November 13th, 2009

Windows 7's first 100 days: So how were yours?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 6:35 am

Categories: Discussion, Downloads, Next-generation technology, Productivity, University, Windows 7, e-Learning

Tags: Memory Usage, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Zack Whittaker

It has been 100 days since the release-to-manufacturing copy of Windows 7 was available for download on MSDN and TechNet. I’ll put this very simply: I have never used an operating system which works so well, is as stable as it is, is aesthetically pleasing, and is a pleasure to use still even after three and a bit months.

There is nothing within Windows 7 which is particularly aimed at students or me specifically. The whole kit and kaboodle focuses on making it an all-inclusive “experience”, but after using it for so long now the experience fades into the background, like a sickly cough in a lecture theatre.

At the end of the day, all you want to do is check your emails or whop out a quick essay. You don’t particularly care about the experience and most of the time you don’t notice the surroundings. Even with Windows 7, this hasn’t changed.

Besides my computer going well and truly kaput, the way I noticed my positive experience so far is through the lack of negative experiences. I’m lucky in that I took advantage of pre-release builds and have seen Windows 7 grow from a small, insignificant Vista rip-off, into a mature, upstanding member of the technology community.

There is only one nit-picky thing that I still struggle to shrug off. The memory usage is far better than Vista but has a long way to go until it reaches levels that XP coped with. Even with a base level of applications open: Outlook 2007, Messenger, Skype and DisplayFusion to maximise my taskbar space, but it still looks like it uses more than it should. On a 4GB RAM system (in 32-bit mode, so only 3.5GB is really recognised), I’m still using 1.10GB on a dual screen system.

I understand why, as I have two screens and the Aero theme takes up quite a lot of memory usage, and doubled it naturally doubles (ish) the memory usage. But I like to keep my memory usage down as much as possible; at least that way I don’t hear my tower whirring away and going nuts.

The feedback I have had from other people, friends and colleagues, may seem somewhat cliched. But all have had a positive attitude towards it when mentioning it in passing. “Oh, Zack, by the way, Windows 7; I like”, for example. Seeing it running on my friend’s computer in a 24-inch crystal clear LCD screen combined with his justified semi-smugness about being one of the few, even still, to have the operating system on his computer, being another.

All in all, I’m extremely happy with everything as it is and how it works, what it does and when it does it. But what I say isn’t too important. How were your first 100 days?

More Windows 7 coverage:

October 19th, 2009

Windows 7 puts Vista into perspective: Only a 'failure' in retrospect

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 4:53 am

Categories: Discussion, Events, Microsoft, Next-generation technology, Productivity, Security, Skills development, Windows 7

Tags: Operating System, Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Corp., Computer, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows Vista (Longhorn), Operating Systems, Software, Zack Whittaker

For my 400th post on ZDNet, this is one mass response in reply to a barrage of emails I have had to suffer over the course of the last couple of weeks.

It seems as though I, and the just-over ten thousand students on my university campus, are not the only ones complaining even still about the abomination that their respective university IT department, hand in hand with the devil itself, Microsoft, have bestowed upon us: forced through product lifecycle periods to upgrade our campus to “the latest and greatest”. Feel free to detect any element of sarcasm in the last sentence.

Only short two weeks ago, I had high hopes for the upgrade. I genuinely thought that a new lease of life could be drawn through the lungs of Microsoft’. I was not only wrong, but overly optimistic.

For those who have been reading since day one, I started with a touch of empathy towards the then-new operating system. Over time, and predominantly over the course of Windows 7’s beta cycles, I became more attached to the lack of resource hogging, sluggishness and a general freshness which could only be rivalled by that of a gentle breeze on a summer’s day in the countryside.

But I did start off with a very good point. Vista back in the day was perfectly fine. Only in comparison to a better benchmark of Windows 7 do we start slating the former operating system. Something that widely popular blogger, Long Zheng, mentioned earlier on this morning on Twitter was this:

To begin, I start with the question as mentioned in the title. From there I hypothesise the potential failure of Windows 7 and look into the few people we can blame for the potentially epic failure of Microsoft’s next operating system.

