Game creation toolset is a hit

Remember last week when we announced Epic Games had released its Unreal Development Kit for free to the masses? Well, it really took off: the company has just informed media over 50,000 installations have been recorded since then. More than that, users are spread across 130 countries and 4,500 cities, so we can expect lots of diverse creations in the years to come.

UDK is free for all, and offers licensing options for those wanting to take their works commercial.

Freeware favourite sees major patch, improved performance, updated UI and lots more

Our personal favourite photo editing program saw a major automatic update roll out just now: Paint.NET is now at version 3.5.

With the patch comes lots of goodness, including heavily improved performance (we noticed install time and memory usage are definitely better), an updated UI (we can't speak for Windows Vista or 7, but on XP it looks 7-y) , new effects, and lots of fixes and tweaks.

Version 4.0 won't be out til about 2011, but you can expect "a new UI, improved extensibility, a revamped brush system, soft selections, and adjustment layers."

If you do basic or semi-advanced photo editing, we highly recommend grabbing 3.5. Paint.NET is freeware, but a donation is encouraged, too.

Below are your release notes, complete with a download link.

Paint.NET v3.5 - Download
This release focused on improving performance and reliability, reducing memory usage, upgrading to the latest .NET Framework version, and refreshing the user interface for Aero and glass (Windows 7 / Vista).

• New: Refreshed user interface with new icons and visual styling. On Windows 7 and Vista, it is enhanced for Aero and "glass".
  
• New effect: Blurs -> Surface Blur, by Ed Harvey
• New effect: Distort -> Dents, by Ed Harvey
• New effect: Distort -> Crystalize, by Ed Harvey
• New: Russian translation.
• Performance and memory usage have been extensively optimized throughout the entire program.
• .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 is now required, which has many built-in performance improvements.
• Disk space usage has been reduced by about 12MB by using NTFS compression on installation files related to staging (.MSI) and diagnostics (.PDB).
• Compression for .PDN images has been improved.
• Effect dialog responsiveness has been improved.
• Images open much faster, especially on single CPU systems.
• Startup performance on most systems will be better by about 20%.
• Memory usage has been reduced when more than one image is open.
• Rendering quality has been greatly improved when zoomed in.
• The selection outline is no longer animated. Instead of "dancing ants", a context-sensitive "XOR" stipple pattern is drawn. This has allowed for improved performance and lowered CPU consumption (and longer battery life).
• The font manager for the Text tool has been completely rewritten, which fixes many problems seen with crashes and missing fonts.
• On Windows XP, the Text tool has improved reliability and font selection (it uses GDI instead of GDI+).
• On Windows 7, the Text tool will use DirectWrite (instead of GDI) which gives better performance and greatly improved quality. On Windows Vista, you may install DirectX 11 to enable this feature; otherwise GDI will be used.
• The toolbar font list has improved usability, rendering quality, and significantly improved performance.
• The toolbar font list no longer requires an application restart to recognize newly installed fonts.
• When many fonts are installed, both memory usage and startup performance have been greatly improved.
• It is now drastically easier to move a very small selection.
• All installation prerequisites are now installed automatically, such as .NET and Windows Installer.
• Updates are now downloaded in the background, and installed after you exit the application. In previous versions, this was a foreground task and you could not use Paint.NET while the update was downloaded.
• Added a "Utilities" menu. Updates, Languages, and Plugin Errors have been moved there.
• Added a "Manage Fonts" command to the Utilities menu. This will launch the built-in Windows font control panel.
• Clicking the middle mouse button on an image thumbnail will now close the image.
• Improved the Unfocus effect.
• The DirectDraw Surface (.DDS) file type now allows you to select the resampling algorithm for auto-generated mip-maps.
• A processor that supports SSE is now required (almost all CPUs purchased this decade satisfy this).
• Fixed an issue with Gaussian Blur and its treatment of alpha values.
• Fixed a crash with the "Units" selector in the toolbar.
• Fixed a crash due to an overflow that prevented very large images from working (64-bit only).
• Fixed many other miscellaneous glitches and crashes.
• The Korean translation has been removed. Sadly, we were unable to find the resources to complete this.

