MaSSSoftech

Today Windows 7 hits the GA or general availability milestone. That means that you’ll be able to pick up a PC with the OS pre-installed on it, or pick up a disc from your favorite virtual or bricks-and-mortar outlet. To celebrate, here are my top 7 favorite Windows 7 features.

#1 - Performance boost

Without a doubt the top Windows 7 feature for me is performance. On every system that I’ve put Windows 7 on, from monster quad core rigs to humble netbooks, I’ve seen a performance boost.

Putting numbers on this performance hike, on key metrics such as boot-up, video encoding and gaming frames per second, the boost over Vista is, on average, in the region of 10%.

In my opinion, this performance boost is Windows 7’s strongest selling point.

#2 - More restrained UAC

The User Account Control (UAC) experience under Vista was a little like being shot in the face with a shotgun filled with dialog boxes. A single simple action could unleash a barrage of warnings that left many users feeling confused, bewildered and angry.

Under Windows 7, UAC is a little more restrained, limiting prompts to specific actions. Some might argue that this decreases the security it offers, but I think that the “dialog blindness” that the old UAC caused is worse.

Another good side of the new, improved UAC is the fact that users can customize the level of warnings they receive and so set up the system to best suit their needs.

#3 - 64-bit becomes the new default

Microsoft, along with the big OEMs, are pushing 64-bit flavor of Windows harder than ever. Given that hardware, software and driver support for 64-bit is now at an all-time high, there’s very little reason for users not to migrate to 64-bit.

Within a few years I expect the Windows 7 effect to start to erode 32-bit’s strangle-hold on PCs.

#4 - Improved troubleshooting tools

When users hit a problem, what they want to do is find a solution or fix and get on with their day. To help users accomplish this, Microsoft has incorporated numerous troubleshooters into Windows 7.

No troubleshooter is perfect, but the work that Microsoft has done in Windows 7 will help many users fix problems for themselves without having to resort to tech support or trawling the web for answers.

#5 - UI improvements

No one can say that the Windows 7 UI is revolutionary, but the evolutionary changes that Microsoft has made in this new OS are almost all steps in the right direction. There are two aspects of the UI that have been tweaked:

- Helping users find the applications and documents they want to work with
- Once the user has found what they want, the UI fades into the background and allows the user to get on with things

#6 - Touch support

It’s going to be a while until the built-in touch support incorporated into Windows 7 really takes off, but there’s no doubt that Microsoft’s inclusion of support for touch-screens right into the Windows 7 OS will encourage OEMs to offer more systems with this cool feature.

#7 - XP Mode

I’m not a huge fan of the XP Mode feature available in some editions of Windows 7 that allows users to run XP within a virtual machine from the desktop. However, for those folks with specific bits of software that won’t work on a later OS, then XP Mode does offer a lifeline.

Bonus favorite feature - It’s not Vista. ‘Nuff said!

So, is it a good OS? Yes. In fact, I agree with Ed Bott when he calls the OS “impressive.” However, that said, I can’t see any really compelling reason to rush adoption. Take your time, Windows 7 will be there waiting for you 6 months of a year down the line. Over that time it’ll get better, and hardware/driver support will get better, so everyone’s a winner.

So, join the party and upgrade now, or wait and upgrade later. Or stick with what you are already running. Or go with a Mac or Linux … The choice if yours.

Microsoft is really turning up the consumer-focused volume on the Windows 7 launch on October 22 — despite the fact that the company makes a lot of money from selling Windows to business users, either via volume-license agreements and/or various other channels.

Why so much attention on retail — where Microsoft admittedly garners the least amount of Windows revenues? Microsoft officials believe if they can win over consumers with Windows 7, these consumers will push their workplaces to move to Windows 7 more quickly. There’s also, undoubtedly, a large helping of Apple envy/fear that’s part of Microsoft’s consumer push.

