Being a popular new operating system means that there are those that would circumvent protections in the OS so as to make it seem legitimate. There are those that willingly take that risk in order to save themselves some cash, then there are those that are suckered into a new system preloaded with a counterfeit install.

Whatever the case may be Microsoft is ramping up their anti-piracy efforts with Windows 7 with their upcoming Windows Activation Technologies Update for Windows 7…update which will try to patch 70 or so activation loopholes and, seemingly, make the installations seem not so genuine.

The update is set to be released in a few days but it’s unknown as to when they’ll require it to be a mandatory install.

Source: The Windows Blog

Yes patches are a necessary evil, bound to break more things than are reportedly fixed but as long as you’re protected from those “remote code execution” boogeymen it’s all good.

Mozilla has released version 3.5.6 of their highly popular Firefox web browser. The update fixes some nasty issues and gives you that warm fuzzy feeling once you’re all patched up.

Source: Mozilla

Mozilla Thunderbird is finally out of the beta/release candidate stage and is now final. Version 3.0 of their software brings much needed performance improvements and better use of tab support which makes browsing through your many email accounts a breeze.

They’ve also gone about easing the pain of entering new email accounts where they’ll happily accept the user and password in the same pop up dialog. Joy of joys!

You can grab your very own copy from their download page.

If you’ve been using Mozilla’s Thunderbird email application over the years you’ve no doubt noticed that it hasn’t been substantially updated in, well, quite a long time aside from the usual bug fixes.

Thankfully they’ve launched a release candidate for Thunderbird 3.0 which improves on several aspects of the email client which should, hopefully, fix many of its shortcomings in usability.

Google’s Chrome operating system has been talked about for months and now it’s finally launched…with a few key hoops to go through if you want to run it.

Google isn’t supplying any pre-compiled binaries or images for their OS, they’re keeping that for their hardware partners to build suitable machines around. If you want to get in on the action you’re going to have to download the source code and build it yourself.

If you’re expecting a full OS experience you’re bound to be disappointed. It’s meant to be something of a portal to Google’s services and sites but, of course, you’ll be able to surf whatever webpages you desire.

You can’t blame a company for taking things slow when their technology is used by millions of people every day to view streaming content on the web even if it is horribly inefficient and causes a lackluster viewing experience.

Adobe’s Flash version 10.1 will be making usage of graphics card features to improve video playback by making the GPU do all of the processor intensive decoding and scaling. Handy in case you spend any amount of time on Youtube, Hulu, or any other site that makes extensive use of Flash to play videos.

Good news for those that don’t like their processor being pegged at 100% while a simple video is being streamed. You can grab your own copy of the beta release from Adobe Labs.

Source: AnandTech

Did you install Apple OS X on a lowly Intel Atom-based netbook? Proud of your tech-fu?

If you answered yes, then be sure to skip the next Snow Leopard update from Apple. According to reports, Mac OS X Leopard 10.6.2 is incompatible with Intel’s netbook powerhouse, the Atom processor, delivering a blow to folks that want to (unofficially) rock some ultra-portable OS X computing and keep current with the latest OS updates.

Source: Wired

Microsoft had a lot riding on their Windows 7 operating system, after all people weren’t exactly flocking to Windows Vista and XP has been getting long in the tooth as far as features were concerned. Their efforts seem to have done good but does all of the added newfangled-ness cause performance issues to pop up?

AnandTech does their usual thorough testing and pits Windows 7 against XP and Vista in a veritable feast of software performance evaluations and benchmarks showing you how 7 handles the most common application tasks undertaken by PC users. There’s a lot of info to digest here:

For Windows 7, Windows has been put on a diet in order to perform better on those machines. The most noticeable changes here are that Windows 7 eats less RAM and hard drive space out of the box than a comparable version of Vista did. There have also been some underlying tweaks to SuperFetch (it’s less aggressive on startup) and the kernel to improve responsiveness.

The tweaks are certainly there as can bee seen by the OS’ ability to eek out more performance from the same hardware.

Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 7 operating system is the most polished OS to come from the company, of course it’s going to have to be compared to Apple’s highly polished Snow Leopard operating system which means plenty of fodder for both sides to sling at each other.

CNET has tested out both operating systems on a model year 2008 MacBook Pro with some interesting results on both ends. Here’s a peek:

First off, the test machine is a 15-inch unibody MacBook Pro with a 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, and a 512MB Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT video card. This is the 2008 model of the computer that comes with a removable battery and doesn’t have the SD card slot. (This is not the latest 2009 model that comes with a nonremovable battery, which packs a lot more juice.)

A test on the same hard drive would be much preferred given that they do go for the time based benchmarks and drive performance can differ especially when using drives from different manufacturers.

There’s nothing quite as scary as a new operating system roll out for businesses especially when they’ve invested quite a bit of time and money in acquiring licenses for Windows XP applications. Fortunately for them, and us, Windows 7’s XP Mode will smooth things over.

The Windows Blog brings word that XP Mode has hit RTM status and will be available to download for Windows 7 Professional, an higher, users meaning your XP applications will run in a nice virtualized environment that should make things go smoothly.

You’ll be able to grab your own copy of the software when Windows 7 launches October 22nd.

Source: Windows 7 Team Blog