Windows 7 News
It has been some time since we last posted news about Microsoft;s upcoming operating system Windows 7. Microsoft has made some important announcements in the past few days. The first big news which hit the online news sites today is that Microsoft will provide the options to upgrade Windows XP to Windows 7. The term upgrade might cause some confusion as it refers to the possibility for XP users to purchase Windows 7 at reduced prices rather than allowing them to upgrade their operating system to Windows 7 which is apparently not possible. So, legit Windows XP users will be able to purchase Windows 7 at a reduced price but need to do a clean install to actually use the operating system.
The second interesting news story is that Microsoft decided to reduce the editions that Windows 7 will ship in when compared to Windows Vista. The so called edition chaos was one of the major reasons for confusion for prospective Windows Vista customers.
Windows 7 will basically be distributed as Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate. There are other versions but those are designed for different markets. Windows 7 Home Premium will be the equivalent of the Windows Vista Home Premium featuring a solid set of features. Windows 7 Professional will be the successor of Windows Vista Business which includes all features of Windows 7 Home Premium plus some business features like group policy based management tools, Remote Desktop host capabilities or network-based backup features.
Windows 7 Ultimate will include all features of Windows 7 Professional plus all supported language packs (something that the other editions miss and users have to pay for), BitLocker whole-drive encryption and capabilities to boot from vhd.
It basically comes down to three Windows 7 editions. It should also be noted that there are no talks yet about Windows 7 Ultimate extras, something that did not work as intended in Windows Vista as well as several users felt cheated by the lack of and quality of the extras.
Most of these information have been taken from our own Windows 7 blog which covers all the latest news about the upcoming operating system. A well visited Windows 7 Forum is available on the same site.
Do you think that those two strategic decisions by Microsoft are good ones? Will they convince Windows XP users to switch to Windows 7?
Author: Martin Brinkmann
Windows 7 News
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Windows 7 News
Microsoft is very reserved about Windows 7 in an effort to avoid damaging Windows Vista sales. The testers that already have copies of Windows 7, the new Microsoft operating system, are not that reserved and it is because of them that we see all those screenshots, videos and information popping up about the new Microsoft operating system. It is definitely in an early development stage and one should not get to excited – or disappointed – by the looks and features that have been revealed as of now.
Windows 7 News is reporting that a Chinese blogger revealed new information about the latest Windows 7 release publishing screenshots, a video and a large article on his website. The article has been pulled after only a few hours and it is unclear why it was pulled.
Thanks to Internet Caches though it was possible to reconstruct the article. The new release is displaying several new functions and layouts that have not been implemented in previous releases of Windows 7.
While most changes are marginal some might really improve the operating system. Windows Vista users won;t be happy to hear that the UAC, the User Account Control, is still in place. A change was implemented though which asks the user if he wants to temporarily disable UAC if more than one action that requires UAC is initiated.
Other changes have been made to the Windows Health Center, the Windows Explorer layout and the search in the Start Menu that is now displaying search results using the full width of the menu. Head over to Windows 7 news to take a look at the screenshots and videos that have been posted on the Chinese website.
Author: Martin Brinkmann
Windows 7 News
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