It's like reading a real ebook, but on your home computer

Remember those book things? They were sort of like scrunched together paper products bound by spines. Remember?

Okay now do you remember ebooks? They were sort of like scanned versions of the paper products that you could access with an ebook reader. Such as Kindle, which was developed by Amazon and subsidiary Lab126.

Today Amazon released a Kindle ebook reader for your home computer. While it seems much nicer to us to be able to read in bed (or on the can) with an actual book, if you feel so inclined, you can download this beta release of PC Kindle and read novels and such from your display. Kindle PC works with Windows 7, Vista, XP -- and a Mac version is "coming soon."

Kindle's e-book repository is upwards of 400,000, and with this reader, you can also get magazines and newspapers and stuff like that. While reading a novel on a PC display doesn't seem that awesome to us, perhaps having a Kindle ebook going on a notebook wouldn't be so bad. You'll also be able to use the app on an iPhone and iPod Touch.

Planned features include being able to turn the page with hand movements .

Oh just wait, are you Canadian? Then no luck buddy. If you are from the Great White North you will not be able to download the program.

Video game recording, screenshot capturing and benchmarking software sees major update

If you're nuts about screenshotting your PC game sessions like us, you've certainly heard of the popular video game screenshot and recording software FRAPS. While WeGame does about the same job and is free, it doesn't support every title like FRAPS, or have benchmarking capabilities. In any case, it's a very well-built, minimalistic program that gets the job done.

FRAPS gets even better today with the major 3.0.0 update, bringing with it a new look, Ventrilo and TeamSpeak support, Windows 7 compatibility, NVIDIA 3D Vision support (yep, you can record in 3D now), and more.

Hit up the source to grab the latest version.

Make your own Gears of War 3, with 300% more bromance

The always community-based Epic Games have seen fit to release their famed Unreal Engine to the public today, allowing anyone with a powerful PC and some technical know-how to make amateur games or even full-scale works with enough time and effort.

The engine, which has powered games like Mirror's Edge, BioShock, and of course, the Unreal series, comes to us in the form of the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), complete with its own website and tons (tons) of support should you need it. More, they plan to release free updates and builds over time.

Basically, it's blowing PC development wide open -- definitely a boost the gaming and education communities could use (the editor is already used in over 100 academic facilities).

Epic seems happy to announce the kit includes all the latest technology, some of which is even yet to be seen in an Unreal Engine-powered title. Hundreds of video tutorials on how to use it are available on 3D Buzz; we've got a demo video of sorts here, featuring some tasty-looking gingerbread men:

For those that want to take their efforts commercial, there's licensing options available, for which they note finances are a minimal barrier thanks to the structuring.

Console gamers are out of luck with this one for the moment, but Epic notes they are considering a version for you. However, if you happen to be approved for the creation of PS3 or 360 games (lucky dog), send an e-mail this way to get started with UDK.

The official website is below, complete with the not too steep system requirements.

30 yuan can go a long way

Windows 7 has been big hit in China, according to early reports. Copies have been flying off the shelves. Much of them pirated.

While the Beijing government has been making some in-roads in curbing excessive piracy, it seems they still have a long way to go. According to a student quoted in the English language, government-run news agency China Daily, pirated copies of the new operating system continue to be sold openly in many malls and markets, and you can get a pirated copy of Windows 7 (non-beta presumably) for 20 yuan (which is about $3 bucks USD).

Microsoft has lowered the price of Windows 7 many Asian countries, including China, in order to better accommodate the general wealth disparity of the average folks, from the West to the East. In China MS's newest OS has had a significant price cut, and is now selling for a world-low price of $58 USD. But for many Chinese, this price seems absurdly high.

