Microsoft Windows 7 Pricing Announced

Most of us are excited for Windows 7 but have some reservations regarding how expensive it's going to be. Fret no more, at least now the mystery is over as Redmond has finally made its 7 pricing official. Those of you planning to upgrade from XP or Vista to Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional or Ultimate will have need to come up with $119.99, $199.99 or $219.99 respectively, while those who opt for a brand new retail copy will have to spend $199.99, $299.99 or $319.99. If that’s too rich for your blood, don’t resolve yourself to piracy just yet — limited pre-orders start tomorrow with Home Premium upgrades running $49.99 and Professional upgrades coming in at $99.99.



More good news: If you absolutely need to replace a dying computer ASAP, you should feel pretty good because nearly everyone who buys a new Windows computer as of tomorrow should be able to get a free upgrade to Windows 7 (although not all manufacturers are participating in this program).

Source: Windows Team Blog

Windows 7 Pro and Ultimate Users Will Have Virtual Win XP

SuperSite for Windows have revealed an intriguing and awesome Windows 7 feature: Dubbed Windows XP Mode (XPM), a virtualized copy of Windows XP with Service Pack 3. It will be a free download for Professional and Ultimate Edition users, too bad it won't be coming to all versions. Unlike many other Virtual PC options, the environment won't require a separate workspace so you can run the individual apps as you would alongside those native to 7.



In the screenshot example pictured above, you'll see Windows XP Mode running Word 2003 next to Word 2007 under Windows 7. It looks similar to the XP compatibility mode found in Vista, which means XPM should make legacy compatibility much less of a hassle. No reports of it being found in the leaked Release Candidate build, but if you want to have more of it, hit up this link to Supersite community for more.

Windows 7 Build 7068 on Torrent Sites

I was still about to write and trying to get more info on the latest screenshots of Windows 7 build 7068 from a Japanese developer's page when I tripped over an article announcing the latest RC appearing in Mininova's index.



Users who managed to download the DVD ISO already are reporting that it appears to be the genuine article. After the last half dozen leaks, I'm inclined to believe them at this point. As always, exercise caution if you decide to download and install from the image yourself.

The newest leak comes less than a week after 7068's build date - March 21, 2009. How are the files getting out so quickly? Do you really think Microsoft isn't responsible for the leaks themselves, at the very least, more than happy to turn a blind eye.

After all, the RC is going to be made freely available in about a month for anyone who wants to download it. Every torrent download means a little less strain on Microsoft's servers. After witnessing the bum's rush users unleashed during the first few hours of the beta release, the gang in Redmond should be embracing P2P as a distribution method for the RC.

You know what to do right? I'm getting one right now. And hopefully it's all good to go in the morning.

Update: Windows7center forum also got some torrent activities going on.

Latest on Windows 7: Release Candidate out in May

Latest report from Neowin.net said that Microsoft will deliver a release candidate to the public in late May this year.

Microsoft will also give out an "escrow build" of the release candidate and offer it to a small invitation-only group of testers end of April, said Neowin, citing information from a Russian-language Web site and sources within Microsoft's technical adoption program, which gives large corporations sneak peeks at pre-release software. An escrow build is a post-development edition given to testers for one final examination for any show-stopping problems or bugs.

No ship date issued yet for Windows 7 RC, although program managers have recently revealed details about the changes that developers have made to the operating system since the public beta was released Jan. 10. Last week, for example, Chaitanya Sareen, a senior program manager on the Windows team, blogged for the second time in two weeks about RC progress.

Pirated post-beta builds of Windows 7 have also been regularly leaking to the Web. The latest, build 7057, reached BitTorrent last week and contained references to "Release Candidate 1" in its end-user licensing agreement.

While Microsoft has not promised that it will issue Windows 7 RC to the public, Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president in charge of the Windows engineering group, has repeatedly hinted that it will do so.

Microsoft today declined to comment on Neowin's projected delivery date, saying through a spokeswoman that it had "nothing new to share" on the subject.

Windows 7 offers option to turn-off Explorer 8

Great news for non-IE browser users (Firefox user here). A Microsoft Windows 7 group product manager confirmed in an announcement last Friday, that in the latest private beta build, users will be able to "turn off" -- to use his own phrase for it -- a greater number of standard Windows features including Internet Explorer 8.

"If a feature is deselected, it is not available for use. This means the files (binaries and data) are not loaded by the operating system (for security-conscious customers) and not available to users on the computer," writes Microsoft's Jack Mayo. "These same files are staged so that the features can easily be added back to the running OS without additional media."

Windows Media Center, Windows Media Player, and Windows Search (4.0) join Internet Explorer 8 and several other features that users will be able to de-select following installation. While the ability to make installed Microsoft features unavailable seems to imply that the company would be capable of offering users the option not to install these features in the first place, Mayo concluded his post by saying the company made an intentional choice to leave the "turn off" option for after setup. Mayo credited user feedback, once again, as the deciding factor.

"We know some have suggested that this set of choices be a 'setup option,'" Mayo wrote. "Some operating systems do provide this type of setup experience. As we balanced feedback, the vast majority of feedback we have received was to streamline setup and to reduce the amount of potential complexity in getting a PC running. We chose to focus this feature on the post-setup experience for Windows 7."

The notion that Internet Explorer and Windows were irreversibly linked with one another had been used by Microsoft in defense of its "bundling" of the two products, both during the US antitrust action against Microsoft a decade ago and during the recent European Commission complaint last January. And indeed, there remains many elements of shared code -- libraries that both Windows UI elements and IE utilize. But as engineers told Betanews as long ago as last October, when Windows 7 was first officially announced, more elements of the operating system's front end rely on rendering provided by Windows Presentation Foundation, not the HTML rendering engine of IE. So the act of separating the IE front end from the underlying shared components upon which it still relies, may be easier now than before.

