Monday, November 9, 2009

The oversimplification that wishes to sell

You just need to visit the blogosphere on any given day to find oversimplified "reviews" about Windows security in general, not just in Windows 7, on which fanatics of other operating systems base their prejudices against Microsoft ... usually born from having used Windows 98 and, maybe, maximum XP and nothing else. The latest one, proclaiming that Windows 7 [is] vulnerable to 8 out of 10 viruses, which also got an echo in the usual ZDNet blog (see post below) by the same security merchants, er, "evangelists", concludes that "you still need to run anti-virus on Windows 7" (duh!). It is more than just running an antivirus program and following the prompts of the User Access Control (UAC) mechanisms: you need to "make sure you're taking advantage of all the ways that Windows can help keep your computer as secure and safe as possible" following the security checklist for Windows 7, as suggested by Microsoft. There is nothing wrong with selling antivirus software, except when it is offered under the guise of a study or a test.
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Sunday, November 1, 2009

The road to success is already paved

Unlike Windows Vista, Windows 7 was installed in many computers, both in beta versions and as release candidate (RC), before its actual commercial launch, and the fact that consumers and corporations really liked it is a sign of the wide acceptance of Windows 7. It is yet to be seen if the rate of acceptance and adoption in the corporate world will increase during the coming months and years. The fact that some will not easily jump into this news OS it is more a reflection to the attachment to the traditional, that is not broken and needs no fixing, than to the actual prowess and promise of Windows 7 as an OS for this new century now on the same playing field of Apple Macs and Linux desktops.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Windows 7 is here! Whether you like it or not...

There are "communicators" who make a living (!) repeating what they read somewhere by someone who did the same, who in turn, read it, heard it some other place, without having a real knowledge of the matter, like, for example, actually USING the product for a while, not just in passing. I came across, for instance, a moronic headline thought out to drive an audience of unsuspecting readers: Windows 7: Our Long National Vista Nightmare Is Over This article begs the questions what "nightmare"? whose "nightmare"? what is over?... and this "expert" does not even bother to explain what he meant to say with "nightmare". Slipshod. Examples abound. Google it, or Bing it!
But to make things more interesting I am surprised to hear that "I run a Windows 7 desktop as my primary home system" coming from Jason Perlow (who usually likes to praise Linux over Windows), explaining why he can never be exclusive to Linux and Open Source on the desktop. Enjoy the new season and the new Windows 7 Operating System. I am enjoying both!

Sunday, September 20, 2009

SMB 2.0 vulnerability does not affect Windows 7

Microsoft, upon investigation of new public reports of a possible vulnerability in the Server Message Block (SMB) implementation, has released an update (dated 18 September 2009) that includes information on the easy way to disable SMB 2.0, a first exploit for code execution released to small number of companies, ways that help prevent attacks, and the status of fixes. The original advisory 975497, published 12 days ago, warned about vulnerabilities in SMB that could allow remote code execution, which could indeed happen only with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, BUT NOT with Windows 7, as it was wrongfully reported (not surprisingly by a "security evangelist" working for an Internet security company. I can't help but wonder, is this just the first time?). SMB 2.0, of which CIFS—Common Internet File System is a "dialect"—is the file sharing protocol used by Windows-based computers and this new version is included in Windows Server 2008 and Vista as part of core networking improvements.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Windows 7 increasing adoption: there must be a reason

From what I've read on the Web and sometimes in the printed press, Windows 7 has gotten a great reception from all camps, namely, users of previous Windows versions and, interestingly enough, some (may be a few, may be a good number) Apple and Linux users. Notice that when I say "adoption" I don't mean to say "switching to". I can easily adopt Linux and Apple, if need be, since I can see their own obvious merits. I came across an interesting comment by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, aka The PC Doctor, a heavy user of different systems and OSes, in which he shares that his default OS is Windows (does not state which one, though), but simply because Windows is the most widespread OS and that it would take for the rest of the world to switch to Linux in order for him to follow suit. Adrian's attitude is simply "I’ve got better things to do with my day that to become a cheerleader for one corporation or another." Same here, though you may think why do I have a Windows 7 (and also a Windows Vista) blog. Well, simply because I "adopted" them as my everyday primary PC tools, after using Windows XP, 2000, 95, 3.1, DOS and my first computer experience: Apple Macintosh (beautiful machine and OS, I have to say).

