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Posts Tagged ‘Windows Vista’

Windows 7 eclipses Vista on Steam, 64-bit dominating 32-bit

We already know that Windows 7 is growing faster than Vista was when it was released, but how fast are gamers adopting it? Pretty darn quickly, according to January 2010 data from Steam, the leader of the digital distribution market. Last month, the percentage of users on Windows 7 eclipsed the number of users on Windows Vista. Windows XP is still leading the pack, but it is under the 50 percent mark:

Data source: Steam

It’s also worth noting that Windows 7 is the first version of Windows where gamers are adopting 64-bit faster than 32-bit. In fact, there are more users on Windows 7 64-bit than any other flavor of Windows, except for Windows XP 32-bit. Overall, XP dropped 2.63 percent from the previous month, Vista dropped 2.8 percent, and Windows 7 gained 5.47 percent. At this rate, we would expect Windows 7 to take the crown before the end of the year.

Each month, Steam collects and compiles data about the hardware and software its customers are using so that game developers can ensure they are making good decisions about what technology should take priority in their support plans. If you’re wondering, Intel is still beating AMD and NVIDIA is still beating ATI. To check out more details and the rest of the statistics, which are primarily hardware-based, head over to the link below.

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Boot Camp updated: now supports Windows 7

Filed under: Software Update, Apple

If you’ve been waiting with bated breath to dual-boot Windows 7 on your Mac, your time has come. File under “better late than never“: Apple has now updated Boot Camp with support for Windows 7.

With separate downloads for 64-bit and 32-bit versions of Windows 7, the download also requires an authentic copy of Windows 7 or Windows 7 upgrade, and is only supported on more recent Intel-based Macs; no Macs produced before 2007 will support Windows 7, as outlined in this Apple support page.

If you’re upgrading your Mac’s other side from Windows Vista to Windows 7, you’ll first want to download and install the Boot Camp Utility for Windows 7, which “safely unmounts the read-only Macintosh volume on Microsoft Vista.”

Let us know in the comments if you have any issues with the update.

[Hat tip to MacRumors and the Apple Support RSS Twitter feed]

TUAWBoot Camp updated: now supports Windows 7 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hasta la Vista, baby: Ars reviews Windows 7

Prologue: A troubled past

A bit less than three years ago, Windows Vista was officially launched after a long delay. The operating system brought a raft of long-overdue new features to the Windows platform to make it truly fit for hardware of the 21st century. In came a new graphics stack and sound stack, as well as significant security, networking, and storage changes.

The changes were all well and good—the graphics work in particular was essential to allow Windows to offer functionality equivalent to that found in Mac OS X for many years—but they came at a high cost. To take advantage of all the new features required the use of all-new Windows Vista hardware drivers. In the OS’s early days, these were often slow, unreliable, or simply non-existent. In spite of the extended development process and lengthy open beta, many vendors were apparently caught off-guard by Windows Vista’s release and its preference for new drivers, so they chose to ignore the new OS for many months.

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Week in Microsoft: MSE debuts, Windows 7 OEM prices revealed

Let’s look back at the week that was in Microsoft news. Here were the top stories:

First look: Microsoft Security Essentials impresses: Microsoft’s new antimalware solution, Microsoft Security Essentials, is now available for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. Ars puts MSE through its paces and finds an unobtrusive app with a clean interface that protected us in the dark corners of the Internet.

Antivirus makers applaud, mock Microsoft Security Essentials: Symantec, ESET, Avast, and AVG all have something to say about the release of Microsoft Security Essentials, Redmond’s free antimalware solution. Two are fine with it, and two are not; can you guess who says what?

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Windows 7 review

Oh, Windows. You inform and entertain us. You are inescapable, and your Start menu is full of items relevant to our productivity. You move us. Sort of. To be honest, we’re not sure what sort of state this fair planet of ours would be in without the ruggedly functional operating systems the folks at Redmond have handed to us over the years, and while Windows Vista might have proved that Microsoft wasn’t invincible, it did nothing to demonstrate that Windows as an idea — and for most, a necessity — was at all in jeopardy.

Windows 7 arrives on the scene three short years after Vista, shoring up its predecessor’s inadequacies and perhaps offering a little bit more to chew on. We’ve been playing with the OS ever since the beta, along through the release candidate, and now at last have the final, “release to manufacturing” (RTM) edition in our grubby paws. Does it live up to its understandable hype and the implicit expectations of a major Microsoft release? Let’s proceed on a magical journey to discover the truth for ourselves.

Continue reading Windows 7 review

Filed under: Software

Windows 7 review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EU Vista, XP users will also get to vote IE off the island

Upon closer inspection, Microsoft’s browser ballot proposal for the EU is much more drastic than one would expect. Users will choose from up to 10 different browsers. And it won’t be limited to Windows 7 users; the ballot screen will be pushed as an update to current Windows XP and Windows Vista users. PC manufacturers will also have the option of shipping one or more third-party browsers in place of IE8 without fear of retaliation from Microsoft. It’s a big change for a company that just last month wanted Windows 7 to be shipped in Europe without Internet Explorer 8 so as to avoid a ballot screen in the first place.

The balloting process will last for five years from the date the European Commission agrees to it, which pushes it into Windows 8 territory. So let’s look at the nitty gritty of the browser ballot announced late last week.

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