Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Beta Screenshots

Over the past week I’ve been installing the Windows 7 SP1 Beta on several of my PCs. I finally was able to grab some screenshots a couple days ago and thought I would share them. So far, my testing has included several different Windows 7 PCs, with one Windows Server 2008 R2 machine.

Office 2010 RTM now available for TechNet subscribers

Today, Aprill 22, marks the first day that TechNet Subscribers will be able to download the final bits of Office 2010. So, if you have a TechNet subscription feel free to download and check out the final product.

 

I am currently in the process of writing a review for Office 2010, however, my schedule’s been a bit hectic of late. I should be back to my normal day-to-day writing for this site come end of next week. With that in mind, Office 2010 does offer some nice features that are definitely worth checking out. It’s a nice complement to Office 2007 and a must if you’re still running Office 2003 or earlier. If you currently do not have a TechNet subscription, you can still try out the Office 2010 Beta.

 

If you don’t currently have a TechNet subscription, you can always check it out at the TechNet website. They cost $349 for new subscribers and $249 for renewal subscriptions. The subscriptions last for one year. Microsoft is usually offering some sort of promotional code that can significantly lower the price of a subscription, so keep a look out for those.

 

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Windows 7 Service Pack 1 – A Little Info

It’s here, it’s now…well, sort of. The official news is that Windows 7 SP1 has leaked and is now available through the nets…it’s build 6.1.7601.16537. It’s an alpha release, so obviously this is not something you want to be installing on a work/production machine. However, in order to further review this update I’m installing it as we speak in a Virtual Machine, I’ll also install it on one of my test PCs. I’ll let you know what I find, if anything, later today or tomorrow.

 

Also of note is although this release doesn’t offer too many significant changes for Windows 7, it will offer some significant (sort of) changes for Windows Server 2008 R2…Which I’ll be looking into as soon as I put the two together (i.e. WS 2008 R2 + SP1). I’ll let you know what I find.

I’m currently also reading the documentation for this release (there’s actually quite a bit) and will hopefully get a little more information from there. Interesting stuff so far.

 

If I’m correct in remembering this, Service Pack 1 should be released about one year after Windows 7’s official release. That is, around October 22, 2010. Unlike some service packs in the past (Windows XP SP2 anyone?) this release won’t necessarily add new “features,” instead, it will fix any problems and include old security updates for Windows 7. In essence, it will be what a service pack is supposed to be.

 

del.icio.us Tags: windows 7,microsoft,service pack,windows 7 service pack 1,beta,downloads,tinkering with windows

Will You Be in New York on May 12?

That’s right, May 12 at New York, Microsoft will be releasing Office 2010.  I won’t be able to make it, but maybe you can.  Mary Jo Foley has a very interesting post on what to expect from this event plus more:

Microsoft officials said a few weeks back that May 12 would be a big day for Office 2010. But Microsoft also is planning to hold an actual business launch event for its next-generation productivity suite in New York City on that date to complement its worldwide virtual launch events.

Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop will be keynoting the event, which kicks off at 11 a.m. ET, company officials said.

As she usually does, Foley goes into depth on this topic and describes every aspect that you need to be aware of, it’s a very good read.  If you haven’t yet tried Office 2010 you can still download the beta from Microsoft (I highly recommend you give it a go).  Not only is Office 2010 just the next version of Office, but it expounds upon the great features of Office 2007, offering the Ribbon on basically every Office App available.  It also adds some very useful tools for users such as a new search navigation pane in Word and SparkLines in Excel.  Very cool stuff.

(P.S. She also discusses Windows Summitt 2010, the replacement for WinHEC)

del.icio.us Tags: Microsoft,Office 2010,ZDNet,Windows

Create more than five installation partitions on Windows 7/Vista

Alright, I realize today is April Fool’s day, but this article is actually legit (you can read my actual April Fool’s article here). Although it might be an April Fool’s joke to suggest that someone actually needs more than five installation partitions on their computer. Anyways, I originally figured this out while I was doing massive installs of Windows 7 during the Beta, otherwise I too would have no reason to actually use this workaround, and since Windows 7 has been officially released, I have not used this method (I enjoy having only one partition to be quite honest). Either way, I felt it would be “fun” to document the steps to creating more than five installation partitions, as this workaround seemed very intriguing to me at the time.  Here’s some background information:

 

While I was testing out Windows 7 Beta I had probably reinstalled Windows 7 over a hundred times.  Often I would install XP, Vista and 7 on the same PC for comparison reasons.  In addition to that I would also install each edition of Windows 7.  Usually I would have to install a few of the editions on one PC and a few more on another one or two PCs.  The reason being was Windows 7 (and Vista for that matter) would only allow me to create five usable partitions, and it counted it’s boot-up partition as one of those (you know, the 100MB partition that Windows 7 sets up when it first installs), thus leaving me with only four usable partitions, not enough for each edition of Windows 7 (5 in total, plus one more for the EU, double that for 32- and 64-bit versions leaving a grand total of 12).  Well, I found a way to finally make that work, and here’s the trick:  use a Windows XP disc to create multiple partitions and then install Windows 7 onto those partitions.  Plain and simple.  It even eradicates the need of the separate 100MB boot partition. Here’s an example if you try to create more than five partitions on your computer (using Vista or 7):

 

 

The same error will appear if you try to create partitions via the Windows Vista/7 boot-up discs.  So how can you get rid of this problem?  Very easily actually, all you need is a Windows XP disc, which most people probably have access to one and the ability to install/reinstall Windows 7. Just keep in mind that this process will require reinstalling Windows, so just make sure you’ve backed up your data if you actually wish to proceed with this.

