.::REALITYRECALL::.

Hey, you — yeah you, the BlackBerry Storm owner over there. You listening? Good. That mythical software update we heard about just last week is obviously the real deal, and a screen grab from Verizon’s internal systems has shown up to prove it. We’re told that it should go live tomorrow (that’s October 25th for those in strange, potentially illegitimate time zones) at 6PM. On the whole, it’ll make your Storm act a lot more like the forthcoming Storm2, but specifically you can expect a “faster, more accurate and more natural text input experience, word completion, a virtual QWERTY keyboard in portrait view and enhanced sensitivity when editing, copying and pasting.” You’ll also get the ability to “enable Auto Correction as opposed to Word Completion in landscape view.” The full changelog should be coming soon, so hang tight! Oh, and cancel those plans for tomorrow night, okay?

[Thanks, Anonymous]

Update: Check out the full (purported) changelog after the break!

Continue reading BlackBerry Storm update landing tomorrow, bringing lots of good stuff (update: now with changelog!)

Filed under: Cellphones, Software

BlackBerry Storm update landing tomorrow, bringing lots of good stuff (update: now with changelog!) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 24 Oct 2009 11:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google has today rolled out some design changes to the map and hybrid views in Google Maps. Google say that the changes,

“include numerous refinements to color, density, typography, and road styling worldwide. For example, in map view, local and arterial roads have been narrowed at medium zooms to improve legibility, and the overall colours have been optimized to be easier on the eye and conflict less with other things“.

Here is a comparison of the old (left) and new hybrid view,

In this view you can see that more roads are clearly visible in the updated design.

Here is comparison of the old (left) and new map view,

In this new view place names are clearly more visible.

I also think that at the higher zoom levels far more interactive business icons are being displayed. Google doesn’t mention this in their announcement, so I can’t be sure of this. However check out Haight St, San Francisco below, this number of points of interest looks new to me.

Anyway TechCrunch are fans of the new design. They say that “it’s clear to see that the new look is much nice (sic). Gone is much of the clutter cause (sic) by darkened street outlines.“

Via: Google LatLong

_____________

Prime Minister Stephen Harper kicked off Friday’s news conference in St-Georges, Que., by saying he would like to see more than six National Hockey League teams in Canada.

Get ready to duck (again). The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, has now reached an operating temperature of 1.9K–colder than outer space itself, according to Ars Technica.

That means the LHC will soon be ready to begin crashing particles together, after a catastrophic failure and series of repairs over the past year took the accelerator out of commission.

The current prognosis is that the LHC will begin operations sometime in the next five weeks. It will accelerate particles at speeds very close to the speed of light. In effect, they’d run around the 16.7-mile length of the accelerator over 11,000 times per second, the report said. That necessitates the accelerator contain a vacuum that’s an order of magnitude less dense than the moon’s atmosphere. In other words, this is tough stuff, so let’s give those guys a break about that whole catastrophic failure thing. (Image credit: CERN)

The much anticipated release of Windows 7 is finally upon us. This Thursday, October 22, Microsoft's latest operating system arrives on the scene looking to win over skeptics disappointed with the much-hyped but often criticized Windows Vista. Whereas its predecessor got off to a rough start with plentiful compatibility issues and incessant "allow or deny" prompts annoying users, Windows 7 represents a major leap forward and has generally been regarded as a snappier and more polished operating system. We've been playing with it ever since the beta became available, and can honestly say that much of the hype is justified.

Read full story…

Motorola tonight released the full specifications and a photo gallery of the highly-awaited Droid phone on their public Web site, pre-empting the anticipated October 28 announcement of Verizon Wireless’s first Android smartphone.

According to the Motorola site, which was first noticed by the Boy Genius Report blog but then independently confirmed and loaded by PCMag, the Droid is a large touchscreen phone with a sliding keyboard. It’s 2.4 x 4.6 x .5 inches in size and weighs six ounces. That’s relatively heavy, but slim. Its color will be “licorice w/brown sugar accents.”

The phone has an unusually high-resolution, 3.7″ 480×854 touch screen; the iPhone’s touch screen is only 320×480 resolution.

