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Microsoft has been busy today announcing a new developer platform at PDC 2008. Yet the big topic on everybody's mind is Windows 7.
I was just browsing the web when I came across two screenshots said to be Windows 7 with a slightly different Taskbar.
Written by Teching It Easy: Windows Vista & 7 on October 27th, 2008 with 1 comment.
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No, this isn’t going to be a “How to overclock your CPU” post, but rather some observations on overclocking, and overclockers (myself included).
There is nothing new about the practice of overclocking a computer’s CPU to gain some extra performance. I’ve personally been doing it to my own machines for many years. I have had machines that were absolutely unbelievable overclockers, and some I could barely get past stock, but one thing remained constant for me – I always wanted to get every drop of performance I could out of my PC without putting the hardware in extreme danger, and without getting very extravagant with my cooling.
There are three basic categories people can fall into when it comes to overclocking a CPU.
First, there are those who absolutely will not even attempt to overclock their rig. The way they see it, they bought a chip that runs at a rated speed decided upon by the manufacturer, and that’s where it’s going to stay. They simply do not want to take the risk – the risk of damaging their hardware or of even remotely sacrificing any stability. Often this group will simply choose a quality off-the-shelf PC from an OEM rather than build their own PC’s, even if they have the skills and technical know-how to build their own rig.
The middle group is where I fall. We want to make sure that we get the most for the money we paid for our hardware. We don’t mind taking the time to slowly increase the speed, while carefully testing for stability to ensure we are getting the most we can get. We will generally buy a “better than stock” cooler, some good thermal compound, and a case with good air-flow, but we aren’t putting major bucks into it. We also aren’t going to get greedy with our OC – we want it fast and we want it stable! This is one of the reasons we build our own rigs – we want to have the choice to tweak, and optimize our BIOS settings, in order to achieve a stable overclock.
The third and more extreme group take overclocking to an entirely different level. For them, overclocking almost becomes a sport. These extreme overclockers will put plenty of extra money into specialized cooling (such as Water Cooling) and specialized cases to ensure they can get every last possible ounce of juice that CPU has. Sure, like those of us in the middle group, they do it to make their rigs faster, but there’s also the bragging rights to go along with it.
I’m not telling you to go out and try to overclock your own rig. Be sure you know what you are doing – do your research, start small, and keep voltage increases (and heat) to a minimum and you can get more speed. Many read posts on forums from some of these “extreme overclockers” and instantly go and try to set their own rigs to these insane settings without the proper cooling equipment (and possibly without a quality PSU and Case) and end up causing hardware damage.
Even though I’m not doing a how-to, I do have some basic advice for you:
Follow these basic rules of thumb, find some good how-to’s online, bring a lot of patience, leave some greed behind, and you can get a successful overclock. Remember, anything over stock is gravy, so just because you see some guy saying he can hit 4GHz doesn’t mean you have to go out and try and do the same – be sane, and be successful.
Here’s what I ended up with – tested 24 hrs stable with 64-bit Prime95 and I’m quite happy. I could probably get more, but I’m happy where it’s at – a 600MHz overclock is amazing over what I could get with a LOT more work with AMD CPU’s. I will say this, these Core2Duo’s (and especially the 200/400MHz FSB models) overclock like mad…unlike anything I’ve ever seen before!
Written by jaysonrowe on October 27th, 2008 with no comments.
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As you probably have noticed, we just re-launched our blog today as The Windows Blog sporting an all-new look and feel reflecting Windows in a broader sense instead of a single Windows release. We figured it was time to give our blog a good facelift (it’s looked the same since we originally launched in October of 2006) – especially as we start talking about Windows 7, Windows Live, and many other interesting Windows topics. Our old design focused strictly on Windows Vista. Our new design is no longer tied to a specific Windows release allowing us to talk about a wider range of topics.
With the previous site design – we essentially had 2 blogs hosted together on the same site: the Windows Vista Team Blog and Windows Experience Blog. But because of the design – not a lot of people noticed that there were actually 2 distinct blogs on our site.
We wanted to fix that.
In thinking about the design for The Windows Blog, we wanted the site to act like a community of blogs focused on talking about Windows.
Today – our new design reflects that.
As you can see in the left-hand navigation menu – The Windows Blog is currently home to 3 Windows blogs, 2 of which you already know.
Both the Windows Vista Team Blog and Windows Experience Blog are the same blogs with the same content you have been reading – however they are exposed differently with our new design. We are also introducing a 3rd blog today – the Windows 7 Team Blog. All 3 of these blogs sit under what I like to call The Windows Blog “umbrella”.
All 3 of these blogs also have distinct purposes. As you can expect – the Windows Vista Team Blog will continue to talk about all-things Windows Vista and the Windows 7 Team Blog will talk about all-things Windows 7 as we move forward. The Windows Experience Blog, which is written by me, will continue to talk about anything related to the cool and interesting Windows experiences people can have with Windows. The focus of the 2 “Team” blogs is to deliver important news and announcements we think are important to you as a consumer and as a Windows enthusiast in a more personable way. Real people (like me and Mike Nash) write these blog posts.
Each blog has its own RSS feed and unique banner. You can subscribe to the individual blogs you are interested in reading content from in your favorite RSS feed reader or simply subscribe to the main RSS feed from The Windows Blog front page as ALL blog content is aggregated to the front page and main RSS feed of The Windows Blog.
