Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Saturday, Jan 10, 2009
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Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Saturday, Jan 10, 2009 ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version | Audio | Blogs |
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Software Info-Tech - New Products & Services MS previews new Windows version, seeks user feedback
The Microsoft CEO, Mr Steve Ballmer, previews the upcoming Windows 7 operating system at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Anand Parthasarathy Bangalore, Jan. 9 It’s always a good idea to listen to your customer. If you don’t, you might end up creating something they won’t accept. Microsoft learnt this the hard way two years ago when, Vista, the last iteration of its Windows personal computer operating system, found poor acceptance among both lay and professional users. They gave the software a sharp thumbs down, for what they saw as an unreasonable demand on their hardware resources, as well as poor compatibility with a variety of accessory devices such as printers and optical drives. So, this time the world’s number one software company is playing it very carefully — earlier this week, the Microsoft CEO, Mr Steve Ballmer, used the company’s customary prime slot at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to announce the availability of free trial versions of the next version — Windows 7 — a good 9 months ahead of its commercial launch. New featuresWindows 7 will boot — that is come to life — much faster than earlier versions and will not plague users with too-frequent alerts, Mr Ballmer promises. Since the software will in all probability be available almost simultaneously in an ‘avatar’ for mobile phones and hand-sized computers, the company also touts its reduced demand on battery life. New features like Home Group, seem tailored as a response to the reality of multiple PCs in many homes — with easier interfaces to share printers, photos or video. It will also be easy to share content with social networking sites such as Facebook or photo sharing sites such as Flickr. Restricted activationThe beta or trial version can be downloaded from January 9 (January 10, IST) from www.microsoft.com/windows7 but the technology site, Computerworld, has warned that Microsoft is likely to restrict sending activation keys to the first 2.5 million applicants. Also, the download will only work as an upgrade to Vista — so if you are using Windows XP, you can’t give Windows 7 beta, a tryout. A PC with a 1 GHz processor, 16 GB of free hard disk space and 128 MB of graphics memory is recommended. A final alert from Computerworld: You have to convert the downloaded file into a DVD (that means you need a DVD writer) because the download is not an executable file but an ISO file that will only run from a DVD. The beta will run till August 2009. It all seems needlessly complicated — but such small steps in customer friendliness are giant leaps for Microsoft. They’re trying, they’re trying! More Stories on : Software | New Products & Services
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