The Digital DoorMatt : Windows 7

From 1 to 7 – Windows 7 is launched

digitaldive — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 19:18:40 GMT

Well it’s finally arrived, Windows 7 has RTM’d! Over the past week I’ve been at MGX in Atlanta, Microsoft’s global sales and marketing conference. On Wednesday, Steve Ballmer, Kevin Turner and Steven Sinofski took to the stage to sign off the RTM, and it was a great feeling to watch our best ever version of Windows get signed off!

Over the past year, I’ve been blogging about the new capabilities, advances and experiences I’ve had of Windows 7. We’ve had more Windows 7 pre-orders than a year’s worth of Vista sales! It’s also been fantastic watching the press’ take-up of our new OS.

· Guardian (Jack Schofield blog) -- It's official: Windows 7 has been released to manufacturing

· The Daily Telegraph -- Windows 7 vs Snow Leopard: Battle of the brands

· V3 -- Windows 7 hits release to manufacturing

· TechRadar -- Windows 7 releases to manufacturing

· PC Pro -- Microsoft finishes Windows 7

· Computer Weekly -- Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 released to manufacturers

· ZDNet -- Microsoft wraps up Windows 7 code

This is going to be a fantastic OS, and to celebrate, here’s some vintage footage of Steve Ballmer selling the first version of Windows, enjoy!

With Windows 7, let’s not forget Vista!

digitaldive — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:42:43 GMT

Both outside and inside Microsoft, the hype of Windows 7 is ever growing. Not only is Windows 7 more visually appealing, stable, more power efficient and performing, it delivers a whole host of great capability for business users.

However, let's not forget what started this all, Windows Vista. Yes, Vista had it's share of problems when it was first released back in February 2007, however those days are behind it, particularly with the delivery of service packs one and two, and Windows 7 expands on many of the capabilities pioneered in Vista.

For example, the enhanced driver model. Traditionally (XP and previous), drivers were stored in the kernel, which meant if they had a bug or became unstable, the whole system would crash (i.e. a BSOD). Now, as often as possible, drivers are now rarely stored in kernel mode, which ultimately means better stability, and fewer (if any) BSODs. If a driver fails in Vista (and 7), you'll get a message stating that the application has crashed, rather than the whole system going down.

And let's not forget the new WIM format. WIM is a hardware-agnostic, file-based image format, meaning that you need only one image to address many different hardware configurations. The WIM image format also lets you store multiple images within one actual file. For example, Microsoft can ship multiple SKUs in one WIM image file. You store images with and without core applications in a single image file. Also, you can mark one of the images as bootable, allowing you to start a computer from a disk image contained in a WIM file. WIM also has a number of other advantages:

The WIM image format enables compression and single instancing, thus reducing the size of image files significantly. Single instancing is a technique that allows you to store two or more copies of a file for the space cost of one copy. For example, if images 1, 2, and 3 all contain file A, single-instancing stores a single copy of the file A and points images 1, 2, and 3 to that copy.
The WIM image format allows you to service an image offline. You can add or delete certain operating system components, patches, and drivers without creating a new image. Rather than spending a few hours updating an image, which you do now with Microsoft Windows XP, for example, you can update an image in minutes. For example, to add a patch to a Windows XP image, you must boot the master image, add the patch, and then prepare the image again. With Windows Vista, you can simply service the image offline.
The WIM image format lets you install a disk image on partitions of any size, unlike sector-based image formats that require you to deploy a disk image to a partition that's the same size or larger than the source disk.
Windows Vista provides an API for the WIM image format called WIMGAPI that developers can use to work with WIM image files.
The WIM image format allows for non-destructive deployment. This means that you can leave data on the volume to which you apply the image because the application of the image does not erase the disk's existing contents.

From a security perspective, Vista introduced a whole host of new capability from the core upwards to make it our most secure (released) OS to date. Look at the enhanced security model, BitLocker et al. Take a look at the report on vulnerabilities between XP and Vista and see the improvements.

And of course, Vista offers great manageability, allowing IT admins to be in more control of their environment then ever before, with loads more group policy settings to control power, accessibility etc.

Of course, Windows 7 builds upon everything in the above, but let’s not lose sight of the other improvements we’ve already made to get there!

Hyper-V Management from Windows 7

digitaldive — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:10:09 GMT

I’m having fun playing with Windows 7, and am pleasantly surprised at how well rounded and stable it is, especially for a Beta! However, I wasn’t so happy when I found the Hyper-V remote management tools for Vista wouldn’t install! :(

However, I’ve found out that there is a version for Windows 7 – hoorah! And I’ve also learnt that the update will be compatible with Hyper-V R2 when it’s released. Double hoorah!

