Microsoft to launch

We're expecting Microsoft to launch the release candidate of not long after CES in January with the final version following at Microsoft's MIX Web developer conference in April.

We could see some small changes to the look of the interface and the RC will have the 'do not track' option to sign up to lists of ad services you don't want to track you from site to site, but there won't be support for any of the technologies such as WebGL that aren't yet standardised.

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NEW UI: This shot of the new Tracking Protection feature in also seems to show slight differences to the user interface, with squared-off tabs

The excellent performance, full hardware acceleration and good HTML5 support will make successful, but while this puts Microsoft back in the browser game Chrome and Firefox will carry on rolling out much faster updates.

More importantly for Microsoft, the HTML5 support in is crucial for new services like Bing Maps, Office Web Apps and Office Live improvements and the cloud connection and synchronisation planned for Windows 8.

Think of as a stepping stone to the cloud; for businesses first, but for consumers as well.

Windows Phone 7 updates

Talking of updates, Windows Phone 7 will get copy and paste early next year (along with support for the CDMA standard used on two key US mobile networks); details will be announced at CES.

There are rumours that a second update allowing some multitasking for third-party apps and more customisation is currently in beta and will be announced at Mobile World Congress in February; we've heard suggestions that updates might come as often as quarterly to help Windows Phone catch up to competitors, which could have the update shipping as soon as May.

At the same time, Microsoft will announce some updates to Silverlight in Windows Phone. The public beta of Silverlight 5 for the PC (which adds remote control, variable speed playback with pitch correction and hardware acceleration for H.264 video) is due in the second quarter of 2011 with the final version coming before the end of the year. If any of the Silverlight features for Windows Phone are the same, don't expect to see them on the phone much sooner than that.

Further down the line is a major update to the Windows Phone browser bringing "a major overhaul of standard support and new approaches to make significant advances in performance, power consumption and bandwidth utilization" and a "search experience [that] will be the key tool you [use to] plan and complete your day to day activities".

That sounds like Windows Phone 8 and while it might not arrive in 2011, the way the team is growing suggests Microsoft is going to keep giving Windows Phone the resources it needs to compete.

If the updates keep coming and the handset manufacturers can actually ship more devices, Windows Phone has a good chance of getting reasonable market share in 2011.

Windows tablets

We're not sure we can say the same for tablets. Although a handful of Windows 7 slates have appeared this year from smaller players (and – perhaps somewhat begrudgingly – from HP), expect to see bigger names producing tablets once Intel's Oak Trail processor is available.

The five-inch Ocosmos gaming tablet probably won't make it out of Korea; instead, from what Intel has been telling OEMs, we'll see 10-inch models that are less than half an inch thick, with proximity sensors, hardware acceleration for media that supports 1080p video and wireless connections that get you online in a couple of seconds.

Intel says there will be 35 Atom tablets coming out in the first half of next year, although some of them might run Chrome OS, Android or Meego rather than Windows 7, using Intel's Atom CE4100 system on a chip.

The power consumption of Atom means that it's going to be hard to match the battery life and weight of an iPad or an Android tablet (or what we hear about the PlayBook) on Windows 7 systems and our experiences with the ExoPC Slate show that the handwriting recognition that should be the killer feature on a Windows tablet needs a little more work on capacitive screens.

ExoPC

PLAYING CATCH-UP: Even the nicest Windows 7 slates are heavier and have less battery life than the iPad or Android tablets; will 2011 tablets do better?

But if what you want is the power of Windows to run a full browser and play any kind of media, then one tablet rumour we've heard makes sense.

We might or might not see TV services on Xbox next year to compete with Google TV and Apple TV, but we will see Windows Media Center set-top boxes from Acer and Asus, running on Windows Embedded, delivering a mix of broadcast and internet TV, plus Netflix – and maybe even Sky.

And one of the key features in the new version of Windows Embedded (along with a much lower price) is multi-touch support.