Who do we blame for Vista, and Windows 7’s potential failure? –>

September 7th, 2009

Students exploit optical phenomenon to create 48-inch multi-touch surface

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 3:59 pm

Categories: Careers, Hardware, Major breakthroughs, Next-generation technology, Research, Skills development, University, Windows 7, diversITy, e-Learning

Tags: Multi-touch, Zack Whittaker

A group of engineering students at the University of Waterloo have recently completed building a 48″ multi-touch device, which could potentially rival the Microsoft Surface device, by exploiting an optical phenomenon.

The device is a massive multi-touch input and output screen, very similar in usage to a Microsoft Surface device but with a very different underlying technology. It was constructed during a fourth-year design project at the university. Running Windows 7, the first operating system to really utilise multi-touch technology, the input and feedback are impressive from the very start.

Although not an entirely new concept, the surface technology uses frustrated total internal reflection (FITR) where light reflects off the surface of an object such as prisms or fibre-optics. A real-life example would be to hold a glass of water and seeing the impression of your fingertips on the surface of the water.

In simpler terms of how FITR and indeed the device works, as described on their announcement post:

“If you shine light into the side of a sheet of acrylic, the light will be trapped inside due to total internal reflection. Now when you touch the surface, it ‘frustrates’ the light at that spot and so light escapes. You use a camera to capture this image and [through mathematics] figure out where the finger was pressed.”

Using FITR in this way isn’t new as was displayed by Jeff Han at the 2006 TED Conference in California. Multi-touch computing was being experimented upon in the 1980’s and since then, this concept isn’t the first FITR-based multi-touch device created.

What surprises me is the sighs and sounds of disbelief in the audience of the Jeff Han demonstration whereas now, we consider multi-touch technology as firmly embedded into our lives - the iPhone being a prime example.

But it’s still so damn cool.

What I am most proud of is the contributors to the blog where this is mentioned involve women in this engineering project.

Not only that, the university actively encourages participation of women in ‘non-traditional’ degree subjects, and clearly praises them when they are proud of the work and research they accomplish.

With female students clearly being as intelligent as they are to complete a project such as this, it again exposes the question of the glass ceiling in the IT industry. Even though I still believe the old boys network plays the major role in limiting women into success of higher paid jobs and those with greater responsibility, this will most definitely change when the old boys running the show either die or retire. Literally.

August 21st, 2009

Harry Potter and the search for a true Media Center experience

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 12:59 pm

Categories: Apple, Hardware, Multimedia, Next-generation technology, University fun, Windows 7

Tags: Potter Inc., Windows Media, Media Center PC, Network, PC, Microsoft Windows Media Center, Media Extender, TVs, Tv & Home Theater, Media Center PCs

After spending hours researching, learning and trying to understand media streaming over a wireless network, I took a bold move and bought a Linksys Media Center Extender DMA2100 without entirely knowing what it would do, provide me, or even if it was what I wanted.

I took a stab in the dark and it turned out it was as near as dammit to what I wanted.

Before today, I wasn’t able to differentiate between Apple TV, a media extender, a media streamer and a DVR. As a technology journalist it is a little embarrassing to admit. I knew what they did in theory but in principle, getting the right device to do exactly what you had hoped is something else.

For those who are not in the know, a media extender allows you to stream pictures, music or videos (”media” hereon in) over a network, wired or wireless, from a PC to a television or external monitor. In reality, a Windows Media Center extender streams the Windows Media Center application (ehshell.exe in Windows Vista and 7) over a network onto your television, giving you the same Windows Media Center experience on your television as you would on your PC.

You may have already switched the old noggin off for the weekend, so in pictogram form:

What you see on your television screen is essentially a remote desktop view of the Windows Media Center application. Once you hit the on button on your media extender and find the right TV extension number on your remote, you see the application as it would be on your PC. But on the PC, Windows Media Center is quietly running in the background and being projected over the wireless network to the television downstairs. I can still use my PC while it is running, including another instance of Windows Media Center if I choose.

Streaming the application itself looks slightly sluggish, even on an 802.11n (240mbps) network, and is clear to see especially in the menus. It feels like you are using it through a Terminal Server window. But when it comes to streaming video for example, there is no sluggishness or delay. It needs a little time - perhaps a few seconds depending on the video size - to buffer the video but experiences no lag or delay.