Of course, being a guy, I didn’t read the manual (well in this case, the blurb which precedes the download), which meant a few minutes hunting for a non-existent management tool! What you must do, after installing the update, is turn the feature on in Windows. So after installing the update:

Go to Control Panel.
In the Programs and Features area, click Turn Windows features on or off.
If you are prompted by User Account Control to enable the Windows Features dialog box to open, click Continue.
In the Windows Features dialog box, expand Remote Server Administration Tools.

UPDATE – The version for the Windows 7 version can be found here (I haven’t updated the link for the Beta as it expires next month, so you should be using the RC by now!):

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f6c62797-791c-48e3-b754-c7c0a09f32f3&displaylang=en

Windows 7 General Availability date announced!

digitaldive — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:18:50 GMT

Something all customers have been asking recently , the General Availability (i.e. on the shelf) date for Windows 7 has been announced as October 22^nd 2009. This was announced yesterday on the Windows team blog.

The RTM (Release to Manufacturing) date hasn’t been confirmed yet, however it is expected the code will be available around the 2^nd half of July. Windows Server 2008 R2 is expected to be around this time too. Not long to go people!!

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/06/02/the-date-for-general-availability-ga-of-windows-7-is.aspx

From 1 to 7 – Windows 7 is launched

digitaldive — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:09:00 GMT

· Guardian (Jack Schofield blog) -- It's official: Windows 7 has been released to manufacturing

· The Daily Telegraph -- Windows 7 vs Snow Leopard: Battle of the brands

· V3 -- Windows 7 hits release to manufacturing

· TechRadar -- Windows 7 releases to manufacturing

· PC Pro -- Microsoft finishes Windows 7

· Computer Weekly -- Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 released to manufacturers

· ZDNet -- Microsoft wraps up Windows 7 code

This is going to be a fantastic OS, and to celebrate, here’s some vintage footage of Steve Ballmer selling the first version of Windows, enjoy!

Windows – from evolution to revolution

digitaldive — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:54:48 GMT

I was speaking to a customer the other day about Windows 7, and it really got me thinking about how the Windows platform has evolved.

Back in the day, the operating system used to be all about doing other ‘stuff’, running applications, accessing websites and so forth. It was almost ‘transparent’ to the user, and this was certainly the perception of customers and users. It was a springboard so that we could do all the other things we needed from a PC, and everything on the OS was there to support this notion.

Even as the OS evolved from 1, 2, 3.1, 95 and the like, the advancements and evolution were there to make the experience of everything running on the PC more seamless, secure, stable and rich.

Then we take today, with the new generations of Operating System, like Vista, and soon with Windows 7. Yes they have evolved to the point where they are far more secure, stable and rich then they have ever been.

However, the OS isn’t just about enabling you to do ‘other stuff’ any more. Now it really is a platform of capability. Take some of the new features in 7 for example, a lot of which I've already blogged about, like Direct Access, AppLocker and BitLocker. Whilst these aren’t applications as such, it really shows how the OS has become a solution platform in itself, adding distinct and tangible value before we even start thinking about everything else we can add (install) to do the other things we need from our PC.

From a personal point of view, I’ve certainly seen and felt the benefits of the new generation. I feel more productive with Direct Access for example, knowing I can truly work from anywhere, with access to all of the resources I need, without having to worry about dodgy VPN connections and the like.

It’s an exciting time, bring on the release of 7!

Windows 7 – available this year and running XP apps!!

digitaldive — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:03:57 GMT

Woohoo! At TechEd on Monday, Bill Veghte announced that “…with the early RC testing and partner feedback we’ve received over the past few weeks, Windows 7 is tracking well for holiday availability”. How exciting! We should see RTM in 2009.

It’s been talked about a lot, and now you can play with it! Windows 7 will have capability to provide an XP environment to support legacy applications, by using virtualization technology. You need Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate to run it, however it’ll allow you to upgrade to the latest platform, whilst potentially being able to run XP applications, and run apps which wouldn’t normally run side-by-side together.

Windows XP Mode provides a 32-bit Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 (SP3) environment pre-loaded on a virtual hard disk. Client virtualization software, like Windows Virtual PC is a pre-requisite to use Windows XP Mode. The above screenshot (from here) shows Office 2003 running in XP mode, with Office 2007 running on Windows 7, side by side.

Take a look here for the beta.

