Windows 7 will be available in six different editions, but only Home Premium and Professional will be widely available at retail. The other editions are focused at other markets, such as the developing world or enterprise use. Each edition of Windows 7 will include all of the capabilities and features of the edition below it. Windows 7 Starter only supports 32-bit (x86) processor architectures while the other editions support both 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x86-64) processor architectures.
According to Microsoft, the features for all editions of Windows 7 will be stored on the machine, regardless of what edition is in use. Users who wish to upgrade to an edition of Windows 7 with more features can then use Windows Anytime Upgrade to purchase the upgrade, and unlock the features of those editions. Microsoft has not yet announced pricing information or volume licensing details for Windows 7.
Emphasized editions
Only these two versions will be available to all customers worldwide at retail and by OEM.
Windows 7 Home Premium
This edition contains features aimed at the home market segment, such as Windows Media Center, Windows Aero and touch-screen controls. Microsoft has expected this edition of Windows 7 to run on most Netbooks.
Windows 7 Professional
This edition is targeted toward enthusiasts and small business users. It includes all the features of Windows 7 Home Premium, and adds the ability to participate in a Windows Server domain. Additional features include operating as a Remote Desktop server, location aware printing, Encrypting File System, and Presentation Mode.
Other editions
The remaining four editions are targeted at selective market segments.
Windows 7 Starter
An option for "folks that will do very limited things with their PCs": the Aero Glass theme is not included, it will only be sold in a 32-bit edition, and the system is limited to running only three applications simultaneously. This will be available pre-installed on computers through system integrators or computer manufacturers.
Windows 7 Home Basic
Windows 7 Home Basic will only be available in emerging markets such as Brazil, People's Republic of China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand. It will not be available in countries such as Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, New Zealand, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Windows 7 Home Basic can run an unlimited number of applications, but some Aero Glass options are excluded along with several new features.
Windows 7 Enterprise
This edition targets the enterprise segment of the market and will be sold through volume licensing to companies which have Software Assurance contract with Microsoft. Additional features include support for Multilingual User Interface (MUI) packages, BitLocker Drive Encryption, and UNIX application-support. Not available through retail or OEM channels, this edition will be distributed through Microsoft Software Assurance (SA). As a result it includes several SA-only benefits, including a license allowing the running of multiple virtual machines, access to Virtual PC Express, and activation via VLK.
Windows 7 Ultimate
Windows 7 Ultimate contains the same features as Windows 7 Enterprise, but unlike that edition it will be available to home users on an individual license basis. Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional users will be able to upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate for a fee using Windows Anytime Upgrade if they wish to do so. Unlike Windows Vista Ultimate, the Windows 7 Ultimate edition will not include the Windows Ultimate Extras feature or any exclusive features.
(*information sourced from Wikipedia)
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Windows 7
Windows 7 (formerly codenamed Blackcomb and Vienna) is the next release of Microsoft Windows, an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, Tablet PCs, netbooks and media center PCs.
Microsoft stated in 2007 they were planning Windows 7 development for a three-year time frame starting after the release of its predecessor, Windows Vista. Microsoft has stated that the final release date would be determined by product quality.
Unlike its predecessor, Windows 7 is intended to be an incremental upgrade from Vista, with the goal of being fully compatible with device drivers, applications, and hardware with which Windows Vista is already compatible. Presentations given by the company in 2008 have focused on multi-touch support, a redesigned Windows Shell with a new taskbar, a home networking system called HomeGroup, and performance improvements. Some applications that have been included with prior releases of Microsoft Windows, most notably Windows Movie Maker, and Windows Photo Gallery, are no longer included with the operating system; they are instead offered separately (free of charge) as part of the Windows Live Essentials suite.
Development
Originally, a version of Windows codenamed Blackcomb was planned as the successor to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Major features were planned for Blackcomb, including an emphasis on searching and querying data and an advanced storage system named WinFS to enable such scenarios. Later, Blackcomb was delayed and an interim, minor release, codenamed "Longhorn" was announced for 2003. By the middle of 2003, however, Longhorn had acquired some of the features originally intended for Blackcomb. After three major viruses exploited flaws in Windows operating systems within a short time period in 2003, Microsoft changed its development priorities, putting some of Longhorn's major development work on hold in order to develop new service packs for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Development of Longhorn (Windows Vista) was also "reset" in September 2004.
