Microsoft Windows 7 Versions - Looking Familiar!

Remember when Vista was announced, and Microsoft decided to release six different versions of the
operating system.
Windows 7 Starter (limited and no legacy software support)
Windows 7 Home Basic (for emerging markets - Chinese, Russians, Indians and Indonesians )
Windows 7 Home Premium (enables Aero GUI, Touch, Media Center, Denies legacy software support)
Windows 7 Professional (Enables Remote Desktop host, Mobility Center, Presentation mode)
Windows 7 Enterprise (volume license only, boot from virtual drive, BitLocker)
Windows 7 Ultimate (limited availability, includes DRM, TPM, HDCP, WAT, DMI and IRM)
Windows 7 XP Downgrades (limited 6 months availability)

OEM Downgrade rights will be available for 6 months post Windows 7 General Availability. The
end user downgrade rights are available only to Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate editions.

Microsoft Reports 2,000 Bugs Found in Windows 7

Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president for the Windows and
Windows Live Engineering Group, that more bugs have been found than in any
previous Windows release!

A bug can be a cosmetic issue, a consistency issue, a crash, a hang, a failure to

succeed, a confusing user experience, a compatibility issue, a missing feature,
or any one of dozens of different ways that the software can behave in a way
that isn't expected.

Windows 7 hardware support, failed 25% percent of the time to work with the system's prepackaged
drivers, Mr. Sinofsky had indicated. Of course, Mr. Sinofsky had phrase it as 75% working. So, it's acceptable
to experience 25% of your hardware to be nonfunctional?

Microsoft's own software titled Microsoft Windows Live OneCare doesn't even install under Windows 7!
Official Microsoft Anti-Virus Partners Page at microsoft.com PDF

Here's the error (Failure of not making the grade) message:

Blog Comments - Excerpts

By walk2k on February 26 2009 12:37 p.m.

In my case it didn't detect my Nvidia card, onboard sound, and most importantly my LAN.

By Bonesdad on February 27 2009 1:36 a.m.

Had the same problem. I have an Abit IP35E with a Marvell Gigabit Ethernet... W7 didn't recognize
it.

By crystal clear on February 26 2009 12:27 p.m.

"We also found that a small number of users were experiencing crashes on a more regular basis
and that about 1.5 percent of all Internet Explorer sessions had encountered a crash." said Herman
Ng, Microsoft program manager, in an IE blog post.

Altogether, about 50% percent reported reliability problems stemmed from 17 unique issues.
Ng said that IE was responsible for about 40 percent of the reliability problems, while 60 percent
were caused by third-party components. Original Article Posted on CRN.com

New Windows 7 Anti-Piracy Features

Microsoft is giving its anti-piracy/DRM technology a PR
face lift with Windows 7.

Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage antipiracy

technology built in Windows 7 has been relabeled and
repackaged as Windows Activation Technologies.

If you do not activate the software within the grace period you will receive persistent notifications, including
a message from the system tray every 60 minutes that reminds you to "Activate Windows Now".

Once the licensing terms are accepted and verified online through "Windows Activation Technologies",
additional on-going validation submissions will occur on every visit to the Windows Update website.

In addition, to every time the PC is booted up and 24 hours later, the following information is collected,
encrypted and transmitted back to Microsoft as follows;

Computer make and model

Version information for the operating system and software using Genuine Advantage
Region and language settings
A unique number assigned to your computer by the tools (Globally Unique Identifier or GUID)
Product Key (hashed) and Product ID
BIOS name, revision number, and revision date
Hard drive volume serial number (hashed)
Whether the installation was successful if one was performed
The result of the validation check, including information about any activation exploits and any related
malicious or unauthorized software found, disabled or removed.
The name and a hash of the contents of the computer's start-up instructions file (commonly called the
boot file) to help us discover activation exploits that modify this file.

If your system is identified as non-genuine, the additional information will be sent to Microsoft.

