Builds for Windows 7 keep powering forward; it seems there are new ones being reported weekly, but here’s one that might be worth sitting up and paying attention for: it appears Windows 7 has reached build 7105, an RC build. But in addition to this, it’s worth remembering that a Windows 7 RC could possibly be available April 10th. This timing makes it seem as though Neowin’s exclusive source was dead on, and that in a few days time Microsoft will announce availability of an RC build for its latest operating system.

The string for this build is 6.1.7105.0.090404-1235_x86fre_client_en-us_Retail_Ultimate-GB1CULFRER_EN_DVD, and it was compiled on April 4th. Many contested that this means it’s a fake; April 4th is a Saturday, but those thoughts have been dismissed with the fact that Microsoft still compiles builds on Saturdays.

Russian site DJForum.ru is reporting this, but remember you’ll need a good proficiency in Russian to read this. The last reported build leak was last month, and it’s expected for 7105 to be leaked shortly also, although it’s hoped a public announcement will be made soon, as mentioned. So, what are they changes that are being reported so far?

1. Improved networking support, the work in the local network
2. Added support for some previously incompatible programs
3. Extras in the LP (?) and small cosmetic interface improvements
4. Added support for new drivers for various devices
5. Extended support sensory displays
6. A small optimization and changes in the kernel

It seems that Windows 7 development is definitely drawing to a close, as now the only changes are bug fixes and optimizations; no new major features are being added, although keep in mind that there could still be some surprises left.

Source: Neowin.net

Now that IE 8 is available for download via Microsoft Download website, users should expect IE 8 being delivered via Windows Update soon. TechARP is reporting that Microsoft will release IE8 via Windows Update a week later and schedule automatic updates at the end of April, 2009.

Refer the IE 8 release notes for more info on the known issues, compatibility issues and other issues.

Microsoft released the Wave 0 (25 languages) which is the RTM version of IE 8 yesterday. The Wave 1 (18 languages) is scheduled on the week of April 20, 2009 and Wave 2 (21 languages) is scheduled on the week of June 1, 2009

Wave 0 (RTM) – Languages
Arabic, Chinese (Hong Kong), Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional),Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (US), Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew,Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil),Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish

Wave 1 – Languages
Bosnia (Cyrillic), Bosnian (Latin), Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Estonian, Hindi, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Romanian, Serbian (Cyrillic), Serbian (Latin), Slovak, Slovenian, Thai, Ukrainian, Vietnamese

Wave 2 – Languages
Albanian, Assamese, Basque, Bengali (Bangladesh), Bengali (India), Gujarati, Indonesian, Kannada, Kazakh, Konkani, Kyrgyz, Latvian, Malay (Brunei Darussalam), Malay (Malaysia), Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi (India), Tamil, Telugu, Uzbek (Latin)

Below is the release schedule

Microsoft Download Center
Wave 0 – March 19, 2009
Wave 1 – Week of April 20, 2009
Wave 2 – Week of June 1, 2009

Windows Update
Wave 0 – Week of March 23 (for Beta / RC users) & Week of April 13 (for all other users)
Wave 1 – Week of May 18, 2009
Wave 2 – TBD

Automatic Updates
Wave 0 – April 27, 2009
Wave 1 – May 5, 2009
Wave 2 – June 24, 2009

News source: Neowin.net

Today Microsoft Corp. announced the availability of Windows Internet Explorer 8, the new Web browser that offers the best solution for how people use the Web today. It can be downloaded in 25 languages at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8 starting at noon EDT on March 19. Internet Explorer 8 is easier to use, faster and offers leading-edge security features in direct response to people’s increasing concerns about online safety. A new study commissioned by Microsoft and the National Cyber Security Alliance and conducted by Harris Interactive Inc. shows that 91 percent of adults in the U.S. are concerned about online threats in the current economic climate, and 78 percent are more likely to choose a Web browser with built-in security than they were two years ago.

“Customers have made clear what they want in a Web browser — safety, speed and greater ease of use,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. “With Internet Explorer 8, we are delivering a browser that gets people to the information they need, fast, and provides protection that no other browser can match.”

In response to extensive customer research and input from tens of millions of customer sessions, Microsoft developed Internet Explorer 8 to focus on what matters most to people. The security enhancements offer protection against existing and emerging security threats online. It blocks two to four times more malware attacks than other browsers; cuts down on the time it takes to complete common tasks on the Web such as searching, mapping and sharing, including navigating 15 of the 20 top worldwide sites; and blurs the lines between the services they use daily and the browser used to access the Internet.

Continues at source: Microsoft.com

So IE8 should be available at 4pm here in the UK

The E7 team has posted a massive list of changes from Beta to RC based on feedback. Below are some of the changes.