To kick off the launch activities, Microsoft unveiled on October 21 a number of retail deals for the product that it has forged with some of its PC partners and retail outlets. Microsoft is calling the promotion “7 Days of Windows 7.” Company officials said to expect more Windows 7 deals to be added throughout the coming week and to check back on Windows.com if you’re in the market for new hardware, upgrades, support, etc.)

Day 1 (October 22) offers include:

* Best Buy offering Full home technology remodel, handyman included. Best Buy PC Home Makeover
* HP laptop, netbook, desktop and monitor package with Windows 7. Geek Squad wireless home network with router and new PC setup is included for $1,199.00
* Dell Studio XPS 13. Save more than $100.00
* Acer AZ5610-U9072 23″ Touch All-in-One (with Windows Touch) for $880.00
* With the Buy a PC, Get a Discounted Upgrade offer, customers who buy a new PC running Windows 7 Home Premium can upgrade a Windows XP- or Windows Vista-based PC they already own with a discounted box copy of Windows 7. This offer will run through Jan. 2, 2010.
* The Windows 7 Family Pack is available tomorrow in select countries while supplies last. With this offer, consumers can buy three Upgrade licenses of Windows 7 for one price.
* The Student Offer begins tomorrow. For a limited time, the Windows 7 Student Offer gives college and university students in the U.S. and select markets worldwide the opportunity to purchase Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade or Windows 7 Professional Upgrade for a discount.

I’m weighing which Windows 7 machine to buy and am open to suggestions. I’m looking for something that’s lightweight and very durable. (I’m actually considering buying both a netbook and a laptop, making the laptop my primary machine and the netbook what I take on the road.) I don’t care about running games. I don’t want or need touch. I do value battery life and don’t need anything flashy (though something with a little personality would be nice). Any suggestions out there?

One other note: If you’re in the New York City area on October 22, feel free to come by our post-launch party. It’s at the Antarctica Bar on Hudson and will start around 5 p.m. Lot of Microsoft bloggers — including Ed Bott of ZDNet, Paul Thurrott of the Windows SuperSite, Tom Warren of NeoWin and more will be there. We’re also expecting Most Valuable Professionals, testers, a few brave/crazy Softies and other hangers-on to show up to sample the seven beers on tap. Hope to see you there!

Today is Windows 7 launch day. Here are some launch day offers that might be of interest to you.

Microsoft is introducing a limited-time series of offers known as “7 Days of Windows 7” with amazing deals on hardware, upgrades, support and other options. Watch for new offers to be released daily on Windows.com.

To kick off Day 1 tomorrow, Microsoft is offering PCs that are targeted at simplifying consumers’ lives. There are a host of offers available for customers, including:

* Best Buy. Full home technology remodel, handyman included. Best Buy PC Home Makeover
- HP laptop, netbook, desktop and monitor package with Windows 7. Geek Squad wireless home network with router and new PC setup is included.
$1,199.00
* Dell Studio XPS 13. All the speed you’ll need.
- Simply put, everything you do on your PC will be easier with a fast, high-performing laptop.
Save more than $100 on a Dell Studio XPS13
* Acer AZ5610-U9072 23″ Touch All-in-One (with Windows Touch)
- Touch capabilities and all-in-one elegance with an integrated PC and monitor
- This stunning, All-in-One PC with Windows Touch incorporates intuitive multi-touch technology for exceptional high-definition (HD) entertainment at your fingertips. An elegant, bring exceptional HD entertainment to your fingertips.
$880.00

With the Buy a PC, Get a Discounted Upgrade offer, customers who buy a new PC running Windows 7 Home Premium can upgrade a Windows XP- or Windows Vista-based PC they already own with a discounted box copy of Windows 7. This offer will run through Jan. 2, 2010.

Other offers available include:

* The Windows 7 Family Pack is available tomorrow in select countries while supplies last. With this offer, consumers can buy three Upgrade licenses of Windows 7 for one low price.
* The Student Offer begins tomorrow. For a limited time, the Windows 7 Student Offer gives college and university students in the U.S. and select markets worldwide the opportunity to purchase Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade or Windows 7 Professional Upgrade for a significant discount.