Saturday, September 5, 2009

The great new Nokia Booklet 3G comes with Windows 7

Unveiled at the annual Nokia World 2009 in Stuttgart, Germany, this past week, this mini-laptop (or "netbook"), less than one inch thick, runs up to 12 hours on a battery, has built-in 3G and Wi-Fi, and among many other features, it comes preloaded with Windows 7. With this bold move of choosing an operating system that even before its official launch is already a success, Nokia is meeting finally the challenge posed by Apple and Blackberry, as the mobile phone and the computer industries move towards convergence. The Nokia Booklet 3G includes Ovi, the global brand for Nokia's Internet services, a powerful way to access and create content and services from a mobile device, desktop computer or via the Web. The promotional video, neat, evocative, for this beautiful mini-laptop is not to be missed...

Monday, August 10, 2009

Good accessories: Paint


Windows 7, like other great OSes, has now built-in decent accessories and not just plain vanilla applications. Paint is one of them, sporting the Microsoft Office 2007 Ribbon, more graphic tools, more formats, and in general more usefulness. Bravo.

Good accessories: WordPad


Windows 7 includes a revamped WordPad, which is more a simplified version of Word 2007 than just an upgrade of the WordPad version of 2001. It can handle other formats and not just text and rtf, includes a rich variety of fonts and sports the ubiquitous Microsoft Office 2007 Ribbon. Nice.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Windows 7 on shelves: 22 October 2009

Much earlier than previously announced, January 2010, that is, three months, Windows 7 will be available for the general public on shelves this coming 22 October, but IT professionals, developers and other folks closer to the action, will get their hands on Windows 7 RTM already this summer. Read more here. Brandon LeBlanc, from The Windows Blog explains in detail who gets what and when.

Burn ISO images directly from Windows 7


Burning ISO images used to require the installation of additional third-party software in previous versions of Windows, including Vista, but now with Windows 7 you can create your DVD from an ISO image right there in the Windows Explorer (see left). Another of the niceties of Windows 7!

Free Windows 7 timeline

I bet that a this point in time you already downloaded and installed one of the best operating systems ever created by Microsoft (ain't the latest version or model of anything supposed to be the best?). Well, just a reminder of the key dates to keep in mind: downloads of the RC will be available up until August 20, 2009, and the expiration date of such a treat will be on June 1, 2010, but before that your PC will start shutting down every two hours starting on March 1, 2010. And if you're still running a copy of Windows 7 Beta, it will shut down on August 1, 2009, that is, on this coming weekend!

SOLUTION: Fixing Windows 7 dual boot with Windows Vista

You can have a dual boot computer with both Windows Vista and Windows 7, but be careful when installing Windows 7 (assuming that you had first Windows Vista). This is what happened to me: I installed Windows 7, on my "old" machine running Windows Vista (Yes, you can run a lot of new (and old) software) on an empty partition that used to hold Windows XP. At the time of the installation, I selected, surely enough, the reserved partition, asked the setup program to format it, followed the prompts and finally had a brand new Windows 7 RC on my VAIO computer. Everything OK, right? Wrong! I was hoping to see the dual boot screen to pick between Vista and Windows 7 but the machine went straight to Windows 7...! What happened to my more than a year old reliable Vista?! I kind of panicked but I was sure that my Windows Vista partition was intact (I could see it from Windows 7, with another letter, though) and knew also that boot.ini is no longer an option, but rather a more sophisticated and secure loader architecture called Boot Configuration Database or Store (BCD) handled by the Windows Boot Manager program (bootmgr), replacing the traditional Windows NT loader (ntldr). I probably could've used that program directly from within Windows 7 to view and modify the contents of the BCD, but it occurred to me that the original Vista disc would do the trick and I was right. I booted the computer with the Vista disc and selected 'restore' or 'repair', which gave the choice to repair the Windows Boot Manager startup option that was missing (i.e. Vista), and the boot option now reads "Windows Vista (TM) Ultimate (recovered)", creating a copy of the then current boot configuration data at C:\Boot\BCD.backup.0001. I know that this issue is far more complex and requires much more attention and that I was probably lucky. My main concern was that I needed some special partition for my particular PC, but that wasn't the case. On the other hand, what would you do if "Windows Vista no longer starts after you install an earlier version of the Windows operating system in a dual-boot configuration"? Find it here.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Windows 7 RC hiding in plain sight...

...at the Enterprise Developer and Solutions Conference, on May 5 and 6, in New York. Cloud Computing in the Enterprise (Azure), Application Life Cycle Management and Creating Impact with Silverlight, WPF and Surface, were the main subjects of this event in which some of the sessions, if not all, were presented using Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) and nobody bothered to mention the fact, I noticed. In the meantime, to see if the changes and fixes of the Beta version are working as expected try Windows 7 RC.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Windows 7 RC ready for downloading

Since April 30 Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) version is ready to be downloaded for MSDN and TechNet subscribers, and this Tuesday, May 5, it will be available to everyone else at least through June 30. What this means is that Windows 7 is just one step ahead to be launched officially. I had predicted that Windows 7 would be released on November of 2009 but things are going faster and we should see the RTM version ("Release to Manufacturing") or "gold version", meaning that the software is ready for mass distribution, probably soon after the summer. Visit the Windows 7 official site for all the information you may need.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

"Sorry, Windows 7 beta downloads are no longer available!"