With Microsoft keeping such tight control over the Windows Phone form factor we don't expect to see a Windows Phone tablet next year, but multi-touch tablets running Windows Media Center Embedded are a possibility.

The Media Center interface is ideal for fingers and you can put a limited number of apps and games on it already.

Media center tablet

ON THE BOX: The familiar Media Center interface will be in set-top boxes; and maybe on Windows Embedded tablets as well?

But unless whatever Microsoft comes out with here is really exciting, we think it will struggle to compete on the tablet front – at least until Windows 8 comes along.

Windows 8

Given how little we know about Windows 8 (it's all from rumours, leaks and job adverts) it's impossible to say how significant it will be, although Steve Ballmer has called it Microsoft's "riskiest product bet".

At this point we're predicting that we'll see the Windows 8 beta in the autumn of 2011 and the final version in the late summer of 2012 – three years after Windows 7.

The most recent rumours give the 64-bit version its own 3D interface on systems with powerful enough graphics chips to go with the Kinect-style gesture control promised in the lead slides and this job ad promises "groundbreaking features" for making Windows the "most stable and trustworthy mass-market OS".

Windows 8 gesture recognition

MOTION SENSING: Walk up to a Windows 8 PC and it will know you're there; we've seen Kinect-style gestures working with PCs in the Microsoft envisioning lab already

The danger is that instead of doing something bold and innovative, the Windows team succumbs to incrementalism while Chrome and webOS move towards lightweight, cloud-enabled systems that work more like an always-on phone, but the leaks claim Windows 8 will have much faster hibernation and resume (in just a few seconds) and use the cloud to back up settings and app details as well for an app store, so we'll just have to wait and see.

Certainly, we don't see either Chrome or webOS going mainstream in 2011. Except on tablets, where portability and battery life trump compatibility and power, we don't think Windows has more to worry about from competing operating systems next year than it did this year; Chrome OS is obviously incomplete and even though it will evolve quickly, it's still completely dependent on you being online.

And while tablets might displace some situations where you'll no longer take a laptop with you, for most people they'll be a second or third computer. But if they're as popular a second computer as some are predicting, Microsoft is going to look rather late to the party until Windows 8 comes along.

Microsoft is going to take a beating in the home storage market, too. Despite gutting the product by removing the Drive Extender disk replication feature from the next version, Microsoft is still promising to ship the Vail updates to Windows Home Server in the first half of 2011 (along with the new versions of Small Business Server that are the reason for dropping Drive Extender) and we'll see the first Vail home servers at CES.

Windows home server

Although Steve Ballmer said he'll look into the issue, it doesn't seem likely that Drive Extender will return and unless one of the PC manufacturers does something really innovative with it, Vail looks like a fail.

Life without Ozzie

Long term, it's an open question as to how Microsoft will fare without Ray Ozzie (and indeed without Robbie Bach, ex head of the entertainment and devices division).

Ozzie's influence has been most obvious in the business products, where the move to the cloud is now entrenched in Microsoft consciousness, but he's also been responsible for helping prioritise user experience – the principle that's made Kinect more significant than Surface and that's made Windows Phone and a truly engaging device to use.

And the social computing FUSE Labs team he set up – which has been coming out with the kind of innovative web tools (such as Montage) that you don't usually associate with Microsoft – is now part of Microsoft Research, although with the same team in place.

Bach's teams produced the Xbox, Kinect and Windows Phone – but then they also ran Windows Mobile into the ground, shipped the DOA Kin phone, allowed the red ring of death to happen and disappointed everyone by making us think Courier was real (or even possible).

But those departures aren't likely to have much effect on the products we see in 2011, which were already well under way before either departure.

It's the direction of the company over the next five years that might falter without them. For the next twelve months, Microsoft still looks good but it also faces plenty of challenges.