Breach identifiers
The breach's current state, such as cleaned, quarantined, or removed
The scanning engine version
Original equipment manufacturer identification
The breach file name and hash of the file.

Source - Microsoft Genuine Advantage Privacy Statement - December 2008

Windows 7 Release Candidate in our PC World Test Center found

that while Windows 7 was slightly faster on our WorldBench 6
suite, the differences may be barely noticeable to users.

...but in no case was the overall improvement greater than 5%

percent, our threshold for when a performance change is
noticeable to the average user.

Speed Test: Windows 7 May Not Be Much Faster Than Vista

On all three systems, we ran our WorldBench 6 benchmark suite on a clean installation of the 32-bit edition
of Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1 and repeated the process with the Windows 7 Ultimate release
candidate (again, the 32-bit version). We made both operating systems current with Windows Update, and
we installed the most current hardware drivers available.

"Let’s face it, Windows 7 is Windows Vista Service Release 2, more than a service pack but less than a major
release, with only a few added extra features" - ZDNET Jason Perlow

Rest Assured: Windows 7 Still Features the BSOD

Surprisingly it looks exactly as it has for a while, the simple blue
background with the traditional white text.

Compliant, Certified and Compatible for Windows 7?

Know what works before you upgrade.

Just how does Microsoft expect you to run legacy software in Windows 7?
By making you run legacy software in Microsoft's own proprietary Virtual PC-based virtual environment
called XPM which stands for XP Mode. That means only customers who afford higher cost for Windows 7
Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate with at least 2GB or ram memory get to use this backward capability
for their legacy software programs requiring its own anti-virus, firewall, patch management and
management software!

XPM Legacy Software = Higher Cost $$$

XPM virtualization only start to work acceptably with 4

GBs of memory and becomes comfortable at 8 GBs.

Just how many netbooks or existing PC's support that

capability and on a 32bit operating system?

1. Virtual PC has ZERO support for Direct 3D!

2. Why did Microsoft mandate VT (by introducing a set of instructions that make x86 fully virtualizable
without the use of binary translation) support for XPM? Since, Virtual PC, the virtualization package that
Microsoft bought and on which XPM is based, is a 32-bit guest binary translation solution!
3. Just when Intel has stopped supporting hardware virtualization in all but their most expensive chips.

4. Windows 7 will NOT be binary compatible with older versions.

5. Applications that weren’t compatible with Vista aren’t going to be compatible with Windows 7!

Microsoft officials have cautioned customers, moving straight from XP to Windows 7 will be as painful
from an application compatibility standpoint as was moving from XP to Vista.

"Customers who are still using Windows XP when Windows 7 releases will have a similar application
compatibility experience moving to Windows 7 as exists moving to Windows Vista from Windows
XP" - Microsoft says in the paper, titled "The Business Value Of Windows Vista."

Some 3rd party components used in Rosetta Stone products have not been certified by Microsoft as
‘Windows 7 Compliant’. Accordingly, you may encounter some Windows 7-related operating issues. Rosetta
Stone technical support may or may not be able to resolve these Windows 7-related issues. Rosetta Stone
hereby disclaims any representations, warranties, guaranties and conditions with respect to the compatibility
of the Rosetta Stone products with the Windows 7 (and Vista) operating systems.

Let's NOT forget...

Steve Ballmer washes hands of Vista Capable claims

Steve Ballmer claims he wasn’t involved in the “operational decisions”
involving Microsoft’s controversial Vista Capable scheme.
“To the best of my recollection, I do not have any unique knowledge of, nor did I
have any unique involvement in, any decisions regarding the Windows Vista
Capable program,” Ballmer claims in the document acquired by the Seattle Post
Intelligencer.

US District Judge Marsha Pechman gave consumers the go-ahead in February 2008 to file a class action
lawsuit against Microsoft for providing misleading information about Windows XP computers being able to
run Vista.

