Microsoft preps Windows 7 release

By Darren Waters
Technology editor, BBC News website
A release candidate of Windows 7, the next major release of the world's most popular operating system, goes public in trial form in the next week. Microsoft is hoping it can avoid the negative press that surrounded the launch of Vista, the last major Windows release, almost three years ago. Windows 7 has been designed to be compatible with Vista so users do not have to invest in new hardware.

A commercial release of Windows 7 is expected in the next nine months. A test version of Windows 7 will be available to developers from Thursday, while the public can try it out from 5 May. John Curran, Microsoft UK's director, Windows Client Group, told BBC News that "shortfalls" in the Vista release had caused problems for some users. "There were challenges on hardware and application compatibility with Vista in the first couple of months - and that has left a little bit of an aftertaste for a segment of people."

When Vista was launched many users expressed frustration that the operating system did not work with all types of existing hardware and peripherals, or programs used commonly on PCs. And a Vista compatibility programme for hardware proved to be confusing and, in some cases, somewhat misleading. Mr Curran said Microsoft had "learned lessons" and had been working with partner developers to ensure the same mistakes would not be repeated.

Windows 7 will also have "comparable system requirements" to Vista, which should mean that if your PC is capable of running Vista it will also run the new version. Negative Mr Curran said Vista had proved to be a success for Microsoft, despite the negative press that surrounds the operating system. "Vista is the fastest selling operating system of all time and, in percentage terms, enterprise moved to Vista faster than it did to XP [an earlier version of Windows]," he said. He said satisfaction surveys for Vista showed 90% of people were either satisfied or very satisfied and 85-90% would recommend it to a friend. Microsoft embarked on a major advertising and marketing mission to improve the image of Vista after the muted reaction around its "The Wow starts now" campaign.
While Vista was released five months after the release candidate was made available, Mr Curran said Windows 7 would only be released when it is ready. Bottom line "Obviously in these times everybody is keeping an eye on the bottom line, but we are certainly taking a longer-term perspective here and always have done with Windows franchise. "The timeline stated all along is that we are targeting Windows 7 within three years of of the launch of Vista and that would be the end of January 2010. "We feel quite confident we are on trajectory that will deliver on that promise. But the exact timing will be based on quality." Windows 7 promises a major usability improvement on Vista, and a simplification of security measures which caused frustration for many users.

Mr Curran said Windows 7 would build on the security improvements in Vista, which have seen a fall in the number of malware attacks and critical vulnerabilities identified. Many beta testers of Windows 7 have reported that it is faster than Vista, especially in terms of start-up and shutdown sequence of the computer.
Mr Curran said that the Microsoft Windows team had been poring over every aspect of the operating system to make improvements. "We were able to shave 400 milliseconds off the shutdown time by slightly trimming the WAV file shutdown music.

"It's indicative of really the level and detail and scrutiny on Windows 7." A version of Windows 7 will also be available for netbooks, but with some caveats. The Windows 7 Starter Edition will have limitations on how many applications can be used concurrently on a machine in order to preserve performance.

Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2

TechGuru :Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2

While working its way to Office 14, Microsoft is also hard at work building the second service pack for the Office 2007 System. Back in October 2008 a member of the Office Service Pack team indicated that Service Pack 2 (SP2) for the 2007 Microsoft Office system is expected to be released in the near future. Although we arent yet announcing the exact release date, it will fall between February and April of 2009. Well, February has come and gone, and so did March. At the start of April the only download of Office 2007 Service Pack 2 comes from torrent trackers, namely the leaked Build 12.0.6416.1000. The bits offered for download were removed from at least one top torrent website and there is no confirmation at this point in time whether Build 12.0.6416.1000 is a legitimate release or not.

The second service pack for the Office 2007 System has slipped past the initial availability deadline announced by the Redmond company. At this point in time Microsoft has offered no information related to the progress done with the service pack. Although the software giant should have already released Office 2007 SP2 to manufacturing, Microsoft is mute on the progress of the development process.
Office 2007 SP2 Build 12.0.6416.1000 is labeled 012.0_B2TR_PRE.0_BTA_EN in the End User License Agreement, pointing out that the release is merely a Beta development milestone. Considering that the Redmond company was laboring to produce Office 2007 SP2 between February and April 2009, the service pack should have evolved further than the Beta stage, to at least Release Candidate or RTM-Escrow. Microsoft did serve a Beta of Office 2007 SP2 in 2008 to a select group of testers, but the testing program was not expanded, and the company offered no details on the development process of the service pack.

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Spam 'produces 17m tons of CO2'

BBC News

A study into spam has blamed it for the production of more than 33bn kilowatt-hours of energy every year, enough to power more than 2.4m homes. The Carbon Footprint of e-mail Spam report estimated that 62 trillion spam emails are sent globally every year. This amounted to emissions of more than 17 million tons of CO2, the research by climate consultants ICF International and anti-virus firm McAfee found.

Searching for legitimate e-mails and deleting spam used some 80% of energy. The study found that the average business user generates 131kg of CO2 every year, of which 22% is related to spam. Unwanted traffic ICF say that spam filtering would reduce unwanted spam by 75%, the equivalent to taking 2.3 million cars off the road. However, the ICF goes on to say that while spam filtering is effective in reducing energy waste, fighting it at the source is far better.

The report highlights the case of McColo , a US web hosting firm that had ties to spammers. The day after it was taken offline by its two internet service providers, global spam volume fell by 70%. Although the respite was only temporary, McAfee said the "day without spam amounted to talking 2.2 million cars off the road" and that tackling spam should be part of the campaign to reduce carbon emissions. Richi Jennings - an independent spam analyst who helped produce the report - told the BBC that the figures were based on the extra energy use spent dealing with spam.

"The PC on our desks uses more power when they do work, so the numbers are based on the additional work they use when dealing with spam," he said. The Spam Report follows only a few days after Symantec's bi-annual Internet Security Threat report, which found that spam had increased by 192%, with bot networks responsible for approximately 90% of all spam e-mail. Mr Jennings said that while McAfee and Symantec had different ways of measuring spam, he was in total agreement with the bot network figure.
"Our report was based on mail that spammers attempt to send, including ones that are blocked by an ISP at source. Symantec only measures spam that is successfully sent. "The vast majority of spam is sent via botnets. We've got Conficker building a fantastic network and you can bet your bottom dollar that it will wind up being used to send spam. "There is speculation that the botnet Conficker is building up is owned and run by the owners of another active botnet - Waledac, itself probably connected to the classic Storm botnet - and the theory is that the owners are keeping their powder dry at the moment and will activate it once Waledac goes down."