Concerns over losing market dominance might be keeping Microsoft reluctant to finding more ways to make their software more resistant to piracy -- but certainly, the company will be trying hard through marketing and political pressure to encourage mainland Chinese to purchase legitimate copies.

The piracy situation could not be much worse this time around than what happened with earlier MS operating systems. Despite a massive, multi-million dollar advertising campaign, Vista was thought to be an abysmal sales failure in China, according to third party analysts (Microsoft declined to release sales figures). Just the concept of buying an OS seems to be somewhat an unusual proposition to the average person in People's Republic -- last year this week, there was massive rage throughout the Chinese blogosphere over changes to the Windows Genuine Advantage that caused pirated desktop backgrounds to turn black.

The Asian piracy of Windows 7 isn't only limited to China of course -- the picture above was a taken in the Philippines, where the OS is selling for about $1.50.

See Unigine's 'Heaven' in action in these videos

Hot on the heels of Microsoft's Windows 7 release, software developer Unigine has unleashed the world's first DirectX 11 benchmark unto the world after five years of development, dubbing it 'Heaven.'

Unigine's engine makes use of hardware tesselation, a feature that has been present on ATI graphics card for a few generations, but is now being put to full use. Without going into too much detail, it adds polygons within polygons so developers can use compressed JPEG images without sacrificing image quality. In other words, we get better looking graphics and, best of all, without a performance hit on DirectX 11 hardware. The video below show's tesselation in action compared to low quality textures rendered normally.

As you can see, the benchmark is nothing short of impressive and, surprisingly, performance is actually pretty good.

In case you haven't picked up an HD5000-series card yet, the benchmark is also backward compatible with DirectX 9 and 10 as well as OpenGL. However, only the full blown DirectX 11 can take advantage of the latest features including DirectCompute and tesselation. If you're still riding the XP bandwagon, you will need to upgrade in order to enjoy those latest advancements in graphics technologies.

Oh and if you feel the urge to start your own game studio and use Unigine's product, it's going to cost you right around $25,000. Of course, it's easier to simply pick up an HD5000 card while waiting for one of the upcoming DirectX 11 titles including DiRT 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, Aliens vs Predator or the already-released Battleforge.

Quarterly profit at Xbox 360 division rises 96 percent despite flat sales

Microsoft as a whole was stung with an 14 percent year-on-year decline in profit for its most recent fiscal quarter ending September 30th.  A 39 percent drop in revenue from sales of Windows and Windows Live products didn't help, and this was attributed the sheer amount of revenue invested in the software giant's Windows 7 pre-order programs.  The overall profit decline was still smaller than what analysts had previously projected. Another bright spot proved to be Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division, home of the Zune and Xbox 360 businesses, boosted by demand for the Xbox 360.

The E&D's revenue only slightly increased to $1.89 billion USD, but this still led to $312 million USD in quarterly profit.  This is nearly double the $159 million USD profit earned during the same three-month period back in 2008.  Xbox 360 hardware shipments also fell slightly to 2.1 millino units for the quarter. Profitability was achieved in light of fairly flat sales through decreased Xbox 360 platform costs, further illustrating the benefits of continually maintaining console production processes. Microsoft also achieved mastery in September by making up nearly 32 percent of the gaming industry's overall revenue through hardware and software sales, as tracked by the NPD Group.

Microsoft's general manager of investor relations, Bill Koefoed, underlined confidence in the company's Xbox 360 business and confirmed in this morning's earnings call that the platform now benefits from an 8.7 software attach ratio.  This means an average of 8.7 Xbox 360 games are sold for each console. Furthermore, the Xbox 360's global install base has now hit over 34 million units, an increase of 3 million units over just this past two months.  Xbox Live revenues also increased 50 percent.

