Microsoft officially confirmed today that it has finished Windows 7 and released the final build to manufacturing (RTM).

Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer at Microsoft, confirmed that Microsoft has finalised Windows 7 during his speech at an employee conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Microsoft Global Exchange (MGX) is an internal Microsoft conference for Microsoft’s global sales teams and evangelists. Employees have been posting updates to Twitter today.

Source: Neowin

Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer 8 is the next version of the world’s most popular browser that has been built from the ground up to be the best browser for the way people really use the Web. Faster, easier and safer than ever before, Internet Explorer 8 optimizes developer and end-user experiences to provide a window to the Web of online services.

Moreover, Internet Explorer 8 offers new features and functionality that enables people to reach beyond the page in a number of faster, easier, and more secure ways. Following are brief descriptions of the new and enhanced features that Microsoft Corp. has introduced in Internet Explorer 8.

Note: Windows 7 Beta already includes a pre-release candidate version of Internet Explorer 8 that is optimized for that release.

View: Fact Sheet
Download: Internet Explorer 8 RTM
View: Microsoft Internet Explorer 8
Source: MSFN

As expected, Microsoft Monday released Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Release Candidate 1 (RC1) to the public. You can grab the download from the Microsoft Download Center: for Vista and Server 2008 32-bit, for Vista and Server 2008 64-bit, for XP 32-bit, for Server 2003 SP2 32-bit, and for Server 2003 SP2 64-bit and XP 64-bit. At time of publishing, the release notes have not yet been updated (but should be soon), though the Technology Overview for Developers is available. Please note that this build is newer than the one in Windows 7 build 7000 and cannot be installed over top of that version of IE8. Testers using Windows 7 will have to wait for a new build of the operating system.

Microsoft already gave testers an RC1 build (8.0.6001.18343) last month and then updated the build number 8.0.6001.18344 that same week, due to an out-of-band security update for the browser. The software giant gave the public IE8 Beta 2 in August 2008 and Beta 1 in March 2008.

View: Full Story
Source: MSFN

Normally, I would frown upon testing beta software against final code that has been updated frequently, but the results this time around are very interesting. Instead of using benchmarking programs, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes from ZDNet put together 23 real-world scenarios to see which operating system would be the quickest to complete all of the tasks.

He tested the 32-bit versions of Windows 7 build 6.1.7000.0.081212-1400, Windows Vista SP1, and Windows XP SP3. Two separate test machines were used:

An AMD Phenom 9700 2.4GHz system fitted with an ATI Radeon 3850 and 4GB of RAM
An Intel Pentium Dual Core E2200 2.2GHz fitted with an NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS and 1GB of RAM

Source: One Microsoft Way via MSFN

CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system – allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. But the best part is that it’s fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware!

Fully tried and tested with Windows 98/NT4/ME/2000/XP/2003/Vista. It’s currently partially compatible with 64bit XP and Vista, there are a few non-critical issues which are still being worked on.

Download: CCleaner v2.14.750 | Other Builds
View: What’s New | CCleaner Homepage
Source: MSFN

I thought I would let people know, that the final build of µTorrent is officially out now. It comes in as v1.8 build 11758. The first thing I noticed about the new build is a new icon, aqua-ish, whilst a minimal change, it still is nice.

You can download µTorrent over here, and for the people that like change logs, it’s also available here.

Well, that’s all for now, happy µtorrenting. Now remember, stay legal .

This third Firefox 3 Release Candidate is a preview release of Mozilla’s next generation Firefox browser and is being made available for testing purposes only.

Firefox 3 is based on the Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 34 months. Building on the previous release, Gecko 1.9 has more than 14,000 updates including some major re-architecting to provide improved performance, stability, rendering correctness, and code simplification and sustainability. Firefox 3 has been built on top of this new platform resulting in a more secure, easier to use, more personal product with a lot more under the hood to offer website and Firefox add-on developers.

