"We make a point of listening to our customers"

If you haven't caught it, Microsoft recently put out an advertisement for the latest edition of Internet Explorer, featuring none other than Superman actor Dean Cain, and directed by comedian and writer Bobcat Goldthwait. The ad, one in a series of similar productions, is now notorious for its 'graphic content'.

Following complaints, Microsoft has pulled it, stating, "while much of the feedback to this particular piece of creative was positive, some of our customers found it offensive, so we have removed it. We make a point of listening to our customers."

Below is the advertisement in question.

Our feeling: it's hilarious. And as a note to Microsoft: while it's good you listen to your customers, what about the ones that find this being pulled absurd? Just a thought, of course -- let us know yours.

HTML5 support, Private Browsing mode, improved performance, and tons more

Mozilla has this morning released the major 3.5 update to its popular browser Firefox. With it comes HTML5 elements, including support for the open Ogg Theora and Vorbis video and audio formats, Private Browsing mode, better web app performance courtesy of the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine (twice as fast as Firefox 3, and ten times Firefox 2), Location Aware Browsing (an optional feature that lets websites know where you're coming from so content can be tailored accordingly), and of course, lots of under the hood improvements, fixes, and the like.

Simply click the 'Help' tab in Firefox and 'Check for Updates' to grab the new version, of if you're particularly careful, use the Tweakguides method. If you're new to Firefox and keen to try, download it here.

There are known issues, naturally -- check the release notes linked below if you're curious.

Enjoy.

What’s New in Firefox 3.5

Firefox 3.5  is based on the Gecko 1.9.1 rendering platform, which has been under development for the past year. Firefox 3.5 offers many changes over the previous version, supporting new web technologies, improving performance and ease of use. Some of the notable features are:

• Available in more than 70 languages.
• Support for the HTML5 <video> and <audio> elements including native support for Ogg Theora encoded video and Vorbis encoded audio.
• Improved tools for controlling your private data, including a Private Browsing Mode.
• Better web application performance using the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
• The ability to share your location with websites using Location Aware Browsing.
• Support for native JSON, and web worker threads.
• Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
• Support for new web technologies such as: downloadable fonts, CSS media queries, new transformations and properties, JavaScript query selectors, HTML5 local storage and offline application storage, <canvas> text, ICC profiles, and SVG transforms.

PowerColor will bundle BumpTop 3D desktop beginning in July

BumpTop 3D is an intuitive and visual approach to organizing your computer desktop that combines the look and feel of a real desktop with the power of your computer to add advanced search and sort capabilities. It also provides the ability to use the three-dimensional aspect of the application to spatially organize files and photos and share them with different contacts. Check out a video of it in action as well as our mini-review here.

Under a new agreement, PowerColor will begin bundling the software with its PCS HD4850 graphics card starting this July. The PCS version of the HD4850 includes an advanced cooling solution from Arctic Cooling for a balance low-noise and low operating temperatures.

PowerColor expects to expand the program to include its entire lineup of videocards in the near future.

So fresh and so clean

It's a big week for Windows 7 -- shortly before revealing its absurdly nice pricing schemes and pre-order steals, Microsoft lifted the curtain on the packaging for the new operating system. If you have packaging and/or environment fetishes like we do, this is a particularly enjoyable moment.

As with the OS itself, they listened to what customers wanted, using this to determine how the boxes and casing would look, and what they came back with was essentially this: clean and simple. As you can see below, each edition's colour makes it easy to differentiate which edition is which, even without reading the box.

As an added bonus, customers can purchase Windows 7 without worrying about any great environmental impact: the case (pictured at top) is light and recyclable, the packaging itself has a 37% weight reduction, and its econometrics score is up 50% over Vista.

Offering discounts on new OS

Microsoft unveiled pricing details for Windows 7 today, which is expected to be available in stores on Oct. 22. Microsoft also announced a program that starts Friday under which consumers can pre-order the operating system for the next two weeks at discounts of more than 50%.

