If there’s one thing that people want it’s access to the things that are important to them all in a central location which Microsoft has taken to heart with their upcoming Windows Phone 7 operating system.

It’ll be a major shift for the company as they’ve done away with their old way of doing things and are focusing on the “lighter side” of the smart phone market. They want to make such a great first impression that they’ve actually instituted a minimum set of requirements if handset makers want to use their next mobile OS.

You’ll have to wait until the holiday buying season to get your hands on a phone sporting the new OS but, from the early information, it looks like it’ll be shaking up the smartphone market.

Source: engadget , Windows Phone 7 Series

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

Ah the holidays. Getting the right gift for that special someone is tricky, getting one for your computer/gadget fiend family member is a maddening experience. Sure you could go the gift card route but that doesn’t exactly give you that certain sense of satisfaction when you see their face light up once they open a finely wrapped gift.

We’ve created a bit of a shopping list containing some of this year’s hottest computer gear and gadgets you may just want to keep in mind should you be buying for the technology purist.

Read more…

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.

Considering how much smartphone users rely on the data their handy gadgets store for them a “data loss” like the one recently suffered by T-Mobile/Microsoft Danger could be catastrophic given that much of the data that’s created on the phone is stored on the cell provider’s outsourced storage system.

Thankfully Microsoft has seemingly found a way to salvage most, if not all, of T-Mobile Sidekick customer data and the company wants you to know that they’re doing everything in their power to get things back up and running smoothly.

Lessons learned? Backup your own data, although that lesson will likely fade given enough time.

The gadget world tends to follow a strange set of rules when it comes to supporting a new version of an operating system. Licensing rules and the like are of concern as is the underlying hardware that will be pushing the software update.

Thankfully Microsoft has debuted a page that will inform you which Windows Mobile based smartphones will support an upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.5 and when you can expect it. Unfortunately there isn’t much in the way of release dates from the various manufacturers so you’ll have to be somewhat patient.

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

When netbooks were introduced they saw a number of restrictions if they wanted to run the Windows XP operating system which, given Vista’s hefty requirements, was the only usable Windows choice. This time around they’ve eased up.

Microsoft is allowing netbook manufacturers to preload whatever version of the Windows 7 OS they’re content with no matter the machine’s specs. Of course you won’t likely find a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate on a bargain basement netbook so they’re somewhat safe on the hardware requirements front.

Good news for those fearing hardware requirements that would stop their shiny new netbook from running the best version of Windows 7.

Source: TG Daily

Its been a long time coming, well a few months is an eternity in gadget years, but Microsoft’s Zune HD has officially launched. Given the amount of hype surrounding it you’ll find plenty of coverage around the web. Here are a few of the choice links:

Zune HD unboxing @ engadget
Zune 4.0 software @ Zune.net
Zune HD Review @ Zune Scene
Zune HD Teardown @ iFixit
Zune HD Disassembly @ anythingbutipod

Microsoft has also announced that they’re working on adding applications like Facebook and Twitter to the Zune HD meanwhile old Zune model owners have a new software version 3.2 to look forward to with as of yet announced fixes or enhancements.