Tag Archive: win7

Windows 7 Family Pack returns October 3

Posted Sep.01, 2010 under Microsoft, Windows 7

Microsoft announced today on their Windows Team Blog that the Windows 7 Family Pack will be making a return to the market, just in time for the one-year anniversary of Windows 7′s retail debut.

Windows 7 Family Pack will allow consumers to upgrade any three computers in their house-hold to Windows 7 Premium. Consumers can upgrade either their Windows XP or Windows Vista PCs to Windows 7 Premium, with compatible hardware. But don’t worry if you are worried if your hardware can handle it, you can download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor through Microsoft.com to check whether your computers are Windows 7 ready.

Consumers should take note that they need Windows XP or Vista Starter, Home Basic or Home Premium to be eligible for the upgrade, and the Family Pack is only meant for upgrading.

Windows 7 was released nearly a year ago, on October 22, 2009. The OS originally released to manufacturing over one year ago. Microsoft announced that Windows 7 is the fastest selling operating system in history, selling over 175 million licenses to date. The company is projected to sell 300 million by the end of 2010.

Microsoft’s success with Windows 7 began before the product was even widely available. Released in October 2009, the operating system has received praise from consumers, businesses and the media. In November 2009, Windows 7 managed to surpass Apple’s Snow Leopard market share in just two weeks. In early February it was revealed that Windows 7 had reached 10% market share in just three months.

Windows 7 has also driven an uptake of 64-bit computing. According to ChangeBASE research, conducted with senior IT decision makers, more than 65% of businesses hoped to migrated to Windows 7 within 12 months of its release. Over 50% of those migrating will be choosing the 64-bit route. Microsoft confirmed earlier this year, that nearly half of all Windows 7 PCs run 64-bit versions.

The Family Pack was discontinued last year, but Microsoft is bringing it back on October 3, 2010, at least while supplies last. Windows 7 Family Pack will sell for $149.99 USD and can be picked up at your local retailer or online at the Microsoft Store.

Windows 7 Family Pack will be available in the United States, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Australia and many other markets.

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Upgrading to Windows 7 can save lots of watts

Posted Jul.31, 2010 under Microsoft, Windows 7

With any new OS, there are both advantages and disadvantages to upgrading. For many computer buffs, an OS upgrade at home is often a no-brainer; for large organizations, that simple OS upgrade becomes a huge project that can span years and cost massive amounts of money. Testing cycles, increased IT workload, and the purchasing of new (compatible) software, and hardware all weigh in heavily during the decision-making process.

A recent study by Mindteck (reported by Ars Technica), titled “Enabling Green Computing in the Enterprise”, showed that a Windows 7 rollout can save a company massive amounts of money due to its superior power management. The study showed that on a Pentium 4 computer, with an “out-of-box” configuration, Windows 7 can be up to 25% more efficient than Windows XP. Further, the study showed that even after all drivers have been updated, Windows 7 still trumped XP by an average of around 10% on a Pentium 4 machine.


System usage in Watts (W), lower is better.

As depicted on the above chart, more modern configurations displayed smaller, but still notable differences with an average power saving of around 3% (with optimized drivers). Regardless of how big the savings are for an organization, they’re still savings and as anyone that works in a large organization can testify – every cent counts.

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Windows 7 SP1 won’t be available to public until 2011

Posted Jul.14, 2010 under Microsoft, Windows 7

Earlier this week, we reported that Service Pack 1 is available as a public beta for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, which would leave most users thinking that SP1 is relatively close to release.

Apparently, this assumption is wrong, with a post from the Windows Team Blog saying that “Windows 7 SP1 will be available in the first half of 2011 through the usual channels.” Brandon LeBlanc, Windows Communications Manager on the Windows Client Communications Team said that “For Windows 7, SP1 is simply a combination of updates already available through Windows Update and additional hotfixes based on feedback by our customers and partners.”

Brandon reiterates that “Business customers tell us that they are already seeing the benefit of deploying Windows 7, and industry analysts agree that there is no need to wait for SP1″ and trumpeted that this month, “Windows 7 has nearly 14% share of the global OS market.”

SP1 only contains two major new features, which will not affect the majority of users. The first of the two is RemoteFX, a standalone product that requires Windows Server 2008 R2 to be used. RemoteFX allows users to watch high-quality video and interact with 3D applications over a remote desktop session — this will change the way Virtual Machines are used, as they have had limited display capabilities until now.

The second feature is an update for HyperV in Windows Server 2008 R2 called “Direct Memory”. The feature is as simple as it sounds — it dynamically allocates memory to virtual machines as required and is able to remove memory from virtual machines when others need higher resources.

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Microsoft extends Windows XP downgrade rights until 2020

Posted Jul.13, 2010 under Microsoft, Windows 7, Windows XP

In an unusual move from Microsoft, the software giant announced that it will allow downgrade rights from Windows 7 to Windows XP Professional right up until 2020.

Microsoft originally stated that users could downgrade to Windows XP 18 months after the debut of Windows 7, or until Windows 7 SP1, which is just around the corner. However, the company changed its mind once again, offering customers the chance to downgrade from Windows 7 to Windows XP Professional until 2020, the entire lifecycle of Windows 7.

Any computer pre-installed with Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate editions will allow the downgrade to similar versions of Vista and XP, until Windows 7 lifecycle is discontinued in 2020. The decision to extend the downgrade rights comes the day before Windows XP SP2 support is officially ended.

“Our business customers have told us that the removing end-user downgrade rights to Windows XP Professional could be confusing,” said Brandon LeBlanc from The Windows Blog.

Retailers are still able to sell boxed versions of Windows Vista up until October 22, 2010, one full year after the release of Windows 7, and PCs preinstalled with Vista up until October 22, 2011.

Just to clarify the above information, Windows XP downgrade rights will only be available throughout the Windows 7 lifecycle. Windows 7 will continue to sell in retails stores one fully year after the next release of Windows, and upto two full years preinstalled on PCs. For instance, if Windows 8 releases on January 1, 2012, Windows 7 downgrade rights to XP will officially retire on January 1, 2014.

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