The full version of Windows 7 Home Premium is priced at $199, with an upgrade from Vista or XP costing $119. The full version of Windows 7 Professional is $299, with upgrades going for $199. Windows 7 Ultimate is priced at $319, with the upgrade version at $219. Note that the upgrade version is good for both Vista and XP installations.

Microsoft also provided more details around a previously disclosed upgrade program: consumers who purchase a Vista-based PC as of Friday will be eligible to upgrade the system to Windows 7 at no or little cost when it becomes available.

New Vista version seen as intermediary step between Win 7

Not many people who know of Windows 7's imminent October arrival would be too anxious to buy a copy of Vista, so Microsoft is changing things up a bit.

Six new Vista SKUs are coming very soon that will contain a voucher for a free upgrade to Windows 7, though there will be a small charge for shipping. The six Vista versions will be both 32-bit and 64-bit varieties of Ultimate, Home, and Business Vista. The free upgrade will be offered for the Win 7 equivalent of these Vista versions.

So if you are about to buy Vista, hold off! You'll definitely want to wait for the free Win 7 upgrade boxes to hit stores first, which should happen fairly soon.

Accusing Chinese firm of pirating Internet safety program

If there's anything we've learned about the People's Republic of China, it's that the entire country seems to have exceptionally liberal views on copyright policies.  We've seen Chinese developers ripping artwork from other MMOs, reskinning Flash games for the official Beijing Olympic website and thinking no one would notice. 

Hell, some major Chinese tech site even stole a Sims 3 performance guide by our Kevin Spiess, including images, for which they crudely added watermarks over OURS.  It's all quite deplorable.

Most recently, we hear from Solid Oak, a small software company based in Santa Barbara, California.  It seems that Jinhui Computer System Engineering Inc. has been passing off Solid Oak's CYBERsitter program as their own, using stolen code in their Green Dam Youth Escort screening software.

Solid Oak founder Brian Milburn said noticed this issue on Friday, June 12, when he received an email from someone claiming to be affliated with the Chinese Communist Party.  Not surprisingly, Milburn and his employees thought this was a joke

"At first I thought it was a prank and didn't pay much attention to it," he said, but they took a deeper look anyway.  Further digging revealed the tip-off was not a hoax.

"One of our employees researched it and came back to me and said I might want to look at it more closely. We then found actual proprietary code from CYBERsitter within the Green Dam programme that is only available in an encrypted format."

"I spent a good deal of the weekend with another engineer trying to find if it was an honest mistake. But someone made a 100% conscious effort to do this. This is not some accident," explained Milburn, who's obviously more than a little vexed at this point.

Of course, Jinhui Computer System Engineering isn't admitting to anything.  "That's impossible. We didn't steal their programming code," claimed spokesperson Bryan Zhang.

The Chinese government currently requires Green Dam to be pre-installed on every new PC made or shipped by July 1, meaning Solid Oak has quite a fight on their hands.  But the Californian software developer isn't giving in.

"We're contacting Dell, HP and others to stop compromised material being shipped," Milburn stated, though he believes the pirated software has already been installed on 9 million computers. 

"If China had gotten hold of free pirated copies of Microsoft's Windows and told Dell and HP to put this on all computers you ship, you would hear a loud outcry. China has a very loose interpretation of what is intellectual property."

He's trying to be understanding, admitting that he understands the PC manufacturers aren't at fault, just "stuck in the middle."  Still, he hopes they'll do the right thing and stop distributing machines with Green Dam.

"We are just a little company and trying to take on China is an impossible task. We don't want to turn into a litigation company."

Ironically, the Chinese incarnation has been revealed to contain serious weak spots, vulnerable to hackers.  China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is trying to get that fixed.

Meanwhile, critics are using this as an opportunity to poke more holes in the "Great Firewall of China."  Although the government claims Green Dam is necessary for protecting children from offensive online material, the program's true purpose remains painfully clear. 