The new BlackBerry 9700 from T-Mobile comes as no surprise given all the leaks. I was actually in a T-Mobile store a couple months ago and a salesperson mentioned it was coming in an offhand manner. T-Mobile made it official today though and announced that the BlackBerry Bold 9700 would be coming in “time for the holidays”. This is T-Mobile USA’s first 3G BlackBerry and it looks sweet. It also has a speedy 624 MHz processor that should really fly.

Other specs include 256MB of Flash memory with a microSD card slot, Bluetooth, WiFi (with support for VoIP calls over the T-Mobile HotSpot @Home network), GPS, 3.2 megapixel camera, touch sensitive trackpad (no trackball on this device), 3.5-mm headset jack, 360 x 480 resolution display and it runs the new BlackBerry OS 5.0. I see on the T-Mobile site there is also a new service called PrimeTime2Go that offers TV viewing on the go.

The BlackBerry Bold 9700 will be available for $199.99 with a 2-year contract.

Windows 7 is impressive. That word is rarely used in the same sentence as “Microsoft” and “Windows” – certainly not in recent years. But it fits here.
Unlike its predecessors, this Windows version feels as if it were designed and built by a single, coordinated team instead of being assembled from interchangeable parts. In daily use, Windows 7 feels graceful and often (but not always) elegant. Although it builds on elements that debuted in Windows Vista, it fixes many usability sins and adds consistency and polish to an interface that had too many rough edges. And some very impressive new capabilities, especially the grossly underrated Libraries feature, offer rewards for digging deeper.

Windows 7 runs smoothly and efficiently on even modest hardware. Remarkably, it reverses the longstanding trend to make Windows bigger. From a standing start, Windows 7 uses less memory, runs fewer services, and consumes less disk space than its predecessor, Windows Vista, and in the 64-bit version it can address about five times more RAM than you can actually stuff onto a single motherboard. This year, anyway.

I’ve already covered the features in Windows 7 extensively. Little in Windows 7 has changed since I wrote What to expect from Windows 7 back in May. If you review the screenshot gallery I assembled for that post, you’ll have a very good idea of how Windows 7 looks and acts today (the sole exception is Windows XP Mode, which has changed significantly from the beta release I looked at in May).

When Windows Vista was released in January 2007, I suggested that most businesses of even modest size and complexity would be wise to heed conventional wisdom and avoid it until Service Pack 1 was ready. I don’t feel compelled to offer that same advice here. The development process for Windows 7 has been steady and deliberate. The Release Candidate code that Microsoft made public last May was arguably more stable and reliable than most recent official Windows releases. As I wrote in What to expect from Windows 7 nearly six months ago:

From a features and capabilities point of view, Windows 7 is essentially done. It’s all over but the process of hunting down bugs, many of them associated with OEM hardware and drivers. In a bygone era, code this stable and well tested might have been released as a 1.0 product, followed six months later by a service pack. Not this year. Microsoft is treating Windows 7 as the world’s most ambitious shareware release ever.

I’m told that 8 million people have been running the Windows 7 Release Candidate. That’s four times the number of people who registered as Windows Vista beta testers during its development process. My gut feeling is that the number of people actually using Windows 7 in recent months is at least an order of magnitude higher than the corresponding head count in the runup to Windows Vista. And based on everything I’ve heard, the overwhelming majority of those who try Windows 7 like it.

So, who should upgrade? And who shouldn’t? As always, I don’t believe in one-size-fits-all recommendations. But for a few categories, the choice is simple:

* If you’re running Windows Vista and gritting your teeth over it, you should upgrade as soon as possible. The relief will be immediate.
* If you’re shopping for a new PC, get one with Windows 7 on it. And if it doesn’t run properly on Day 1, return it and find another. OEMs that do a good job of matching PC hardware to Windows should be rewarded. Those who didn’t learn from the Vista experience deserve to be punished.
* If you’re perfectly happy with the performance of XP and don’t want to relearn established habits, stay put.
* For anyone relying on mission-critical Windows-based apps or specialized hardware, testing trumps any desire to have the latest OS, no matter how well it’s been reviewed.