 

1.  Insert your Windows XP disc and boot off of the disc.  Make sure that your BIOS is set to boot off of your CD/DVD drive first—i.e. before your hard drive.

 

2.  When it comes to the step of selecting where you want XP to be installed, instead of installing XP use the options to delete the partition (so that you have unallocated space). From there just create as many partitions as you want.

 

3.  Now you can install Windows 7 (32-bit or 64-bit) or any other operating system onto those partitions, thus leaving you with an unlimited (at least six) different OS choices.

 

I realize most people do not need to do this, either for one, they have multiple PCs in which they can install the different OSes or they only need one OS.  The latter probably fits most people.  Of course, there are probably multiple utilities out there both free and proprietary that will do this as well, but this one I found simply by trial and error and it’s been working fine for me ever since.  At one point I had the following installed on one computer:

 

Windows 7 Starter 32-bit

Windows 7 Home Basic 32-bit

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

Windows 7 Ultimate-E 64-bit

 

All of them worked without a hitch.  I have tested this with up to six different partitions, but no more.  Feel free to try it for yourself.  If you have other methods feel free to let me know.

del.icio.us Tags: installing,windows 7,partitions,vista

Mozilla Firefox 3.7 Alpha 4 Preview – A Quick Look

 

Yesterday, I got wind of an update to Mozilla’s Firefox 3.7 Alpha string. The last time I had looked at this build was during the Alpha 1 release, however, quite a bit has changed since then. Most notably, the current Alpha of 3.7 offers Aero Glass UI, a very nice touch. I took together a couple of screenshots of the browser and felt I had to share them. I’ll add a bit of commentary to the screenshots as well.

 

Installation

Installing the Alpha version was very simple, and very similar to the overall installation of previous Firefox versions. The biggest difference between the Alpha prerelease and the current version of Firefox is the prerelease is labeled as Mozilla’s experimental browser, Minefield. As time goes on, and Mozilla gets closer to the final release, they’ll rename the final version Firefox 3.7.

 

 

Note the Minefield name reference in the setup dialogue box...this will change once the final release ships.

 

 

 

Installing under the "Minefield" folder type allows the user to continue using their previous version of Firefox, very useful if you have extensions or add-ons that may not work yet with this prerelease.

 

Most extensions and add-ons won't work with the pre-release. As time goes on developers should start making these compatible with FF 3.7.

 

Finally, after the installation you should get this nice screen. Notice the new Aero Glass UI and lack of the Menu Bar.

 

Changes since Firefox 3.6

The most noticeable feature change in this prerelease is the addition of the Aero glass UI. To compare the new UI, I took an older screenshot of Firefox 3.6.

 

Firefox 3.7's new UI...quite a bit has changed.

 

Firefox 3.6.2's UI. The UI looks old and out-of-date when compared to other browsers.

This UI change is both a pleasant and welcome experience. After-all, many other competing browsers have already switched to this style, first with IE, then Google Chrome quickly followed suit. Another noticeable difference is the lack of a menu bar. This is primarily due to the addition of the glass UI; however, you can still get the menu bar back by simply tapping the ALT key on your keyboard, this will bring up the familiar menu.

 

I haven’t spent a whole lot of time on this version to really point out every possible feature since this is just a preview; I’ll look a little more in detail with this version as it comes closer to the full release time. Look out for a full review on this site around its official release. You can also pick up the pre-release version over at the Mozilla labs to try it out for yourself.

 

As always, you can contact me via Twitter (@jctierney) or leave a comment below. I’ve also started a new e-mail address for this site, tinkeringwithwindows @ live dot com. Feel free to drop me a line every now and then. I welcome anyone who has a question, comment, suggestion, etc. to feel free to e-mail me at that address.

 

del.icio.us Tags: windows,internet,firefox,beta,tinkering

What this site is about

I started this blog to write about my experiences with Windows and other Microsoft products.  As the name suggests, I tinker with Windows quite a bit.  It’s not my job, instead it’s more of a hobby of mine.  I spend countless hours trying to figure out how Windows really works.  You can almost always find something new with Windows or Office that you didn’t know before, and this is why I use Windows so much, there’s always something new to find, discover, or see.

I have been following Windows very closely ever since the XP / Win2K days, but I’ve been playing around with Windows since the Windows 3.11 era.  I used DOS on a 286 (maybe it was a 386, can't remember) before that.

This site as a whole will look at Windows and other Microsoft products such as Office, Server, Visual Studio, Expression (which is pretty cool if you ask me), and a whole lot more.  Many posts will constitute simple how-to articles, while others will be more complex, and still others will be reviews on products that Microsoft is releasing, such as Office 2010 (you can download the Beta now).

From time to time, I may look at Microsoft’s competition, because let’s face it, without their competition Windows may not be where it is today.  This may include testing and reviewing the latest Firefox update, Chrome (which I use and highly recommend), iTunes and other media players, among many other applications.

It seems appropriate that the first place that I start with looking at Windows 7 for this blog is in the Control Panel, as almost all tweaking and messing around with Windows can be started from this nice little app.  So, for the next couple of posts or so, I’ll look at different components of the Control Panel, such as the Action Center, Administrative Tools (a fairly complex tool), Performance Information and Tools, and more.  Ultimately, I would like to cover all of the most important components of Control Panel (let’s face it, they’re all important, though some more so than others).

If you want to follow me on Twitter, my handle is jctierney.  You can ask me questions, give me tips, information, etc.  Don’t have a Twitter account?  Don’t worry, it’s simple to set up – in fact, I just set one up the other day.