The said "offensive" content includes politically sensitive / damning information, images, keywords, and certain web addresses.  Green Dam can also monitor general computer usage and shut down applications.

"While the justification may be pitched as protecting children and mostly concerning pornography, once the architecture is set up it can be used for broader purposes, such as the filtering of political ideas," said Harvard's Professor Jonathan Zittrain.

Dell spokesman David Frink insists the PC giant hasn't shipped any machines containing the Green Dam program.  According to Frink, Dell is "aware of the policy from China and along with the rest of the industry are reviewing it."

Now available in eight languages

Elemental Technologies today announced its Badaboom 1.2 media converter is available to non-English markets for the first time with support of seven additional languages. In addition to the original English, Badaboom now offers user interfaces in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Badaboom is a media converter which runs on any CUDA-enabled NVIDIA GPU to make transcoding of video file fast and easy; offloading the conversion process to the GPU enables the software to take advantage of the massive parallel processing capabilities of NVIDIA's computing architecture, significantly reducing the time needed to transfer files to portable media devices.

First time for everything

Reacting to an antitrust investigation headed by the European Commission (EC) since January, Microsoft has elected to keep Internet Explorer (IE) out of Windows 7, albeit only in Europe. From here, manufacturers will have the option to put the browser back in, install another, or install multiple browsers. This, of course, is a first in the corporation's history, and a move that should please Mozilla and Opera (update: okay, nevermind).

The news comes courtesy of a leaked memo from Microsoft to PC makers, which reads as follows:

"To ensure that Microsoft is in compliance with European law, Microsoft will be releasing a separate version of Windows 7 for distribution in Europe that will not include Windows Internet Explorer. Microsoft will offer IE8 separately and free of charge and will make it easy and convenient for PC manufacturers to preinstall IE 8 on Windows 7 machines in Europe if they so choose. PC manufacturers may choose to install an alternative browser instead of IE 8, and has always been the case, they may install multiple browsers if they wish."

Microsoft has confirmed its authenticity, but decided against further comment.

The version without IE will be dubbed the "E" version, while another excluding it as well as Windows Media Player (for the same reasons), will be dubbed the "N" version. The corporation also noted:

"[We are] focused on ensuring that Windows 7 is a successful worldwide release available to the broadest number of consumers, including those in Europe. We believe that we need to release these E versions to address the preliminary legal views communicated to us in the EU. We are informing OEMs of these plans now so that we can work together to meet our shared goal to have Windows 7 broadly available for a holiday launch."

The tricky part is for manufacturers who choose to ship the OS without a browser -- for customers who purchase a copy as such at retail, it's not exactly simple to find a browser if you're browser-less, and the average user is most likely not going to know it's even possible.

According to "a person familiar with the situation", Microsoft plans on offering IE via CD, FTP and retail channels, ensuring we're all good to go. If sense prevails, though, manufacturers will simply offer a browser (any browser) with the OS -- we're pretty sure most people would rather even IE than any hassle, to start with. Update: The EC agrees.

Meanwhile, the rest of us can all but completely remove the software if we so wish.

Update: Microsoft has responded here, also offering background on the matter and even acknowledging the "ballot screen" approach.

Say 'bye bye' to Norton and 'hello' to Microsoft

So you just bought yourself a nice new computer from Best Buy, and it came pre-installed with a whole lot of software, one of them probably being Norton Anti-Virus from Symantec.  Unfortunately, a lot of people can't stand Norton for a number of reasons, despite its overall effectiveness. 

To appease such consumers (like myself), Microsoft has announced that it will be developing its own free virus software.  The mystery software is still being tested by Microsoft employees, but a trial copy should be available for download soon.

We're not expecting Microsoft's anti-virus to have quite so many features as those pricey programs, so we're not sure if it will include encryption, data recovery, firewalls or back-up feature

Estimated release date is October 22, and the software will be bundled with Windows 7.

