TechPortal

Microsoft overnight blessed the latest build of Windows 7 for ‘release to manufacture’, reaching a milestone in its efforts to push the memory of Vista far behind.

Yesterday we outlined Microsoft’s timetable for distributing the finalised ‘gold code edition of Windows 7 and observed that the OS was therefore due to reach RTM status sometime within the next two weeks.

As it turns out, Microsoft hit that milestone overnight. CEO Steve Ballmer announced at the company’s staff-only Microsoft Global Exchange sales conference in Atlanta, Georgia that Windows 7 was, at last, ready to roll. Windows exec Steven Sinofsky decreed that the fresh-baked release candidate 7600.16385 was “signed off … and declared as RTM”.

It’s been a long journey since the first external release of Windows 7’s Milestone 1 build 6519 in January 2008, but nowhere near the arduous five year trek of Vista.

Nor has the road been anywhere near as rough. With exceptional focus and under Steven Sinofky’s exceptional stewardship, the next-gen Windows has enjoyed widespread praise with almost no stumbles.

So what happens now? A set of DVDs containing the 32-bit and 64-vit RTM builds of Windows 7, along with scads of supplementary tools and gumpf, is being distributed to the PC builders of the world.

Most will receive their prized FedEx parcel by Friday, US time, so that they can begin the process of turning the raw code into their own bespoke versions of the OS with branding, customised help screens, vendor-specific software and assorted crapware.

The next official date of note in the Windows 7 distribution calendar is August 6th, when the code will be posted for download on Microsoft’s members-only MSDN, TechNet and Microsoft Connect online services. Unless it lands on the BitTorrent networks sometime in the coming fortnight (and we’re taking bets that it will).

Source : APCMag.com

There are a few Ion machines available like the Japanese DosPara machine. Well this week, we get one more Ion-wielding netbook to check out from a company named Point of View. That brand isn’t exactly a household name, but the rig has the right stuff crammed inside and some bright colors on the outside.

The machine is called the Mobii Ion 230 and inside its bright exterior hides an Intel Atom 230 CPU with the Ion platform handling the HD video capabilities. The little machine has a 10.2-inch screen with a 1024 x 600 resolution and LED backlighting. The Ion platform supports 1080p video and offers NVIDIA tech like CUDA and PurevideoHD.

The little rig has an HDMI out as well so you can enjoy that 1080p goodness on your big screen in the living room. Other features include 1GB of RAM and a 160GB HDD. The risk no optical drive considering the rig is a netbook, but it does offer a memory card reader and a standard 6-cell battery. The battery has enough oomph to run the netbook for up to four hours per charge.

The netbook will come in shockingly bright colors including black, red, and lime and should ship within the next few weeks. The big downside is that the standard OS will be Linux, hopefully a Windows option will be available as well. Availability is expected in the next few weeks at about €349 ($AUD606).

Source : APCMag.com

While the consumer market seems keen on jumping on the Windows 7 bandwagon, the people with the big money are sticking to XP.

We’ve covered how Windows 7 is making all the right noises when it comes to the typical home user, but where Microsoft earns its big money, in the IT departments of companies and corporations around the world, it seems to have run into a rather big stumbling block.

Research by TechRepublic reveals that most IT departments are quite happy with Windows XP and have little or no plans to upgrade to Windows Vista, in the few months it has left to live, yet alone Windows 7. Impressively,  from over 12,000 respondents, the research reveals that 96% of them are still using XP. 43% of them have no plans to upgrade while 45% will upgrade to Windows 7 eventually. Eventually means “only when they absolutely have to” according to 52% of respondents.

Unfortunately, only 6% of them are seriously planning to switch to Linux or OS X, so the revolution certainly won’t be happening this time around. Which suggests that, for all the hope and hype, both Mac and Linux seriously failed to move in the for kill when Windows was at its weakest in the Vista era. The inquest into how that happened really should be worth turning up for.

Naturally, a lot of these figures could be reflecting the current state of the global economy. As soon as the cash starts flowing into the IT budget once again, there could be a splurge on upgrades. But, the real deal seems to be that Microsoft finally got Windows XP in the right place (by Service Pack 2) and most corporate users are happy there and have no need to move on. Perhaps when Windows 7 reaches SP2 status, in around 3013, the computing heartland of industry will be able to move on.

Source : APCMag.com

Some “casually” left text in a post-release candidate beta of Windows 7 suggest a family pack is on the way.

In part of the end-user agreement in a recently leaked beta, a keen-eyed tester has noticed mention of a “Family Pack” version of Windows 7. The concept will be familiar to Apple users who have had such a thing for around seven years now, allowing users in the same household to install the same copy of the OS, to keep all their machines in sync.

