will vary between systems based on amount of files and hardware performance.

It works like most other Antivirus apps and lets you scan a single file.

If a threat is detected a red attention screen pops up in the Notification Area and you can clean the threat right away based on your recommended actions or find out more detail about the threat.

If you want more details, they actually provide a good amount of information on a threat. When in the details screen you can change the recommend action if you want and clean it from there.

During out tests we tried to download an infected file, but MSE stopped it and wouldn’t allow the download to continue unless manually selecting to ignore it. This is very nice so someone doesn’t ignore the warnings, click out of the screens, and try to download and install the app anyway.

For testing we ran this on the 32-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium but it will also work with XP and Vista. It is light on system resources and runs quietly without constantly popping up messages and annoying you. It does pop up a message when it matters though. If a threat is found it will pop up a red alert to let you know about the malware and decide what actions to take. It’s nice to have a free anti-malware utility that is easy to use and effective. While Microsoft doesn’t always offer the best security solutions, they seem to have gotten this one right.

Download Microsoft Security Essentials

New Features in WordPad and Paint in Windows 7

New Features in WordPad and Paint in Windows 7: "

WordPad and Paint are often overlooked accessories included in all versions of Windows since 95. They are still included in Windows 7 and now have a new look with some enhanced features. Here we will take a look at some of the new improvements.

Classic WordPad

WordPad has always come in very handy as a quick and easy to use text editor for documents. Rather than opening up a new Word session to make simple adjustments, WordPad can save a lot of time. In fact it is all some users need to create basic letters and and other simple documents.

WordPad 6.1 w/ Ribbon UI

The new WordPad in Windows 7 includes the nicely laid out Ribbon interface which has been a feature in Office 2007 and in the forthcoming 2010. If you are new to the Ribbon, it does take getting used to, but once you do, you’ll wonder how you did without it before.

To access commonly used commands easier, just Right-click the button and choose “Add to Quick Access Toolbar”.

What may be considered the coolest new feature, it includes the ability to read and write documents to Office Open XML format, which supports Open Office (.odt) and IBM Lotus Symphony suites.

Like in pervious versions you can insert a Paint drawing.

Paint

Of course we would be remiss if we didn’t show the new Ribbon UI included in the new version of Paint.

Easier to access options for editing projects.

The main menu offers more choices for saving, printing images etc.

It looks like the Ribbon is around to stay and it’s nice to get uniformity between Windows applications. Paint and WordPad may seem like forgotten accessories, but the new look and improvements might warrant a second look.

How about you? We are curious how many of you still use WordPad or Paint and what you think about the new interface. Just leave us a comment and let us know.

How Windows 7 handles disk defragmenting

How Windows 7 handles disk defragmenting

It may not be one of the sexier changes Microsoft has made in Windows 7 beta, but the company has changed the way the operating system handles disk defragmentation. Microsoft developers Rajeev Nagar and Matt Garson have written a lengthy post on the Engineering Windows 7 blog explaining how fragmentation occurs, how modern hardware like high capacity hard drives changes things, and how Windows 7 differs from Windows Vista and Windows XP when it comes to defragging your hard drive.

In a nutshell, Windows 7 features a new graphical user interface for the Windows disk defragmentor that provides uers with more control over defrag jobs and shows more detailed information about each job. You can also safely terminate the defragmenting process any time without any adverse effects.

Like Windows Vista, Windows 7 allows for scheduled defragmentation jobs. In fact, defragmentation is automatically scheduled by default, which means that most users will never have to adjust any settings in order to optimize disk performance. Well, assuming you don't turn off your computer at night, anyway. By default, the defragmenter is set to run at 1:00AM.

Windows 7 also adds the ability to defragment multiple volumes simultaneously, and the operating system will automatically disable defragmentation on any solid state disk since there's no need to defragment flash memory and continued write access to the disk could actually shorten its life.

Master Windows 7 Jump Lists to Boost Your Win7 Productivity [Windows 7]

Master Windows 7 Jump Lists to Boost Your Win7 Productivity [Windows 7]: "

We've already mentioned the new Jump Lists feature in Windows 7 as one of our favorite features of the burgeoning operating system, and today we're taking a closer look at how you can use them to save time.

For those of you that haven't yet tried out Windows 7, when you right-click on a taskbar button in Windows 7, a menu slides out with recent documents and application tasks. You can even access it with the left mouse button if you choose. Here's a rundown of our favorite Jump List boosters.

Display More Items on Jump Lists

Before we even dive into all the great things you can do with Jump Lists, you'll probably want to increase the number of recent items that show up on the list. You can easily do so by heading into the Taskbar properties, choosing the Start Menu tab, and then clicking the Customize button. At the bottom of this window you should be able to choose the amount of items you want to show up in the Jump Lists—though you might want to play with the setting a bit to see what works best for you.

Quick Access to Media

Having quick access to your music is essential for a productive work environment, and the Jump Lists feature lets you access your frequently used media, hit the next button, or pause whatever is playing when the boss walks in—right from the taskbar button. Windows Media Player users have this functionality built in, as does anybody using iTunes 9, but foobar2000 or Winamp users aren't left in the cold either, with the same functionality available through plugins.

Open Private Browsing or Bookmarks Easily

When you want to quickly open up a new Private Browsing window, you really don't want to have to open up the browser, find the button for private browsing, and then switch the browser to private mode—you want an instant way to open it up, and Jump Lists give you exactly that. Internet Explorer has this feature baked in, Google Chrome added this functionality recently as well, and while Firefox users are currently left out, you can use an add-on application called Winfox to at least add Jump List support under Windows 7, though private browsing isn't currently an option.