Bundles of goodness in store, Mozilla assures

Mozilla's popular Internet browser Firefox is set for its next big incremental update "soon", and the team has laid out what we can look forward to.

More than just a set of improvements and minor new functionalites (though there is that, too, of course), 3.5 is touted by Mozilla as representing "a huge upgrade to the web itself", which is to say there will be "support for open audio and video (Ogg), threads in JavaScript, new canvas features, tons of new CSS features, downloadable fonts, geolocation, and more." If you're really into this stuff, head over to Firefox Hacks where Mozilla is demonstrating the new stuff daily as part of their 'Firefox 3.5 in 35 days' feature.

Another upgrade to get excited about is the add-on installation process -- developer Dave Townsend says he's aiming to "let users know that new add-ons have been installed and let the add-on help the user move forward without needing to show popup dialogs or inundate the user.” If you have suggestions, or are just curious to get all the details, take a jaunt to his blog.

We'll have more news for you on 3.5 as the release draws near.

Handing over the reins

Sadly, it seems the "golden age" of popular online music service Last.fm is over -- following the switch from free radio to paid in select countries and banning of third party mobile apps due to agreements between companies, the original founders have stepped down and handed their project completely over to CBS, with whom they've been running the site under for two years, having started in 2002.

Of course, it's not all bad, as one of the creators, Felix Miller informs us, upon writing they feel "the time is right to begin the process of handing over the reins":

It’s been a privilege working with the incredible team here in our London office, and we’re extremely proud of what we’ve achieved together. Last.fm’s users have more than doubled in the last 12 months (we are now at an all-time high of 37.3M monthly unique visitors), and we’re confident the site will continue to go from strength to strength. Being a part of CBS, and the recently formed CBSi music group, continues to open up many opportunities for Last.fm. Recent product releases such as the new visual radio, and the Last.fm on XBox announcement, are an indication of how much more Last.fm will achieve.

A huge “Thank You!” has to be said to all of you in front of your computers. With your contribution, enthusiasm and scrobbles you have helped to make Last.fm into what it is today: the best place for music online. Big up yourself for that, as we say here in East London.

That’s all folks, we are going to miss you!

Felix, RJ and Martin

Details, predictions, and nerdy programmer stuff

AMD's Sr. Manager of Developer Relations Richard Huddy wrote a neat little blog post last week about DirectX 11, which should shed a lot of light on what to expect from the next generation of the API collection -- a much bigger jump than DirectX 9 was to 10, to be sure. Couple that with the advancements and improvements Windows 7 has in store (it will be available for Vista, too, though), and well -- it's a good time to be a PC gamer.

Huddy outlines three main areas (there are many others) in which DX11 will affect your graphics experiences, particularly with games, of course. If you're not really into this whole "reading" thing, feel free to skip to the bottom where a summary can be found.

The first step lies with "a beast called the tessellator", which will be behind the stuff we'll be most aware of, like in landscape silhouettes or character profiles (say goodbye to blocky features), as seen above. Most interesting is the change in dynamics -- whereas for what seems like forever, gamers have had to trade-off graphics for performance, or vice versa, old tessy here should offer much more freedom to developers, in turn giving us a more "naturalistic" experience. We've been getting a taste of this for awhile now, as the technology has been in video cards for a bit, including the Xbox 360's, but in combination with DX11, things should be stepped up considerably.

Number two comes from "Compute Shader", aka "GPGPU", a feature which will allow programmers a radically different way of writing for graphics chips (similiar to programming using NVIDIA's CUDA parallel computing engine). In scenarios like this, they can treat the GPU more like a highly parallel CPU, something Huddy says will abolish the "triangle approach" programmers have been forced to use before, allowing for more freedom of expression, also in keeping with the "naturalistic" mode of work offered by the tessellator. For the gamer, the Compute Shader will allow higher frame rates overall -- can't complain, there.

