Microsoft today revealed the retail packaging for Windows Vista and Office 2007, the eagerly awaited new products to be made widely available in early 2007. The boxes boast a completely revised and redesigned packaging. Writing on the Windows Vista Team Blog, Nick White said:

“Designed to be user-friendly, the new packaging is a small, hard, plastic container that’s designed to protect the software inside for life-long use. It provides a convenient and attractive place for you to permanently store both discs and documentation.

The new design will provide the strength, dimensional stability and impact resistance required when packaging software today. Our plan is to extend this packaging style to other Microsoft products after the launch of Windows Vista and 2007 Office system.”

Source: Neowin.net

This is hillarious, James Senior (Microsoft Technical Specialist) has revealed the highly anticipated sounds of Windows Vista.

“So over the weekend I installed a nice shiney RTM build and the sounds have been upgraded from the ones in XP to the new creations by Robert Fripp. I’d thought I would share some of these with you and I’ve compiled them in this mp3 which you can download and listen to below.

The sounds I cover are the following:

• Critical Stop
• ReadyBoost drive inserted
• Windows UAC control prompt
• New e-mail notification
• Low Battery Alarm
• Exclamation
• Windows Start
• Exit Windows\”

Don’t say we didn’t warn you

Source: blogs.technet.com

5 years ago today Windows XP was launched worldwide after it had RTM’d a month earlier.

It has been without a doubt the longest running operating system Microsoft has ever produced. Microsoft typically updated the client version of Windows every 2 years with Windows 95 being released in early 1996, the successive OSR updates until 1997 when Microsoft were hammered by anti-trust cases for bundling Internet Explorer 4.0 with Windows 95 OSR2, Windows ‘98 in 1998, Windows 98 Second Edition in 1999 and Windows Millennium in the February of 2000 after an extremely short beta cycle.

The flop that was Millennium was a last ditch attempt to salvage what was left of the outdated 16-bit legacy kernel, it was never at the top of Microsoft’s comparison charts when Windows XP became available, they typically used Windows 98 SE as an example of how far the client version had come by switching to the proven NT kernel, offering for the first time the kind of stability only the industry had enjoyed with Windows 2000 Professional, the business workstation version of Windows.

Now, 5 years later Windows XP has been released with as many as 5 different flavors of which includes a 64-bit version and the latest version you can buy in the stores is Windows XP SP2b (an updated Service Pack 2 version). SP3 has been pushed back as far as 1H of 2008, long after its successor Windows Vista will be sitting on store shelves.

Less popular additions to the client version of Windows are WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) and “Activation” a technology that “calls home” and verifies the product key. Both of the above, like all previous versions of Windows however have been circumvented at least once and Microsoft continues to make it harder to pirate Windows and its other software packages. Lets hope Microsoft also goes as far as to “improve” its pricing after reeping the benefits of less pirating and more sales.

Source: Windows XP Website @ Microsoft

Looks as though PodTech (Robert Scoble anyone?) sat down with Matt Jubelirer, product manager of the Zune program and got a 40 minute video out of it. The video runs through the Zune in detail and really gives a nice overview of Microsoft’s answer to the iPod. (PodTech has an awesome demo of Cisco’s new TelePresence 3000 system as well over here if you’re into Video Conferencing)

Video weighs in at around 120 Megs, but well worth the download if you’re considering buying one, on or after, November 14th.

View: PodTech: Indepth Look at the Zune
View: Zune Details (Wikipedia) | ZuneInsider Blog

IEBLOG: In the first four days over three million of you have already downloaded the final release. Thank you! (If you’re not one of those three million, you can get it here.)We expect the numbers to continue to climb steadily until we start distributing via Automatic Updates in a few weeks.

Clearly, we expect IE7 adoption to really take off then. If you haven’t tested your website with IE7 yet, please use the tools Scott posted about a few weeks ago to help you prepare.With the final release, we got a chance to do some fun tech community activities. For instance, on the night of the launch, we hosted a dinner in San Francisco for about twenty leaders in the local blogging community.

Afterwards, Jeremiah Owyang posted his thoughts and Thomas Hawk put up a great set of photos. We also finally let our product managers do some real marketing. We have the first IE radio spot that I can remember us doing, and we created some Mobile billboards that cruised through 10 major U.S. cities.Source: IE Blog via Bink

Mozilla has just officially launched Firefox 2.0! Although the final release was posted to their FTP servers earlier today, Mozilla waited until around 17:30 EST to put the official launch site up.

New features include:
Visual Refresh: Firefox 2’s theme and user interface have been updated to improve usability without altering the familiarity of the browsing experience.
Built-in phishing protection: Phishing Protection warns users when they encounter suspected Web forgeries, and offers to return the user to their home page.
Improved tabbed browsing: By default, Firefox will open links in new tabs instead of new windows, and each tab will now have a close tab button.
Inline spell checking: A new built-in spell checker enables users to quickly check the spelling of text entered into Web forms
Spread Firefox coordinator Asa Dotzler commented on the release in his blog:

“Two years ago an amazing community of Firefox contributors set the world on fire (and not in that Sony battery way) with the release of Firefox 1.0. One year ago, when we came together and pushed Firefox 1.5 into the mainstream, proving that we were a force to be reckoned with. Today, with the release if Firefox 2, we’re setting a new standard for user safety, control, and fun on the Web.”

