IE9 Tweaker: Tweak Internet Explorer 9 Browser Settings

Using IE9 Tweaker one can create a custom homepage, make the menubar always visible, change the menubar position to the top, add 3D border between toolbar and web window, make the toolbar icons smaller, and more.

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Windows 7 Service Pack 1 officially coming in early 2011

According to the FAQ section of Microsoft’s TechNet site, the first service pack for Windows 7 (for public, not beta) will be available in the early months of 2011:

Q: When will SP1 be released?

A: Service Pack 1 will be released within the first half of calendar year 2011.

Forget Windows: Midori is coming

WINDOWS is a name that has ruled the whole computer world since its first launch in November 1985. Since then it is like a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

With many advanced versions of Windows available today such as Windows XP, Windows Vista, it is the most used operating system in the world. In 2010, Microsoft is going to launch WINDOWS 2007, but now here is time to experience a yet another technology of operating systems.

Yes, MICROSOFT is working on a new generation of operating systems called Cloud-Based Operating System and rumors are there that MIDORI will be their first such operating system, which will replace Windows fully from computer map.

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE

MIDORI is an offshoot of Microsoft Research's Singularity operating system. In this the tools and libraries are completely managed code. MIDORI is designed to run directly on native hardware (x86, x64 and ARM), will be hosted on the Windows Hyper-V hypervisor, or even be hosted by a Windows process.

MIDORI can be also seen as MICROSOFT'S answer those competitors who are applying "Virtualization" as a mean to solving issues within contemporary computing.

The main idea behind MIDORI is to develop a lightweight portable OS which can be mated easily to lots of various applications.

IMPORTANCE OF MIDORI

For knowing the importance of MIDORI you have to think about, how an operating system is loaded on a computer. Actually operating system is loaded onto a hard disk physically located on that machine. In this way, the operating system is tied very tightly to that hardware. As Windows is dependent on hardware, it might face opposition from contemporary ways of working because people are extremely mobile in using different devices in order get diverse information.

Due to this trend installing different applications on a single computer may led to different compatibility issues whenever the machine require updating. The new operating system will solve these problems by the concept of Virtualizing. This will solve problems such as widespread security vulnerabilities, unexpected interactions among different applications, failures caused by errant extensions, plug-ins, and drivers and many more.

ERIC RUDDER, Senior Vice President, Technical Strategy

The importance of this project for MICROSOFT can be understood by the fact that company choose Eric Rudder , former head of Microsoft's server and tools business and a key member of Chairman Bill Gates' faction of the company, to handle it.

WHEN WILL IT BE LAUNCHED

Just Wait and See. Microsoft has not declared any such date about launching of MIDORI, but there are rumors that this project is in incubation phase.
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Windows Phone 7 builds upon Silverlight, XNA and .NET

Microsoft revealed its upcoming mobile OS, Windows Phone 7 at MWC 2010 and after looking at the first presentation, everyone surely wants to try this handsome OS.

At MWC 2010, Microsoft didn’t give much emphasis on software part, but they are expected to share more details on Windows Phone 7 OS in forthcoming MIX 2010. However, Microsoft’s Charlie Kindel has shared some insights on Windows Phone development.


Kindel said that Microsoft will produce new Windows Mobile 6.5 based devices along with Windows Phone 7 series phones. So, now there is no reason to get disappointed. You will get support for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones from the company.

As far as Windows Phone 7 development is concerned, Microsoft developers are using Silverlight, XNA and .NET platform to build different applications.

Charlie Kindel talks about the tools used in Windows Phone development -

The expertise and familiarity with our tools is not lost. If you are a .NET developer today your skills and much of your code will move forward. If you are Silverlight or XNA developer today you’re gonna be really happy. New developers to the platform will find a cohesive, well designed API set with super productive tools.

If you are a Windows Mobile 6.5 developer, you will have an opportunity to develop applications for Windows Phone 7 mobile phones too. Microsoft exactly knows what their developers and users want in the phone, and they have once again given a great platform to developers to show their talent with Windows Phone 7.

86% of Windows 7 PCs maxing out memory ... really?

I’ve had so many emails hit my inbox overnight about a story over on ComputerWorld citing data collected by Devil Mountain Software’s community-based XPnet claiming that some 86% of Windows 7 machines being monitored are regularly consuming 90-95% of the system RAM that I’m forced from silence to comment.

OK, let me begin by telling you why I wasn’t going to cover this story. Well, I’ll be honest with you, it’s because XPnet’s data isn’t a data source that’s on my trusted list. Collecting and correlating data is a tricky business, and there are too many mysteries surrounding how XPnet data is collected and what data is collected for me to get a clear picture of what’s going on. Those are my thoughts and feelings on the issue, but I encourage you to come to your own conclusions.

OK, but with that out of the way, let’s take a look at the claim.

86% of Windows 7 machines in the XPnet pool are regularly consuming 90%-95% of their available RAM

OK, first off, these figures seem way off to me. A quick look at the Windows 7 systems I’ve running here (which range in RAM from 1GB to 24GB) now shows the highest consumption to be in the region of 42%, and that system has two browser running, a remote desktop session active and a word processor running. This system is a notebook and has 2GB of RAM.

I’ve asked around a few other folks who are running multiple Windows 7 systems to see if they are seeing anything like what’s being reported. So far, no one I’ve talked to has seen this happen outside of when really pushing the system gaming or other demanding activity, such as running virtual machines or encoding multimedia.

OK, but let’s assume that there are systems out there that are consuming +90% RAM. So what? The only time you waste RAM is when you don’t use it. If you have 2GB or 4GB or whatever in your system, you want your system to make use of that RAM. Operating systems such as Windows 7 make intelligent use of memory, using it to speed up the OS when no other demands are being placed on it.

High RAM usage only becomes a problem when there’s no more RAM to work with because something is hogging the RAM and the system has to resort to disk paging. Problem is, there no data provided about disk paging or page faults, so we can’t make any sensible conclusions as to the impact that the memory usage is having on the systems.