Blackcomb was renamed Vienna in early 2006, and again to Windows 7 in 2007. In 2008, it was announced that Windows 7 would also be the official name of the operating system. The first external release to select Microsoft partners came in January 2008 with Milestone 1 (build 6519).
Bill Gates, in an interview with Newsweek, suggested that the next version of Windows would "be more user-centric". Gates later said that Windows 7 will also focus on performance improvements; Steven Sinofsky later expanded on this point, explaining in the Engineering Windows 7 blog that the company was using a variety of new tracing tools to measure the performance of many areas of the operating system on an ongoing basis, to help locate inefficient code paths and to help prevent performance regressions.
Senior Vice President Bill Veghte stated that Windows 7 will not have the kind of compatibility issues with Windows Vista that Vista has with previous versions. Speaking about Windows 7 on 16 October 2008, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer confirmed compatibility between Vista and Windows 7. Ballmer also confirmed the relationship between Vista and Windows 7, indicating that Windows 7 will be an improved version of Vista.
On 27 December 2008 Windows 7 Beta was leaked onto the Internet. According to a performance test by ZDNet, Windows 7 Beta has beaten both Windows XP and Vista in several key areas, including boot and shut down time, working with files and loading documents; others, including PC Pro benchmarks for typical office activities and video-editing, remain identical to Vista and slower than XP. On 7 January 2009, the 64-bit version of the Windows 7 Beta (build 7000) was leaked onto the web.
The official beta, announced at the CES 2009, was made available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers on 7 January 2009 and was made briefly available for public download on Microsoft TechNet on 9 January 2009 before being withdrawn and replaced with a coming soon message. The servers were experiencing difficulty in dealing with the number of users who wished to download the beta. Microsoft added additional servers to cope with the large volume of interest from the public. Due to the unexpectedly high demand, Microsoft also decided to remove its initial 2.5 million download limit and make it available to the public until January 24 2009, and later until February 10, from where it was no longer available to the public, although paused or deferred downloads of the DVD image files still worked until February 12.
Users can still download Windows 7 via the Microsoft Connect program. According to Neowin, the release candidate is scheduled to be released wordwide on 10 April 2009.
Features
Windows 7 includes a number of new features, such as advances in touch, speech, and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, improved performance on multi-core processors, improved boot performance, and kernel improvements.
Windows 7 adds support for systems using multiple heterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors, a new version of Windows Media Center, a Gadget for Windows Media Center, improved media features, the XPS Essentials Pack and Windows PowerShell being included, and a redesigned Calculator with multiline capabilities including Programmer and Statistics modes along with unit conversion.
Many new items have been added to the Control Panel, including ClearType Text Tuner, Display Color Calibration Wizard, Gadgets, Recovery, Troubleshooting, Workspaces Center, Location and Other Sensors, Credential Manager, Biometric Devices, System Icons, and Display. Windows Security Center has been renamed to Windows Action Center (Windows Health Center and Windows Solution Center in earlier builds) which encompasses both security and maintenance of the computer.
The taskbar has seen the biggest visual changes, where the Quick Launch toolbar has been replaced with pinning applications to the taskbar. Buttons for pinned applications are integrated with the task buttons. These buttons also enable the Jump Lists feature to allow easy access to common tasks. The revamped taskbar also allows the reordering of taskbar buttons.
Adjacent to the system clock is a small rectangle button for the new feature Peek. Hovering over this button makes all visible windows transparent for a quick look at the desktop. Clicking this button minimizes all windows.
Unlike Windows Vista, window borders and the taskbar do not turn dark when a window is maximized when Windows Aero is applied. Instead, they remain transparent.
For developers, Windows 7 includes a new networking API with support for building SOAP based web services in native code (as opposed to .NET based WCF web services), new features to shorten application install times, reduced UAC prompts, simplified development of installation packages, and improved globalization support through a new Extended Linguistic Services API.
