Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Tuesday that Windows 7 will be available for netbooks, the mini-laptops that have generated strong sales despite the recession.




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Fibre Channel Over Ethernet Is Catching On As Data Centers Consolidate and Server and Storage Virtualization Takes OffIn a meeting with financial analysts, Ballmer said Microsoft decided early in the introduction of netbooks about two years ago that it was important to be the leading operating system vendor in the market. Today, Windows XP is in more than 90% of netbooks, aided by the high rate of return on netbooks that had shipped with Linux.
Going forward, Microsoft plans to maintain its dominance. "Windows 7 will be available on the netbook," Ballmer said.

Windows 7, the successor of the poorly received Windows Vista, is expected late this year or early 2010.

The netbook market today is growing while non-netbook PCs have been flat or slightly down, Ballmer said. Besides being a growth market, the mini-PC also provides Microsoft with an opportunity to create a downsized OS that will be easily adapted to many other different devices.

"I think you'll see an opening up of a lot of opportunities for us," Ballmer said. The CEO acknowledged that today revenue per netbook is less than on a standard PC, because the price of the OS running on these low-cost devices is less.

One component key to netbooks, which are primarily used for e-mail and Web browsing, is the browser. And on that front, Microsoft's Internet Explorer has been losing market share to the No. 2 browser, Mozilla Firefox.

Ballmer said Microsoft is spending money on marketing and building Internet Explorer 8, which is currently in beta, with features to take back and expand market share. "We believe browsers are important," Ballmer said. "They're not a commodity."

As of the end of November 2008, Firefox's market share reached more than 20%, while Internet Explorer's had fallen below 70%, according to Web metrics firm Net Applications. Throughout the year, Firefox usage on the Web grew steadily, starting in January 2008 with a 16.98% share. Internet Explorer, on the other hand, started 2008 with a 75.47% share.

Microsoft released a comprehensive update for Windows 7 Beta Tuesday aimed at plugging numerous compatibility and reliability holes in Internet Explorer 8.
The comprehensive update patches an array of stability problems that include crashes, hangs and memory issues on Windows 7 Beta caused by IE as well as third-party components such as Adobe Flash, Adobe Acrobat and others. The patch also fixes glitches in PDF file printing and includes a change that improves cookie management.

Microsoft researchers said that the update was prompted by user feedback, which brought attention to existing problems with IE8 and other applications running on Windows 7.

"We found that approximately 10 percent of customers who had downloaded the Windows 7 Beta had experienced some type of reliability problem in IE," said Herman Ng, Microsoft program manager, in an IE blog post. "We also found that a small number of users were experiencing crashes on a more regular basis and that about 1.5 percent of all Internet Explorer sessions had encountered a crash."

Altogether, about 50 percent reported reliability problems stemmed from 17 unique issues. Ng said that IE was responsible for about 40 percent of the reliability problems, while 60 percent were caused by third-party components.

Ng said that Microsoft worked with its third-party partners to address many of the issues, either by working around the problem inside IE or preventing the third-party application from loading.

"Because users generally have lots of toolbars and extensions installed, it's common to see this many third-party components at the top of our failure curve," Ng said.

The newly released update is available via Windows Update, and also can be downloaded via Microsoft Update.

• [ Kill the Process, Use Killbox if your Access Denied ]

[In Windows Vista Run As Administrator, After Execution System Will Restart]

• %Program Files\RealAV [Folder]
• %Program Files\RealAV\RealAV.exe
•  %Program Files\RealAV\vscan.tsi
• %Program Files\RealAV\zlib.dll
• %Program Files\RealAV\Infected
• %Program Files\RealAV\Suspicious
• %UserProfile%\Desktop\RealAV.lnk
• %UserProfile%\Start Menu\Programs\RealAV
• %UserProfile%\Start Menu\Programs\RealAV\RealAV.lnk
• %UserProfile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\RealAV.lnk
  If you have any of these files in running process from task manger, end the process before removal.
  Note: if task manager is disabled, Download the following file, Click to Download - Enable Registry.reg [ Right Click - Save Target As/Linked Content As ]
  Open it with Regedit.exe [%system32\regedit.exe], then it Confirms Add to registry Yes or No, Confirm Yes, then click Ok.

This week we are announcing that Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 has hit an important milestone in development: Release Candidate (RC). 

Starting today, the RC of SP2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 will be available to TechNet and MSDN subscribers to test prior to final release. In the very near future, we will be making the RC broadly available for anyone to download and test. You can expect another blog post from me when that happens.

SP2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 include updates that have been delivered since the release of SP1, as well as support for new types of hardware and emerging standards. As we’ve described since we first talked about SP2, we’ve taken your feedback into account when developing SP2. Specifically, we expect SP2 to continue the security benefits of both products and simplify deployment for our customers.

For an outline of changes in SP2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, check out the notable changes document.

We are planning to release SP2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 in the second quarter of 2009.

via ActiveWin.com

“If you are running the Windows® 7 operating system beta, the following information will help you select the correct beta software to download for your Microsoft Hardware product.

Important: This table contains the Microsoft Hardware support information for Windows 7 Beta. Please read the release notes before installing the software.”

Learn more here

My Windows 7 FAQ and Quick Started Guide is now up on ActiveWin.com with more content to get you started with the BETA:

“We have just posted our comprehensive Windows 7 FAQ / Quick Guide, with over 55 questions covering all Windows 7 topics. Check it out!”

Check it out here

Previously:

Windows Vista RTM FAQ and Quick Start Guide.