Windows 7 – the RC is out!!

digitaldive — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:16:50 GMT

The long awaited Release Candidate for Windows 7 is out! I’ve just installed 7100 on my machine and it’s working like a dream :)

If you’ve got a TechNet or MSDN subscription, you can download it today. If not, don’t fret, you’ve only got to wait until May 5th to get your hands on it! :)

Here are some things you should know about the RC, taken from the Springboard Series blog:

Please plan ahead for Windows 7 Beta and Windows 7 RC expiration dates. To avoid interruption, you’ll need to rebuild your test machine using a genuine version of Windows 7 before the software expires. Windows will remind you when the expiration process is beginning; two weeks after this notification your PC will begin shutting down every two hours.

Windows 7 Beta expires on August 1, 2009, and bi-hourly shutdowns will begin July 1, 2009.
Windows 7 RC will expire June 1, 2010, and the bi-hourly shutdowns will begin on March 1, 2010.

Since Windows 7 RC is not the final release, your PC will gather and send information to Microsoft engineers to help them check the fixes and changes made based on testing of Windows 7 Beta.
Windows 7 RC requires that you do a clean install. Before installing Windows 7 RC, please read the Release Notes and Things to Know for important information.*
Keep your PC updated. Be sure turn on automatic updates in Windows Update in case we publish updates for Windows 7 RC.
Microsoft doesn’t offer technical support for prerelease software, including Windows 7 RC. If you have problems or questions, we encourage you to visit our online forums, where you can get answers from our Windows Community and Support Professionals.

Have fun!

Windows 7 – ‘Touching’

digitaldive — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:57:05 GMT

I’m giving a lot of Windows 7 demos at the moment, and amongst everything else, the investments made in touch technology within Windows 7 is a very popular feature with customers.

There has been a great deal of investment in touch with Windows 7, to provide new ways of interacting with the PC, over and above the keyboard and mouse. There are a number of ways touch can enhance our experience, from basic interactions with the OS, to developing new and exciting bespoke apps, similar to Microsoft Surface. We’re also working hard with our OEM partners to ensure there is a great ecosystem of devices which take advantage of the new investments in Windows 7. I’ve been using the HP TouchSmart laptops and desktops to demo Windows 7 touch. Take a look at the examples below:

Windows 7 – 1 month on

digitaldive — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:33:52 GMT

So, I’ve been using Windows 7 for a little over a month now, and thought I’d document my first impressions. And for this, believe it or not, I’m going to take my Microsoft hat off and be as candid as I can. This is by no means a concise summary of all the features and benefits of 7, rather a summary of my experiences to date.

So first off, for a beta, I’ve found it extremely stable, so much so that I use it on all my PCs, including my primary work laptop. I haven’t yet downloaded or used a program which doesn’t work with 7, and by and large all the drivers for my Lenovo X61T (of which there are a lot), work like a charm. Everything from the proprietary wireless application to the custom buttons on the laptop seem to work without a problem. My one real driver issue is explained later in this post.

I’m also loving the new usability features on the taskbar (or superbar as it’s come to be known). It’s great being able to get a quick view of what’s open (especially IE), and also quickly close any windows I want to without having to open each one. I’m also quite partial to being able to pin frequently used documents in the jump-list, particularly useful in my job when I frequently have to open a variety of decks about Microsoft products.

I haven’t had much exposure around some of the enterprise features of 7, like BranchCache and DirectAccess, however I look forwarded to being able to play with these features soon. I did however play with BitLocker to go yesterday, which allows you to encrypt portable drives using BitLocker technology, and I was surprised and pleased at how easy it was to do. It took slightly longer than I thought to actually encrypt the drive, however the actual process of encrypting a portable drive was pleasantly simple.

I’ve noticed a definite performance increase on my machine. Start-up is definitely quicker, both on boot and also logging on to Windows. I’ve also found a huge improvement for those dreaded UAC prompts! Rarely now do I have to confirm that I ‘wanted to do something’, and when I do get a prompt, it’s because of a perfectly legitimate reason. In fact, a lot of the time UAC has prevented me doing something I didn’t really want to do!

Here’s something I found out the other day. With document preview in Windows explorer, you can now copy and paste directly from the preview. How cool is that?!

So with my hat firmly sat beside me for the duration of this post, what about the bad? Well, I’ve had a few issues with the display driver, where occasionally I get the message that the display driver has stopped working, and has subsequently recovered. I’m hoping Lenovo will bring out an update to correct this. My other minor niggle is that, when you hover over the application buttons in the taskbar, the preview doesn’t always disappear when you move the cursor away from the toolbar, and sometimes the preview doesn’t even render. Again, I’m hoping these are driver issues, although I have submitted these issues to the Windows 7 dev team, and hopefully they’ll be corrected.

