Windows 7, which went on sale Thursday, promises a smoother user experience, multi-touchscreen capability and more seamless networking with other computers.

Early reviews have been good.

“We think it’s a far superior product to the previous Microsoft operating systems,” says Vishal Dhar, co-founder of iYogi, a tech services company. “It’s got a more intuitive interface.”

Great. But it is right for you? Which version of the software best fits your needs? And are there tricks to installing Windows 7 and navigating its new features?

We anticipate seven of the most common questions about Windows 7 and offer some advice:

Will my aging computer run Windows 7?

Maybe. If your PC can run the much-maligned Windows Vista, it can probably run Windows 7. Check your computer’s specs: To install Windows 7, you’ll need at least a 1 gigahertz or faster 32-bit (x86) processor, plus at least 2 GB of RAM and at least 16 GB of available hard disk space.

Yes, that sounds like a foreign language to most people. If you’re not sure what all that means, try downloading a free Microsoft tool called a Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor, which will scan your PC, report any potential problems and offer ways to fix them.

Is upgrading to Windows 7 worth it?

That depends on your budget and how you use your computer. The software will cost you from $120 to $220, depending on which version you buy. If you’re broke and you’re happy with your Vista or Windows XP system, then there’s probably no rush.

But keep in mind that Windows XP is eight-year-old software, and that it will eventually stop running new applications. Newer operating systems also offer better security against hackers. You’ll need to upgrade someday.

Depending on how old your computer is, you may be better off buying a new laptop or PC, preloaded with Windows 7, instead of trying to refresh your aging machine. Retailers such as Best Buy and Dell.com are offering Windows 7-loaded laptops for as low as $499.

Which version of Windows 7 should I buy?

Most casual computer users will probably be satisfied with the Home Premium edition ($119.99), which includes most of the basic features you’ll need. That includes Home Group, which makes it easier to share music, video and documents — a common printer, too — between Windows 7-enabled computers in a home.

Small business owners and people who work from home may opt for the Professional edition ($199.99), which supports all the Home Premium features while automatically backing up all your data to a networked hard drive.

If you guard corporate secrets or work for the CIA, you’ll want the Ultimate edition ($219.99). It comes with BitLocker encryption, which prevents thieves from accessing your files if your laptop is stolen.

How tricky is Windows 7 to install?

If you’re upgrading from Vista, it’s supposed to be a breeze: Insert the disc, and it does the rest. “It’s the easiest upgrade I’ve ever seen,” says J. Peter Bruzzese, who writes about tech for InfoWorld. “All of my settings carried over.”

Upgrading from Windows XP is more complicated. Users will need to back up their files, format their hard drive, install Windows 7 and then reinstall browsers, reimport bookmarks and so on. Microsoft has a wizard called Easy Transfer that uses a USB cable to help you transfer files and settings.

It’s not officially recommended, but Bruzzese says XP users also can install a borrowed copy of Vista, then upgrade easily from there to Windows 7.

What if I need help?

If you don’t have a tech-savvy friend, nephew or neighbor, try Microsoft’s online Windows 7 Solution Center, which will walk you through the installation process.

You may also want to consider hiring a tech-support service such as iYogi, whose technicians connect to your computer remotely to diagnose problems, help you install Windows 7 and show you how to migrate your old applications onto your new system. Services start at about $30.

Will Windows 7 run my old XP programs?

Most likely. Heeding complaints about Vista’s compatibility problems, Microsoft is introducing something called XP Mode, which creates a virtual, or “shadow” Windows XP operating system running inside Windows 7.

Once XP Mode is running, it fools your older apps into thinking they’re on Windows XP. Here you’ll find an XP start menu and all your familiar XP features — all of which should work as they did before. XP Mode is only available in the higher-priced Professional and Ultimate editions, though.

Does Windows 7 have any cool new bells and whistles?

• Well, it’s got trippier desktop wallpaper, for one. Microsoft has replaced much of its blandly pretty nature shots with colorful psychedelic images.

• A Library feature allows you to gather files — documents, photos and video — from different places on your computer and group them together in new folders by topic, such as “beach house,” or “Grandpa Fred.”

• A new feature called AeroPeek displays outlines of your open windows behind the window you’re working in. A related feature, AeroSnap, allows you to move, shrink and enlarge windows on your screen so that you can see several at once.