The Droid’s OS is Android 2.0, as Verizon previously showed on their teaser Web site for the device. It is the first Android 2.0 phone.

The Droid has a 550 Mhz processor, according to the site, which didn’t describe the processor architecture. The architecture is important because most Android phones up until now have run on 528 Mhz ARM11 processors, which some users consider sluggish in some circumstances. The recently announced Samsung Moment upped the ante to an 800 Mhz ARM11. If the Droid runs a newer form of architecture, known as Cortex-A8, it could be faster with a lower clock speed.

More details and photos after the jump.

The Droid will come with a 16GB MicroSD card pre-installed, according to the site. It runs on Verizon Wireless’s CDMA EVDO Rev A network and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, but not GSM networks.

For multimedia, the phone will come with music and video players. It will capture 720×480 video at 24 frames per second – that’s unusually good – and will take 5-megapixel stills with image stabilization and dual-LED flash.

In terms of other software, the Droid supports Microsoft Exchange sync and comes with the QuickOffice Microsoft Office document viewer, Facebook, and lots of Google apps (including Google Search by Voice), but no IM program for non-Google protocols.

Motorola promises up to 270 hours of standby time and 6 hours, 25 minutes of talk time on the 1400 mAh battery. That’s quite good for a Verizon phone.

Verizon has made it clear that the Droid is their most anticipated launch of the year. They’ve been sending out an unusual amount of teaser information, culminating in a recent invitation to an October 28 press event.

Earlier this month, Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam said his company was making a major commitment to releasing many devices with the Google Android OS, including two smartphones coming this year. In wire service photos that day, he and Google CEO Eric Schmidt showed two phones, one of which was the Droid. The other looked a lot like Sprint’s HTC Hero phone, but with a Verizon logo.

The Motorola Droid Web site’s main page, at http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/ci.Motorola-DROID-US-EN.vertical, was live at 8:30 PM ET on Thursday night but taken down by 9 PM. A tech specs page at http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/ci.Motorola-DROID-US-EN.alt was still live at 9 PM.

Verizon’s official Droid site can be accessed at www.droiddoes.com.

Post by Sascha Segan

The Droid’s face is mostly a 3.7″, 480×854 capacitive TFT LCD touchscreen.

On the back of the Motorola Droid, there’s a 5-megapixel camera with flash.

Slid closed, the Motorola Droid is 2.4 x 4.6 x .5 inches in size.

The Motorola Droid is relatively slim for such a powerful smartphone.

Filed under: OS Updates, Utilities, Windows, Microsoft, Freeware

Microsoft offers tool to burn Windows 7 ISO – or put it on a USB flash drive originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sponsored Topics:
Microsoft – Windows 7 – Download Squad – Operating system – USB flash drive

By now, it’s just silly to analyze Windows 7. All you really need to know is that it’s better than Vista, and if you use a PC, it’s probably your next OS. So let’s give Win7 a 27-reviewer victory lap.

CNET
“Windows 7 presents a stable platform that can compete comfortably with OS X, while reassuring the world that Microsoft can still turn out a strong, useful operating system.”

PCWorld
“…the final shipping version I test-drove appears to be the worthy successor to Windows XP that Vista never was.”

NYTimes
“[Microsoft’s] three-year Windows Vista nightmare is over.”

IT Pro
“Windows 7…is competent and functional due to internal improvements and the user interface is attractive and good for productivity.”

bit-tech
“For want of a better way of describing it, Microsoft has essentially fixed Vista and the result is arguably Microsoft’s best operating system to date.”

Guardian
“Windows 7 is simply the best version of Windows you can get.”

Slate
“Indeed, the new Windows is not only the best operating system that Microsoft has ever produced. It is arguably the fastest, most intuitive, and most useful consumer desktop OS on the market today.”

Maximum PC
“…Windows 7 is unquestionably the best version of Windows that Microsoft has ever released, and is the true successor to Windows XP.”

Tech Radar
“No version of Windows is ever perfect, but Windows 7 really is the best release of Windows yet.”