The media extender will give me everything that my PC has - including live TV if it has a TV card installed. While I can’t directly test it, I’m unsure of whether it will really work. The only way I could watch live digital television using my media extender is if I plugged in a TV aerial coaxial cable into my desktop PC upstairs and streamed it over the network.

A simple, single question. Why can’t you add a TV-in port to the extender and include a digital TV tuner?

Because now, I can watch all of my streamed media over the network from my PC without a problem, but to watch live television I have to switch from EX7-MEDIA to EX1-DTV on my remote. The reason why I bought an extender was through the sheer determination to expel all remote controls except for one single clicker.

I’m not saying that such a device exists, but having a combination of media streamers, extenders and digital video recorders would be perfect. Having a box which allows you to stream all kinds of media from a shared folder on your PC over a wireless N network - very much like an extender, along with in-built TV capabilities which receives digital TV signals and directly to your television - like Apple TV, but also a unit which has storage enabling you to record live TV and store it on your extender-come-digital TV box - like a DVR.

At least I can download a Harry Potter film and watch it on my 32″ widescreen television without burning a single disk…

August 13th, 2009

Who wins: Sliced bread or Windows 7?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 12:49 pm

Categories: Multimedia, Next-generation technology, Productivity, Skills development, Virtualisation, Weird and wonderful, Windows 7

Tags: Operating System, Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Zack Whittaker

Think of Windows 7 in relation to Vista as how most relationships seem to fail: things between you and your partner were perfectly fine, just before a newer, younger and better looking model came along. I barely complained (publicly) about Vista because it wasn’t that bad in the long run and there was nothing to really compare it to. Comparing it to XP would be unfair as the two operating systems were in an entirely different league to each other.

After using the release-candidate for months and finally getting round to downloading and installing the finished product, I was pleased. In fact, “pleased” probably wouldn’t describe it as much as “relieved” would do. The fact of the matter is that Windows 7 is now done and dusted, and I was sick to the back teeth of either writing about it or hearing anything about it long before it even reached the first release-candidate milestone.

But now that it is over with, I can rest easy tonight knowing that the trickles of information I prescribed to the readers over the course of this last year can now be wrapped up and concluded in a closing statement. It is for the jury now to decide how the product will continue.

For me, it is truly brilliant through and through. For others who have yet to really experience what it is like first hand may well wonder why Vista even existed - at least in its current form. I would have gladly waited another year on top of the original delayed schedule for them to take a long, hard look at what Vista would have been at RTM to make it work en par with Windows 7 at RTM performance-wise.

Take my word for it. Without the need to re-write what half the blogosphere has already written, Windows 7 is damn good and a far cry from what “legacy” Windows operating systems were. I would personally recommend it to anybody - professionally or personally - simply after using it and experiencing the high performance, the responses it gives me, the application compatibility and the general cleanliness of the user experience.

All this, in perspective, is relative to Vista, to be fair.

Read the rest of this entry »

July 12th, 2009

Windows 7 at build 7600: Achingly close to RTM?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 5:39 pm

Categories: Breaking news, Major breakthroughs, Microsoft, Virtualisation, Windows 7

Tags: Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Zack Whittaker

Reports across the blogosphere attempt to confirm that Windows 7, after nearly two years of development and hysteria, has been released to manufacturing. It will be available to purchase before the end of the year in time for the holiday season. The current build string, as discovered by Internet phenomenon, Long Zheng, reads at:

7600.16384.090710-1945_x64fre_client_en-us_Retail_Ultimate-GRMCULXFRER_EN_DVD.iso

This means:

• the final build is at 7600;
• the sub-string of 16384 maintains application compatibility with Vista, ensuring applications still run on Windows 7;
• the build is that of Ultimate edition, and marked Retail, suggesting this is the on-the-shelf copy.
• it was built on the 10th July 2009 at 7:45pm, so the Friday just gone;
• and that it is a 64-bit English version of the image.

Zheng—along with similar sites asking if it is Christmas, whether or not we are at war with Iran, or to simply ask if you are awesome—released a site asking if Windows 7 had RTM’d.