And the deadline to download was today at 12 am Pacific Time... If you did not download the ISO image file (7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso) to burn your DVD and install Window 7, then you will not be able to do it. It was indeed a great opportunity to get your hands on this new software marvel. You can still get only the Product Key, though, in case you've got the file and have not installed...

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Administrator and Standard User accounts in Windows 7

When you install Windows 7 you are asked to create an account (it does not tell which type) with a user name and a password. This account is by default an Administrator account and is part of one of the 15 default account groups. There is, on the other hand, an "Administrator" account (that is, user name "Administrator"), which is disabled, like the Guest account, and you can enable it so it will show on the opening screen with your other accounts. In Vista, in order to see the "Administrator" account at the beginning of a session, you have to run a special script. In XP, when you have other accounts, you can access the Administrator account by pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL twice. It is advisable that you create a "Standard User" account, with which you can change system settings that do not affect other users or don't compromise the security of the system. Surf the Web as a Standard User.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Windows 7 is "version 6.1.7000" but for a reason

When you go to the traditional DOS console, using the command "cmd", and type the command "ver" at the prompt, you find out that Windows 7 is actually "version 6.1.700" and the main reason being compatibility issues. In other words, if you want to run in Windows 7 a program, which is compatible with Vista (i.e. Windows 6.0 version) it may not run. Some applications did not run in Vista simply because they were designed for Windows 5.x and perhaps other reasons. However, as Mike Nash explains in his excellent blog, there's been some fodder about whether using 6.1 in the code is an indicator of the relevance of Windows 7. It is not. Windows 7 is a significant and evolutionary advancement of the client operating system. It is in every way a major effort in design, engineering and innovation.

Windows 7 running in an old computer

For lack of available equipment I installed this Windows 7 Beta in an old Dell PowerEdge 700 server (year 2004), which if not for a lack of good video features has everything it takes to run this new OS. Here are the basic specs:

  • Processor: Single Intel® Pentium® 4 CPU 2.80 GHz

  • Chipset: Intel E7210. Support for dual channel memory

  • Front Side Bus: 800MHz

  • Memory (RAM): 1.5 GB

  • Video: Embedded ATI Rage XL with 8MB memory [Microsoft recommends a video card that supports DirectX 9 graphics with 128MB memory]

  • Networking: Single embedded Intel Gigabit NIC, Intel PRO/100S; Intel PRO/1000 MT

The downside of not having the appropriate video card is manifold: you cannot use and appreciate the Windows Aero visual effects including transparency and Windows Flip 3D; in addition, hardware acceleration is not supported and a DirectX device cannot be created to open certain applications, which means basically you can not play games. However, watching (Internet) videos is possible. I will probably install a new video card in this computer, while I get a new laptop...

You are seeing my Windows 7 desktop

Finally I got my hands on the Windows 7 Beta version, Build 7000! This is a partial view of my desktop with some gadgets in full size, which now can be positioned anywhere on the desktop separately. The sidebar, the one you could open with WinKey + Space Key, is not exactly gone. What happens now in Windows 7 is that it has been renamed to "Gadgets" than can be reached by right-clicking on the desktop. Internally, the program continues to be called "sidebar.exe" and you can verify that by opening the Taskbar and looking in the "Processes" tab. The curious thing is that if you end that process, then ALL of the gadgets will close at once. Then, when you call back the gadgets ALL of them will open up at once where they were left off.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Windows 7: ushering in the convergence of new media

From what I've seen of Windows 7 so far I can draw some conclusions (some obvious and some not so obvious): • First of all, for those unsuspecting users, Windows 7 is a revamped, improved, slimmed down, beautified (as if it was necessary) Windows Vista • Windows 7 is the OS that will shut up Linux and Mac zealots, simply because it has the best of those worlds plus the already mature Vista technology; whatever you found 'cool' there, you will find it here, and then some. However, don't get me wrong, I will continue to follow and appreciate all the improvements (and innovations) you may find in Linux and Mac systems. • Windows 7 is the convergence of new media into one operating system, this time consolidated, refined and ready for the masses, namely, Internet TV, Windows Media Center with Touch, and easier Home Networking, among many others. We're living in interesting times, believe or not and, as keynote speaker Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, put it at the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), when he introduced Windows 7 Beta, "despite the economy, I hope you all agree with me, that our industry has an incredible, incredible opportunity ahead of us. I'm certainly incredibly excited to be a part of this industry." These trying times are the breeding ground for innovation and new developments. Let's embrace the challenges! See what's new in Windows 7.