PC Mag
“It’s far and away the best OS we’ve ever seen from Microsoft.”

Wall Street Journal
“I believe it is the best version of Windows Microsoft has produced.”

ElectricPig
“With Windows 7, Microsoft wants us to believe that it’s got its OS back on track and for the most part we feel they have.”

Engadget
“Where Vista felt like a sprawling mess, Windows 7 has patched up the holes and feels like a tight, unified mechanism.”

Telegraph
“Windows 7 is the operating system Vista should have been…”

Hexus
“This is the operating system that Windows Vista should have been.”

Digital Trends
“…Microsoft has returned for redemption with Windows 7, otherwise known as “what Vista should have been.”

AP
“Windows 7 [is] a slick, much improved operating system that should go a long way toward erasing the bad impression left by its previous effort, Vista.”

V3
“…Windows 7 is a worthy successor to Windows XP…”

Federal Computer Week
“There is nothing wrong with Windows 7 – and we’ve always thought Vista was a better operating system than its reputation suggested – so if a new system happens to come with it, then you’ll get a fine operating system.”

PC Pro UK
“We like Windows 7 a lot – so much so, that the disappointment that was Windows Vista has already become a distant memory…”

Technodorm
“If you have the money to spend, there is no reason why you shouldn’t upgrade.”

Laptop Mag
“If Vista left you somewhat disillusioned with Windows, we suggest you upgrade to Windows 7.”

Cult of Mac
“I need to go wash my eyes out with bleach.”

The Inquirer
“Windows 7 is as pretty as Apple stuff, just as easy to use, and does not treat you like a moron.”

Computer World
“…it’s finally time to upgrade.”

TechWorld
“Windows 7 feels like an anti-Vista…”

Gizmodo
"…if you're coming from Windows XP, Windows 7 will totally feel like a revelation from the glossy future. If you're coming from Vista, you'll definitely go "Hey, this is much better!" the first time you touch Aero Peek. If you're coming from a Mac, you'll—hahahahaha. But seriously, even the Mactards will have to tone down their nasal David Spadian snide, at least a little bit."

Windows only: Photo geeks out there know how valuable raw image formats can be, but the Windows Imaging Component doesn’t have native support. The free FastPictureViewer WIC codec pack adds RAW support to XP, Vista, and 7.

By default, Windows Explorer won't even show thumbnails for images in raw format, nor does it support slideshows or previews in programs like Windows Live Photo Gallery or Windows Media Center. FastPictureViewer WIC Codec Pack is a one-time install that supports 20 raw image formats from more than 13 camera manufacturers—so no matter what camera you may have now or in the future, your system will likely support it. In addition, it provides all of these codecs for 64-bit editions of Windows, which camera manufacturers don't always do. So even if your camera doesn't provide the support, you can probably find it here.

FastPictureViewer WIC RAW Codec Pack is a free download, Windows only.

Windows 7 officially launches today, but we’ve been testing, tweaking, customizing, fixing, and writing about this OS for a year now. We present here a guide to everything we’ve learned about the OS, from first install to final settings change.

Whether you’ve played around with Windows 7 during its beta or release candidate versions, launch day is finally here, and Windows 7 is finally ready for widespread, public consumption. This guide will take you straight through from system requirements and upgrading your PC to highlighting Windows 7’s best new features to helping you hit the ground running with all of the awesome tweaks Windows 7 has in store for you.

System Requirements

According to Microsoft:

• 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Buying, installing, and upgrading

• Figure Out Which Windows 7 Edition Has the Features You Need: Not everybody needs Windows 7 Ultimate, but what if there’s a certain feature you must have when you grab your upgrade this Thursday? CNET breaks down each Windows 7 edition feature by feature in a handy chart.
• Prep Your PC for Windows 7: When Windows 7 drops this Thursday, you can either spend many, many hours watching a progress bar, or you can boot into a clean, speedy system with that new-OS smell. Let’s get your system set up for a proper Windows 7 upgrade.
• Get Windows 7 Home Premium for $30 With a College Email Address: If you’re a U.S. college student, or at least having a working .edu email address, you don’t have to pay $120 to upgrade Vista to Windows 7. You can get the Home Premium upgrade for just $30.
• Run Windows 7 for 120 Days Without Activation: The command line code (slmgr -rearm) that could be entered at the end of three different 30-day periods to give Vista 120 days without activation works just the same in Windows 7.