• Finally, Windows 7 needs less processing power than previous Windows versions, meaning that in theory, you should be able to work faster and in more windows at the same time. In other words, it’s built for today’s warp-speed, multi-tasking lifestyle.

(CNN)

Among the promotions Microsoft tried with Windows Vista was an outdoor human billboard.

It’s true of the product, which is as notable for its everyday performance as any one new feature. It’s also true of how Microsoft plans to launch the new operating system on Thursday October 22.

Rather than go for flash, the company is focused on making sure that all of its partners are ready to sell lots of PCs and copies of Windows 7.

“We’re living in a different world today,” Microsoft Vice President Tami Reller said in an interview with CNET News.

Microsoft is hoping to strike a contrast with the launch of Vista, which was marked by ambitious marketing (Remember “The Wow starts now”?) but a product that wasn’t fully baked, nor were other software and hardware makers ready for the big changes that came with Vista.

Windows 7, meanwhile, offers only minor changes to the Windows core from Vista, and aims to be faster and easier to navigate than its predecessor.

Reller said the goal with the marketing of Windows 7 is to let the product speak for itself. Early ads have featured Kylie — the perfectly precocious preschooler — reading some of the product’s positive reviews.

“We’ll stay true to that on October 22, and we’ll stay true to that post-October 22, which just results in sort of less acrobats, and more customers,” Reller said, adding that there will be more than just Kylie.

Among the promotions Microsoft tried with Windows Vista was an outdoor human billboard, which left spectators — quite literally — out in the cold on a very nippy New York day.

Microsoft said this time around, it is putting nearly all its energy on getting the product in front of as many people as possible. As has been the case with past Windows launches, there will be plenty of specials and promotions tied to the Windows 7 launch. Customers, she said “can expect great, great deals.”

“This is where we’ve put a lot of coordination effort to make sure that customers more than ever get some great, great value, starting on October 22 and continuing.”

And, of course, Microsoft is planning a massive advertising campaign to promote the product. The launch of Windows 7 is key for Microsoft, which gets a huge chunk of overall sales and profits from Windows.

Although some PC makers have already started introducing their Windows 7-based models, Reller promised there are other machines yet to be announced.

“You’ll see a few more PCs for sure in all categories, whether they’re gaming machines, whether they’re new notebooks, a few new Netbooks,” Reller said. “You will see more.”

Some stores will also open at midnight, Reller said, without offering specifics. Microsoft itself is opening its first retail store — in Scottsdale, Arizona — to coincide with the launch, although that store opens at 10 a.m. on Thursday. Sources said to expect a celebrity or two, plus some nice goodies for whoever happens to be the first to walk out of the store with a copy of Windows 7.

Microsoft is also opening a “Windows Cafe” in Paris, though that location will be selling lattes rather than laptops.

As for formalities, Microsoft plans launch events around the globe, with Windows unit head Steven Sinofsky in Japan kicking things off, followed by Julie Larson-Green at an event in Britain and finally, (due to time zones) Steve Ballmer presiding over the main event in New York.

Microsoft will also ring the opening bell on Nasdaq on Thursday, while Microsoft will join with its computer maker partners to end the day’s trading.

Unclear is whether Microsoft will be making a return appearance to late-night TV. With the launch of Vista, Bill Gates took to the Daily Show stage, talking tech with Jon Stewart.

“You’ll certainly see a lot of coverage from us that day, but no commitments on the exact venue,” Reller said.

Whenever one enters a cyber-café patronised by youthful clientele and looks around, the most striking thing is finding them almost uniformly glued to Facebook or to a lesser extent, other social sites like MySpace.

Unknown to many of them, these now vastly huge sites were the products of youths like them, mostly in the US, who came up with these ideas and developed them through hard work and a great deal of ingenuity.

It may not be easy for Kenyans to come up with a Facebook with over 200 million followers any time soon but if a local IT company has its way, a good start may be in the offing in the field of software development, the very backbone of the ICT industry everywhere, but which has not seemingly been much of a priority in Kenya.

Internet Communications Technology (or ICT) Consultants, a Nairobi-based information technology firm, is set to change this to a great degree, when it launches a software development platform meant to ease the creation of new programmes and business operations.