Microsoft sued for charging for Vista-XP downgrade - 2009-02-13 PDF Complaint

Should Microsoft be charging the majority of users for backwards compatibility usability?

What about OOXML compatibility? The OOXML is dependant on the Windows technology
platform. Its specification is written to be fully implemental only on the Windows platform.

Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 ODF Spreadsheet Interoperability?

Created In
Google KSpread Symphony OpenOffice Sun Plugin CleverAge MS Office 2007 SP2
Read In Google OK OK OK OK Fail OK Fail
KSpread OK OK OK Fail Fail OK Fail
Symphony OK OK OK OK OK Fail Fail
OpenOffice OK OK OK OK OK OK Fail
Sun Plugin OK OK OK OK OK OK Fail
CleverAge Plugin OK OK OK OK Fail OK OK
MS Office 2007 SP2 Fail Fail Fail Fail Fail Fail OK

Blog Comments - Excerpts

February 24, 2008 at 5:08 pm

Microsoft unjustly enriched itself by promoting PCs as “Windows Vista Capable” even when they
could only run a bare-bones version of the operating system.

Windows 7 Security?
Windows 7 can now eliminate unknown and unwanted
software in the desktop environment using AppLocker.

AppLocker ensures the desktop environment is in

compliance with corporate policies and industry
regulations such as PCI DSS, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, Basel
II, and others.

Microsoft Dumps Ultimate Extras from Windows 7

Microsoft Corp. will not offer "Ultimate Extras" in Windows 7, the company has confirmed, saying it abandoned
the heavily criticized concept to focus on "existing features."

Windows 7 Security Flaws Already Uncovered

Unfortunately, due to the way one program can launch another, a non-trusted application can piggyback off
one of Microsoft's trusted programs to elevate its access. The culprit is rundll32.exe, which you might have
seen on an XP or Vista system as a process running in the background. By having rundll32.exe start a new
process, a program can gain full rights over the system.

Windows 7 First Critical Security Flaw MS09-006 KB958644 and 64bit

"A security issue has been identified that could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to compromise
your system and gain control over it."

Critical flaw that leaves users at a risk of having their computer systems captured remotely if they access a
maliciously designed EMF or WMF image file. Note, Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Windows Server 2003 and
2008 including Windows 7 were all vulnerable!

Huge Security Flaw in Windows 7 User Account Control Link 2

User Account Control annoyed a lot of people in Vista, so Microsoft turned down the volume in Windows 7.
But they've also opened up a massive security hole that leaves PCs exposed to nastywares.

Unfixable Windows 7 Security Flaw

Researchers Vipin Kumar and Nitin Kumar used proof-of-concept code they developed, called VBootkit 2.0,
to take control of a Windows 7 virtual machine while it was booting up. VBootkit 2.0, which is just 3KB in
size, allows an attacker to take control of the computer by making changes to Windows 7 files that are
loaded into the system memory during the boot process. The latest version of VBootkit includes the ability to
remotely control the victim's computer!

Windows 7 Annoying Reasons

1. No Upgrade Install From XP to Windows 7.

2. Windows copying is not improved

3. Can't Pin What We Want to Taskbar. (Particularly, the Recycle Bin and some devices, like USB drives.)
4. Certain malware, including the Conficker worm, have started making use of the capabilities of AutoRun
to provide a seemingly benign task to people – which masquerades as a Trojan Horse to get malware
onto the computer. The malware then infects future devices plugged into that computer with the same
Trojan Horse.
As an example, for a USB flash drive that has photos, malware
registers as the benign task of “Open folders to view files.”

If you select the first “Open folders to view files” (circled in red),
you would be running malware. However, if you select the
second task (circled in green), you would be safe running the
Windows task.

Microsoft's guidance on disabling AutoPlay is available here.

Windows 7 Advantages; if your Chinese or a Math Student

East Asian Handwriting Recognition

The gray words represent what has been entered and the black shows the predictions.

Math Handwriting Recognition