Virus, spyware & malware protection in free 5MB download

If you like free, and perhaps are discontent with your current computer security solution, Microsoft late yesterday launched its rebranded and rehauled application suite Security Essentials, replacing Windows Live OneCare (terrible name, really), which you may want to check out.

Essentials is the full package, offering protection against viruses, spyware and malware, and comes in a 5MB download, designed to be easy to install and work well on even low-powered PCs. The suite runs on operating systems from Windows XP SP2 onward, including Windows 7.

Other security vendors aren't terribly worried at the moment about Microsoft as a threat, as they've yet to prove themselves a solid competitor in this arena, so only time will tell if Essentials has what it takes. Mostly, it's felt this will replace other current free software as opposed to the advantages of paid. In the meantime, we know Symnatec has been bashing it for some time now, while independent testing firm AV-Test GmbH has commended it.

Alex Eckelberry, chief executive of Sunbelt Software states Microsoft's move is one intended to compete with Apple and improve their image as a security-oriented corporation. Ultimately, he says, it's good for the consumer.

Grab Security Essentials via the link below. 

Love or love not Windows 7, this is a great deal -- other countries' offers upcoming

Microsoft will be selling Windows 7 to interested post-secondary students, for a limited time, for a dang-low price. For an upgrade version of Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional, UK students will be able to pick it up for £30, while US students will only be charged $30.

It seems that you'll be able to upgrade to Premium or Professional, so it is unclear as to why anyone would choose Premium. Anyways: keep in mind you'll need a valid, existing copy of Windows to upgrade from. But if you don't have a valid copy of XP or Vista, it appears that you can be extra thrifty (and somewhat sneaky) by getting a valid beta code for the beta version of Windows 7, download that for free, install that, and than upgrade from their.

So far, only the details for the U.K students have been put out there by Microsoft. But other big countries will be getting this deal to, including: Canada, Australia, Korea, Mexico, France, and Germany. The US offer will open up very soon, apparently. Any moment now.

Students will verified by their email address: so you'll want one that ends in the suffix ".edu".

The offer will start on October 1st, and you'll be able to download Windows 7 when it comes out on the 22nd. The offer will end in early March it seems.

Here's a Neoseeker Public Service Announcement: Being a student can put you in rough financial shape, but if you can pick up an OS that could conceivably last you 5-8 years or more, you just might want to skip a couple of pizzas, and a few cases of beer, to grab this deal while it is available. Or use Linux!

Grab some Windows 7 features early

Newly available from Microsoft is a Platform Update for the Windows Vista users out there; the public beta package incorporates a multitude of features from Windows 7 into Vista, a testament to just how similar the architecture between the two operating systems is. A final version of this update will be available to Vista users later this year.

Below is a description of the items included; those most notable to our readers will probably be DirectX 11 support (just in time for the new update) and the Portable Devices Platform.

To acquire the update, grab the Vista script through the Microsoft Download Center linked below, then load up Windows Update to fetch the new content.

• Windows Graphics, Imaging, and XPS Library

The Windows Graphics, Imaging, and XPS library contains the latest advancements in modern graphics technologies for gaming, multimedia, imaging and printing applications. It includes updates to DirectX to support hardware acceleration for 2D, 3D and text based scenarios; DirectCompute for hardware accelerated parallel computing scenarios; and XPS Library for document printing scenarios.

• Windows Automation API

The Windows Automation API allows accessibility tools and test automations to access Windows user interface in a consistent way across operating system versions.

• Windows Portable Devices Platform

The Windows Portable Devices (WPD) Platform supplies the infrastructure to standardize data transfers between an application and a portable device, such as a mobile phone, digital camera, or portable media player.

• Windows Ribbon and Animation Manager Library

The Windows Ribbon and Animation Manager Library includes contains the Windows Ribbon API, a command framework that enables developers to quickly and easily create rich ribbon experiences in their applications, and the Windows Animation Manager API, an animation framework for managing the scheduling and execution of user interface element animations.