Prospective

The firm has partnered with FreeCode International, a company based in Norway that offers ‘open source’ software or free software, which any prospective software development aspirant as well as established companies can obtain from the Kenyan firm.

The Norwegian company also has a franchising or joint ownership option, which in the fast-growing Kenyan ICT field could prove to be a lucrative business in the not-too-distant future. Besides, it gives a convenient platform for those getting into content and data creation, either through the PC-based internet or increasingly, the mobile telephone.

According to ICT Consultants’ technical officer, Mr Alex Mutinda, open source software is ‘free’ such that once you posses it, you can create all sorts of programmes without worrying about restrictions usually imposed by the creators of such software or paying steep license fees.

“A company or software developer’s freedom of choice is secured with the use of free software, since it removes the vendor-lock imposed by proprietary owners”, says Mr Mutinda.

“What people have experienced is that the Microsoft Windows software commonly used — due to its hitherto tight lock on the software market worldwide — is expensive to run, especially for small and medium enterprises, it is prone to costly viruses and it’s not that secure from hacking. You have to buy virtually every piece of software the company comes up with and you don’t have much leeway with it”.

One totally owns this FreeCode software and it comes with the technical and systems back-up from the parent company.

Some ICT industry watchers contend that one of the biggest hindrances to the growth of software development in Kenya is that besides not having been a priority area in many computer studies with most learning only the basics of computing such as Windows, even those who have studied advanced courses such as JavaScript have had to depend on closed software options whenever they intended to use it for real business.

This has made it difficult and quite expensive for individual or small upstarts to make meaningful use of them.

Mr Mutinda says that whereas the FreeCode software is not itself expensive, its free nature allows companies to run the software for any purpose including human resources, enterprise resource planning (ERP), payroll systems and development of products among many others.

This, he says, is a boon not just to companies but also to those creative individuals wishing to enter into software development, especially those outsourced for by major companies.

A dynamic one which can be modified, updated, improved, or re-designed, he says it is a perfect tool for e-commerce, or for other aspects of data and content creation.

Fully-fledged

For the enterprise-minded, FreeCode International offers the option of owning a fully-fledged franchise, which gives one exclusive rights to a geographic area.

While it is also possible to have a joint venture or become a subsidiary of the Norwegian company, it says that “those entrepreneurs seeking to retain maximum control and profit of their operations, should opt for the franchise model after an initial licensing fee and franchise fee pegged on 10 per cent of gross revenue.”

This model, they say, is especially suitable in virtually virgin markets such as Kenya where computing requiring all manner of customised software is poised to grow enormously.

Although they do not indicate the cost for the free software preferring direct contact with clients, ICT Consultants itself, which presently has a franchise with FreeCode International to sell and promote this open source software, is already training its staff in preparation for roll-out and, according to its officials at a workshop held at a local hotel recently, targeting IT specialists and managers in the private and public sectors to highlight this software.

By ALLAN NGUGI Nation media group

The fight between Microsoft and Google is over who’ll be seen as the world’s most important tech company.

And not more than a month and a half ago, Microsoft unveiled its new search engine Bing, which it hopes will steal market share from Google and finally make it real money online.

From the news of it, it’s a full-blown tech battle, complete with behind-the-scenes machinations to sic government regulators on each other.

It is, however, not a death match — it’s more of an fight to see who will be the King of Technology, since both companies pull in their billions through completely different siphons and are unlikely to severely wound one another any time soon.

Google pulled in $22 billion in revenue in 2008, 97 percent of which came tiny text ads bought by the keyword and placed next to search results or on pages around the web. Google makes a negligible amount of money bundling its online apps for businesses, charging $50 a head annually — but mostly it just gives its online text editor, email and spreadsheet programs away.

By contrast, Microsoft sold $14.3 billion worth of Microsoft Word and PowerPoint and other business applications over the last nine months, making a profit of $9.3 billion. It made a further $16 billion in revenue in 2008 through sales of its operating systems, which range from XP installations on netbooks, to Vista, to Windows Mobile to its server software.

Google now plans its own range of operating systems, starting with Android, an open-source OS for small devices like smartphones, and Chrome OS, a browser-focused, open-source OS that will run on notebooks and desktops.

