Here goes definition of Windows 7 from my perspective -

Windows 95 > Windows 98 > Windows ME > Windows 2000 > Windows XP > Windows Vista > Windows 7

So finally they found the right naming convention for Windows versions!

Microsoft is providing completely legal download for Windows 7 beta version for testing. Why so? Again, my perspective says that because Microsoft found itself unable to stop illegal distribution of Windows beta torrents (yes you can get one it easily if you know what torrents are). So finally, we are moving towards open neutralized world, thanks to Microsoft for taking this latest surprising step in that direction.

Here is the download like from Microsoft – Windows 7 Beta Customer Preview which is currently displaying the following message –

Thanks for your interest in the Windows 7 Beta. The volume has been phenomenal — we’re in the process of adding more servers to handle the demand. We’re sorry for the delay and we’ll re-post the Beta as soon as we can ensure a quality download experience.

Remember that you have to register on the website to download the beta version so that you can receive registration key for Windows 7 beta. If you don’t register your Beta version, it will run only for one month otherwise registration key dopes it to run till August 2009.

Everything fine, but I am not going to run this beta release despite being a fervid software lover and the reason is that I am still a student to Windows Vista no matter I started running Vista earlier than millions others. Still some of my roomies like to work on Windows XP just because they find Vista difficult to grasp and I agree with them up to some extent as it takes long process for understanding and getting used to many useful features provided by Microsoft in Vista (or an OS in general). In that’s way, it doesn’t make sense to directly hop over to next version of Windows which doesn’t include much but the reformed user interface. So I would prefer to wait for, may be Windows 7 RC1.

Till then, happy testing for all the Windows 7 beta testers!

I was discussing today about the changes Yahoo! share prices went through during its bid war with Microsoft and there wasn’t much discussion about that in blogosphere. What kept people silent in those moments and what could had happened, had it been discussed at that crucial time!

Here is the graph and from it, even a novice in share market can figure out about the period when bid happened -

(directly taken from Google Finance)

It pays to be at higher place and still getting a bidder from someone a level higher…Yahoo! cashed it very well.

As shown in last keynote from Bill Gates at CES 2008 -

Keynote – Bill Gates’ Last Day – January 6, 2008

Interesting enough…at least for those folks who enjoy those funny Apple advertisements cracking jokes at Microsoft Chairman!

Microsoft and Nokia have teamed up for bringing Windows Live services to Nokia S60 devices which include Nokia N73, N80i, N95, N76 and the N93i. These services include following -

• Windows Live Hotmail
• Messenger
• Contacts
• Space

Good to see that Microsoft is opening up to other platforms.

These services are being rolled out on trial basis which will cost 2 euros a month, later.

New Hotmail allows to send photos and videos taken by camera to be set as attachment with mails. This service will be available in 11 countries initially – Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, U.K., Sweden, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (unable to figure out any pattern).

Here are screen-shots from Phil Holden’s writeup on deal who is Director in online services at Microsoft -

If you are also facing same problem as I have been facing while trying to register custom DLL files in Vista as whenever I issued following command -

REGSVR32 C:\xxx.dll?

I have a turn around for that. I received error regarding User Access Control.

Even when you try to run any executable file in Vista, every time it asks you to confirm if you want to run that program or not as if it doesn’t believe that you are the one who tried to open that program.

If you think that you can manage it enough by yourself, you can go for disabling this prompt as I did. For that you will need to go to Control Panel > User Accounts and Family Safety > User Accounts and there click Turn User Account Control on or off. Unselect Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer option and click OK. That’s it. Now try to register your DLLs and you would be able to do that without any hiccups.

Also there is shortcut method to do that from command line -

Disable UAC:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k %windir%\System32\reg.exe

ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Enable UAC:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k %windir%\System32\reg.exe

ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Reboot your system and you are done.

And if you are getting this error while registering your DLLs -

The module REGSVR32 “C:\Program Files\xxx.dll? failed to load.

Make sure the binary is stored at the specified path or debug it to check for problems with the binary or dependent .DLL files.

The specified module couldn’t be found.

.

(I don’t know why that extra dot in the end – may be UI bug from Vista team!) 

It means you are not giving proper path. Try to correct the path for your DLL and you will be able to register it.