I guess the other thing I’m trying to get used to is the fact that when I click on an application on the taskbar, IE for example, it will always bring up the open window. For example, with IE, to open a new window, I have to right-click the IE icon, and then click Internet Explorer. But like I say, it’s just a matter of getting used to a new way of doing things, because overall I love the new taskbar/superbar and all the benefits it brings.

Let’s remember though, that this is a beta, and little niggles are bound to crop up, especially when hardware manufacturers haven’t yet brought out the latest versions of their drivers for the new OS. I mean, that’s what beta testing is all about after all!

I’m delivering my first formal customer presentation on Windows 7 next week, and I’m really looking forward to it. I really feel Microsoft have pulled one out of the bag with 7, produced something they can be very proud of, and provided me with everything I need to really evangelise the benefits 7 brings. So, if you haven’t downloaded the beta yet, my advice would be to get it, and have a good play!. You only have until February 10th to download it, so be quick!!

Now where’s that hat?

Hyper-V Management from Windows 7

digitaldive — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:11:54 GMT

However, I’ve found out that there is a version for Windows 7 – hoorah! And I’ve also learnt that the update will be compatible with Hyper-V R2 when it’s released. Double hoorah!

Go to Control Panel.
In the Programs and Features area, click Turn Windows features on or off.
If you are prompted by User Account Control to enable the Windows Features dialog box to open, click Continue.
In the Windows Features dialog box, expand Remote Server Administration Tools.

The above is an abridged version of installing the update. Download the update and full instructions from: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=82516c35-c7dc-4652-b2ea-2df99ea83dbb&displaylang=en

Windows 7 tips & tricks

digitaldive — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:22:30 GMT

The Beta’s out! I’ve been using it for the past week and a half now, and so far it’s rocking and rolling! Really like some of the usability features, and looking forward to trying things like AppLocker and Direct Access. I was reading Tim Sneath’s blog the other day, where he posted some interesting tips and shortcuts, my favourite of which are below:

Win+Left Arrow and Win+Right Arrow - dock;
Win+Up Arrow and Win+Down Arrow - maximizes and restores / minimizes;
Win+Shift+Up Arrow and Win+Shift+Down Arrow - maximizes and restores the vertical size.
Win+P, – quickly change displays:
Win+Home - minimize all the non-active background windows
Win+Shift+Left Arrow and Win+Shift+Right Arrow - move windows from one monitor to another
Win+1, Win+2, Win+3 - open the corresponding icon on the taskbar. In the below example, Win+1 will open IE, Win+2 for Outlook, Win+3 for Windows Explorer etc.
- Also on the above, left-clicking and dragging upwards on a taskbar icon opens the Jump List (useful if you are using touch screen or only have one mouse button!)

7

digitaldive — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:19:02 GMT

77777, that's the number on everyone's lips at the moment, especially in Microsoft-land. And now, at last, since the Professional Developers Conference (PDC), I can start blogging about some of the features which will be available in Windows 7!

So what's coming? Well:

Jumplists - pop-up contextual menus giving user-specific tasks related to the application

Taskbar - A new improved task bar, which groups a set of the same application (e.g IE) automatically, and allows for a preview of the full window when you hover over the application

The ribbon - you'll start seeing more of it! (e.g. in paint)

Libraries - custom views of disparate files consolidated in one place

For business users, you'll see features like:

Branch office caching - caching files downloaded from remote resources locally, to speed up performance
BitLocker - encryption for both hard drive and portable USB keys
Direct access - enabling access to corporate resources without having to VPN in
Virtualization enhancements - improvements around VDI
AppLocker - control of applications allowed in your organisation
Management - better management through automated tasks, troubleshooting platform, more flexible configuration

Read up on more of these features here

What about Vista you say? Well, remember that Windows 7 is built upon the same platform as Vista, so if you're holding out for Windows 7 because you think you'll have issues around compatibility and so forth, you should be pleasantly be surprised! Whilst Vista made a huge leap forward in terms of security and architecture, it meant some programs would not run correctly. Since the Vista launch, most vendors have provided Vista-compatible versions of their software. So anything currently running on Vista, should work on Windows 7, as they both share this platform. So make the leap now, and you'll be ready when Windows 7 is! Find out more here.

Windows 7 - they now have a blog

digitaldive — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:50:45 GMT

The next release of Windows, currently code named Windows 7, now has it's own blog. Set up by Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky, two senior engineering managers for Windows 7, the "Engineering Windows 7", or E7 blog, will begin divulging insights around the Windows 7 project.

You can visit the blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/

P.S. Above logo inserted for nostalgia's sake only :)