Quite notably, this could evolve into a situation where integrated graphics go the route of integrated sound, becoming substantial enough on their own, with the ability to run most modern games; the big boys from NVIDIA and ATI, then, would be sold to enthusiasts (e.g. those who want to crank the settings). In short, PC gaming would be accessible to just about everyone if this came to fruition.

On the CPU end, 11 is touted as being much more optimized to make use of the power multicore hardware offers, also helping in the frame rate department, as well as with realism and detail.

Though without elaborating, Huddy lastly notes "corner cases" should be significantly improved performance-wise, which would mean more consistent gaming experiences across the board.

In summary, here are his predictions:

• We’ll see higher frame rates because the way DirectX 11 uses CPUs will be more efficient.
• We’ll see higher frame rates because games developers will be able to use our GPUs more like CPUs.
• We’ll see smoother, more realistic characters and more realistic terrain as we move away from blocky polygonal representations to the kind that are used in movies.
• And a side-benefit, that will help PC gaming generally, is that the new version is easier to use, so it will help to keep game development costs down.

Windows 7 ships October 22 -- sounds like we have a lot to look forward to, and not long to wait.

'Green Dam' software to be requisite installation on all PCs

China's Internet censorship laws are already infamously and widely known, but it appears the government is still unsatisifed and is taking further steps to control what its citizen see.

Green Dam-Youth Escort is the name of the new software they'll be soon using, which will be required to be installed by manufacturers on all personal computers in China. The government says this is to “protect young people from ‘harmful’ content," (i.e. pornography), but some, like the Internet Society's chairman (who refers to it as government spyware), and Arts Technica writer John Timmer, are concerned it will be used for political ends.

Indeed, browsers and operating systems already have built-in parental controls, and the rest of the world seems to be doing just fine with those, so to say this is its only purpose seems all too suspicious, especially given the Chinese government's track record (i.e. covering up online reports regarding a massive earthquake earlier this year, for one).

October 22nd

Microsoft announced this morning the official release date of their latest operating system - Windows 7. The team at Redmond will make it available to the world on October 22nd, just a day earlier than Acer leaked a few weeks ago.

Unlike its predecessor, 7 has been warmly welcomed by the vast majority of people who jumped on the release candidate and even the surprisingly stable beta.

While Windows 7 is more of an evolutionary upgrade from Vista, it's certainly a worthy one; it may just be what Microsoft needs to get the masses to willingfully upgrade their XP and even Vista computers.

Pricing should be in line with Vista and we'll probaby get hit by a slew of not-so-different versions.

10.2'' the new limmit, VIA Tech ousted

In our Lenovo announces ION graphics-based IdeaPad S12 netbook article yesterday, readers debated whether or not the manufacturer's latest foray into the mini PC world was truly a "mini" PC, what with its 12.1'' screen.

As Microsoft had it, 12.1'' was the maximum limit for a PC to be considered a netbook, meaning anything up to and including that size would receive the discount for a netbook version of a given Windows operating system.

Today we learn Intel and Microsoft have agreed upon a new standard -- 10.2'', according to Taiwan-based ODM, who manufacture notebooks.

Not a terribly significant event in itself, but the effects are. VIA technologies, Intel's only main competitor in the netbook world as far as we can tell, will be cut off from their current price advantage in the 11-12.1'' segment as they no longer qualify for the discounted Windows 7 on netbooks licensing rates from Microsoft; Intel already currently dominates the more common 10'' segment with its Atom CPUs.

The new limitation is part of a set of changes in Microsoft's new netbook standards:

Things to know

Users decided on Windows Vista until 7 rolls around should be happy today: Service Pack 2 (SP2) is released.

In addition to incorporating all previous updates, SP2 contains changes "focused on supporting new types of hardware and adding support for several emerging standards." On the IT side, administrators will now find it easier to deploy and manage large installations of Vista and its accompanying Windows Server 2008.