Zune 30GB 1st Gen Parts

The Microsoft zune 30GB Model was the first of the Zunes.It was released too much hype and praise, as this was Microsoft s first big entry into the mp3 marketplace, and this was their big attempt at conquering the giant we all know as the Apple Ipod device. The Zune much like the Ipod suffers from numerous of the same ailments. It breaks in the identical manner and numerous of the very same problems you get when an Ipod breaks you get when a Microsoft zune breaks.

There are many elements on the Zune that can break.The unit comprised of 7 separate Zune 30gb 1st Gen Parts. There is of course the hard drive, the difficult generate in the Microsoft zune 30GB 1st gen is the exact same exact tough gain that is employed in the 5th Generation Apple Ipod device Video models.The difficult gain serves the objective of storing all the info that is on your Zune.This would be any music you have loaded, any photos you have loaded, and any videos or films that you might also have loaded.

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So if you ever have the unfortunate expertise of your challenging gain crashing all of this information will be gone. An additional component of the Zune is the mom board, the mother board on the Zune consists of the docking port, the port wherever you plug in the sync cable and it also includes the headphone jack. So if either of these two piece go poor on your Zune you might be seeking at replacing your mother board.

There is also of program the battery, the battery is the most typical of all the components to go negative, most batteries have a three 12 months existence span, so if your battery is even now going powerful following 3 yr; you need to be pretty pleased because this is way longer than the typical battery lasts. There is also the LCD or as most individuals refer to it as the display. The display in this Zune at the time of the release was a huge offer because it was so significantly larger than the Ipod device at the time.

This also yet another typical element that is replaced, a lot of folks drop or sit on their Zunes therefore breaking the display. There is also the challenging obtain zif cable television this is the cable television that connects the hard generate to the mom board giving the gain energy to turn on when your turn on the Microsoft zune.

There is also the click wheel, this is the ribbon cable television that enables you to push the buttons on your Zune and have them in fact work. Along with all of these seven vital elements, there are an assortment of other people such as; the front plate with glass, the back again rear panel, the screws that hold everything together, the difficult generate cage that protects the challenging gain, the battery cage which holds the battery in location, and the plastic dock surround which covers the screws on the bottom of the unit.

Now there is a opportunity wherever you may well operate into the misfortunate knowledge of breaking your Microsoft zune, and you might require a new element to get in again to working buy, and if this is the case there areZune 30gb 1st Gen Parts providers and they can get you the element you require in purchase to bring your Zune back again.

A future in the cloud with Windows Azure

Opening Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference, Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie finally unveiled the services strategy he's been driving Microsoft towards since he arrived at the company in 2006 as Bill Gates' anointed replacement. Windows Azure is the expected "Windows in the cloud" and it's going to be running services and applications you'd normally use on your desktop.

But forget everything moving into the browser, even with Silverlight. Azure is "a turning point for Microsoft" according to Ozzie but he expects it to work alongside servers in business and rich applications on the PC.

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And today Ozzie will announce Windows 7, which he calls "an operating system that will enable a new generation of applications that span the PC and the Web", sticking with the Microsoft idea of 'software plus services' where PC applications use all the power of the PC, but get extra features when you're online.

It's time for the cloud

The virtualization techniques and shared utility computing that enable cloud computing may have been around for decades, but it's the hardware in users hands today that make Microsoft think it's time for cloud services.

According to Ozzie, demand for the cloud is "driven by cheap computing and cheap storage, by the increasing ubiquity of high bandwidth connectivity to the internet, by an explosion in PC innovation from the high-end desktops to low-end netbooks, by an explosion in innovation in devices - from media players and smartphones to net-connected devices of all shapes and sizes."

Windows Azure is based on Microsoft technology like an optimized version of the new hypervisor, and on what Microsoft has learned from building services like MSN, Windows Update and Office Online Help. Azure runs on "a vast number of machines" in Microsoft's data centres, first in the US and later around the world. And over the next two weeks the 6,000 developers at the conference will get free access to the 'Community technology Preview' version of Azure, which is what Microsoft calls its prototypes.