Also, there appears to be a digitally signed executable which has been verified as being build 7600 which, unless the authentication is broken which basically can’t happen, it is legitimate.

I managed to get my hands on this executable file which is the setup.exe application, which kick-starts the initial setup to this build. The build in question is in fact build 7600 after personally and independently verifying the application.

However, I still hold my reservations on this. Builds have been announced before with beta and release-candidate stages, and they have turned out to be pre-beta and pre-release-candidate builds. Just because there is proof of build 7600 does not necessarily mean that this is the gold version of the upcoming operating system.

I have spoken to a number of employees working on Windows 7 and they have yet to confirm it. There could be a few more rebuilds before it is of up to scratch material. While a lot of this rests on Zheng’s head, it is up to myself and others who report this news to accept responsibility for covering both aspects in this event.

Neowin has a screenshot claiming to be the same build version of Windows 7’s sister-server operating system, Windows Server 2008 R2.

On the other hand, on Monday 13th there is expected to be the revealing of a “big announcement” according to former Microsoft employee, Robert Scoble. It is expected that Office web applications, which I have covered previously, could be at the forefront of this announcement. If release-to-manufacturing is to go ahead in the next 24 hours, the perfect time to share the news at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference. This could be a soapbox opportunity to shower the community with a plethora of good news all in one go.

Personally, I do not believe this is the final build string of Microsoft’s next operating system. When Windows Vista was released, the first part of its build string was 6000.16386. This build of Windows 7 as mentioned is 7600.16384. To ensure application compatibility, the build string needs to align the sub-string to the same as that of Vista’s build string. All it would take is two rebuilds of the final build to create this, but this is why I believe we haven’t quite reached the end milestone of this development cycle yet.

While 7600 is very likely to be the final build version of Windows 7, tomorrow may hold the final answer the technology communities are perched at the edges of their seats for.

June 21st, 2009

The greatest student laptop ever? No, but it's close

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 4:59 pm

Categories: Hardware, Mobile computing, Next-generation technology, Productivity, University fun, Windows 7, e-Learning

Tags: Screen, Laptop Computer, Keyboards, Media Center PCs, Hardware, Peripherals, Personal Technology, Home Entertainment, Zack Whittaker

Alright, so I’m getting quite a few things wrong this week. Now is the time to admit to yet another failing - touch technology. I once, relatively recently, branded it to be the most evil technology on the planet and up until this week would have defended that to the grave. An awful lot can change in the course of a week, mind you.

Take this one. And I quote:

“I’ve used many-a-touchscreen device, including the iPhone and the Microsoft Surface table. The Surface table, granted, isn’t bad to use. It’s fast, responsive, and works well using high-powered applications as it sucks out the power of the GPU.”

Before I spend half of the post writing about the touch capabilities, I’ll run through a few of the more essential items on the checklist. The HP TouchSmart tx2, one of the contenders in the race of the best student laptop I have ever used has:

• 2.2Ghz AMD Turion X2 64: dual core and supports 64-bit technology;
• 12.1″ high definition, multi-touch enabled, tablet PC with 180° degree screen;
• ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics, 320GB hard drive, 3GB RAM memory;
• Lightscribe enabled DVD-RW, wireless a/b/g and n supported;
• Integrated fingerprint reader, more hotkeys than you can cope with, and a wealth of connector ports available (including 3 USB ports and a removable media center remote)

I won’t be too geeky - if you want to read the full specs, head on over to Amazon.

The leaking of the Microsoft Touch Pack which was supposed to demonstrate the sheer awesomeness of multi-touch technology in Windows 7 got me in stitches. I downloaded it, installed it after a few attempts, of which, hat tip goes to my colleague, Ed Bott, for helping me out in form of a handy tweet. (I was smashed at the time, but got it working through sheer determination).

Oh yeah, this will automatically play in HD so go full-screen because it looks awesome.

But there is so much more to this device than just touch (albeit it probably is the striking feature).