The question will inevitably arise, then: Is a Web browser a principal component of an operating system, as Microsoft has argued affirmatively in the past? Like a political appointee telling a Sunday morning talk show host that it's time to "move on" and focus on what "the people" are more interested in, Mayo dismissed this whole discussion -- once the foundation of Microsoft's defense -- as a philosophical tangent that's not worth arguing any more.

"We don't want the discussion about this feature or these choices to digress into a philosophical discussion about the definition of an operating system," writes Mayo, "which is ultimately a challenging exercise (judging by the revision history on the community page), but we do want to improve a feature centered on helping to meet the feedback expressed by some over the summer when this blog started."

What testers discovering the feature over the weekend have yet to reveal, however, is exactly what happens both during and after the "turning off" process. Specifically, does Windows assist the user in seeking other options for a Web browser? Or does it simply leave the user without one? If it's the latter case, then the user will probably want to have downloaded the substitute of his choice, prior to the system's reboot. That may not be as smooth an "experience" as Mayo was alluding to.

But it does seem probable, if not completely clear, that one instigator of this change in Windows policy, in addition to tester feedback, was the EC's latest objections. The turning off of IE, or at least the ability to make the IE front end not a part of Windows, will nullify any argument Microsoft had left that the operating system and Web browser are intertwined. Giving users an option of other brands' Web browsers may not be the company's first choice at this moment, but the likelihood that such an option will appear -- if only in European editions -- has now substantially increased.

How to Upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7

It's quite difficult but doable. We all know that Microsoft seems to tell us that a Windows 7 upgrade is will only work from Windows Vista-based computers. Is this some kind of strategy Microsoft's playing on us loyal Windows XP users to purchase Vista before upgrading to Windows 7? I hope not. But if you're running XP, you may not be out of options.

Can we get around without purchasing and activating Windows Vista before upgrading to Windows 7? Yes we can. We have tried upgrading one old Windows XP machine over the weekend to Windows 7 Build 7000. It took us from morning till evening to wrap up the upgrade. But it's all worth it. We had the machine running Windows 7 without a glitch, at least until now.

We got a copy of a Vista promo installer to upgrade our Windows XP SP1 (yes SP1, we specifically want to try it on the earliest XP release, but should at least have Office 2007 on it). We were able to install Vista without entering any serial number. Afterwhich we installed the latest Windows 7 public beta, after waiting through a long installation process... It went in without any problem. We entered a legit serial number and activated it, crossing our fingers, it did. Everything's running without a hitch including Office 2007.

But then, this may not guarantee that everyone can have the same system installation experience when upgrading XP to Windows 7, most particularly with the final Windows 7 release. But this experience will at least tell us, at the very least that inspite of a difficult long process, Windows XP users can get their system upgraded to Windows 7 without the extra cost of purchasing a Windows Vista.

Windows 3.1 installed and running on Nokia N95

Total badazz tweak! Polish bulletin board FrazPC last night received a post from developer and writer Marcin-PRV showing that he can successfully run Windows 3.1 simultaneously with Symbian S60 on a Nokia N95.

This feat could not normally be done by the N95's ARM processor, but thanks to an emulator known as DOSBox for Symbian, the ARM chip emulates the x86 architecture...a 486, to be exact, according to Marcin.



Here are some screenshots:


Here's how he did it:

DOWNLOAD DOXBox v0.72 for Symbian by kolijoco:
DOSBox_s60.zip

DOWNLOAD Windows 3.1 for Symbien:
Win3.1-on-s60_v1.1.part1.rar
Win3.1-on-s60_v1.1.part2.rar

INSTALLATION GUIDE v1.1 (ENGLISH)
--------------------------------------------------

I. DOSBox v0.72 for Symbian by kolijoco

1. Unpack 'DOSBox_s60.rar' archiwe to your Memory Card
2. Install ALL aplication from 'Install' directory.
3. Try install DOSBox_Full.sisx
4. If show message: 'Not enought memory' install 'DOSBox_Slim.sisx' and replace previous version.

II. Windows 3.1 for Symbian (included Norton Commander 5)

1. Unpack 'Win3.1-on-s60_v1.1.rar' archive to your Memory Card.
2. Run DOSBox.

III. To switch between Windows 3.1 and Norton Commander 5.

1. Go to 'Data' directory on your Memory Card and find 'dosbox.conf' file.
2. Edit file in notepad.

2.1 To run Windows 3.1
--------------------------------------------------
# Loader 1 -- Windows 3.1
# mount a e:\Data\win31\ (To install more drivers)*
mount c e:\Data\
mount d e:\
c:
c:\Windows\win.com

# Loader 2 -- Norton Commander 5.0
# mount c e:\Data\
# mount d e:\
# c:
# c:\nc\nc.exe

* TO install new drivers you need tu put Windows 3.1 installer files to e:\Data\win31 directory.
Edit 'dosbox.conf' file and remove '#' in 'mount a e:\Data\win31\' line.

2.2 Run Norton Commander 5
--------------------------------------------------
# Loader 1 -- Windows 3.1
# mount a e:\Data\win31\ (To install more drivers)
# mount c e:\Data\
# mount d e:\
# c:
# c:\Windows\win.com

# Loader 2 -- Norton Commander 5.0
mount c e:\Data\
mount d e:\
c:
c:\nc\nc.exe

2.3 Changed
--------------------------------------------------
Added MCGA (320x200) Driver
Added Win32s v1.30c with OLE

IV. Suggestions

1. To switch between the mouse and the keyboard press "Call" key.
2. Turn off automatic screen rotation, it may cause DOSBox close.
3. To change DOSBox allocated 2MB RAM edit line 'memsize=2' in file 'e:\Data\dosbox.conf'.