Windows 7 3D Advances

By DustinPosted on

Windows 7 is only one month away from widespread public release, and people are starting to get excited. TechARP takes a look at how Windows 7 improves on the graphics processor. They also take a quick look at how multi-GPU support is improved with Windows 7. I know a few of you readers are avid gamers, so this should be of interest to you. I am still spec’ing out a machine with 3 GPU’s, 2 in SLI and 1 for physics. Windows 7 should play nicely with that setup.

Beta testers have so far been very impressed with Windows 7. It’s fast and it’s stable. One of the reasons is the improved graphics capability in Windows 7. Microsoft seemed hesitant in utilizing the full capabilities of the graphics processor in Windows Vista, which was a real shame. Windows 7 changes all that, and that’s what we will be talking about today.

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Office Coming To The Web Next Week

By DustinPosted on

It’s been mentioned before, but Microsoft Office is coming to the web, as part of their Live offerings. This is extremely good news, as I could use this a lot. It is a direct competitor to Google Apps, which also offers some Office compatibility. Public testing starts later this week. I’ll definitely be giving this a lot of my time. Of course, I wonder how many features it does have. Can I still run VBA macros? Does it support full formatting options? How large of a spreadsheet can I have? Some things I’ll have to look in to.

Microsoft will offer browser-based Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in two ways. For consumers, they will be offered via Microsoft’s Office Live Web site, while businesses will be able to offer browser-based Office capabilities through Microsoft’s SharePoint Server product.

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Big Cat On Microsoft Campus

By DustinPosted on

Almost sounds like Apple is coming for Microsoft. But, this isn’t Snow Leopard. It’s a cougar. I bet there are a few Microsoft employees scared of the cat on the loose. Being from the Northwest, I’m no stranger to the big cats being around, but it is still pretty cool.

The sightings were enough to prompt Microsoft to send out a note on Friday letting its employees know what they should do if they encounter one of the cats, which are also known as mountain lions.

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Windows 7 Online Summit From MVP’s

By DustinPosted on

Doing a lot of work online, helping others and just chatting with others, I meet a lot of Microsoft MVP’s (been nominated myself quite a few times over the years, too!). Well, on October 7th, five MVP’s are holding an online summit to answer your questions and give you the lowdown on Windows 7. From an enthusiast point of view. Show up if you want to learn more, in plain english.

Is Windows 7 really that good? Did it become what Windows Vista was
supposed to be? Does it meet the expectations?

October 7, starting 1:00 PM (EDT), we give you the answers…

Meet the team that worked closely with the development team in Redmond,
built production systems, configured, deployed, hardened, debugged, tested,
crashed,modified and ran the new platform through all possible scenarios.

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A Reason To Upgrade From Windows 2000

By DustinPosted on

For those of you still running Windows 2000, which is probably very few, Microsoft has given a new reason to upgrade to at the very least Windows XP. Windows 2000 has had a questionable TCP/IP stack, and Microsoft has said that it would take a considerable amount of changes to the core of the OS, that it would hurt compatibility for the aging OS (which still is under MS support until 2010). It’s a good reason to finally upgrade, if you’ve been putting it off. If you are, you might want to also upgrade that 5.25″ floppy to the 3.5″. 🙂

“The architecture to properly support TCP/IP protection does not exist on Microsoft Windows 2000 systems, making it infeasible to build the fix. To do so would require re-architecting a very significant amount of the Windows 2000 SP4 operating system, not just the affected component. The product of such a re-architecture effort would be sufficiently incompatible … that there would be no assurance that applications designed to run on Windows 2000 SP4 would continue to operate on the updated system.”

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Vista is Less Good, So 7 is More Better

By DustinPosted on

Microsoft has admitted that Windows Vista was a “less good” of a product for Microsoft. Personally, I really love Vista. It was superior to Windows XP, and Windows 7 is superior to Vista. That’s how it is supposed to be.

“What people underestimate is the importance of good or bad products,” said Songhurst. “And sometimes your products are good, sometimes the products are bad. And I think Vista was a less good product for Microsoft.”

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New Site

By DustinPosted on

We are working on updating the site to better serve our readers. Thank you for your patience and understanding while we move the FAQ’s, files and pictures to the new site. We are also having some issues logging in, the forums and some small visual issues. Thank you for your support!

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Users Are Abandoning XP For Vista and 7

By DustinPosted on

Some good news, Windows 7 market share is just above 1% of the market for OSes. Not bad at all for an Operating System that has yet to be released to the public. This is good news for the newest OS from Microsoft. Also in the good news department, the commonly refered to “failed OS”, Vista, also gained some market share, as many users have started dumping Windows XP in favor of the more secure, but resource hungry, OS.

Windows 7’s share has more than doubled since May, when Microsoft issued the Release Candidate (RC) , the final public preview of the OS. Since then, Microsoft has wrapped up Windows 7, and delivered a RTM (release to manufacturing) build to computer makers, volume license customers and subscribers to its TechNet and MSDN services.

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