It appears Microsoft will limit the pack to three machines, which isn’t bad – the main family desktop and mummy’s and daddy’s laptops is an obvious permutation – but somewhat down on Apple’s limit of five. Clearly Apple users have big families, or just rows and rows of Macs, carefully polished by a daddy who doesn’t get out much.

According to the Ars Technica story, the text in the Home Premium edition EULA says:

“b. Family Pack. If you are a “Qualified Family Pack User,” you may install one copy of the software marked as “Family Pack” on three computers in your household for use by people who reside there. Those computers are the “licensed computers” and are subject to these license terms. If you do not know whether you are a Qualified Family Pack User, visit go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?Linkid=141399 or contact the Microsoft affiliate serving your country.”

The link is not yet live, but that’s a pretty firm confirmation of what a lot of users had been hoping. Microsoft isn’t saying anything, yet, but will probably be waiting a week or two to let the pricing announcements sink in. Plus, it will want to get the Fourth of July holidays out of the way, when Americans have other things on their minds. Ultimate moral of this story, you really can’t keep a secret in the tech world any more.

Source : APCMag.com

Tech blogger Michael Arrington’s CrunchPad nears completion and launch with an event late this month or in early August.

One technology blog in the U.S. is moving from the world of telling readers about new gadgets into the world of telling the users about gadgets to actually making and selling gadgets to users. Michael Arrington form TechCrunch has been talking for a while now about the CrunchPad that he has been working to bring to market.

The New York Times reports that Arrington is set to bring the CrunchPad from the realm of vaporware to reality. Arrington has reportedly now incorporated a new company called CrunchPad and has said that the company will hold an event at the end of July or in early August where the device will presumably be launched.

The most recent photos of the nearly finalized design are very slick. The device looks much like a larger iPhone. The CrunchPad is said to be a mere 16mm thick, and have a screen that is at least 12-inches in size and flush with the aluminum case. The CrunchPad will also come in different colors and run an Intel Atom processor.

Strangely, the device will reportedly have no storage built-in and there is no word on if the device will offer a memory card slot for storing digital content. No keyboard will be offered with the device, which will instead use an onscreen keyboard like the iPhone. Unlike the iPhone, the CrunchPad will support Flash says Arrington. The price for the finished device is promised to be under $US300 ($AUD381).

Source : APCMag.com

Sony announces Vaio W and isn’t afraid to call it a netbook.

Sony has more Vaio models that you can shake a stick at, but no “official” netbooks on its books until now. Most of us would consider the Vaio P a netbook, but Sony refuses to see the reality of what the Vaio P actually is.

Today Sony has announced its first official netbook model called the Vaio W. If you were hoping for a snazzy design and some interesting features to set the upscale priced Vaio W apart from its peers, you will be disappointed. The only feature that is any different from the other masses of 10.1-inch netbooks on the market is the dubya’s 1366 x 768 screen resolution.

I’m not sure exactly what good a 720p HD resolution will do you on a netbook that judging from the hardware specs probably won’t stream HD content well. Other than the screen resolution, the remainder of the specifications for the netbook are common.

The Vaio W gets a 1.6GHz Atom processor, Windows XP Home, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB HDD, Wi-Fi, and a media streaming software pack called Vaio Media Plus. According to reports, the price tag for the netbook is going to be about $US629 ($AUD799 — but expect it to cost much more when it officially hits Australia). That is at least twice what the machine is worth in my opinion. Sony has another big bag of fail on its hands to go along with the Vaio P me thinks.

Source : APCMag.com

ClearType has long been a feature of Windows and evolved over the various OSes since Millennium — find out what has changed in the Windows 7 version.

Microsoft’s Engineering Windows 7 blog has just been updated with a detailed look at one of the unsung developments in the desktop experience. ClearType has slowly been improved and the blog covers a bit of the history, development and research that has gone into delivering what you see on the Windows 7 desktop.

It also explains how to alter the rendering settings in Windows 7 and how to turn it off if you prefer your fonts to be all jagged and industrial looking. There is also details of the ClearType tuner that is part of the Windows Control Panel, allowing you to beat the desktop fonts into the shape you desire. For example, “Because there are differences in monitor characteristics and differences between readers’ eyes, there are font rendering options that can only be optimized by a reader looking at text on their monitor. The ClearType Tuner uses various samples of ClearType, presented in the form of an eye-test, to make fine grained adjustments to the ClearType algorithms. Each wizard page tunes a parameter such as monitor gamma (relationship between voltage and brightness), your sensitivity to color artifacts, and your preference for letter heaviness.”

Some of the research that they have undertaken is oddly interesting too, did you know that word recognition is improved 17%, reading speed is improved 5% and eye tiredness is reduced. So next time you realise you’ve read an entire document without blinking, raise a glass to ClearType, new and improved in Windows 7.

