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Windows 7, DirectX 11!

Mark Edward Soper — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 22:17:34 -0600

New versions of Windows have featured new versions of DirectX, the 3D audio and graphics family of APIs, and it now appears that Windows 7 will be no exception. According to PC Games Hardware, Microsoft's Ben Basaric, Product Marketing Manager Windows, says that Redmond will be bundling DirectX 11 with Windows 7, after all. Earlier this week, PCGH had reported that the pairing of DirectX 11 and Windows 7 was "unlikely."

So, what's new in DirectX 11? As we reported this summer, DX 11 will include compute shader technology, enabling the GPU to perform operations other than 3D graphics; better multi-core resource handling; more efficient utilization of the processing pipeline; hardware tesselation support for more detailed 3D models.

For you chance to sound off about your plans to buy DirectX 11-compliant hardware, and how long you'll have to wait for it, join us after the jump.

When can you expect to buy DirectX 11-compliant GPUs? AMD says its first DirectX 11 parts will be available in late 2009 - right about the time Windows 7 is expected to arrive. New operating system and new graphics hardware? Hopefully, that's a recipe for more realistic 3D graphics than ever before. If Microsoft and OEMs continue to work as closely as the Engineering Windows 7 blog suggests, that's much more likely than a repeat of the poorly handled integration of hardware and Windows Vista at rollout.

How about you? Are you going to wait for DirectX 11 before you buy a new graphics card, or are NVIDIA and ATI's current products tempting you to make the jump now? Hit Comment and tell us what your heart (and your wallet) are telling you.

G-Speak Operating System is Minority Report Fully Realized

Paul Lilly — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:40:03 -0600

A common trait among many sci-fi movies is the depiction of outlandish technologies that, while they may appear to be badass concepts (some are just hokey), they end up scoffed at by geeks due to the impracticality of trying to implement them. The computer used in Minority Report falls into this category, or at least we thought it did until we saw Oblong's G-Speak spatial operating system. And there's a good reason for the similarity.

"Some of the SOE's core ideas are already familiar from the film Minority Report, whose characters performed forensic analysis using massive, gesturally driven displays," Oblong states on its website. "The similarity is no coincidence: one of Oblong's founders served as science adviser to Minority Report and based the design of those scenes directly on his earlier work at MIT."

Oblong's website hosts a video showing the new OS in action. A demonstrator wearing special gloves performs a variety of gestures that manipulate content on multiple screens. At one point in the video, a second demonstrator steps into the scene to show how more than one user can interact with the OS at the same time. What's really amazing is how smoothly everything works with real-time responses to hand gestures, a result of G-Speak being optimized for massive data sets and time-critical work, the developers say.

While it's far too early to tell what long-term implications G-Speak might have on mainstream computing, we can't help but think of the possibilities, both in productivity apps and videogames.

Windows 7's Pre-Beta is "Safe, Solid - Exciting?"

Mark Edward Soper — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:28:17 -0600

As a counterpoint to InfoWorld blogger Randall Kennedy's controversial review of the Windows 7 pre-beta , we bring you a contrasting view from The Register's Tim Anderson:

During the press briefing for Windows 7 at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC), corporate vice president for Windows product management Mike Nash insisted Microsoft had learned from the Vista experience.

Judging by early Windows 7 code released at PDC, the signs are that it really has....Windows 7 feels more polished than Vista, even in the preview, and performance is good.

Anderson noted the new Device Stage, BitLocker to Go, and improvements in Windows Media Player. To find out what other features Anderson likes in the next Windows, join us after the jump.

256-Core Support Coming to Windows Server 08

Paul Lilly — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:46:46 -0600

Holy high core count, Batman, Microsoft's upcoming Windows Server 2008 R2, the second revision to the server OS released last year, will support up to 256 logical cores. Logical processors equate to the number of physical processors times the number of cores and threads per core, so 256 logical cores translates into 64 dual-core processors with two threads per core, or 32 quad-core chips with two threads per core.

The new release, which will be based on Windows 7 code-base and contain a good bit of Vista DNA, manages to scale as high as it does by breaking the dispatcher lock in Windows. The dispatcher lock isn't a big issue for systems with up to 8 cores, but as the core-count goes up, Windows threads end up waiting for the dispatcher lock to green-light the cores. To get around this, two more wait states have been added to replace the global dispatcher lock of old so that those threads are no longer stuck waiting. Mark Russinovich, Technical Fellow in Microsoft's Core OS division, details the process in a 45-minute video interview on Microsoft's Chanel 9 website.