At WinHEC 2008 Microsoft announced that color depths of 30-bit and 48-bit would be supported in Windows 7 along with the wide color gamut scRGB (which for HDMI 1.3 can be converted and output as xvYCC). The video modes supported in Windows 7 are 16-bit sRGB, 24-bit sRGB, 30-bit sRGB, 30-bit with extended color gamut sRGB, and 48-bit scRGB. Microsoft is also investigating better support for Solid State Drives and Windows 7 will be able to identify a Solid State Drive uniquely.
Online versions of Spades, Backgammon and Checkers were removed from Windows Vista, but restored in Windows 7.
Windows 7 will include Internet Explorer 8 and Windows Media Player 12.
Users will also be able to disable many more programs than was allowed in Windows Vista. New additions to this list of programs include Internet Explorer 8, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, Windows Search, and the Windows Gadget Platform.
(*information sourced from Wikipedia)
Microsoft stated in 2007 they were planning Windows 7 development for a three-year time frame starting after the release of its predecessor, Windows Vista. Microsoft has stated that the final release date would be determined by product quality.
Unlike its predecessor, Windows 7 is intended to be an incremental upgrade from Vista, with the goal of being fully compatible with device drivers, applications, and hardware with which Windows Vista is already compatible. Presentations given by the company in 2008 have focused on multi-touch support, a redesigned Windows Shell with a new taskbar, a home networking system called HomeGroup, and performance improvements. Some applications that have been included with prior releases of Microsoft Windows, most notably Windows Movie Maker, and Windows Photo Gallery, are no longer included with the operating system; they are instead offered separately (free of charge) as part of the Windows Live Essentials suite.
Development
Originally, a version of Windows codenamed Blackcomb was planned as the successor to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Major features were planned for Blackcomb, including an emphasis on searching and querying data and an advanced storage system named WinFS to enable such scenarios. Later, Blackcomb was delayed and an interim, minor release, codenamed "Longhorn" was announced for 2003. By the middle of 2003, however, Longhorn had acquired some of the features originally intended for Blackcomb. After three major viruses exploited flaws in Windows operating systems within a short time period in 2003, Microsoft changed its development priorities, putting some of Longhorn's major development work on hold in order to develop new service packs for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Development of Longhorn (Windows Vista) was also "reset" in September 2004.
Blackcomb was renamed Vienna in early 2006, and again to Windows 7 in 2007. In 2008, it was announced that Windows 7 would also be the official name of the operating system. The first external release to select Microsoft partners came in January 2008 with Milestone 1 (build 6519).
Bill Gates, in an interview with Newsweek, suggested that the next version of Windows would "be more user-centric". Gates later said that Windows 7 will also focus on performance improvements; Steven Sinofsky later expanded on this point, explaining in the Engineering Windows 7 blog that the company was using a variety of new tracing tools to measure the performance of many areas of the operating system on an ongoing basis, to help locate inefficient code paths and to help prevent performance regressions.
Senior Vice President Bill Veghte stated that Windows 7 will not have the kind of compatibility issues with Windows Vista that Vista has with previous versions. Speaking about Windows 7 on 16 October 2008, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer confirmed compatibility between Vista and Windows 7. Ballmer also confirmed the relationship between Vista and Windows 7, indicating that Windows 7 will be an improved version of Vista.
On 27 December 2008 Windows 7 Beta was leaked onto the Internet. According to a performance test by ZDNet, Windows 7 Beta has beaten both Windows XP and Vista in several key areas, including boot and shut down time, working with files and loading documents; others, including PC Pro benchmarks for typical office activities and video-editing, remain identical to Vista and slower than XP. On 7 January 2009, the 64-bit version of the Windows 7 Beta (build 7000) was leaked onto the web.
The official beta, announced at the CES 2009, was made available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers on 7 January 2009 and was made briefly available for public download on Microsoft TechNet on 9 January 2009 before being withdrawn and replaced with a coming soon message. The servers were experiencing difficulty in dealing with the number of users who wished to download the beta. Microsoft added additional servers to cope with the large volume of interest from the public. Due to the unexpectedly high demand, Microsoft also decided to remove its initial 2.5 million download limit and make it available to the public until January 24 2009, and later until February 10, from where it was no longer available to the public, although paused or deferred downloads of the DVD image files still worked until February 12.