Desktop Experience

1. Improved taskbar thumbnail overflow

Our customers are enjoying how windows are grouped and revealed on the enhanced taskbar. Some enthusiasts who have a significant number of open windows for a program encounter our scaling mechanism; the thumbnail view turns into a list view. Although this UI is virtually identical to experience in XP and Vista, customers still want to enjoy new functionality of the thumbnail view. Bentronic wrote, “It’s nice that there’s a little close button on the thumbnail previews–why not have a similar button for when it’s showing as a list?  Being able to run down the list clicking the close button instead of right-clicking would be great.” For RC we’ve made the list view architecturally the same as the thumbnail view, just sans thumbnails. Customers will now enjoy close buttons and the menus open on hover (in Beta one had to click to open them).

Fig 1.

List View of running windows appears on hover and supports close

2. Control Panel Jump List

Right-clicking on the Control Panel icon on the taskbar in Beta revealed a noticeably sparse Jump List. A few people such as Britney told us “Should most recently used items be displayed in the Jump List of the CPL when pinned to the taskbar? Something should be shown and nothing is there right now”. In RC the Control Panel Jump List offers quick access to recently used items.

Fig 2.

The Control Panel Jump List now surfaces recently used items

2. PowerShell Jump List

By default PowerShell in Beta launched a streamlined console. Customers could load optional modules via distinct shortcuts in the Start Menu. We heard from you that this was a confusing experience. Additionally, PowerShell did not surface a way to launch related tasks such as the Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE) from within their console experience. PowerShell now has a robust Jump List that affords a method to load modules, launch the ISE and open documentation.

3. Remote Desktop Jump List

Rajeev made us smile with his comment, “Being able to add my Remote Desktop shortcut to the taskbar—good. Saving settings and showing them in the Recent items section—awesome. Being able to pin the connections in the Jump List, so they always appear—priceless!” Well, Rajeev and others who shared this request, you will be enjoy this functionality in RC.

4. Applying taskbar settings

Have you ever customized the taskbar, only to find your changes were not saved across sessions? Has the taskbar ever inexplicably moved on you after you log in? For a variety of reasons, previous versions of Windows saved taskbar settings only after Explorer exited at the end of a session. However, if the OS is not shutdown properly these settings did not persist. Based on the bugs we saw from Beta, we decided to change our architecture and write these settings within 30 seconds (providing enough time to batch a group of changes) during the session. This means settings will now be more reliable.

Touch

5. Multi-touch zoom

One of the pieces of feedback we heard from the Beta was that customers enjoy the new multi-touch zoom feature, but wish it was supported in Windows Explorer.  In response to this feedback we have added support for the zoom gesture in Windows Explorer.  Using the zoom gesture you can switch between view modes in Explorer such as zooming from Small Icons to Extra Large icons.

Windows Explorer and Libraries

6. Invert Selection

In an effort to make improvements to performance, network bandwidth and memory footprint for various scenarios (e.g. libraries, search and search federation), we rearchitected the implementation of the view code in Windows Explorer. As part of this we did not to port “Invert Selection” since this rarely used feature is pretty complex to implement in the context of virtualized lists.  Despite the small percentage of usage we’ve recorded, those who missed it have been pretty vocal 🙂  On one of the blog posts, GGreig summarized what we heard from several of you—“Invert Selection; that’s a useful – sometimes absolutely invaluable – little piece of functionality, and I definitely don’t want to see it go…Please reinstate Invert Selection.” Given the feedback from enthusiasts, we added back the functionality for RC.

Continues at source: Engineering Windows 7 blog

By linking your Live ID to your user account in Windows 7 (from build 7048), you can now stream your home media to your another PC/laptop connected to a work or public network. Both your home network PC and work network PC should be linked to the same Live ID account. The media is streamed always from home network to work or public network.

This feature partially worked in build 7048, but works pretty neat in the recent 7057 build. Below is a step by step procedure to allow internet access to your home media

Home Network
In your home PC, link your user account to your Live ID

Open Media Player and choose to Allow Internet Access to home media

You can see users who have access to home media in the resulting screen

Now you are ready to stream your home media library

Work or Public Network
In your work PC, link your user account to the same Live ID you linked above in your home PC

Open Media Player and choose to Allow Internet Access to home media

Wait for few seconds, and you will see your home media library listed in the Other Libraries. The remote media library icon indicates that it is being accessed via internet

The file properties indeed show that this is being streamed via internet from your home

If at all your home media library doesnt appear, refresh the Other Libraries list

You can now browse your home media library from your work PC!

One thing to note is that your Live ID account is tighly integrated with your user account in your home network. This enables the media player to remember your home media library. If you ever change your network connection from home to work/public network or vice versa, always remember to unlink and link your Live ID with your user account again. This can change when Windows 7 gets released. For now, enjoy streaming!