Prerequisites will be simple for most: your version of Windows Server 2008 or Vista must have SP1 installed. Note if you're updating through Windows Update/WSUS, a separate update to the servicing stack must first be installed -- this handles installation and removal of software updates and other features, and is necessary to successfully install and uninstall the new pack, and with maximum performance and reliability. Lastly, if you're making use of the vLite utility for the move, you may get an error -- details here.

If receiving through Windows Update, which downloads only the changed data, you're looking at a 43 MB file set; those going for the standalone set will be at 302 or 390 MB (five or seven languages) on x86 systems (link), and 508 or 622 MB (five or 36 languages) on x64s (link).

Upon successful installation it is strongly advised to run the Service Pack Clean-up tool -- just run command prompt and enter compcln.exe.

For the list of highlighted changes and improvements, hit up the source below where you can also find a link to the full list of hotfixes and security updates. For a quick list, though, have this: removal of half open outbound TCP connections limit, ability to record to Blu-ray disc, and 'improved' content protection for TV in Windows Media Center.

Enjoy!

Big sales for Microsoft

The United States Army has announced the decision to upgrade hundreds of thousands of PC desktops from Windows XP to Windows Vista by 2010. This undoubtedly will make Microsoft happy, as sales of Vista were presumed to be never as high as they had hoped. 

The U.S Army will also be upgrading all copies of Windows Office 2003 to Office 2007. Instead of waiting for Office 2010, it looks like the Army is choosing to go with Office 2007 out of security concerns.

This switch over to Vista will be one of the largest OS mass-upgradings to happen in the United States. While Vista has made its way into many large corporations and organizations, there has been some marketplace reluctance, and Windows XP remains a very common sight, 8 years after release.

Introducing Windows 7 Scenario Feedback

For those really looking to give back, beyond just using the Windows 7 release candidate and automatically sending data to Microsoft, there's a program being put off called Windows 7 Scenario Feedback. Just head over to the website linked below, enter your information, and have at 'er.

The questions regard what you'd expect -- things like quality, when you plan to install, etc. and come in a yes/no and scale of 1-7 format. Easy stuff.

The RC's been about for about two weeks now, so it should prove a good amount of time to have formulated your collective impressions and then send them off, if that's what you're into.

A sarcastic take on "the Microsoft future"

Not too long ago Microsoft presented us with their vision of a future far more technological than the present, which was thought to be rather interesting, even beautiful, by many.

Sarcastic Gamer are the cynical type, though, and decided to run with the corporation's idea for the sake of satire, and the results are hilarious.

Check it out:

We knew it was too good to be true...

For all the praise we've heaped on Windows 7, it appears there's been a catch all along: price. According to Dell's Darrel Ward, director of product management for the corporation's business client product group, the cost of the new operating system will exceed Vista (and in turn, XP):

"If there's one thing that may influence adoption, make things slower or cause customers to pause, it's that generally the ASPs (average selling price) of the operating systems are higher than they were for Vista and XP," he said, referring to the various upcoming versions of 7.

The source of this issue, it appears, is licensing, perhaps specifically a decrease in growth in its revenues:

"In tough economic times," says Ward, "I think it's naive to believe that you can increase your prices on average and then still see a stronger swell than if you held prices flat or even lowered them. I can tell you that the licensing tiers at retail are more expensive than they were for Vista."

To give you a more specific idea of what to expect, he states Windows 7 Professional should be more expensive than Windows Vista Business was.

Network World's Mitchell Ashley has a big problem with this, saying Microsoft would be making a grave mistake to make the entry point for 7 even higher than the standard $200-300. Here are his reasons:

• Vista upgraders and purchasers would like the product they already paid for
• This won't help seduce XP users
• Not going to help the battle against Linux. (i.e. Free OS or $400 OS? Suddenly Linux is a serious consideration for some.)
  
• Remember the bad economy?
  
• Why should we pay (reward) Microsoft to fix your own problems. (i.e. Decreased license revenues? Not our issue.)
  