Clearly top executives at each company look over at the others’ pots of gold and dream of ways to steal them, or at least make it harder for the other guy to make money.

In fact, they even dislike each other enough to spend money to make the other one lose revenue — take for example, Microsoft’s behind-the-scenes campaign to scuttle last year’s proposed Google-Yahoo advertising deal or its ongoing attempts to derail the Google Book Search settlement.

But in reality, the competition is really about creating universes or ecosystems that it hopes consumers will want to live their technology lives inside. And it’s about ego — a fight to be recognized as the world’s most important technology company.

Microsoft would love for everyone in the world to be using its Internet Explorer browser to search through Bing to find a story from its MSN portal to email via Hotmail or Outlook to a friend. Add in a smartphone running Windows Mobile and an Xbox in the living room for the kids, and you have a Microsoft family. And though it is much joked about, Microsoft is the dominant platform for software developers of all types, whether they are making small business software, massive online role-playing games or photo-editing utilities.

Google’s ecosystem looks different. It starts with a Google Chrome browser (oddly running only on Windows) with a default homepage set to Google News or a customized Google homepage. From there you might go to Gmail and then click on a Word document sent to you as an attachment which Google will quickly — and safely — open for you in its online word processor.

But most importantly, Google wants you to search and travel around the web, hitting web pages that run Google-served ads and Google tracking cookies. You might think that Google is a really cool company to give away all this free technology, while never thinking about the persistent and silent data collection Google is undertaking to profile you in order to deliver you to advertisers for a premium.

So how do the two stack up in four key areas of competition?

Browsers: Internet Explorer in all its variations still retains close to 70 percent of the market (depending on who is counting and how). That dominance remains, even though Microsoft’s latest offering IE8 lags behind all the other major browsers in features and advanced web capabilities.

Firefox, Opera, and Apple’s Safari have all driven browser innovation over the last five years, but most people have not been convinced to leave IE behind, despite other alternatives being safer and more advanced. Why does it matter? Well, IE installations come with a default home page, don’t they?

Google’s Chrome browser, on the other hand, is a handsome, whiz-kid of a browser. It’s sleek and nimble, and it revolutionizes how tabs are handled. The address bar is the search box (Google as default, naturally). Each website opened runs as its own browser instance and has very low permissions to read and write to files. The sandboxing of tabs means that if a single website hangs or crashes, the rest are unaffected. Meanwhile, lower permissions make it harder for a hacker to bust into your computer through your browser.

Chrome also has less than 2 percent of the browser market share.

Online Search: Google’s name now means search to most users. Google’s search engine means money to Google. In June, it delivered 78.5 percent of search results pages delivered to U.S. web users. In the first three months of 2009, Google pulled in $5.2 billion in revenue, a majority of which came from AdWords, an auction-based service that triggers ads based on the keywords in a search query.

Microsoft recently debuted Bing, a new search engine it hoped would fare well in comparison to Google. It’s got some fine innovations, and shows the company is thinking very hard about better ways to present information to users by finding ways to synthesize data, rather than just retrieving links. Still, despite these improvements, a $100 million ad campaign, and generous press coverage that treats Bing like an underdog, Bing gained only a point in June to get Microsoft 8.2 percent of all searches.

Operating Systems: Microsoft has been making operating systems since 1979 and has spent 28 years perfecting MS-DOS and Windows NT, the frameworks that Windows have been built around. Microsoft is estimated to run on about 90 percent of all laptops and desktops in the world. By copying its competitors’ best features, leveraging questionable licensing arrangements and using its base of accustomed users to buy it time against innovators, Microsoft has held on to its lead in the OS market for almost 30 years. That’s despite challenges from Digital Research, Apple and IBM.

Microsoft’s newest version, Windows 7, will be available in the fall. Early reviews say the OS boots quickly and sleeps fast, and avoids much of the confusing interface decisions that have made many dislike Vista, the successor to Windows XP. Microsoft also dominates in the business world, where nearly every medium to large company standardizes around Microsoft Office. Microsoft is also at work on version 6 of its operating system for handheld devices, which it first launched in 2000.