Source: Neowin.net

The E7 team has posted an interesting blog post about the various Windows features that are available to turn on or off in the Windows 7 RC. Customers are now given more control, flexibility and choice in managing the features available in the RC of Windows 7.

Below are the list of extra features that are added to Windows 7 RC:

• Windows Media Player
• Windows Media Center
• Windows DVD Maker
• Internet Explorer 8
• Windows Search
• Handwriting Recognition (through the Tablet PC Components option)
• Windows Gadget Platform
• Fax and Scan
• XPS Viewer and Services (including the Virtual Print Driver)

Neowin had already reported about Internet Explorer 8 being an optional component in the latest Windows 7 build 7048, and so are the other features. Interesting features to note other than Internet Explorer 8 are the Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center.
However these options (turning Windows features on or off) are not made available during the Windows 7 installation and are available on the post-setup experience for Windows 7

“Finally, we know some have suggested that this set of choices be a “setup option”. Some operating systems do provide this type of setup experience. As we balanced feedback, the vast majority of feedback we have received was to streamline setup and to reduce the amount of potential complexity in getting a PC running. We chose to focus this feature on the post-setup experience for Windows 7″

Deselecting a Windows feature makes that feature not available for use, which means that the files are not loaded by the operating system and are staged so that they can be easily added when the features are selected back again. Since these files are staged, users dont require the Windows 7 installation DVD to turn on the features again.
It would be interesting to see whether will there be an option for OEMs to streamline the Windows 7 post-setup experience where they could deselect/select some of the Windows features. This is also a great addition for Corporates where they would be able to streamline the Windows 7 setup for deployment (using the MDOP)

News source: Neowin.net

Following on from the Internet Explorer 8 update that Microsoft released for Windows 7 Beta a day ago, another update has been released targeting application compatibility.

Judging by these two updates released, Microsoft is progressing nicely, and the most recent update targets mainly games that did not run before hand, or had to be opened via compatibility-mode. Interestingly, Microsoft didn’t state which applications were targeted in this update, but it is of no doubt that users will find out soon enough.

If you’re currently having problems with gaming, or have had problems with it, in the Windows 7 Beta, install these updates and post in the comments to show which games now work, or still don’t. As Ars Technica is reporting, this update have no affiliation what-so-ever with the Windows 7 test updates that have been released. You can choose to download the updates from the links below, or as usual, update using Windows Update.

Download: Windows 7 Beta (x86) Update
Download: Windows 7 Beta (x64) Update

Source: Neowin.net

After a long post yesterday by Steven regarding Windows 7 feedback, which focussed heavily on how Microsoft was gathering the feedback for Windows 7 and the feedback process, the E7 blog has posted the changes that users will see from Windows 7 beta to RC.

Steven emphasized in his last post that Microsoft takes users feedback very seriously and are committed to it

“The work of acting on feedback responsibly and managing the development of Windows through all phases of the process is something we are very sincere about. Internally we’ve talked a lot about being a learning organization and how we’re always learning how to do a better job, improve the work we do, and in the process work to make Windows even better. We take this approach as individuals and how we view building Windows. We know we will continue to have tough choices to make as everyone who builds products understands and what you have is our commitment to continue to use all the tools available to make sure we are building the best Windows 7 we can build.”

Chaitanya from the E7 team has posted a detailed list of various changes in Windows 7 from beta to RC based upon customer feedback. Though there are number of bug fixes, performance improvements, compatibility fixes, we are more concerned on the changes in these three areas – User Experience, Find and Organize and Devices and Media. Below are some of the impressive changes amongst the various other changes highlighted in the blog post

Aero Peeks meets Alt-Tab
Many users who love aero peek (including me) wanted to have it implemented when flipping windows using the Alt-Tab keys. Now, this change has been added to RC. Users can still quickly flip through all the windows, but when you want to see more information about a particular window, aero peek would appear and this is triggered by a time delay while flipping windows.

More Shortcuts
One of the areas where Windows 7 received positive feedback was the new keyboard shortcuts introduced. As usual, we users wanted more (and still want more!) and here are few more shortcuts added to RC:
Windows Logo + <#> – opens an application corresponding to its order in the superbar (this is already present in the current beta)

• Windows Logo + <#> and Windows Logo + <#> (pressing twice) – Switches to the corresponding application to its order in the superbar
• SHIFT + Windows Logo + <#> – Opens application corresponding to its order in the superbar
• Holding the Windows Logo + tapping the <#> – Cycle through various windows in the same application, like tabs in IE
• ALT + Windows Logo + <#> – Access programs’ Jump List
• CTRL + Windows Logo + <#> – Flip back to last active window
• CTRL + mouse click on a superbar button – Flip back to last active window

Needy Window
In the current beta, the flashing animation which alerts when users require attention, like the messenger window when you receive a message, is very limited to 3 flashes. It is very easy to miss the alert and thus now it is increased to seven flashes!