A lot more to come

The initial features are "only a fraction of what you'll see on our roadmaps," Ozzie promised, claiming that Azure will also change based on what developers want from it during the rest of 2008 and through 2009. But he proclaimed Azure as "setting the stage for the next 50 years of systems" and working as a new tier of computing for "systems serving potentially everyone in the world."

Like Windows Server, Windows Azure is really a development platform and Bob Muglia, vice president for servers and tools, claims it lets developers use the skills they've developed on Windows rather than learning a whole new set of tools. He also promised Microsoft won't abandon software that runs on local servers, and that they'll take what they learn from running Azure and add it to new versions of the server software.

But there will be online versions of all Microsoft enterprise software through the Microsoft Online service, which can be extended using Azure. That means you could take Dynamics CRM Services, create a custom ribbon in Word and add extra features using Azure. Apart from the connection to desktop applications like Office, that's the same principle as taking Salesforce's CRM service and extending it on the Force.com platform.

70-506 questions and answers

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HIP - Home Information Packs Explained

It's been quite some time since they were first introduced by the government to the common man but the controversy just refuses to die down. While the government has been propagating the Home Information Pack (HIP) as being extremely beneficial to the people and one that would bring much more transparency to the field, the critiques just won't buy it. And what's interesting is that some of the most vociferous of these critiques come from the political arena. Leading the charge, as we all know, are the Tories.

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HIP's has been on the political agenda for quite some time since the Government introduced them. Essentially, the Home Information Packs (HIP) were proposed to be a one-stop shop for anything that you wanted to know about a particular property that seemed to be interesting. The first stage of the roll out of the HIP's began in 2007. Initially, things took time to get going with only the large houses (ones that had five bedrooms or more) being put on the cards. But, by 2008 and as of now, all properties, regardless of the size, need to have an HIP before they can be sold.

The Conservatives have been pretty clear on what they think of the Home Information Packs (HIP) right from day one. Their primary assertion was that the move was just another bureaucratic game and way too expensive to remain beneficial to anyone. The fact that there have been innumerable hiccups to the roll out have only made the Torries' point stronger by the day.

One of the major setbacks to the government's plans was their decision that made the HCRs (Home Condition Reports) voluntary. For many, the HCR was what defined HIP's. A Home condition report helped the buyer understand and know about the condition of the house, something that most people agreed was pretty useful and the essence of a Home Information Pack (HIP). Fiasco's like this and more have only given the Conservatives more ammunition to pound on the viability of the HIP's.

The Shadow Housing Minister, Grant Shapps has been quite unambiguous about his views on the HIP's. Blaming the packs for the properties that have been taken off the markets, the Minister has long said that, given the chance, he would completely abolish the Home Information Packs (HIP). The HIP's have turned out to be more of a conundrum than the Government could have ever imagined. Nonetheless, they are also unequivocally supporting the initiative and chances are, if the Tories do come back in power, HIP's will also certain still be around but packaged in another format and called something else.

Firefox 3.6 gets Windows 7 Integration

Here comes the Mozilla’s first Beta for release of Firefox 3.6. As we benchmarked Firefox 3.6 earlier, it’s 25 percent faster than Firefox 3.5.

What makes Firefox 3.6 more interesting is the Windows 7 integration — It integrates with the new taskbar in Windows 7. [Discussed in detail in Windows 7 Review]

What’s the Deal? The Tabs within Firefox will show up as previews when you hover over Firefox‘s taskbar entry in Windows 7, in the same way IE8 already does it. This makes Firefox one of the few applications to offer integration with Windows 7′s new taskbar. [iTunes 9 is also one of them].

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Firefox 3.6 also brings visual previews when you use the ctrl+tab method to switch tabs – Windows 7 style. This feature is disabled by default, so you need to dive into about:config, find the browser.ctrlTab.previews key and set it to true. Restart Firefox, and experience the new tabbing feature, it’s all beautiful.