· Windows Vista Team Blog | RSS Feed
· Windows 7 Team Blog | RSS Feed
· Windows Experience Blog | RSS Feed
As we move forward – you can expect new blogs to be added to this community of Windows blogs here which I think is exciting. We are committed to building this community of Windows blogs – this is just the beginning.
We’ve got a lot more changes to talk about too.
Our Media Gallery is much better – allowing for Tag navigation. Each Tag comes with its own RSS feed too. When viewing the Media Gallery, readers are now able to sort our photos and screenshots Name, Most Recent, Most Downloads, Most Popular, and Most Comments. We also have specific Galleries of images as well you can navigate through under “Browse Media”.
We are now running on Telligent’s latest Community Server release. Because of this, we are able to take advantage of Telligent’s social networking investments within Community Server such as enhanced user profiles. Users who sign up to be members of The Windows Blog can now enjoy much more customizable user profiles. Members can add announcements to their profiles, add custom RSS feeds (such as the RSS feed to their Twitter account for all their tweets), and add other members as friends. Users can also leave comments on user’s profiles as well. The Windows Blog has a mini social network!
Click here to see my profile.
The new enhanced user profiles also have an activity stream called “My Activity”. If you are an active commenter, your comments will appear here as activities. The activity stream has its own RSS feed allowing you to take advantage of tapping in to other social networks such as Facebook and FriendFeed. Members can add their activity RSS feeds as Notes on their Facebook profile or add the feed to FriendFeed.
Also: when you see a little green dot on people’s avatar that means they are “online” – signed in to the blog and browsing the site.
And don’t be surprised if you see members of our Windows Featured Community Program or Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals leaving comments on the blog either!
Along with the new site name and design – we’re also using a new URL. You can now find us at www.windowsteamblog.com. The old URL – www.windowsvistablog.com – as well as all RSS feeds should redirect to the new URL.
And with that – I welcome you to The Windows Blog! Stayed tuned for tomorrow as I’m here in Los Angeles at the PDC and will be bringing lots of Windows 7 news your way.
Written by Brandon LeBlanc on October 27th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on otherSoftware and PDC2008 and windows 7 and blog and Windows and Announcement and Windows Vista.
Well here it is. It’s not the iconic roof of the Los Angeles Convention Center in 2003, but it’s still sort of cool. The official wallpaper on the machines here at PDC 2008 is this blue wavy abstract thing which has reminiscence of the aurora.
Written by Long Zheng on October 27th, 2008 with no comments.
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Please pardon our dust, we’re currently deploying a pretty sweet upgrade to the site and ironing out a few issues. Some things may not work correctly at the moment. I’ll be posting more shortly on the changes to the site once we get everything the way we want it. Thank you for your patience!
Written by Brandon LeBlanc on October 27th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on otherSoftware and blog and Announcement and Windows.
God I love privacy, or to be more exact, privacy statements. Microsoft today has just published the “Windows 7: Pre-release privacy statement” detailing some new and very interesting features which we’re expected to see tomorrow at PDC 2008 when everyone gets the Windows 7 pre-beta build.
Here’s some quick excerpts from the “privacy supplement“,
BitLocker™ Drive Encryption
What this feature does
BitLocker Drive Encryption (BitLocker) is available on computers running Windows 7 Enterprise Edition and Windows 7 Ultimate Edition. Should your computer be lost or stolen, BitLocker protects your data by helping to prevent offline software attacks. Turning on BitLocker encrypts the hard drive where Windows is installed, including all information that is stored on that drive.Device Information Retrieval
What this feature does
Device Information Retrieval downloads information from Microsoft for your hardware devices and displays it in the Windows 7 Devices and Printers control panel, and when you first install and use a device, in the Device Stage.
Choice and control
If you choose the recommended settings during Windows 7 setup, you turn on Device Information Retrieval. You can turn this feature off by going to Devices and Printers in Control Panel. Right-click your computer icon, and then click Device Installation Settings. Select “No, let me choose what to do” and click to clear the “Display enhanced device icons…” check box.
Driver Protection
What this feature does
Driver Protection helps prevent the operating system from starting drivers that are known to cause stability problems. These drivers are listed in a Driver Protection List database that is stored on your computer. The Driver Protection List is updated through Windows Update and Dynamic Update (below). Driver Protection checks this database while the operating system is running. These checks are performed to determine whether to start a driver. For more information, see the Driver Protection List article online at the Microsoft website.
Dynamic Update
What this feature does
Dynamic Update enables Windows 7 to perform a one-time check with the Windows Update website to get the latest updates for your computer while Windows is being installed. If updates are found, Dynamic Update automatically downloads and installs them so your computer is up to date the first time that you log on or use it.
Gadgets
What this feature does
Gadgets are programs that run on the desktop and provide at-a-glance information, and easy access to frequently used tools.
Games Folder
What this feature does
You can also choose to check for updates to some games by right-clicking the game icon and selecting Scan for Update. Game version details and game identification numbers will be sent to Microsoft, and you will be notified of any updates that are available. You may choose to have Windows automatically scan and notify you about game updates from the options menu.
HomeGroup
What this feature does
A HomeGroup allows you to easily link Windows 7 computers on your home network so that you can share pictures, music, videos, documents and devices. It also makes them ready to stream media to devices on your home network such as a media extender. You can help protect your HomeGroup with a password, and you can choose what you want to share.
Written by Long Zheng on October 27th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on otherSoftware and blog.
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