What would you do with 20,000 square feet of real estate. Microsoft has decided to open it’s first Microsoft Store. Well actually in is not open and it is not called the Microsoft Store. It is actually called the Microsoft Retail Experence Center, part of thier vision for a technolegy-enabled retail experience. This does prove that Microsoft has the skill to make a great retail store, so why dont they actually open the store to the public. For years now people have been asking Microsoft to create a store, and as a responce they create a fake store! I’m not sure if this is Microsoft’s way of saying that they are never going to open a store, or them just throwing away money again.

I have just one simple question, if this store is as functional as Microsoft tout it to be, then why not build a car-park, some real doors and just call it “open for business”?

Until Microsoft opens a store enjoy these photos and this Photosynth tour:

PhotoSynth Tour

This will almost certainly get a flood of anonymous emails from Apple Fanboys who will shout about how there are no viruses for Leopard. ZDNet has based its findings on all the known security flaws and placed them side by side. The results are fairly compelling.

The vulnerability statistics come from Secunia and ZDNet broke them down by Windows XP flaws, Vista flaws, and Mac OS X flaws.

During 2007 Apple had more than five times the number of flaws per month than Windows XP and Vista in 2007, and most of them were serious. Windows Vista had less flaws than Windows XP.

The article admits that the problems could be much worse. Apple do not admit that it ever has problems with its software until it releases a patch for it. This means that it could be sitting on huge security holes that it has not told anyone about.

So, while there might not be viruses for your shiny Apple computer, there are some fairly juicy security holes for hackers to exploit.

ZDNet admits that all this goes against the conventional wisdom that Apple is somehow more secure than Windows. But since the conventional wisdom is a result of some canny marketing by Apple this is not not really surprising.

It seems the EC’s new “statement of objections” is based on Opera Software’s 2007 antitrust complaint against Microsoft. (Here is the press release from Opera on its December 2007 complaint.)

From Microsoft’s “On the Issues” blog:

“A legal action we received yesterday (January 15) from the Directorate General for Competition of the European Commission.  (DG Comp, to use the shorthand, sets and enforces marketplace rules that apply to all companies doing business in Europe).

“The ‘Statement of Objections’ concerns our practice of including Internet Explorer browsing technology in the Windows operating system, which we’ve done since 1996.

We’ll provide a formal response to DG Comp within the next two months. In the meantime, since this is a legal matter, we won’t have much to say publicly.”

Microsoft is expected to deliver a near-final Release Candidate (RC) of Internet Explorer 8 some time this quarter. The final release is expected to ship this year as both a standalone browser and an integrated piece of Windows 7.

If you thought the issue of whether or not IE is really “part” of Windows (or a bundled component) was settled almost a decade ago by the U.S. government, you’d be right. But the EC is saying that the U.S. decision applies to the U.S. and not the EU.

Again from Microsoft’s On the Issues blog:

“The Statement of Objections states that the remedies put in place by the U.S. courts in 2002 following antitrust proceedings in Washington, D.C. do not make the inclusion of Internet Explorer in Windows lawful under European Union law.”

I never bought the whole idea that IE was an inextricable part of Windows, and feel Microsoft failed to prove its case. But Microsoft was allowed by the courts to continue to package the two together. In 2009, Opera’s objections regarding IE bundling seem awfully late….

Plus, remember when Microsoft removed Media Player from some versions of Windows in the EU? No one bought the player-free releases; they stuck with the player-bundled Windows.

Is a browser-free Windows release something that would only benefit Microsoft’s competitors and not customers? What do you think?

Update (5:45 p.m. ET on January 16): The EC’s “statement of objections” doesn’t sound as innocuous as I initially assumed.

Based on comments from a couple of industry observers with whom I’ve spoken, it sounds like the EC basically is presenting its findings at this point, and Microsoft — after having a chance to “respond” within the next eight weeks — is going to be required to take some kind of remedial action. It’s not clear if the EC will try to force Microsoft to unbundle IE from current/future versions of Windows sold in the EU; offer links to other browsers as part of the initial Windows set-up page, or what.

Ben Edelman, an assistant professor with Harvard Business School (who noted he has done some consulting work with Microsoft in the browser-competition space), had this to add:

Today’s developments “feel like last decade’s fight, especially given recent (marketshare) gains by competing browsers.  Every other operating system has a browser as part of it.”

I have never been to an event so boring. I couldn’t help but think that these people ran out of ideas so they just added a whole bunch of complex pull-down menus and features no one will ever use. What happened to the simple Apple? It must have gotten sick and died.

The show was not all bad though. The facial recognition feature in iPhoto was a little interesting, but after a while you get bored of seeing software recognizing faces for thirty minutes. Lets end on a positive note. This is most likely the last MacWorld so we do not have to be bored to death anymore (unless they come to CES).

P.S. If there is ever another MacWorld as boring as this feel free to give steve jobs good talking too.

• Microsoft Exchange Support
• Better support for Multicore Mac’s
• Open CL
• Minor Media and Internet upgrade
• Support for 64-Bit

Not really what I call exciting. (You can see that list with more details at: http://www.apple.com/macosx/snowleopard) Snow Leopard doesn’t have half the features as Windows 7. I do not think that the average Snow Leopard users would appreciate the new features. The only people who would appreciate the new feature are programmers.