Will Windows 7's high pricing hold you off from upgrading?

Unsurprising, yet exciting

The final release date for Windows 7 has been a hot topic of discussion ever since the operating system was first announced. Reports have ranged from July 2009 to January 2010, with analysts saying anything past this holiday season would be a mistake on Microsoft's part, costing them truckloads of money. Thankfully for Microsoft, it appears this "comittment to quality" kick they're on will not have to be compromised in light of the official target window revealed at Tech•Ed North America 2009 -- Holiday 2009.

“With early RC testing and extensive partner feedback we’ve received, Windows 7 is tracking well for holiday availability," said Bill Veghte, senior vice president of the Windows Business at Microsoft.

Stated The Windows Blog's Brandon LeBlanc: "I want to underscore that our top priority remains QUALITY. This guidance does not alter that principle."

Good to know.

For details on the path from RC to General Availability (GA), check out the latest Engineering Windows 7 blog post.

Building on Vista's Software Protection Platform

Most all Windows users are familiar with Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) tool, which aims to minimize piracy of its operating system and promote legitimate use.

The system was succeeded in Vista with the Software Protection Platform (SPP), and as we learn today, a new tweaked version of this will be featured in Windows 7 (ironically, the new OS doesn't like some forms of DRM, at least not at this stage).

The new system is called Windows Activation Technologies (WAT), and, so says Microsoft’s general manager of Worldwide Genuine Windows Joe Williams, will make life harder for pirates, even moreso than SPP did over WGA.

Williams observes they're "seeing fewer copies of non-genuine Windows Vista on customers’ machines," incentive enough for them to push this new tech along, not to mention “up to a third of customers worldwide may be running counterfeit copies of Windows" (we're pretty sure that means they're not customers, however).

He states: "As a public company, we have a responsibility to our shareholders and employees to protect our intellectual property and get paid for the products we bring to the market."

Are you ready?

Last evening Microsoft released its Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Beta tool, which will help greatly if you're not sure about making to jump to Windows 7 at this point.

At 6.5 MB, it's a simple and smooth experience which scans your system, letting you know if you meet the minimum requirements, and if your components, programs and devices are compatible with the new operating system. Finally, it will serve as a guide on your upgrade options.

Give it a shot if you like via the link below.

That old antitrust story again...

Microsoft has a history of strategically monopolizing the browser sector in the computing world, among others. Presumably in keeping with recent antitrust action against the corporation from the European Commission, as previously reported, their latest OS, Windows 7, is featuring a first-time option to all but completely remove Internet Explorer, meaning a couple of clicks and a restart and your browser of choice will always be opened by default.

Apparently Mozilla -- makers of the ever-popular Firefox -- and Opera are not satisfied, however, still maintaining IE is given an unfair advantage due to it being the included browser by default. Mozilla's chairperson Mitchell Baker explains:

"Our initial review suggests this is a blatant use of the Windows operating system to change the market dynamics of browser usage. What we've seen so far is a clear example of why and how Microsoft's Windows monopoly damages competition in related products."

Opera were the ones who complained to the Commission over Microsoft's anti-competitive tactics, leading to a provisional finding against them. Their chief technology officer Hakon Wium Lie says they'd like to clear the air:

"This issue highlights the problem with the browser market. It's certainly something we would want to discuss."

Microsoft has stated the software, newly in the release candidate stage and previously in beta, was "only a test version aimed at a limited audience of experienced computer users" and the final experience will be different.

The proposed solution is to offer rival browsers as well as IE. Should this come to fruition, our suggestion, specifically (which is not to say this isn't asking too much), would be to offer a choice upon first installation, featuring a concise "preview" of each browser, instead of having three or more installed by default.

We look forward to seeing how this situation turns out in the final version of Windows 7; some headway should be made on June 3 following a meeting in Brussels.

In the meantime, what are your opinions? Are Mozilla and Opera's demands reasonable?