Microsoft's Surrender to Intel over Vista Capable Requirements Angered HP, Pleased Others, Newly Released Emails Reveal

Mark Edward Soper — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:18:10 -0600

The class action lawsuit against Microsoft's "Vista Capable" marketing campaign, which we first told you about in late February, got even more interesting late last week with the release of more emails between Microsoft and Intel and between HP and Microsoft.

According to a filing released Thursday, the Vista Capable program originally included support for the Windows Driver Display Model (WDDM) as part of the requirement for support of core Windows features. Although OEMs such as Dell, Sony, and Fujitsu all asked for waivers from the WDDM requirement for various computer models that used Intel chipsets with integrated graphics that could not run WDDM drivers, Microsoft refused all three companies' request for waivers because of the improvements in stability and features resulting from WDDM drivers.

However, when Intel came calling on Microsoft , it was a different story. After a series of email exchanges between Intel and Microsoft, Microsoft dropped the WDDM driver requirement, enabling Intel and its OEM partners to market systems with Intel 915 integrated graphics as being "Vista Capable" - even though their integrated graphics would never support Aero Glass or be supported by a WDDM driver.

To find out why some OEM vendors were pleased with Microsoft's relaxing of the WDDM rules, and some weren't, join us after the jump.

Is Windows 7 M3 Build 6801 Really "Vista R2?"

Mark Edward Soper — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:56:08 -0600

InfoWorld's Randall C. Kennedy has put Windows 7's Milestone 3 pre-beta build 6801, a freebie from last month's Microsoft Professional Developer's Conference, through a variety of benchmark tests, and isn't all that impressed:

As I reported on my Enterprise Desktop blog, the more I dug into Windows 7, the more I saw an OS that looked and felt like a slightly tweaked version of Windows Vista.

At his blog, Kennedy complains that Windows 7 is:

Just as slow as Vista...Just as consumer-focused as Vista...Just as confusing as Vista...

Kennedy cites these similarities:

The number of execution threads in key subsystems is almost the same in Windows 7 as in Vista
Benchmarks of Windows 7 and Vista Ultimate SP1 using the DMS Clarity Studio tools suite show almost identical results
Similar amounts of RAM are used by Windows 7 and Windows Vista

From these facts and visual similarities between Windows 7 and Vista, Kennedy concludes:

Bottom line: So far, Windows 7 looks and behaves almost exactly like Windows Vista. It performs almost exactly like Vista. And it breaks all sorts of things that used to work just fine under Vista. In other words, Microsoft's follow-up to its most unpopular OS release since Windows Me threatens to deliver zero measurable performance benefits while introducing new and potentially crippling compatibility issues.

Is Kennedy right, or is he missing a big difference between Windows 7 and its predecessor? For my take, join me after the break.

Ballmer Joins List of Android Skeptics, Questions Google's Strategy

Paul Lilly — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:38:24 -0600

Google's open-source Android platform may not have revolutionized the mobile industry just yet, but it has spurred some interesting comments among top level execs. Two weeks ago, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said that the current iteration of Android isn't "good enough to put the Sprint brand name on it," and taking it a step further, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer says he sees the move as being finanically unsound for Google.

"They can hire smart guys, hire a lot of people, blah dee blah dee blah, but you know they start out way behind, in a certain sense," Ballmer said while speaking at Telstra's annual investment day.

Ballmer went on to say that he doesn't understand Google's strategy, criticizing a product launch launch "that has no revenue model." But the potshots didn't end there. Ballmer further indicated that "Google doesn't exactly bubble to the top of the list of competitors we've got going in mobile." Oh snap!

Is Ballmer underestimating the potential of Google's Android platform? Hit the jump and give us your thoughts.

Windows 7's Image Backup to Work with Network Shares

Mark Edward Soper — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:39:40 -0600

Long Zheng's I Started Something blog reports a welcome improvement in Windows 7's Complete PC Backup: in addition to backing up to local hard disks and DVDs, you can now back up to a network share. Complete PC Backup is the image (aka "bare metal restore") backup feature originally found in Vista's Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions (see our 2007 article to learn how it compares to other popular image backup/restore programs). This new feature brings Complete PC Backup's backup target options basically in line with those in the file/folder backup portion of the Backup and Restore Center, and makes it possible to use an NAS appliance as well as a folder share on another PC as a backup target.

It's important to realize that Complete PC Backup is a complementary technology to file and folder backup. Use it to back up your entire PC, and then use file and folder backup to backup data files that change after you create an image backup. Note that the NTBackup program (included in Windows XP and earlier versions) is not an image backup program, but a file and folder backup program only; it does not have a true 'bare metal' restore option.

I've used Complete PC Backup on a number of occasions to backup and restore Windows Vista systems, and I'm looking forward to this additional improvement in Windows 7's version (and I hope it will be available in all Windows 7 SKUs, by the way). What do you think? Join us after the jump and tell us.