Pin Document Templates to the Taskbar

Reader Stephen showed us how to pin Outlook templates to the taskbar for quick access when emailing the same thing over and over, but the same technique works for just about any application—you can create a template document in your favorite application, and then simply drag it to the taskbar button to pin it to the Jump List. Then, the next time you need to use the template you can simply right-click on the taskbar button to open it up. It's a huge time-saver, especially if your job involves a lot of repetitive tasks.

Pin Applications To the JumpList

You can't, by default, pin applications to a Jump List—that's what the start menu is designed for—but with an add-on application called JumpList Launcher, you can do just that. Simply pin the launcher to your taskbar, and then use the settings to add all of your favorite applications. You can create separate groups, and consolidate many of your taskbar launcher buttons to save space when you want quick access to an application, but don't necessarily want it taking up space on your taskbar. If the JumpList Launcher doesn't do it for you, you should take a look at how StandaloneStack can do application launching and file browsing right from your taskbar.

Pin Folders and Searches To the Taskbar

Perhaps the biggest time-saver for me is the ability to pin your most frequently used folders to the taskbar, but most people don't realize you can actually pin a search as well. Simply open up the Windows 7 search, put in your search criteria, and then drag the icon from the location bar down to the Windows Explorer taskbar button to pin the search there. I've got a habit of losing that file I was just working on, so I've created a search that finds recently modified files and pinned it to the start menu—this way I never completely lose that document again.

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Have you also taken a shine to the Jump List feature? Tell us how you've put it to good use in the comments.

Access Hidden Regional Themes in Windows 7

Access Hidden Regional Themes in Windows 7: "

Windows 7 offers you location specific Aero themes based on the language and location you pick during installation. Here we will take a look at accessing other hidden themes from different countries.

When you first start the Windows 7 installation the first thing you will do is select a language, time and currency format. This is where Windows determines what themes you’re presented with by default.

Being from the US I’m presented with location specific themes from the United States with desktop backgrounds such as scenery from Maine, Idaho, Oregon etc.

To access the other international themes copy and paste the following path into the search box and hit Enter.

C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT

In the MCT folder you will find additional themes for Canada, Australia, South Africa, and Great Britain.

You can go in and grab just the Wallpapers…

Or go into the Theme folder double click on the the thumbnail to add it.

Here you can see I added all of them and now they will be available under the My Themes section for when you want to change them around.

This is a neat little trick that will let you customize Windows 7 with hidden themes already available. Also if you want to get more themes head over to the Microsoft site.

Windows 7 Drivers for Commercial Desktops and Laptops

The Windows 7 team at Dell is excited about the progress we have made to
get the OS ready for commercial customers and is looking forward to launch in just a couple of short months! Effective August 7,
2009 MSDN, TechNet and Volume License Customers with Software Assurance can begin deploying the new operating system. We have received many requests from our business customers that we post our Windows 7 drivers so they can begin testing and qualifying the new OS within their environments.

We've listened and recently, we have started posting Dell Certified Windows 7 drivers at www.support.dell.com/Windows7 where you will find the first set of drivers for many of our commercial systems.

We will post additional drivers once they pass rigorous testing and certification standards--please check back if there is something you don't see. For customers without dedicated IT staff interested in evaluating Windows 7, check out Windows
Update.

Our services staff is also ready to help customers with the transition to Windows 7. We have a number of deployment tools and services for businesses and institutions to make the migration from Windows XP, which is what most commercial customers are running, to Windows 7 easier. ProConsult services that help customers understand how to best to deploy the new operating system, along with determining which features of the OS will benefit your business the most. After deployment, our ProSupport and ProManage services can help administer and support systems throughout their lifecycle.

Jump List Tricks for Windows Media Player in Windows 7

Back in June, I blogged the first of 6 blog posts dedicated to tips and/or tricks for Windows Media Player in Windows 7. I had originally intended to post the remaining 5 blog posts over the course of 3 weeks. However, that didn’t quite happen. I intend to post the remaining posts, starting today with the 2^nd blog post, but won’t commit to any specific timeline.

Windows 7 introduces Jump Lists as one of the many enhancements to the Windows Taskbar. And Windows Media Player takes advantage of this feature for quick access to your digital media.

Here are a few tips for working with the Jump List for Windows Media Player:

• You can drag most items off of the Windows Media Player Jump List and onto the desktop to create a shortcut that can be used on any computer to do that query and return local items.
• Doing a search on a view and double clicking one of the result items will log the search query to the Jump List. For example, can go to all songs and search for ‘NOT genre:Christmas’ and you’ll get a Jump List item of all your music with no Christmas music (see above screenshot).
• You can pin any file Windows Media Player will play in the Jump List by directly dragging and dropping the file onto the Windows Media Player icon on the Windows Taskbar.
• Clicking “Play All” or playing a stack view from File Explorer will log to the Jump List.
• If you go to Organize, then Options, and then Player - the last option in Player settings “Save recently used to the Jump List instead of frequently used” toggles what shows on your Jump List.

Hope you enjoyed these Jump List tips for Windows Media Player!

RELATED:
Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows Media Player in Windows 7

Awesome Desktop Wallpapers: The Windows 7 Edition

Awesome Desktop Wallpapers: The Windows 7 Edition: "

Today we’ve got some awesome, high-quality, and just generally amazing desktop wallpapers for your system tweaking pleasure. Unlike some of the previous roundups, we made sure to only pick wallpaper with large resolution versions available.

Click on the pictures to see the full-size version, and you’ll need to use the Download link on the left side of the download page to get the gigantic, high-quality version. All of these should fit any widescreen desktop, even large ones. Note: this first one is the official RTM wallpaper.

Got some ideas for the next wallpaper roundup? Let us know in the comments.