Its OS advantages are immense. It has millions of users who know nothing else and who like Windows. There are millions who are attached to games or the thousands of desktop apps that are only available on Windows. Thousands of devices just plug in and work on its hardware. And familiarity with Microsoft software is a requirement for a huge number of office jobs.

By contrast, Google first stepped into the OS game in 2007 when it announced its Android operating system for small devices. Google estimates that some 18 phone models will be running its system by the end of the year. Last week, Google announced, but did not show off, a new OS to compete with Windows, dubbing it Chrome OS.

That name signifies that Google’s OS will be for the web and browser-based. It hopes to convince developers to write software that runs inside a browser, instead of on top of the OS as developers for Windows and Apples’ OS X do. It will also let web developers extend the power of their websites by expanding the capabilities of the browser, allowing websites to lean on the browser for storage and processing help.

Advertising: Google is largely powered by its innovative auction-based text ads on its own site, but then expanded into serving ads on other people’s sites with the Adsense program. It bought the ad-serving and behavioral-profiling giant Doubleclick in 2007 for more than $3 billion, and has ventured into mobile, print, radio and television ads.

Microsoft has struggled to replicate Google’s online advertising success. Despite owning MSN.com — a portal that is second only to Yahoo as a destination — Microsoft has not made money on the internet. To turbocharge its ad-delivery technology, it paid more than $6 billion in cash in 2007 for aQuantive, a full-service online advertising concern.

Instead, Microsoft’s online ad business lost $1.2 billion in 2008, double what it lost in 2007. The company expects 2009 revenues to be higher than the $3.2 billion it took in last year, but has not said it would make a profit.

Contrary to what some might have you believe, the benefits of the Google-Microsoft competition are immense.

Microsoft had largely grown complacent until Google came along to shake up categories. Gmail’s massive online storage capability and fancy programming made Microsoft hustle to upgrade its popular, though not user-friendly, web e-mail service. Google Maps led to Microsoft’s Live Maps, which now bests Google’s efforts in some ways.

Google has been winning the fight for the last few years, showing that it is still nimbler than the software giant from the Northwest. But the pendulum may be slowing, or even poised to swing the other way. With the innovations in Bing and the promise that Microsoft’s online Office offerings will be free and more fully featured than the Google equivalent, Microsoft is taking on Google where it matters for users: on the field of innovation.

And that will make for an interesting race, no matter which horse you prefer to ride — (WIRED)

Windows 7 is coming in October. Here are seven reasons to consider switching to Microsoft’s new OS.

When scanning our list, we politely encourage you to ask yourself, “Do I really want to continue using an eight-year-old operating system?” Followed by “Don’t I deserve better?”

Because no matter how comfortable you are with XP, you do deserve an OS that’s both newer and better, and Windows 7 will deliver. Not convinced? Then read on.

You Asked for This

Remember Vista? We know most of you don’t want to, and that’s because the OS fell short of many consumers’ expectations. As a result, many — especially power users — elected to skip Vista entirely, and have continued running Windows XP. Hence Microsoft’s attempt at a redo with Windows 7. This time around, the software giant made an effort to crowdsource feedback from Microsoft enthusiasts by distributing a free beta version of Windows 7 in January.

You complained, you demanded, and in response Microsoft slapped something together to ship October 22. The result? The overall presentation of Windows 7 is familiar enough to welcome XP users, but fundamentally it’s different enough to make you change the way you think of Microsoft. (I can vouch for that, being a long-time Mac user and ex-Windows fan).

Upgrading Won’t Screw You Over

Microsoft has its loyal fans in mind, including those clinging for dear life to XP. The tech giant promises that Windows 7 has been coded to support almost every piece of software that runs on your XP system. If, in the rare case one of your XP programs doesn’t work on Windows 7, you can still run it in a virtual environment called XP Mode. What’s especially cool about this mode is you won’t have to toggle between an XP emulator and Windows 7. The apps running in XP Mode appear like ordinary windows that are part of Windows 7.

Also, the Windows 7 upgrade chart may appear intimidating and confusing, but prior to release Microsoft plans to release a compatibility checker that will automatically scan your system to tell you which version of Windows 7 is for you.