And if you’re feeling gun-shy about switching, it’s OK to wait. Most people forget that the venerable Windows XP was unpopular and unloved for its first two years in the marketplace. And Windows Vista has matured into a solid, if forgettable OS after many reliability updates and two service packs. Based on that experience, Windows 7 will improve with age.

Yes, there are downsides to the Windows 7 transition. For Windows XP users in particular, the upgrade process is tedious. Licensing is still a confusing mess, especially for small business owners. Drivers are still a potential source of headaches, as I’ve found in recent months.

But its improvements in productivity, security, and reliability make Windows 7 worth those short-term hassles. It is, without question, the most impressive software development effort Microsoft has ever undertaken. For anyone who has chosen Windows – out of preference or necessity – it is an impressive achievement and as close to an essential upgrade as I have ever seen.

Gangs know what encryption is. They are using it in force at the street level, let alone at the very top. Rim’s BlackBerries are the ultimate in security for them. Everything is secured and impossible to monitor by police.
Rim’s Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) is one of the most sophisticated platforms for email and PIN messages. This system used to be the domain of big corporations. No longer. One of the reasons many financial brokerage institutions ban the use of PIN messages is because they can’t be tracked. In 2005 this was big news and was reported widely. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) and Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) banned its use. Organized crime picked up where the banks left off.

RCMP Insp. Gary Shinkaruk, head of biker gang investigations in B.C., said BlackBerries are “extremely common” among the criminals his unit investigates.“For a lot of groups, it’s standard practice,” he said.

The RCMP legendary motto maybe heading to the delete bin and may not be able to always get their man after all…

The IT industry is exiting its worst year ever, as worldwide IT spending is on
pace to decline 5.2 percent, according to Gartner, Inc. Worldwide enterprise IT
spending will struggle more with IT spending dropping 6.9 percent. The IT
industry will return to growth with 2010 IT spending forecast to total $3.3
trillion, a 3.3 percent increase from 2009.

Gartner provided the latest outlook for the IT industry during Gartner
Symposium/ITxpo, which is taking place here through October 22. While IT
spending will increase next year, Gartner cautioned IT leaders to be overly
optimistic.

"While the IT industry will return to growth in 2010, the market will not
recover to 2008 revenue levels before 2012," said Peter Sondergaard, senior vice
president at Gartner and global head of Research. "2010 is about balancing the
focus on cost, risk, and growth. For more than 50 percent of CIOs the IT budget
will be 0 percent or less in growth terms. It will only slowly improve in 2011."


The computing hardware market has struggled more than other segments with
worldwide hardware spending forecast to total $317 billion in 2009, a 16.5
percent decline. In 2010, spending on hardware spending will be flat. Worldwide
telecom spending is on pace to decline 4 percent in 2009 with revenue of nearly
$1.9 trillion. In 2010, telecom spending is forecast to grow 3.2 percent.
Worldwide IT services spending is expected to total $781 billion in 2009, and it
is forecast to grow 4.5 percent in 2010. Worldwide software spending is forecast
to decline 2.1 percent in 2009, and the segment is projected to grow 4.8 percent
in 2010.

On a regional basis, emerging regions will resume strong growth. "By 2012, the
accelerated IT spending and culturally different approach to IT in these
economies will directly influence product features, service structures, and the
overall IT industry. Silicon Valley will not be in the driver`s seat anymore,"
Mr. Sondergaard said.