Read the rest of this entry »

June 18th, 2009

Will someone pull out the IE life support machine?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 3:25 am

Categories: Gratuitous rant, Microsoft, Productivity, Windows 7

Tags: Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Web Browser, Web Browsers, Internet, Zack Whittaker

For those who don’t live in the catchment area of the European Union, you’re quite lucky. After spending a year of my academic career in a room for an hour each week with a bunch of highly politicised, fanatical and activist type students, constantly debating the point, need and will of the European Union, I’ve sided with the lesser opinion.

For the fact that the European Commission “welcomed” (and had absolutely no part in forcing Microsoft to do so) the modular setup of Windows 7, enabling users to pick and choose their browser, but also removes Internet Explorer from all copies of Windows 7 sold in Europe, made my mind up: yes, the EU really is important in some respects.

My good friend Bryant Zadegan made my eyes pop out the sides of my head (everyone knows I’m secretly a giant rabbit in disguise) when he tweeted the other day, annoyed that Firefox was a “bloated sack of crap”. Although to some extent I can see his point, considering newer versions of Firefox are built upon previous distributions of the software, but it just does not compare to the bulky, heavyweight champion of the millennium, Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer is the Guinness of the browser/beer world. Internet Explorer is a stodgy, chunky beefcake which athletes chow down upon before they throw a shot put across a field. Internet Explorer is the fat kid in the corner of the school gym that nobody wants to pick because they’ll slow them down, the kid that everybody teases, but still ends up being used “just to make up numbers”. Internet Explorer is an embarrassment to the browser world; and quite frankly, we now live in a day and age which as the default, in-built browser into the world’s most “popular” (which in itself is a phrase not often associated with Microsoft often) operating system that it feels like it is thrust upon you just as a Kalashnikov would be, in your face, in a poverty stricken post-communistic country.

The one thing that threw me over the edge? Tabs. Because Microsoft were late to the game, with only implementing tabs into Internet Explorer 7, it seems they haven’t quite understood how the system works. Firefox, pretty much from the word go, used tabs and the entire engine has supported it. It’s like giving someone born with one arm missing a new arm when they’re 50, no physiotherapy and expecting them just to “get on with things”.

It takes me between 5-12 seconds to load a new tab. I’ve tried Ed Bott’s trick of speeding up Internet Explorer, but if I’m honest, it does bugger all. Registering a new DLL into the system, one which is there already and should be implemented by Internet Explorer, isn’t going to change a damn thing - even I know that. Even when it loads about:blank into my new tab, it still crawls to load it. By this time I’m ripping out my hair and screaming at the screen.

Update: seeing as some of you are in a hating mood and decided to find any potential weakness in my opinion back at me, I took liberty in recording opening tabs in Internet Explorer on my machine. Using ScreenToaster, I recorded opening a new tab with the clock in the corner just to show accurate timing. Also this way, I get to upload it straight to YouTube without editing and the watermark reflects this so I cannot tamper with it. It takes approximately 7 seconds in this instance, within my aforementioned timeframe, although I have previously counted longer. I won’t bother trying to get it to that state again - believe it or not, I do have a life beyond this office.

Performance. I know people keep going on about performance and quite frankly, it’s getting a little tiresome, but it’s still a valid point nonetheless. Personally, I’d like to see an application working within one process, so if anything goes wrong - the whole thing closes. But with Firefox’s technique of restoring your tabs for you if a crash occurs, this is fine.

Internet Explorer, however, seems to keep multiple processes going just in case there is a crash, as if it is preempting a crash. Firefox has contingency plans in place in case there is a crash, yet Internet Explorer seems to expect it to happen. What sort of guideline is that to go by? “Yeah, it’s an unstable application, so let’s make sure that it crashes well without actually fixing the problem.” Score.

Take a look at this:

Firefox uses 148.4MB in memory on my computer in one process. Internet Explorer, on the other hand, opens multiple processes determined by how many tabs or windows are open, and uses 147.4MB. So even though Firefox uses an extra megabyte in memory, there is an explanation for this.

At the time of the screenshot, Internet Explorer had five tabs open in one window. Firefox had eighteen tabs spread across four windows. It is clear to me that Firefox in this case manages memory far better than Windows’ in-built browser.

Microsoft’s ego is stretched thinly nowadays and has already taken a massive hit with the European Commission’s decision to rip out a “vital” part of Windows 7 and sell it to the masses as a separate product, Windows 7 E. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, as usual, disagrees with me but give him credit, he has been around for a bit longer than me.