Automatically Installed Device Drivers

This is only a minor improvement, but it addresses a major pain in the ass in earlier versions of Windows. Who has time to scour the internet for a device driver to work with hardware such as a video card or an external hard drive? Life is too short for that garbage work, and fortunately Windows 7 does this chore for you.

Plug in a new piece of hardware, and the OS will find and install the driver for you. XP has this feature, sort of, but it works better in Vista and much better in Windows 7. No more of those annoying yellow question marks. Good riddance.

Piracy

Yarr! We know there are plenty of you out there downloading pirated digital booty, especially in Windows land. But it’s never been convenient to be a pirate compared with being a paying customer. For example, if you’re a legitimate buyer purchasing movies off iTunes, you can easily stream your media to your legitimately purchased Apple TV. If you’re a pirate, you’d have to go through roundabout programs and hardware to re-create the experience.

Windows 7 is an OS practically made for pirates. Want to display your movies, photos or music on your TV? Bam! Windows Media Player will do that out of the box if you have a Wi-Fi enabled TV, or an Xbox. No extra programs to install: Windows Media Player seamlessly communicates with your Wi-Fi device to display your illegal content in all its glory on your fancy HD TV.

And sharing media is easy, too. Want to download all of your brother’s music? Bam! HomeGroup, an easy networking feature included in Windows 7, will make that super easy between computers running the OS. Immediately upon plugging in to your network with Ethernet or Wi-Fi, HomeGroup will ask if you wish to join the group on the network, allowing you to set up easy file sharing in minutes.

A Better Interface

The new Aero features, which we covered in our Windows 7 first look, will change the way you interact with your computer. Aero Peek will prove the most useful: The feature displays outlines of all your open windows behind your active window. Each outlined box contains a thumbnail previewing its corresponding window to help you choose.

Gizmodo’s Matt Buchanan, who has been using AeroPeek for six months, provides an excellent perspective on Aero: “It breaks the instinct to maximize windows as you’re using them; instead, you simply let windows hang out, since it’s much easier to juggle them.” Makes sense, doesn’t it, for a generation of multitaskers? Aren’t you tired of Alt-Tabbing over and over and over?

Another feature, Aero Snap, makes it easier to resize and tile windows to fit the available space. (Read more about Aero Snap and Aero Peek.)

Words aren’t enough. You really have to try the OS to understand why these UI enhancements are a big deal. We get the idea that the people dismissing Windows 7 haven’t yet tinkered with it, and we highly encourage you to download the release candidate and give it a test drive. But do it now: The download is only available until August 20.

More Advanced Hardware Support

Technology evolves faster than living organisms, and Windows 7 is also designed to work well with upcoming hardware. Touchscreens are getting more popular in the mainstream (thanks largely to the iPhone), and sure enough Windows 7 includes multitouch support. (Check out a video demoing how it works.) If 2010 is indeed the year of the tablet, as we predict, then Windows 7 just might be the winning OS in that new landscape.

If you’re not interested in touchscreens, think multiple processor cores. At some point when multicore computers are more widely available, affordable and energy efficient, an eight-year-old OS like Windows XP isn’t going to know what to do with all that extra processing power. Microsoft has already hinted that Windows 7 will scale to 256 processors.

That’s more than enough, but you get the picture: This is a new operating system designed for newer systems. You’re going to need to upgrade eventually, so why not do it now, so you can get a good feel for the OS, rather than later?

The 64-bit version of Windows 7 can handle bigger system memory, too, scaling up to 192 GB of RAM, compared to the 4-GB limit for the 32-bit versions of Windows XP and Windows 7, and 128 GB for the less common 64-bit edition of Windows XP.

Oh, yeah, speaking of new devices — Windows 7 is tweaked to better suit those trendy netbooks, too. These puny devices are low-powered and thus limited in performance, and Windows 7 will run better on them thanks to its improved memory management. For example, Windows XP allocated video memory for unseen windows, but Windows 7 does not. It uses video memory only for visible windows. That equates to a more responsive netbook with longer battery life.

It Looks Sexier

A superficial reason, we know, but we’ve become so intimate with our gadgets that their looks are important, too. Windows 7 will make your new PC look new, unlike the boring-as-vanilla UI of Windows XP. Extra detail, polish, gradients and a UI that will clear your desktop of clutter should all make Windows 7 a more attractive choice — (WIRED)