Adds direct upload capability to Facebook, DivX and MJPEG AVI formats

If you shoot home videos sometimes your results are less than stellar and you find yourself wishing for a way to improves the quality. Motion DSP has such a product with its vReveal software that is designed to make it extremely easy to improve the quality of flawed videos. vReveal is an amazingly easy, one-click application for quickly fixing dark, shaky, noisy, pixilated, or blurry video clips. While vReveal can run on any GPU, it was especially written to take advantage of the power of CUDA-enabled Nvidia processors.

The latest release of the software, version 1.1, offers several new features:

• NVIDIA "G80" models now supported for GPU acceleration (GeForce 8800 Ultra, 8800 GTX, 8800 GTS 640, 8800 GTS 320; Quadro 4600 and 5600)
• Even more powerful video stabilization, plus auto-cropping of black bars from around stabilized videos
• New output formats including DivX and MJPEG AVI. (Joins the previous output options of WMV and uncompressed AVI)
• Japanese localization. (Full set is now English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese)
• Integrated Facebook video uploader -- the first of its kind in a desktop application

The software retails for $49.99 and you can try it out by downloading a 30-day free trial from the company's web site.

Killed a couple of careers cause you copyin' more, couple years behind bars just to even the score!

Like all public service announcements aimed at the youth back in the early 90's, the message against the evils of software piracy was delivered in corny rap through the "cult classic" educational video, "Don't Copy That Floppy" (Youtube link). Heck, even the sequel has the hip and cool youth of today laughing at the original. Oh yes, there's recently been a sequel courtesy of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), "Don't Copy That 2", and it's available for your listening pleasure at www.dontcopythat2.com, and even iTunes.

As in the original video, "Don't Copy That 2" extols the virtues of anti-piracy through the hip-hop stylings of the newly upgraded MC Double Def DP... the Digital Protector. Unfortunately he doesn't get to battle against a costumed villain voiced by Tim Curry in the digial world, like the Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad.

Yet if you software pirates continue your foul deeds with a guilty conscious or not, you'll end up like the mother in the music video: being chased by armed police while you're in the middle of making dinner in the kitchen or something. So put your knowledge to use for better things, like spotting the seconds-long Rage cameo courtesy of id Software. Else you can stick around for a guest appearance from convicted software pirate Jeremiah Mondello, currently serving a 48-month federal sentence for hawking pirated software on eBay using stolen bank accounts.  Heck it's even got Klingons in it, proving they did indeed triumph in a desperate struggle for our primitive planet.

According to the SIIA, a "modified and extended" version of the video will be made available for actual classrooms later this fall... so you young'uns better stay in school. Or else.

Microsoft offers folks a free ride

Microsoft has now made available a 90-day free trial version of Windows 7 (RTM), called the Windows 7 Enterprise 90-day Trial version. It is intended to be downloaded by IT professionals -- the good news is though, that just as long as you believe yourself to qualify as an IT professional, you can download it.

The Windows 7 Enterprise 90-day Trial will be available until March 31st, 2010 -- or until they run out of an unspecified amount of license keys available. The 'Enterprise' version is pretty much the same, feature-wise, as the Ultimate retail version.

The trial Windows version comes in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors, and five of the world's most popular languages.

On the Microsoft download page, it says that once this version of Windows expires, you will need to do a fresh re-install of the OS. However some of said that it is possible to change product keys -- so if you decided to purchase Windows 7, perhaps you might be able to change your key, thereby saving yourself the hassle of having to re-install an OS.

Web browser hosts new design, faster engine, auto-updates, Turbo functionality, and more

Opera Software today releases version 10 of its acclaimed browser, bringing plenty of new features in tow, and improving on old ones.

Some highlights of the new release include an auto-update ability, an improved rendering engine which boasts higher stability and security, and Opera Turbo, a very handy function for those on slow connections -- this one offers a variety of options to suit your needs.