On the face of it, Internet Explorer is just another browser, but it’s time to stop drip feeding it, it’s time to stop replacing its internal organs when one fails, and it’s time to wean it off its nasty oxygen habit. Internet Explorer is old, pathetic, tiring to even look at, and depressing. Microsoft, let it die. (Failing that, just do what you did with OneCare: strip it down, funk it up and start all over again.)

Don’t boycott Opera, boycott Internet Explorer. Buy Windows 7 E if you can, or if you don’t want to or live in a non-European country, please for the love of God, remove Internet Explorer from your Windows 7 machine.

June 16th, 2009

Windows 7 has a new default wallpaper and logo

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 4:50 am

Categories: Breaking news, Microsoft, Multimedia, Windows 7

Tags: Logo, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Zack Whittaker

After my normal flick through of technology websites this morning, I came across the news of another leaked post-RC build of Windows 7, build 7232. With this comes a new wallpaper which appears to set the final flag-based logo which all Windows versions have had since Windows 95.

The new wallpaper is named “Harmony” and replaces the default fish background which we saw in previous builds. Unknown yet, this could also be the default unchangable background in Windows 7 Starter edition, designed for emerging markets.

After speaking to a Microsoft employee friend based here in England, she says this logo also represents the new Windows logo.

You can click for a larger, full sized image (1920×1200)

The logo and wallpaper seems to go with a natural look, juxtoposed with that of new technology. The “elements” are clear with trees and a meadow in both the red and yellow areas, an underwater theme in the blue with a small trace of a fin on a fish nope, it’s a bird - (should have put my glasses on), and the air with butterflies in the green area. It’s almost as if Microsoft is going with an earth, air, fire and water theme.

What do you think: does it strike out to you? Does it reflect Windows 7 to you? Leave a comment.

June 15th, 2009

Microsoft "Morro": explicitly explained, fact from fiction

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 11:40 am

Categories: Cloud computing, Major breakthroughs, Microsoft, Next-generation technology, Security, Web 2.0, Windows 7

Tags: Antivirus, Microsoft Corp., Computer, Morro, Internet Security Suite, Internet, Microsoft Windows, Viruses And Worms, Security, Operating Systems

Update: this post is considered out of date and incorrect. Please follow this link to an explanatory post.

Microsoft’s decision to pull the plug on Windows Live OneCare was, let’s face it, one of the best ideas the company has made in a long while. The anti-virus and firewall solution was just plain awful; with high expectations from users and the media, and the inability to deliver the goods, or in this case, prevent the bad’s from getting in. It was a bad first attempt at making an operating system secure.

There is a lot floating around at the moment, and as a younger, more naive user as a number of my most eminent readers quite regularly point out, there are some interesting things yet to discover about Morro.

I may as well point out now, with my research and understanding, Morro will be more of a web anti-virus than a file anti-virus. Most threats come in from the Internet nowadays, with broadband connections keeping the web juices flowing constantly. The bandwidth issue mentioned later on will make this more apparent.

What?

“Morro”, the codename for the new anti-malware solution which Microsoft will be plugging to the world by the end of the year, and is Microsoft’s second attempt at an anti-malware solution for Windows. However, unlike Windows Live OneCare which can be bought as a subscription, or Windows Defender which is included as a basic anti-spyware solution in Windows Vista onwards, Morro is almost entirely cloud based.

Instead of scanning every file or network packet as they arrive into the computer from the web or an external device, it creates a virtual tunnelbetween your incoming Internet pipe at the back of your computer to a Morro data center, which scans every byte and packet for malware.

Now, if you had a 5MB image which was laced with an amyl-nitrate virus of doom, would this mean that the image would be uploaded, scanned in the cloud (almost instantly due to the vast computational power) then flagged as OK afterwards? This would surely use up a lot of bandwidth, but we simply don’t know yet.

With some anti-virus products on the market costing around $40 for an annual subscription, Morro will be provided for free. It will almost certainly not be part of Windows 7, as this will kick off a storm in Brussels and potentially spark a million lawsuits.

Read the rest of this entry »