Source : APCMag.com

Vista SP2 has gone live to the masses, but if you’ve used vLite to streamline Vista you could be facing a total reinstall of the OS from scratch.
Earlier this month Microsoft slid Vista SP2 out to its members-only MSDN  subscription service, but overnight the service pack went live on the main Microsoft Download Centre hub and is expected to flow on to Windows Update next month.

Vista SP2, which also includes SP2 for Windows Server 2008 due to the fact that both the desktop and server OS share the same codebase, requires that SP1 is already installed on your PC.

But SP2 doesn’t play well with vLite, the put-Vista-on-a-diet software which many to trim the OS back to size by removing unwanted components.

Microsoft’s even posted a specific warning on this hurdle, which during the SP2 install tosses up the error message that “One or more system components that the service pack requires are missing”.

“This problem occurs because system components that are required to install Windows Vista SP2 are not present on your computer” Microsoft explains. “A common reason for this problem is that the vLite software was used to customise the Windows Vista installation and some required system components were removed.”

Ah, but there’s a solution. “To resolve this problem, use genuine Microsoft software media to reinstall Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 and then install Windows Vista SP2.” Of course – that makes everything so easy!

You can grab the 32-bit edition of SP2 (a 348MB download) from here, or click here for the 64-bit (577MB) version.

Source : APCMag.com

The Atom-powered four-drive system looks set to be the second major WHS system that we can’t get here. Surprise, surprise…

Microsoft has taken a bit of sledging for the lack of success of its Windows Home Server platform.

Despite being quite a solid product that’s enjoyed two decent ‘Power Pack’ updates and is now closing on its second birthday, WHS has failed to gain anywhere near the mainstream penetration which Microsoft expected.

But it doesn’t help when Microsoft’s hardware partners build appealing WHS systems for the US and European markets but don’t bring them to our shores and stock them on our shelves.

It could be a pricing issue, or the reality of our smaller market size (even though Aussies have proved to be fervent adopters of technology).

None the less, we’ve already seen HP release its second-gen WHS system in the MediaSmart LX195, and HP’s local spokesman still tells us “There no plans of releasing this product locally”.

It’s the same tune with Acer, which last week launched its first WHS box. The Acer Aspire EasyStore Home Server is a compact black box with four 2.5 inch drive bays, the first of which is filled with a 1TB disk, and like HP’s LX195 is powered by Intel’s desktop-class Atom 230 with 2GB of RAM.

In addition to the five USB 2.0 ports which support an automatic ‘quick copy’ of files from a flash drive or hard drive onto the server, there’s an eSATA port and Gigabit Ethernet (of course). All this comes in at a pretty sweet US$399.

But an Acer spokeswoman told APCmag that “at the current moment Acer Australia has no plans to introduce the new EasyStore into the Australian market.”

Jeff Alexander, one of Microsoft Australia’s ‘IT Pro Evangelists’, told APCmag that the lack of brand-name systems with a strong retail presence definitely hampered Windows Home Server getting cut-through with consumers.

“In Australia, it’s probably because we haven’t had a big hardware partner to launch a box so you can go to a shop and see it on the shelf and buy it. We just haven’t got the big manufacturers like HP doing Home Server here in Australia.”

But there could be light on the Home Server horizon, with Alexander admitting that “we’re working with multinationals like HP for a possible launch.”

Source : APCMag.com

File extension PSD is most commonly associated with a Photoshop Document, a proprietary format developed by Adobe for storing layered images. PSD files are not commonly found by end users, as their use is usually restricted to design and development environments.

File Extension PSD is the default file format of Adobe Photoshop, which allows images to be saved whilst retaining fully editable layering. As a result, PSD files are usually only used in design environments where an image may need to be modified. Final images are usually stored in alternative formats such as File extension TIFF, File extension PNG or File extension JPG depending on how they are to be used. Adobe Photoshop is the industry standard application for the manipulation of bitmap images, and as a result the PSD file format is widely used and to an extent supported by rival applications.

Files with file extension PSD store images in layers, with each layer comprising of separate raster or vector images, effects or filters. Layers within PSD files may also contain masks, colour spaces, transparency, alpha channels, text or clipping paths. These are stacked on top of one another, allowing elements to be placed or effects applied on top of the original image. Each layer is referenced by a name and description which can be altered to reflect its contents, making PSD files easy to work with, even if they are worked on by multiple designers. PSD files are most frequently encountered in the design industry, though they are also widely used to distribute editable image files such as web page templates over the Internet.

Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Elements can be used to open PSD files on both the Windows and Mac platforms. Corel Paint Shop Pro and ACDSee Photo Manager can also be used to open PSD files in Windows, though some features of the document may not be fully supported.