View: Mozilla Firefox 3 RC3 Main Page
View: Mozilla Firefox 3 RC3 Release Notes

Downloads (via official distributed mirrors):
Mozilla Firefox 3 RC3 English Windows | 7.15 MB
Mozilla Firefox 3 RC3 English Mac OS X | 17.2 MB
Mozilla Firefox 3 RC3 English Linux | 8.7 MB

Microsoft is denying a recent report that suggests it deliberately included a technical loophole in Windows Vista that lets users install the OS without paying for the full priced version. In an article that appeared earlier this week in the Windows Secrets newsletter, reporter Scott Dunn noted that the Service Pack 1 version of Windows Vista gives users the option of buying the ‘upgrade edition’ and installing it on any PC, which enables them to avoid paying for the more expensive ‘full’ edition. In the U.S., the list price of the upgrade edition is more than $100 cheaper than the full edition, according to Dunn.

According to Dunn, the same option was available to users when Vista was first released, and Microsoft’s failure to close this loophole in Vista SP1 suggests that the vendor “approved the back door as a way to make the price of Vista more appealing to sophisticated buyers.” But a Microsoft spokesperson disputed the notion that the vendor supports users taking advantage of the technical loophole in Vista.

View: Full Story
Source: InformationWeek via MSFN

Based on the well-known original memtest86 written by Chris Brady, memtest86+ is a port by some members of the x86-secret team, now working at www.canardplus.com. Our goal is to provide an up-to-date and completly reliable version of this software tool aimed at memory failures detection.

Memtest86+ is, like the original, released under the terms of the Gnu Public License (GPL). No restrictions for use, private or commercial exist other than the ones mentioned in the Gnu Public License (GPL). Texts about the original version was taken from the original website and written by Chris Brady.

Download: Memtest86+ v2.01
View: Memtest Homepage

Changes:

*** Enhancements in v2.01 : ***

* New Features
o Added support for 45 nm Mobile Core 2 w/ 3 Mo L2
o Added support for i945GM/PM/GME & i946PL/GZ
o Added support for iGM965/iGL960/iPM965/iGME965/iGLE960
o Added detection for SiS 649/656/671/672
o Added detection for i430MX/i430TX
o Added an optional beep mode (pass completed w/o error)
o Pass duration 20% reduced
o Removed the blinking cursor
o Reverted Test #0 to cached

* Bug Fixes
o Solved a major bug in Memory Address Errors Reporting
o Patched for Intel-Powered Mac
o Corrected Intel 3-Series (P35/X38) chipset init
o Corrected a bug with SPD Display and ESB6300
o Correct a detection bug on P965/G965 C-Stepping
o Solved a incoherency with pass progress indicator
o Patched Makefile to compile on x86_64
o Bootable Memtest86+ ISO more compatible

I had a bunch of people internally ask me why Windows Server shows it’s version as Windows Server 2008 SP1 (for brevity – WS08). I will explain it, but I wanted to use the Writer feature that allows me to insert pictures. Who says anything beyond notepad is a waste of time. Actually, that’s me usually… The history here goes back to problems we had form the split we had when we broke Windows XP from Windows Server 2003 (WS03) way back in 2000.

At the time we had Windows 2000 (Win2k) out in the market & it was being very well received. Especially on the client side which was doing well with corporate desktops. At the same time in the consumer side, we had Windows ME. I never worked on WinME, I have never installed it, & I know nothing about it except what people have told me.

Mid 2000, we had a combined release on the rails but the pressure to do a client release for consumer got high. So we forked WinXP from what was to become WS03. On one side, I think we did exactly the right thing. We met the dates required from OEMs for WinXP & closed down the server release in exactly the right way. I believe the longevity of WS03 in market was because we did a load of right things in the end game. I sill think what we knew when we released WinXP in august 2001 it was a great product. It’s just that the world changed 2 weeks later…

View: Full Story
Source: MSFN