Feed: SuperSite Blog : Vista - AggScore: 74.8

Laptop Magazine has some surprising news for Windows 7 battery life, at least on three netbooks: It's not as good as it was on XP. Here's what they found:

Back in August when we started testing the final version of Windows 7, we noticed that several netbooks didn’t last as long on a charge with the new OS installed as with Windows XP. Microsoft claimed that Win 7 notebooks would see longer battery life than Vista, and for the two full-size systems we upgraded that rang true. The Dell XPS Studio 16 only got an extra few minutes, but the Gateway NV lasted an extra hour. Netbooks have been a different story.

Recently we tested Windows 7 versions of the Toshiba mini NB205 and ASUS Eee PC 1008HA, and now  HP’s Mini 311 with Windows 7 has been released. The results don’t look good. In each case we tested the three systems using the LAPTOP Battery Test (continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi) and in each case the Windows 7 machines got less battery life.

What's interesting about this is that netbooks are one of the few ways in which to accurately test Windows 7 battery life vs. that of XP, since this is the only market where you can find the same machines in which both OSes have been included. With mainstream laptops, the battery life differences (between Vista and 7, in that case) seem to be less dramatic.

Microsoft previously reported that its new Security Essentials anti-malware solution (see my review) had garnered 1.5 million downloads in its first week of availability. Well, the numbers keep going up: After two weeks, the download total stood at 2.6 million. Also, the company tells me that Microsoft Security Essentials has achieved ICSA Labs Anti-Virus Certification on Vista Ultimate 32-bit and Vista Ultimate 64-bit in the Desktop/Server AV Detection & Cleaning Testing criteria. This certification builds on its October certification from West Coast Labs.

The public version of Microsoft Security Essentials is now available from the Microsoft web site:

Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free* download from Microsoft that is simple to install, easy to use, and always kept up to date so you can be assured your PC is protected by the latest technology. It’s easy to tell if your PC is secure — when you’re green, you’re good. It’s that simple.

Microsoft Security Essentials runs quietly and efficiently in the background so that you are free to use your Windows-based PC the way you want—without interruptions or long computer wait times.

My review of Microsoft Security Essentials is also available.

If you're using the Microsoft Security Essentials Beta, you'll notice an update in Windows Update this morning. It's unclear what's changed under the hood (the referenced KB article below doesn't yet exist), but there's a new tray icon at least. Here are some before and after shots...

Sorry about the confusion yesterday, but Windows Live Movie Maker 1.0 is now live. Here's the word from Microsoft:

Today, Microsoft is releasing its new Windows Live Movie Maker application globally.  As the first application within the Windows Live Essentials suite optimized for Windows 7, this free download – available at http://download.live.com -- makes it easy for Windows 7 and Windows Vista users to create beautiful movies from their photos and videos and share them with friends and family.

With Windows Live Movie Maker, people can:

• Use Auto Movie to create a great-looking video in under one minute that includes transitions, a title, captions and a music soundtrack.
• Share movies across TV, PC and mobile device
• Publish directly to YouTube – with other online sharing sites to come.
• Save their creations in HD*
• Import and edit content from Flip Video and iPhone*

To learn more and see real movies created by Windows Live Movie Maker, please visit www.moviemakerpreview.com or check out the Windows Live team blog post.

Or just check out my review. :)

I'm embarrassed to say I missed this last week, but when Microsoft announced its proposal to let EU customers choose a browser via a so-called ballot screen, they also provided an image of what that screen could look like. Here it is.

Under our new proposal, among other things, European consumers who buy a new Windows PC with Internet Explorer set as their default browser would be shown a ‘ballot screen’ from which they could, if they wished, easily install competing browsers from the Web. If this proposal is ultimately accepted, Microsoft will ship Windows in Europe with the full functionality available in the rest of the world. As requested by the Commission, we will be publishing our proposal in full here on our website as soon as possible.

The icons above were no doubt the inspiration for Opera's newest complaint, that icons should not be used because IE's blue "E" logo is, to many people, the Internet. I suppose a more valid argument could be made about the order in which the browsers appear. In the shot above, the browsers are listed by usage/market share, with IE first.

Mary Jo Foley reports on an interesting tidbit I missed while traipsing around The Netherlands this week: Microsoft's proposal to let EU users choose from competing web browsers isn't relegated to Windows 7. They'll offer this capability on Windows XP and Windows Vista as well.

The “ballot screen” isn’t for Windows 7 users only. Microsoft is proposing that it be allowed to provide the ballot screen to European users running Windows XP, Vista and/or Windows 7.

The ballot screen — which will include a list of browsers including IE, plus a number of choices from  competing vendors — will be delivered to current and future XP and Vista users over Windows Update, according to Microsoft’s proposal.