From a budget perspective, there are three important items that IT leaders must
consider in 2010:

1 A Shift from Capital Expenditure to Operational Expenditure in the
IT Budget — Concepts such as cloud services will accelerate this
shift. IT costs become scaleable and elastic. CIOs need to model the
economic impact of IT on the overall financial performance of an
organization. For public companies, they must show how IT improves
earnings per share (EPS).
2 Impact of the Increased Age of IT Hardware — With delayed
purchases of servers, PCs and printers likely to continue into 2010,
organizations must start to assess the impact of increased equipment
failure rates, and if current financial write-off periods are still
appropriate. Approximately 1 million servers have had their
replacement delayed by a year. That is 3 percent of the global
installed base. In 2010, it will be at least 2 million. “If
replacement cycles do not change, almost 10 percent of the server
installed base will be beyond scheduled replacement be 2011,” Mr.
Sondergaard said. “That will impact enterprise risk. CFOs need to
understand this dynamic, and it’s the responsibility of the CIO to
convey this in a way the CFO understands.”
3 IT Must Learn to Build Compelling Business Cases — 2010 marks
the year in which IT needs to demonstrate true line of sight to
business objectives for every investment decision. IT leaders can no
longer look at IT as a percentage of revenue. CIOs must benchmark IT
according to business impact.

Mr. Sondergaard said three additional topics that were important in 2009 will
continue to dominate IT leaders` agendas in 2010. These three topics include

* Business Intelligence - Users will continue to expand their investments in
this area with the focus moving from "in here" to "out there"
* Virtualization - IT leaders should not just invest in the server and data
center environment, but in the entire infrastructure. In 2010, users will create
the cornerstone for the cloud infrastructure. They will enable the
infrastructure to move from owned to shared.
* Social Media - Organizations are starting to scale their efforts in this
space. The technologies are improving and organizations realize this is not only
about digital natives. It`s about all client segments including the most
significant: the population in the next 10 years, the above 60 year old
generations.

While those topics are key to IT agendas today, Mr. Sondergaard highlighted
three themes that will become important going forward. They include:

* Context-Aware Computing - This is the concept of leveraging information about
the end user to improve the quality of the interaction. Emerging
context-enriched services will use location, presence, social attributes, and
other environmental information to anticipate an end user`s immediate needs,
offering more sophisticated, situation-aware and usable functions.
* Operational Technology (OT) - OT is devices, sensors, and software used to
control or monitor physical assets and processes in real-time to maintain system
integrity. The rapid growth of OT is increasing the need for a unified view of
information covering business process and control systems. OT will become a
mainstream focus for all organizations.
* Pattern-Based Strategy - This is a new model about implementing a framework to
proactively seek, model, and adapt to leading indicators, often termed "weak"
signals, that form patterns in the marketplace, and to exploit them for
competitive advantage. A Pattern-Based Strategy will allow an organization to
not only better understand what`s happening now in terms of demand, but also to
detect leading indicators of change, and to indentify and quantify risks
emerging from new patterns rather than continuing to focus on lagging indicators
of performance.

About Gartner Symposium/ITxpo

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is the industry's largest and most important annual
gathering of CIOs and senior IT executives. This event delivers independent and
objective content with the authority and weight of the world's leading IT
research and advisory organization, and provides access to the latest solutions
from key technology providers. Gartner's annual Symposium/ITxpo events are key
components of attendees' annual planning efforts. They rely on Gartner
Symposium/ITxpo to gain insight into how their organizations can use IT to
address business challenges and improve operational efficiency.

Upcoming dates and locations for Gartner Symposium/ITxpo include:

October 18-22, Orlando, Florida: www.gartner.com/us/symposium

November 2-5, Cannes, France: www.gartner.com/eu/symposium

November 11-13, Tokyo, Japan: www.gartner.com/jp/symposium

November 17-19, Sydney Australia: www.gartner.com/au/symposium

About Gartner

Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research
and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary
for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT
leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in
high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology
investors, Gartner is the indispensable partner to 60,000 clients in 10,000
distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner
Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with
every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the
context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in
Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 4,000 associates, including 1,200
research analysts and consultants in 80 countries. For more information, visit
www.gartner.com.

Gartner
Christy Pettey, + 1 408 468 8312
christy.pettey@gartner.com