Improvements to Color Hot-Track
One of the ways to differentiate between running and not-running applications in superbar is using the color hot-track. But this color hot-track is lost when the mouse hovers over taskbar thumbnails. In RC, the color hot-track stays active even when the mouse hovers over taskbar thumbnails!

Desktop Icons and Gadgets improvement
In Beta it was impossible to separate desktop icons from gadgets under the View setting available by right-clicking on the desktop. In RC, users can opt to hide just the gadgets or just the desktop icons.

User Account Control
This change was obvious as Microsoft had already confirmed that they are going to implement the change in RC. Due to this change, now users will get a prompt for any modification made to the UAC Control Panel

Cleaner Now Playing view in Media Player
Microsoft has responded with a visual update that is more lightweight and compact to the Now Playing view in WMP, based on customers’ feedback. However, there is no screenshot posted to see those changes.

Easier access to advanced settings
I myself was frustrated when I couldn’t find the Advanced Settings (equalizer, visualisations, enhancements) options in the Windows Media Player from the main window. However, they were accessible only via the List Pane Options in the Now Playing mode. Microsoft has responded to this and these options are now available via the Now Playing context menu under Enhancements.

Windows Logo+E shortcut
In Vista, Windows Logo+E launches “Computer” Explorer, but in current Windows 7 beta, it launches Libraries which is quite confusing and a change in a behavior which was prevalent for a long time! Microsoft has changed back this behavior and now in RC, Windows Logo+E will launch “Computer” Explorer.

These are not the only changes that are to be made available in the Windows 7 RC. To know more about the other changes, visit the E7 blog post.

Having seen the various feedback submitted by other users and by myself for Windows 7 , I am very much satisfied with these changes for the RC. It is not possible for Microsoft to satisfy every user, but the changes highlighted here clearly shows that Microsoft is indeed taking an open approach to the Windows 7 feedback program.

Lets all hope now that Windows 7 RC gets released as expected and move to RTM soon!

News source: Neowin.net

There have been so many dates flying around concerning the upcoming Release Candidate for Windows 7, and it’s beginning to become a daily subject in the blogosphere. Just when you thought that we were going to see a Windows 7 RC by the end of February, a trusted source within Microsoft has informed Neowin that the RC will not be ready by the end of February.

At this time, Windows 7 RC is internally being tested and the official release date is set for April 10, 2009. The Windows team is right on schedule with development, and if there are no significant problems over the next few weeks the April 10, 2009 release date will remain in tact.

Not much information is available at this time. We’re uncertain if the release will be a world-wide, and Microsoft is expected to do more testing before releasing a RC build to the public. With that in mind, TechNet and MSDN subscribers should be the first to receive the RC build. A recent email conversation between Paul, over at GeekSmack, and Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft Senior Vice President of Windows, revealed that there have been over 500,000 suggestions since the public launch of the Windows 7 Beta.

Sinofsky mentioned that, “recently we’ve seen people talk about ‘RC Builds’ and the like. First, all builds since the beta are RC builds since by definition that is the next milestone. But by far the most humorous element has been that the build numbers blogged about are higher than our current build. Today’s build is 7046, but it hasn’t completed yet :-).”

Other than the UAC fixes that were highlighted earlier this month, not much is known as to what has been changed or fixed in these internal builds, we’ll keep you up to date with more information as it comes our way.

Update (1:14 PM -6 GMT): Emil Protalinski over at Ars Technica has apparently spoke with Steven Sinofsky, and he has said, “The build will be available broadly”. This isn’t a normal thing for Microsoft to do, however we will wait and see what Microsoft has in store for us in the coming weeks.

News Source: Neowin.net

WinnFuture, a German website reports that the one and only RC build of Windows 7 will be ready at the end of February to be sent to select testers.

According to WinFuture’s sources, the first-RC build has been compiled by now. The build number currently under test is not known, however WinFuture reports that 7048 was the latest build of Windows 7 and might be the RC, created a few days before and confirms that work is currently going on around the Windows 7 RC build.

The German website also reports that MSDN/TechNet subscribers along with the other private beta testers, would receive the RC build after 27th February, but not sure about the public beta which ended few weeks back.

Neowin earlier reported that we could be seeing the Windows 7 RC in early April, but with the rumor that Windows 7 is set to hit RTM in August, no wonder we can expect the RC build very soon!

News source: Neowin.net

Well, I can’t wait to get my hands on this 🙂