Apart from that, lots of improvements have been made to old features like Opera Mail, bugs have been fixed, and a new design is yours to enjoy. The release notes are massive, so head here if you wish to get a deeper look, and to the source below to download.

Corp. donating meals to Feeding America for every download

Microsoft has been running a program with the Feeding America charity since early June, whereby users who download Internet Explorer 8 will see eight meals donated to starving Americans.

As the charity has designated September Hunger Action month, Microsoft has kicked things into even higher gear, offering to donate 16 meals per download for those who are still on Internet Explorer 6.

Not sure how they work it, but under the program, called "Browser for the Better", eight meals can be had for just $1.15; up to $1 million worth will be donated before it ends June 30, 2010.

Note you don't have to actually install the browser, you simply need to download it through the website below. Even for staunch Firefox, Chrome, Opera or Safari users, we encourage you to give it a whirl.

Transitional period means customers are suffering, company admits

It's not often a large company or corporation will openly admit its mistakes and apologize to customers when appropriate, so we have to give kudos to Adobe here. The software company recently upgraded its customer service experience, bringing in over 800 new agents in its transition to a new global provider (outsourcing possibly), and with it came a real nosedive in quality on that end.

Below is a copy of their open letter to customers, which also comes with an emergency e-mail should you be having any problems yourself during this period.

Adobe is committed to providing the most advanced, innovative products and services in the world. Recently, however, our customers have experienced a level of service that is inconsistent with what they expect and deserve. This is unacceptable to us and we sincerely apologise for the inconvenience this has caused some of our customers.

We are working diligently – in fact, teams are working around the clock – to resolve these issues. I’d like to thank all our customers who are sharing feedback and giving us the opportunity to respond. We appreciate your loyalty, support, and willingness to make your concerns heard.

Adobe is in the process of transitioning to a new global service provider that will help grow and improve the quality of our customer service worldwide. While our new partner is a recognised leader in service and support solutions, this is a major global transition that includes bringing more than 800 new agents onboard. Clearly this process has not gone as smoothly as we had planned, and we are working to immediately remedy the situation. We are confident that once this transition is completed, we will provide customers with new and better ways to engage with Adobe using their preferred methods, helping to ensure prompt, effective customer service.

The Adobe Customer Care leadership team is monitoring our customers’ experiences closely to understand and respond to the challenges you are encountering. If you experience difficulties of any kind, contacting Customer Service in your local region remains the best initial course of action; however, during this transition period, unresolved issues can also be directed to adbecare@adobe.com.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we make this transition and work to improve our service and support operations for customers around the world.

Regards,
Lambert Walsh
Vice President, Technical Services

Photoshopped so bad, looks like it was done in Paint

If you have been paying attention to Twitter, a few other social sites, or even a thread in our own forums, you will notice that Microsoft has provoked some controversy.

On the United States version of the Microsoft Business website, there is a friendly picture of a white lady, an African-American man, and an Asian man.  Very diverse, very politically correct.  But on the Polish version of the site (picture before fix shown below), the African-American man’s head was replaced with a head of a white man.  Not only is that bad enough, but it was Photoshopped horribly, and the hand wasn’t even replaced.

Microsoft quickly stepped in, and replaced the race-swap picture.  A Microsoft representative said, “We are looking into the details of this situation. We apologize and are in the process of pulling down the image.”

Here is a screenshot of the US site, followed by one of the Polish site:

Really, whoever did that needs to take a class on Photoshop.

Perhaps Linux or BSD?

What are you in favor of?  Windows, or something free such as Linux?  This Wednesday the Free Software Foundation (FSF) will be holding a demonstration in Boston, where they will try to convince businesses to throw out their copies of Windows, in exchange of free software.

The Free Software Foundation believes that businesses using Windows have put a risk on their “privacy, security, and freedom."

