Microsoft Windows 7 Beta Official Launching (CTP) on 9 Jan 2009

Finally, the Official Beta version of Windows 7 is out for testing now.

For more information about the Windows 7 Beta news, resources, deployment and support, go to the following url: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd361745.aspx?ITPID=sprblog

Basically this Windows 7 is built on the foundation of Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista, the core architecture of Windows 7 is the same as Windows Server® 2008 and Windows Vista®.  Therefore almost all PCs, applications and devices that are compatible with Windows Vista will retain their compatibility with Windows 7.

What’s new in Windows 7?

This version of Windows focus on the hardware and application compatibility faced by Windows Vista.   Data migration is faster and more flexible with a new ‘Hardlink’ feature, along with Offline Migration support.

• In Windows 7, there is a customizable UAC (User Account Control) that can be tuned to reduce the number of elevation prompts.
• Windows 7 introduce DirectAccess – a capability that allows managing and updating of internet-connected remote PCs even when they are not connect to the corporate network.
• New Powershell v2 and its graphical editor help automate repetitive tasks more easier.

For data protection, Windows 7 introduces  BitLocker ToGo™ for extending encryption to removable drives. Windows 7 also incorporates improvements to the Firewall Profiles and allows control access to specific applications by specific users.

The minimum hardware requirements for running the Windows 7 Beta:

• Processor: 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor
• Memory:  1 GB of system memory
• Hard drive: 16 GB of available disk space
• Video card:  Support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128MB memory (in order to enable Aero theme)
• Drive: DVD-R/W drive
• Internet connection (to download the Beta and get updates)

For download Windows 7 Beta – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd353205.aspx

This Beta will expire on 1 Aug 2009, there are 32-bit and 64-bit version depend on the hardware type, after select the language of the windows 7 (under 32-bit or 64-bit), click go and sign in with your Windows Live ID to get the Product Key and Download the DVD ISO image file.

For instruction of install Windows 7 Beta refer to – http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-installation-instructions.aspx

Technorati Tags: Windows 7, Beta,

New Microsoft Live Beta

There are a new set of Microsoft Live Beta service available now.

This included the Live Messenger Beta, Live Writer Beta (For Blog), Live Mail Beta (For EMail), Photo Gallery Beta, Movie Maker Beta and Microsoft Office Outlook Connector Beta (for add on to MS Outlook to receive mail from @live.com or @hotmail.com email.)

Interested to this, you can download at http://download.live.com.

Get the Free Microsoft Press E-Book

There is a Visual Studio 2008 Free E-Book Offer at Microsoft Press website.

http://csna01.libredigital.com/

It offers 3 free e-book:

• Programming Microsoft LINQ

• Introducing Microsoft Silverlight 2, 2nd Edition

• Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 3.5

Have a try on Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta

Microsoft^® Phone Data Manager Beta is a PC
application that enables you to keep your phone contents – your
contacts, precious pictures and videos and music files safe in your desktop pc or laptop.

For more detail, go visit here.

Or you can download it directly through this link here.

Technorati Tags: mobile, beta, phone

The Shortest Free Email – @in.com

Just go to http://mail.in.com/ and sign up for a new shortest free email – @in.com which is FREE.

This site still under beta stage.

Beside mail, it got other service like Read news, Listen music, Watch Video, Play games… etc.

Alternative MS Office – KingSoft Office 2007

Want to get the an alternative MS Office which have the similar menu, toolbar and interface, so that you can get to use it quickly.

Here is one from KingSoft, KingSoft Office 2007 Personal Edition.

This Personal Edition is released as Free but at this moment you are unable to download from the kingsoft website yet.  I found that this english version was released in to be download in a vietnam website.

This is a compact Microsoft Office Compatible suite which have familiar layout for documents, Spreadsheets and Presentation, and this is not based on OpenOffice.  However this personal edition does not support for VBA in MS Office.

It support save as PDF and .wps format by their WPS Office 2007 (Chinese Version Only – only 27MB).

If you want to try, you can download from this link – here.

Technorati Tags: office, kingsoft, WPS, Personal, Free, PDF

Ultra Compression Freeware

Have you ever heard of KGB Archiver ?

This is a small compress/decompress software which claim to have more high compression ratio than the others compressor (like winzip, winrar,7z…etc).

KGB Archiver is the compression tool with an unbelievably high compression rate.  However it has high hardware requirements (recommend processor with 1,5GHz clock and minimum 256MB of RAM).   Beside,  It  also has AES-256 encryption which is used
to encrypt the archives.

Current stable version is KGB Archiver v1.2.1.24  which run on Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista.

I have included a rapidshare download link for this KGB Archiver 1.x for download.

It also have the Beta version of KGB Archiver 2 Beta 2.  However this beta require more high processor which with SSE2 support, if you have processor below Intel Pentium 4, Celeron D, Amd Athlon 64 and Sempron, you need to download a patch to patch for old CPUs.

For KGB Archiver 2 Beta 2 and the patch, you should go KGB Archiver home page and download.

USB support for Old Windows OS like Windows 98 and Windows NT 4

Sometimes when you want use the USB pendrive in a windows NT 4 workstation or Windows 98 PC, mostly you will face the problem of no drivers support.

After do a searching in google and I have found the following 2 drivers:

1. For Windows NT 4, here is the driver I found on net but I have not tested. – i4usb403.exe
2. For Windows 98 Second Edition, there is a generic USB mass storage driver – nusb33e.exe  (This one I have tested on several Windows 98 SE PC, this version  (v3.3e) is quite stable now than before.

For nusb33e.exe, it support most of the USB mass storage driver, such as flash drive, memory card (SDHC, MMC, MicroSD …etc)

Updated: USB mass storage driver for Windows 98 First Edition – nusb320-Eng-98FE.exe

Hari Raya Holiday

After tomorrow, Hari Raya is coming and I will get a holiday from 1 Oct until 5 Oct, where I be back to work on Monday (6 Oct).

That’s great, but a pity I cannot go back home town.

I will stay in KL for this period, maybe will go around (It would be fun to see no traffic jam and less people in KL city due to everybody go back for celebrate Hari Raya.)

I always all Muslim got a nice Hari Raya.  -  “Selamat Hari Raya !!!”

Getting more busy for the next 3 months.

Anyway, just be relax for this moments ^_^.

I am Back !!!

After a long time, finally I am back to this blog again.

This time, I try to use a Firefox extension – ScribeFire to write and post to this blog.

I hope this method will enable for me to write and post new articles over here more frequently.