Will 2009 be the year of Windows 7?

Making a quit recap, Windows Vista was released back in January 2007 and spent a troublesome year mostly because of hardware and software compatibility issues. Not because of the operating system capabilities. Then, in 2008, Service Pack 1 (SP1) came along and Vista started to show its real strength and beauty, but the damage to the image of the product was already done. However, Vista overcame successfully a nasty and biased smear campaign by the media and the competitors (read, Mac and Linux). Back to the present, 2009, and you have a big and strong multitude of followers everywhere. No doubt this will be the year of Windows Vista. But looming on the horizon is Windows 7, now getting closer and closer to the launch pad and it is just fair to ask if 2009 will be the year of Windows 7, as well. I like what Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, the PC Doctor, says of Windows 7, when he compares it to XP and Vista: if you’re looking for a solid OS then Windows 7 seems ready to deliver just that - a fast, reliable, relatively easy to use platform for your hardware and software.

You are seeing the "new" Windows 7 desktop

Watch the PDC 2008 session where it was presented
However, this is, in essence, an enhanced Windows Vista desktop with some new functionality in the taskbar, Start menu and other elements. Some previous skeptics of Vista even like it (!), the whole OS. Let me say this: Windows 7 may be "the Mojave experiment II" for a discriminating audience, and it seems to be working. Not bad for a pre-Beta release! Watch the session of PDC 2008 where the new desktop was presented.

Vista brand is alive. The New York Times was perhaps wrong


Some time back on late October 2008, the NYT claimed, in an article reviewing the pre-release of Windows 7, that Microsot "unceremoniously [dropped] the brand name Vista for the new product" only to add in the second paragraph that "the new version will instead be branded Windows 7..." All right, let's see. First of all, is debatable to say that Microsoft "ended" the Vista brand, when it is alive and kicking and will continue to be around for some years to come (look, for instance, at Windows XP). Brands are not dropped, they evolve. Vista is just a step in the Windows saga and a new OS architecture on which the future versions of Windows will most likely be based. So I would have to disagree with the NYT. Secondly, the new version will not "instead" be branded Windows 7, rather the new version is the next logical and consecutive version of this OS. Check the chart above. It shows the MAJOR Windows versions, and milestones. Note that XP does not appear, since it is simply an enhancement to 2000 and as such it was marked as version 5.1.2600. Now, whether Windows 7 is just an update of Vista is just another issue.

So Windows 7 is coming in 2009?

It's a fact. It's here. The next incarnation of the Windows Operating Systems saga will come to a PC close to (developers perhaps just like) you reportedly in early 2009, in a pre-release, Beta, version. That is, earlier than expected. The news was officially announced in the mother of all developer's gatherings, the Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles back in November 2008, where eager developers got a copy of a pre-Beta version. But guess what? Windows 7 share the same advanced architecture of Windows Vista. So, if you are flabbergasted by how cool the newer OS is, well, that's why I love Windows Vista...!

How to stay behind in IT: keep using Windows XP

And wait till Windows 7 comes out probably in early 2010 and expect an easy transition from XP and skip Vista altogether as advised by the "experts", and... right? Wrong! If you are to follow the "advise" of some so called experts who claim to have the best answers when it comes to the best choices for your IT environment then you certainly will continue to use Windows XP for a while. Yet, you will be missing the big picture: the three biggest milestones in the history of Windows OS have been Windows 95, Windows 2000 and Windows Vista. So, skipping Vista and waiting for Windows 7 is tantamount to going from Windows 98 to Windows XP. "Completely ignoring Vista is a shortsighted decision that may cause both usability and security troubles not too far down the line", says Sara Peters, senior editor at the Computer Security Institute. Windows 7 is simply an update of Vista, which is the foundation of the future of computing, at least from the Microsoft viewpoint.

While some still wander around the past, Windows 7 is in the making

Yes, it's the successor of Windows Vista, to be released in 2010, based on the Vista and Windows Server 2008 engine. [By the way, I'm also running Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition]. If you remember, Windows 3.1 came out in 1992 and then Windows 95 (Windows 4.0) and if I'm not mistaking, 2000 and XP were Windows 5.0. Windows Vista is Version 6.0.6001 (the one running in the PC I use to write this blog), says the DOS console after executing the "ver" command. Looking forward. (This post was just a side note in my personal endeavor of promoting Windows Vista).