Recently Microsoft had announced a big feature of Windows 7, “XP Mode” as most call it. This allows people to install all their favorite XP software that won’t run in Vista or 7 in a XP virtual pc. Or at least as it was supposed to work, but many people with Intel processors won’t be able to use this feature. Microsoft is requiring that the computer on which 7 is installed to have hardware virtualization support. Since VirtualPC that the XP mode uses is a software hypervisor the decision makes no sense.

AMD processors have AMD-V (hardware virtualization) on all but their Sempron line. Intel on the other hand used the feature as a way to divide their processor models and don’t have as many models with the support. Tom’s Hardware has a list of all the Intel models that support VT-x.

Source: ArsTechnica

Tags: amd, intel, virtualization, windows 7

Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate is stated to having an XP mode where applications that only run in XP can be installed in a virtualized XP environment and linked to the Windows 7 desktop. Microsoft is including this feature to hopefully ease businesses into upgrading with the assurance that the critical business apps will still run. This is one of the big reason Vista still hasn’t been adopted by businesses. This feature should be in the upcoming April 30th Release Candidate.

Source: The Register

Tags: IT, RC, windows 7

According to InfoWorld IE 8 users aren’t for very long.

As of 8:00 am Monday, IE8 — released Thursday — held 1.86% of the browser market, down from a high of 2.59% on Sunday, according to market watcher Net Applications. The most likely reason for the decline is that early adopters of IE8 are switching back to the more familiar, and –at this point — reliable Explorer 7 browser.

I was never even able to download IE 8 when I tried Thursday, server timeouts, I guess it’s all as well, because I’d probably be in that .73% downgrading. I’ve actually tried IE 8 on Windows 7 beta and I wasn’t all that impressed, just looked like IE with a couple of new buttons. The whole web slice thing drove me crazy too. Every time you would highlight the little button would pop up and be overall annoying.

Tags: browser, firefox, IE, microsoft

Don’t like IE then you might be able to ditch it in Windows 7, a leaked beta has the feature to turn off IE8. Some speculated it because of the whole EU thing. The 7048 build of the beta has this feature, although not available in the public beta it’s easy enough to find on your favorite torrent site.
Source: CNet News – Microsoft may let Windows 7 users turn browser off

Tags: beta, eu, IE, windows 7

IE has been losing market share for a long time but in the last three months it’s dropped nearly a percentage point a month. IE has dropped from %69.77 in November to %67.55 in January. Firefox grew from %20.78 to %21.53 in the same time. Safari and Chrome have also enjoyed good growth in the past few months. It looks like consumers are finally get wise to Microsoft and realizing their is an alternative either in browser or OS all together.

(more…)

Tags: browser, firefox, IE, Internet, Mozilla