The CES 2009 conference is less than a week away and the world is looking forward to Steve Ballmer’s keynote which is expected to reveal new information about Microsoft’s upcoming operating system Windows 7. Many news sites assume that Steve Ballmer will announce the public release of the Windows 7 Beta in his keynote. While that is not totally clear yet it is generally assumed that the Windows 7 Beta will be released in the beginning of January.

Long posted information about the live streams of the keynote on his Windows 7 blog. It will begin on Wednesday January 7 at 6.30pm PST and three live streams can be accessed to view the keynote from anywhere on the globe:

100K CEO 2009 Live Stream
300K CEO 2009 Live Stream
750K CEO 2009 Live Stream

We have reported earlier that Microsoft has the intention to ship Windows 7 with regional themes that make use of wallpapers and additional interface enhancements that are unique depending on the region Windows 7 has been sold. Currently the five zones Australia, Canada, Great Britain, United States and South Africa are known and it is very likely that additional zones will be added in the retail versions.

There is one interesting option to add all regional themes to Windows 7. The option works both in the 6956 and the 7000 build of the operating system. It is very likely that it can also be used in the retail versions of Windows 7.

To activate all regional themes in Windows 7 do the following:

Navigate to \Windows\Globalization\MCT\
The folder contains five folders that represent the five regions currently available in Windows 7
Open the themes folder in one of the folders and doubleclick on the xx.theme file to activate that theme.
Repeat the steps to add all five regional themes to Windows 7

How does Windows 7 beta 1 compare to Vista and XP in terms of performance? That’s a question that’s been hitting my inbox regularly over the past few weeks. Let’s see if we can’t answer it!

Important note: Before I go any further I feel I need to make a point, and make it clear. The build I’m testing of Windows 7 (build 6.1.7000.0.081212-1400) is a beta build, and as a rule beta builds are usually more geared towards stability than performance. That said, the performance of this build should give us a clue as to how the OS is coming along.

Rather than publish a series of benchmark results for the three operating systems (something which Microsoft frowns upon for beta builds, not to mention the fact that the final numbers only really matter for the release candidate and RTM builds), I’ve decided to put Windows 7, Vista and XP head-to-head in a series of real-world tests to find out which OS comes out top.

The tests

There are 23 tests in all, most of which are self explanatory:

Install OS - Time it takes to install the OS
Boot up - Average...

An early version of Windows 7, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s successor to the widely maligned Vista operating system, is drawing mixed reviews from users of a popular, though legally questionable, file-sharing site.
"I'm using this OS as I type," wrote a Pirate Bay user going by the name "al966g." "Looks like it's OK to me, not too much different than Vista but a few new items," the user wrote.


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Intel (NSDQ: INTC) CEO Paul Otellini demonstrates and discusses the future of collaboration and talks about Intels business model, including how it approaches R&D.Al966g noted that he had Windows 7 running on a relatively underpowered Pentium 4 computer with only 768 MB of RAM. Vista, by contrast, was widely criticized for steep hardware requirements that forced users to upgrade their PCs.
Another Pirate Bay user, "bren72," said the Windows 7 beta version he's using works well for games. "I can mount all my games, which are playing incredibly well for my older hardware," he wrote. "It looks like Microsoft took note of some of the problems with...

To unlock and reveal the hidden regional themes in Windows 7, do the following:

1. Open Windows Explorer.
2. Click Organize, and select Folder and Search Options.
3. Go to View tab.
4. Select Show hidden files, folders and drivers and uncheck Hide protected operating system files (Recommended). If prompted with confirmation, click Yes.
5. Click OK.
6. Browse to the following folder:

   \Windows\Globalization\MCT\

7. There are five folders in the name with format MCT-XX (where XX is AU, CA, GB, US, or ZA) which represents globalization settings for each region. Go into the folder that you want to activate its theme.

   Note: AU, CA and ZA regions have the same themes.

8. Open the Theme folder inside the selected region folder.
9. Double click on the XX.theme file to apply the theme to the Windows 7 desktop system. Once a theme is ran and activated, the theme will be remembered and saved into Personalization options, so that user can change or select the theme again directly from Personalization settings screen.
10. Now to go to Folder Options to reverse the first 5 steps to hide the hidden and protected system files and folders again.

After unlocking, there are more themes for personalize selection.

Alternatively, go to \Windows\winsxs, and search

...

Downloads of a new build of Microsoft Corp.'s upcoming Windows 7 operating system have soared in the last two days, with thousands of systems now pulling pirated copies from BitTorrent sites.

Searches today on the Pirate Bay BitTorrent site, for example, returned multiple listings of Windows 7 Build 7000, which Microsoft identifies as a beta candidate in the filename. The torrent is a disk image of the 32-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate; a 64-bit version is not yet available.

The most heavily trafficked Windows 7 BitTorrent on Pirate Bay showed more than 4,300 "seeders" -- the term for a computer that has a complete copy of the torrent file -- and about 7,500 "leechers," or computers that have downloaded only part of the complete torrent. Less popular BitTorrents of the file on Pirate Bay claimed an additional 1,000 seeders and more than 3,000 leechers.

On Saturday, a day after the first copies of Build 7000 appeared on BitTorrent, Pirate Bay's prime listing showed less than half as many seeders as it did today.

Similar increases could be seen on other BitTorrent sites. For example, Mininova listed almost 20 Windows 7 BitTorrents -- some...