Download: Mozilla Firefox 2.0 (Win32, en-us) | Other Operating Systems/Languages

A big hello to all the people that we met today at the Greenwich Market on Sunday! Hopefully everyone had a great time and others discovered what Shisha really is! Very soon, we will have a page listing the nations of citizens who visit us! This week we met our first Norwegians, Sri Lankan, Malaysian, Swedes and a very passionate South African!

The cool people we met including Hayman, a veteran Shisha Smoker of 6 years after she received a Shisha pipe for her birthday, the SHisha Smoke breathing Scandinavian dragon (see pic below), a South African lady who was ‘Stunned’ by how good our Greenwich flavoured cocktail (Aniseed/Mint) tasted; a Swede whose mortal enemy is Aniseed! The Jingle ‘All I need is a Shisha in my life’ Brothers.Also shouts out to Jane, an American from Cyprus who worked in a Shisha Lounge (Full of tips which we hope will be shared!), an Australian duo that are out back packing! The lovely Selina, who has a wonderful smile, one of our neighbours Emma!

A big hello to the fun loving duo of Audgy and Mel who asked us to shout theirs names out in the market and to call them (almost got in trouble for that!), once we had the Banana flavour Shisha ready! We hope you enjoy the Shisha Pipe and tell all your friends about us!

Finally, a big thank you goes out to the couple from York, we applaud you for the Snakes, they tasted wonderful after we broke our fast!

We hope you thoroughly enjoy your Shisha experience!

Pictures: TheShishaShop.com

An interesting trivial article about the 10 biggest computer flops of all time including:

The Xerox Alto
NeXT computer
IBM PCjr
Apple Newton
Apple 3
Apple Lisa
Microsoft Windows ME
Microsoft Bob
IBM OS/2
Gary Kildall’s CP/M

Source: www.miguelcarrasco.net

There are confirmed reports that Windows Vista build 5808 has been released to TAP (Technology Adoption Program) customers, it has also been suggested that testers will not get this build on Connect and it’s unclear if this is a pre-RTM build shipped as such. Interesting to note is that 57xx was designated the RTM branch, there is no further information on a 5744 to 58xx jump, or what it implies.

Jim Allchin cleared up conflicting reports to eWeek by saying that Windows Vista would not make RTM this week, adding that there was still work to do “We won’t RTM (release to manufacturing) in a week,” Allchin told MJ Foley on October 18. “We are in pretty good shape. And there are still months before (the January 2007) launch.”

Source: The Vista.ru

The iPod/iPhone rumour mill is something so clouded that as TR News Ed I made the executive decision to circumvent the vast majority of it a long time ago, but yesterday I had a conversation with an extremely well informed exec which I’m going to share.

Naturally the identity of this friendly and talkative fellow has to stay a closely guarded secret but he works in a multinational company that develops iPod products and which sport ‘Made For iPod’ accreditation and the info flowed after I questioned the value of one of his company’s new iPod accessories.  

In a very matter of fact tone I was told that the product was not designed for the current generation of device, but the official 6G iPod (fanboy art above - the current generation is referred to as 5.5) which is to be released in December. His company’s device only comes onto the market shortly before then and would benefit hugely because the new iPod would sport a screen that filled the full side of the device and consequently offer higher resolution video.

He explained that Apple had told him 480p content was the target but could only promise whatever did appear would be of a much greater quality than is used today. When I enquired about the control method he confirmed it would be virtual (see official Apple patent application above) and that essentially Apple was finally delivering the type of device we’ve seen journos (including myself) talk about since the turn of the year. “This is why Jobs isn’t afraid of the Zune,� he said, though he had no knowledge of whether wireless would make an appearance.

Furthermore he also said Apple has been informing partner companies that its long awaited ‘iPhone’ (fan art again above) will debut in January and Apple wants to feature a subscription iTunes service where tracks could be downloaded for free as long as the subscription was maintained. He said Apple is already in negotiations with networks about bundling a trial period of the service with user contracts. Apart from that he said Apple did confirm to him that a three megapixel camera will be onboard. When I asked this exec why we should believe any of this info he explained that Apple works incredibly hard to keep its third party manufacturers in the loop because “it makes more money from the affiliates programme than from selling iPods� and that Steve Jobs believes it is brand’s vast array of add-ons which plays the biggest part in maintaining Apple’s market dominance. “He needs third parties to be ready with products when each new generation launches,� he explained, “and we will be…�

So there you go. The usual caveats apply, don’t shoot the messenger, etc, etc but – just maybe – get a little bit excited…

In related news Apple has confirmed less than one per cent of its 5.5G iPods have shipped with the RavMonE.exe Windows virus. It does nothing to the iPod but transfers itself to Windows on connection. An infected Windows computer on Apple’s assembly line has been blamed and the company has put up a fix page here.

Source: TrustedReviews.com