Users can still download Windows 7 via the Microsoft Connect program. According to Neowin, the release candidate is scheduled to be released wordwide on 10 April 2009.
Features
Windows 7 includes a number of new features, such as advances in touch, speech, and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, improved performance on multi-core processors, improved boot performance, and kernel improvements.
Windows 7 adds support for systems using multiple heterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors, a new version of Windows Media Center, a Gadget for Windows Media Center, improved media features, the XPS Essentials Pack and Windows PowerShell being included, and a redesigned Calculator with multiline capabilities including Programmer and Statistics modes along with unit conversion.
Many new items have been added to the Control Panel, including ClearType Text Tuner, Display Color Calibration Wizard, Gadgets, Recovery, Troubleshooting, Workspaces Center, Location and Other Sensors, Credential Manager, Biometric Devices, System Icons, and Display. Windows Security Center has been renamed to Windows Action Center (Windows Health Center and Windows Solution Center in earlier builds) which encompasses both security and maintenance of the computer.
The taskbar has seen the biggest visual changes, where the Quick Launch toolbar has been replaced with pinning applications to the taskbar. Buttons for pinned applications are integrated with the task buttons. These buttons also enable the Jump Lists feature to allow easy access to common tasks. The revamped taskbar also allows the reordering of taskbar buttons.
Adjacent to the system clock is a small rectangle button for the new feature Peek. Hovering over this button makes all visible windows transparent for a quick look at the desktop. Clicking this button minimizes all windows.
Unlike Windows Vista, window borders and the taskbar do not turn dark when a window is maximized when Windows Aero is applied. Instead, they remain transparent.
For developers, Windows 7 includes a new networking API with support for building SOAP based web services in native code (as opposed to .NET based WCF web services), new features to shorten application install times, reduced UAC prompts, simplified development of installation packages, and improved globalization support through a new Extended Linguistic Services API.
At WinHEC 2008 Microsoft announced that color depths of 30-bit and 48-bit would be supported in Windows 7 along with the wide color gamut scRGB (which for HDMI 1.3 can be converted and output as xvYCC). The video modes supported in Windows 7 are 16-bit sRGB, 24-bit sRGB, 30-bit sRGB, 30-bit with extended color gamut sRGB, and 48-bit scRGB. Microsoft is also investigating better support for Solid State Drives and Windows 7 will be able to identify a Solid State Drive uniquely.
Online versions of Spades, Backgammon and Checkers were removed from Windows Vista, but restored in Windows 7.
Windows 7 will include Internet Explorer 8 and Windows Media Player 12.
Users will also be able to disable many more programs than was allowed in Windows Vista. New additions to this list of programs include Internet Explorer 8, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, Windows Search, and the Windows Gadget Platform.
(*information sourced from Wikipedia)
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Windows 7 Drivers
We will continue update this section as we found Windows 7 Drivers. We are tracking following brands for drivers.
- 3com Drivers
- Agere Drivers
- Ali Drivers
- Alps Drivers
- Atheros Drivers
- ATI Drivers
- Aureal Drivers
- Avermedia Drivers
- BenQ Drivers
- Broadcom Drivers
- Chicony Drivers
- C-media Drivers
- Conexant Drivers
- Creative Drivers
- Crystal Drivers
- Dell Drivers
- D-Link Drivers
- Epson Drivers
- Hauppage Drivers
- Huawei Drivers
- Intel Drivers
- Lexmark Drivers
- Logitech Drivers
- Marvell Drivers
- Microsoft Drivers
- Netgear Drivers
- Nokia Drivers
- Nvidia Drivers
- O2Micro Drivers
- Phillips Drivers
- Ralink Drivers
- Realtek Drivers
- SigmaTel Drivers
- SIS Drivers
- SMC Drivers
- Texas Instruments Drivers
- VIA Drivers
- Voyetra Drivers
- Wacom Drivers
- Yamaha Drivers
- Yuan Drivers
Windows 7 Antivirus
- Symantec offers the Norton 360 3.0 Beta which works on the Windows 7 Beta.
- AVG offers AVG Internet Security and AVG Anti-Virus that works with the Windows 7 Beta.
- Kaspersky is offering a technical preview of Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows 7.
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