Microsoft is advocating that the ballot screen include 10 or fewer of “the most widely-used web browsers that run on Windows with a usage share of equal to or more than 0.5% in the EEA (European Economic Area).” The choice of browsers should be presented “in a horizontal line and in an unbiased way” a display of icons and “basic identifying information” on the Web browsers. The top five of the browsers listed (by market share) will get additional “prominent display,” Microsoft is advocating.

XP and Vista users will get the ballot screen three to six months after the European Commission’s final ruling in the Opera antitrust case. For XP users, Microsoft plans to designate the ballot screen a “high priority” update when it pushes it out over Windows Update; for Vista and Windows 7 users, the ballot screen will be designated “important,” the proposal says.

Here's to hoping that this condition leaves Opera off the list. I'm not sure if I mentioned this here in the blog yet, but I'd advocate a boycott of Opera if I thought anyone was actually using the damn thing. I'm so tired of these complainers. Here's a new example why. The people have spoken, Opera. Please go away.

Some may recall that I got excited about Mozilla's original plans for the Firefox 3 UI on Windows, only to have my hopes dashed when they came out with something half-baked. (The shipping Firefox 3.x "chrome" is just horrible looking, in my opinion, and as much as I hate wasting time configuring things that are better left alone, I always replace it.)

Well, they're at it again.

On the Mozilla Wiki, you can now see a mockup for what Mozilla calls Firefox 3.7, on Windows. And man, is it looking good. I won't get my hopes up again. But here's to hoping they make this happen.

And unlike with the current theme/chrome/whatever they call it, this one looks as nice on all the major platforms: Windows Vista/7, Windows XP, and Mac OS X. (The current version curiously looks best on XP, to me.) Check out the Wiki for XP shots.

Thanks very much to Stan B. for forwarding this info.

I'm sure you've seen the news. If not, I've written something up about it.

Microsoft COO Kevin Turner relayed a funny story about Apple. The Cupertino Mac maker recently called Microsoft and demanded that the software giant stop running its "Laptop Hunter" ads on TV. The ads highlight how expensive Macs are compared to PCs, and how much more choice there is in the PC market. That's a lot of chutzpah, even for Apple: Its annoying "I'm a Mac" ads have been running for years and often include inaccurate information about Windows and PCs.

Turner revealed how desperate Apple is to prevent people from realizing how much more expensive Macs are than PCs. "Two weeks ago we got a call from the Apple legal department saying, 'Hey, you need to stop running those ads, we lowered our prices,'" he said. "They took like $100 off or something. It was the greatest single phone call that I've ever taken in business."

Finally, Microsoft had gotten to Apple. "I did cartwheels down the hallway," Turner continued. "At first I said, 'Is this a joke? Who are you?' We're just going to keep running them and running them and running them."

Turner noted that the ads work because they're the truth. He talked about reading an ad for an electronics retailer in the newspaper this past Sunday and examining the prices for different computers. "You can get a 13.3” Macbook for $1,199 from that retailer," he said. "Guess what? [From] that same retailer, you can get a PC with more RAM, a bigger hard drive, and almost a three-inch bigger screen for $649. This is...the Apple Tax."

Too funny.

It amuses me when people complain about things in Windows that are complete non-issues (like the Windows 3.x-era Fonts window from Windows Vista). But how about the real stupidity? Ladies and gentlemen, I present Exhibit A:

So what's wrong with this dialog, you ask? (Most likely because you've never tried to use it.)

It doesn't work. Almost ever.

In this case, I actually do know which application I need to run. But what the heck, let's let Windows do its magic and see what happens. And what happens, almost every single time, is this:

Absolutely freaking useless.

No announcement, but Microsoft has quietly released Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 in all languages ...

32-bit download

64-bit download

DVD ISO standalone image

Thanks very much to Emmanuel P. for the tip!

If you're looking to snag the initial beta version of Microsoft Security Essentials from the source, here are a few things to be aware of:

• US, Israel, and Brazil only (China in 30 days)
• Public downloads will be capped at 75,000
• Download will be made available around 9 am PDT/12 pm EDT
• Requires Windows XP (32-bit only), Windows Vista or Windows 7

For more info, please check out my overview of the public beta.

Please, no emails or posts about the torrent versions. Obviously, it's out there. Obviously, downloading a security product via torrent is ... well, dumb.

Neowin has posted a couple of shots of an older Morro build. Again, I can't really comment except to note that this build is already out of date.

I've gotten an unusual number of questions lately about whether it will be possible to use an Upgrade version of Windows 7 to perform a clean install, as is possible with Windows Vista (a process I validated with both the RTM and SP1 versions of Windows Vista ... I will do so with SP2 as well, once that media becomes available).

I suspect it will still work. But there's no real answer to this question yet because, well, there's no retail Windows 7 media to test. In order to see whether this works, I will need a copy of some Upgrade version of Windows 7. And Microsoft doesn't make that code available until it completes development of the product. Rest assured, I will be testing this process--both with Windows 7 and Vista SP2--as soon as the relevant code is available.