The demonstration seems to be more focused on the next version of Windows, 7, to be released October 22, 2009.  FSF Executive Director, Peter Brown, was quoted saying that they are not targeting 7 in general, but more so Microsoft: “Any time Microsoft tries to push them to a new version, it's a good time to make that case," he remarked.

This isn’t just about which operating system has market share, but it’s also about digital rights management.  The FSF wants to prevent these powers from becoming too common in the world.

"That's the kind of power that proprietary software gives to these corporations," said Brown. "When we give that power, sooner or later somebody comes knocking, whether it is the government or the corporations themselves. Free software is kind of the answer to that."

So, if you’re interested, check out the Free Software Foundation’s website. Who knows, maybe you will become a Linux fanatic soon.

Corporation heavily fined for copyright infringement

They say that everything's bigger in Texas.  Unfortunately, Microsoft's check book and software repertoire are shrinking.  Texas federal court justice Leonard Davis ruled yesterday in favor of Toronto based i4i, a software firm that had patented technology relating to custom XML formatting back in 1998, which the company claimed Microsoft's Office 2003 and Office 2007 suites infringed.

As such, Microsoft has sixty days to take their precious Word software off the market.  In addition, they owe:

• $200 Million in unpaid royalties, which was awarded to i4i back in May.
• $40 Million for willful infringement.  A trail of e-mails submitted as evidence during the case's preceedings indicated that Microsoft knew they were infringing the aforementioned patent and yet did it anyway thinking nobody would catch on.
• $37 Million in prejudgement interest.
• A total of $165,102 per day until a final ruling has been made in the case concerning damages.

This is definitely a huge blow to the software giant's reputation.  Reports coming from Redmond indicate that an appeal is being considered.

No final date has been announced as of yet for the final judgment of damages.

Leads to a blue screen of untimely life cessation

A fairly large bug has been found in Windows 7 RTM (basically the 'complete' version of Windows 7 that gets shipped off to manufacturers to be sold.) 

The bug is a memory leak that is triggered when people use Microsoft's ole classic: the CHKDSK command, on a hard drive that doesn't have your boot partition on it. The bug will only be triggered if you use the "/r" command, which is the "read and verify all data" paramater.  

If you trigger the bug, you can expect your computer to grind to a screeching halt fairly quickly. If it doesn't immediately crash stuff, the bug will at least cause a huge system slow down in stage 4 of the CHKDSK operation. The bug effects both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

Some blogs are calling this a big "show stopper" but it doesn't seem like it'll be much of a big deal, nor a problem that Microsoft should have much trouble fixing up on a patch available on the first day of the new operating system's retail debut.

Try it out now with Windows 7 RC/RTM

Microsoft would like you to know Windows XP Mode, the OS virtualization feature built into Windows 7 Ultimate, is now available to test drive on the RC or RTM versions of the new operating system. For those that've been thinking about grabbing the Ultimate version (which is bundled with it) versus Home Premium or Professional (the former can't use it, the latter can download and install it), this should help you make up your mind. Note an additional 1GB of RAM, 15 GB of hard drive space, and a hardware virtualization-capable CPU are needed here.

Microsoft reminds the feature won't be necessary for most of us, it simply provides “last mile” compatibility technology for special cases regarding applications, particularly for business users.

Since the beta version, they've made several important changes based on feedback. Here's what you get:

• You can now attach USB devices to Windows XP Mode applications directly from the Windows 7 task-bar. This means your USB devices, such as printers and flash drives, are available to applications running in Windows XP Mode, without the need to go into full screen mode.
• You can now access Windows XP Mode applications with a “jump-list”. Right click on the Windows XP Mode applications from the Windows 7 task bar to select and open most recently used files.
• You now have the flexibility of customizing where Windows XP Mode differencing disk files are stored.
• You can now disable drive sharing between Windows XP Mode and Windows 7 if you do not need that feature.
• The initial setup now includes a new user tutorial about how to use Windows XP Mode.