There are too many new features in Windows 7 to talk about so here are some of them:

• Graphic thumbnails for open windows
• Switch between multiple windows by just hovering over the taskbar thumbnail
• Icons are big enough to be selected easily with the new touch feature
• Applications can use the taskbar to provide information (a progress bar for example)

Libraries (new)

• Libraries are containers similar to folders, but their content is based on file properties such as file type, pictures by date taken, or music by genre
• There are default libraries (documents, music, pictures, etc.) and one can create personalized libraries
• Libraries can contain files, not network shares, which are indexed by Windows Search

Jump lists (improved)

• Jump lists are automatically populated links in the Start Menu to frequently accessed sources (apps, documents, etc.)
• Taskbar items, the Internet Explorer, and Windows Media Player will have them too, allowing you to jump directly to a certain task of a program

Windows Sidebar (improved)

• Is no longer a sidebar
• Gadgets are now placed on the desktop
• Gadgets are resizable
• Aero Peek lets you see gadgets behind open windows

Windows Explorer (improved)

• New user interface (have to find out more)
• New copy engine: fewer prompts, shows file names being copied, more reliable

Scenic Ribbon (new)

• Paint and WordPad now have a ribbon similar to the one in Office 2007
• Third-party developers can integrate ribbons into their apps

Start Menu Search (improved)

• Searches in Libraries (also external files)
• Search results are grouped according to Libraries
• System administrator can define up to five external search destinations
• Search will be executed on the server

Windows Search 4 (improved)

• Input recommendations based on previous searches
• Dynamic filters to narrow down results
• New relevance algorithm
• Word highlighting in results
• Search Federation: search external resources (servers, Sharepoint, Web sites (OpenSearch))

Tablet PC enhancements (improved)

• Supposed to have improved handwriting recognition
• Supports handwritten math expressions
• Personalized custom dictionaries, and supports new languages

Sticky Notes (improved)

• Ink support
• Paste support
• Note colors
• Resize possible

Accessibility (improved)

• Improved speech recognition
• Magnifier (whole desktop or portion of the screen)
• Accessibility support tools for developers

Windows Touch (new)

• Windows 7 can be controlled by touching the screen
• It also supports multi-touch allowing you to use more than one finger

Other desktop enhancements (improved)

• More styles
• Region specific styles
• Multilingual browsing no longer requires font installation, language-based font

Internet Explorer 8 (improved)

I will only discuss the major changes here.

• IE8 is supposed to be faster and more stable
• Rendering engine: IE8 will improve compliance with web standards; web sites can opt-in for IE7 mode for backward compatibility
• InPrivate: Makes sure that the browsing history can’t be tracked
• Accelerators: Allows you to invoke a web application by selecting an object on a web page (for example for blogging)
• Web Slices: Users can subscribe to snippets on a web page, which will be updated automatically by the browser
• SmartScreen Filter: This is the new name for the Phishing Filter. It has a new user interface, is supposed to perform faster, and has new heuristics, anti-malware support, and improved Group Policy support.
• Automatic Crash Recovery: The browser will reload the pages after a crash

Calculator (improved)

• New user interface
• Calculation history
• Unit conversion
• Calculation templates
• Date calculations
• Controls that are optimized for touch

XPS Viewer (XML Paper Specification) (improved)

• New user interface
• Relevancy-ranked XPS searched
• Thumbnails provide an interactive view of several pages at a time
• Preview XPS documents in Windows Explorer and Office

HomeGroup (new)

• Windows 7 computers can connect automatically with each other to share resources (files, printers, etc.)
• Users can decide what they want to share
• Support for Libraries
• Can be configured via Group Policy

MinWin (new)

The most comprehensive source about MinWin, the new mini kernel in Windows 7, is this interviewwith Mark Russinowich. Robert McLaws translated the main part for non-developers.

• MinWin is fully bootable
• Requires 25-40MB of disk space
• It contains the executive systems, memory management, networking, and optional file system drivers
• Components only call down the stack, and not up
• It allows building of less bloated Windows editions that run on netbooks and other computers with limited hardware resources

Windows 7 Demo Part 2:

More to come soon.

(The link is under the video)

The link that is to the right of the video

www.xpango.com-ref=91503480

The products we ordered where brand new, came with warrantee, official documents and the companies seal was not damaged.  The web site offers High Definition Televisions, Cell Phones, iPods, mp3 players, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PSP, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo Wii. So go ahead and get your free stuff

(The link is under the video)

The link that is to the right of the video

www.xpango.com-ref=91503480

The products we ordered where brand new, came with warrantee, official documents and the companies seal was not damaged.  The web site offers High Definition Televisions, Cell Phones, iPods, mp3 players, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PSP, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo Wii. So go ahead and get your free stuff

As Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Windows Product Management puts it:

"The decision to use the name Windows 7 is about simplicity. Over the years, we have taken different approaches to naming Windows. We’ve used version numbers like Windows 3.11, or dates like Windows 98, or "aspirational" monikers like Windows XP or Windows Vista. And since we do not ship new versions of Windows every year, using a date did not make sense. Likewise, coming up with an all-new "aspirational" name does not do justice to what we are trying to achieve, which is to stay firmly rooted in our aspirations for Windows Vista, while evolving and refining the substantial investments in platform technology in Windows Vista into the next generation of Windows."

This is the first time a Windows version has used its codename also as the name of the final release, and also one of the earliest naming announcements from Microsoft, as Windows 7 hasn’t even reached its first beta version. A pre-beta will be handed out to attendees of the PDC and WinHEC conferences taking place later this month.