More Windows 7 Tricks -> Windows 7 Tips n Tricks

The new tab switching feature also shows an option called “Show all n tabs“. This will bring up a permanent preview window with an instant search field to search through your open tabs. The navigation through tabs becomes much more easier.

Excited already? Get it from Mozilla’s FTP server.

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Know About All-in-One Printers

All-in-one printers, also knows as multifunction printers, can be the ideal solution for both the home and business office. They combine the functionality of several different pieces of equipment into one single machine. As a result, you'll experience lower supply and maintenance costs along with more desktop space. However, before you go out and buy one of these space-saving devices, make sure you're familiar with all of the important features, including print speed, memory, and resolution.

All-in-one printer speed:
Many all-in-one printers are rather slow in terms of copy and print speeds. If speed is important to you, choose the fastest all-in-one printer you can afford. You'll certainly notice the difference between 14 and 33 pages per minute. Also, make sure you check the fax/modem speed. As a general rule, you shouldn't choose one that operates at less than 33 kpbs. Faster fax functions mean less time on the phone line and more money in your pocket.

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All-in-one printer memory:
The memory for an all-in-one printer refers to the storage area used to hold computer files or fax messages while they wait to be printed. When it comes to copying, faxing or printing documents, a lack of memory is exceptionally noticeable. For increased speed, use a greater buffer memory. If you generally work with large documents, consider purchasing an all-in-one printer with at least 16 MB of memory.

All-in-one printer resolution:
One quick way to assess print quality is by looking at the resolution, which measures the sharpness of printing in dots per inch (dpi). Unless you'll be using the all-in-one device for photo printing, a resolution of 600 x 600 should be perfectly adequate.

Inkjet vs. Laser:
All-in-one printers are typically available in both inkjet- and laser-based models. As with single-function printers, all-in-one inkjets use small dots of ink to create images, whereas all-in-one laser printers use toner to produce text. For small office and home environments, inkjets are usually the better choice because they cost less initially yet deliver brilliant, vivid color. On the other hand, all-in-one laser printers produce high-quality output at a lower cost per page. Plus, toner cartridges last longer than inkjet cartridges, which eventually bring down overall printing costs. For these very reasons, all-in-one laser printers are more popular in larger office settings.

Wireless All-in-one Printers:
You'll also have the option of buying a wireless all-in-one printer. Ideal for a business office network, wireless all-in-one printers are the perfect solution to printing without plug or wires. Without the need for cables, you can put the printer anywhere in the office so that it is easily accessible to everyone. Once the printer is connected to the network, it will be usable to any authorized computer or user. Most wireless all-in-one printers come with software that lets you fax or scan to your computer over a wireless network. Keep in mind though, that like any device on your wireless network, proper security is essential.

Additional Tips:
You shouldn't buy an all-in-one printer without first testing it in the store. Read the specifications first, and then test each function separately to see if it suits your needs. Price will definitely be a factor when shopping for your printer. At the low end of the spectrum, you can find cheap all-in-one printers starting at about $350. If you're mostly concerned with price, shop and compare our large selection of cheap all-in-one printers.

HP all-in-one printers are considered some of the best on the market. Whether you need black and white text or vibrant color images, HP all-in-one printers deliver breakthrough performance and professional results every time.

The best all-in-one printers will have automatic duplexers, which mean you can print on both sides of the paper. While this can save you a great deal of money, it may also slow printing speeds, so you'll first need to decide which feature is more important to you.

If you do a high-volume of printing, your all-in-one should have high-capacity input and output trays. This will reduce the time and effort required for constantly reloading paper.

Some all-in-one printers can serve as a standalone photo lab, letting you print high-quality photos directly from your memory card. These photo lab all-in-ones usually offer a large LCD screen for previewing photos as well as a kiosk-style menu. For professional-looking photographs, we recommend browsing through our Canon all-in-one printers. Canon's PIXMA series lets you quickly print beautiful photos and laser-quality text for results that are truer to your originals.