 The XP Mode release candidate can be downloaded here.

Strategic bluff, or actual fact ?

Earlier this week, some terrible cracker folks found a way to bypass the product key activation for Microsoft's new OS, Windows 7 Ultimate. Using a stolen master authentication key given to manufacturers, a key-breaking tool immediately ran laps around the Internet, enabling pirate folks to register versions of Windows 7, probably usually the latest RTM ISO.

Microsoft is understandably not amused. Today they addressed the situation on their blog. They claim that there is more than meets the eye when it comes to the new Genuine Advantage methods employed in the latest OS.

The blog entry starts by admitting that the leaked master key is the real deal: "Yesterday we were alerted to reports of a leak of a special product key issued to an OEM partner of ours. The key is for use with Windows 7 Ultimate RTM product that is meant to be pre-installed by the OEM on new PCs to be shipped later this year." But the blog then goes to say that there are ways for them to know which copies are authentic, and that no manufacturers would be selling copies of Windows 7 using that key.

"The Windows Activation Technologies included in Windows 7 are designed to handle situations such as this one, and customers using these tools and methods should expect Windows to detect them. Windows 7 already includes an improved ability to detect hacks, also known as activation exploits, and alert customers who are using a pirated copy," they said.

It does seem like Microsoft took a big blow by having the master key stolen -- even months before the official release of the OS. Although it doesn't seem likely that they can presently distinguish between users with legit keys, and users without, one would guess that they will introduce a WGA patch in the updates that will unvalidate keys derived from this master key.

One blog commentator derided Microsoft for not doing much to change their activation methods from the Vista days. According to that anonymous poster: "After this long a time, you guys didn't even make any change in Windows 7. What a joke. You guys still call it reliable? OMG, Com'n, boys. Replacing a master key for a specific vendor could really solve the problem? ... Change the mechanism, instead of just replacing keys. What do you say?"

The blog writer responded: "I would also like to remind readers that our program is effective at this [anti-piracy] goal and we aim to keep it effective."

Looks awful Chrome-y

Fresh off its major 3.5 release for Firefox, Mozilla begun the design phase for version 4.0, as well as 3.7. Both look pretty similar, under Windows 7 at least, so we'll just take a look at the latter here today, for which the corporation has released some drafts. Keep in mind these are for "brainstorming and exploration" only; the final look could be wildly different.

First is presented a couple of ideas for tab placement -- above or below the address bar?

For 'below', a Bookmarks widget (pictured here) is considered as a replacement for the current menu/toolbar implementation, with an option to restore it.

'Above' brings its own complexities:

Positives

• Save Vertical Space
• Efficiency/Remove Visual Complexity - Right now the tabs have to be connected to something. So we are adding an extra visual element for them to connect to.
• Shorter Mouse Distance to Page Controls

Negatives

• Breaks Consistency/Familiarity - Moving things confuses existing users.
• Title is MIA - With the space removed from the titlebar you only get the truncated version in the tab.
• Longer Mouse Distance to Tabs - Takes longer to mouse to a tab.
• Lost Space - Sandwiched in between the application icon and the window widgets you lose some space.

The Location Bar is getting its own reexamination; the team proposes a combining of the stop, go and refresh buttons, with more colour and customization likely added later, to these and the progress bar.

All this wouldn't be of much use without some feedback of course, so head over to the MozillaWiki's discussion page to let 'em know how you feel about the new Foxy.

People are just a little excited

Yesterday Microsoft hit the 'release to manufacturing' (RTM) milestone for Windows 7 (build 7600), the last stop before public release (developers and the like have it now).

Windows Server 2008 R2 has also hit its final build -- good news all around, really.

Not one to take the matter lightly, Windows Division President Steven Sinofsky and CEO Steve Ballmer made the announcement at the corporation's annual sales kick-off event in Atlanta, and we thought we'd give you a little look.

Let's just say people were excited.