Our take on Windows 7

• Top 10 Things to Look Forward to in Windows 7: Windows 7 isn’t a dramatic overhaul of its predecessor Windows Vista, but it does fix several sore spots and add a few welcome features.
• Windows 7’s Best Underhyped Features: It’s these less sexy, but very useful features, that make me think the more I use Windows 7, the less chance I’ll ever use Vista or XP again.
• Windows 7 Versus Mac OS X Leopard: The Feature-by-Feature Showdown: Oh, I know: the Mac versus PC debate is so played out. Perhaps, but dumb commercials aside, if you’re deciding between buying a Mac or a PC in the coming months, it helps to know what you’re getting from one or the other.

New features

• Windows 7 Tells You Why You Can’t Touch That File: Windows 7 doesn’t just give you a wagging finger (and pretend-useful “Try Again” button) when you want to move or delete a file that’s in use. It actually tells you which application is using the file.
• Windows 7 Lets You Customize Your Logon Background: Expert Windows hacker Rafael Rivera finds a change in the latest build of Windows 7—you can finally customize the log-on screen natively.
• Windows 7 Transfers Your Wireless Settings Easily: To transfer the settings for yourself, head into the Network and Sharing Center, click on Manage Wireless Networks, and then in the properties for your wireless network you’ll find the link to open the wizard that will copy all your settings onto a flash drive.
• How to Burn ISOs in Windows 7: Burning that ISO to a disc is as simple as: 1. Double-click the ISO file (or right-click and select Burn disc image); 2. Click Burn.
• Play Your iPod Through Your Windows 7 PC’s Speakers: You can play an external audio device through your computer’s speakers without any extra software using a simple configuration setting.
• Windows 7 Makes UAC Less Annoying Than Vista: The biggest change in Windows 7 is the new User Account Control "slider" setting, where you can choose your own balance between annoyance and security—but behind the scenes, Microsoft reduced the amount of actions that will prompt you.
• Netflix Update Comes to Windows 7 Media Center, Looks Excellent: Starting this week, Microsoft is rolling out an upgraded Watch Instantly interface to Windows 7 Media Center for users looking to get their streaming TV and movie fix on their upgraded PCs.
• Setup File and Printer Sharing From XP to Windows 7: This guide walks you through the process of enabling network discovery, sharing your folders and printers, and accessing your shared resources from either Windows 7 or XP.
• IE8 Can Proactively Close Crashing Tabs in Windows 7: The copy of IE8 found only in (Windows 7) has a “timer” that monitors new tabs as they open. If they aren’t responsive within a relatively short amount of time, the browser will pop up and tell you this, possibly with a reason why, and ask whether you want to wait or kill the tab before it causes further problems.
• Windows 7 Lets You Finally Uninstall Internet Explorer (Kinda): … It won't completely uninstall—only the executable is actually removed. Still, being able to finally banish IE proper from your system is a pretty good start for folks who really don't like IE.
• Windows 7 Will Let You Uninstall Most Built-In Apps: You can turn almost every built-in application on or off, including Windows Search, Gadgets, and even Media Player.

The Taskbar

• Aero Peek: Peek supercharges Windows’ taskbar thumbnail previews, and lets you view, close, and switch between multiple windows by just hovering over the taskbar thumbnail, as well as pin programs to the taskbar permanently.
• Pin Individual Folders to the Windows 7 Taskbar: Windows 7’s taskbar lets you pin any running program to the taskbar for easy future access, but it treats folders like second-class sub-items of the Explorer icon. Create a fake “program” to pin individual folder shortcuts to your taskbar.
• Middle-Click to Close Applications from Windows 7’s Taskbar: In Windows 7, middle-clicking a taskbar button opens a new program instance. The easy solution for closing an app? Middle-click its preview window.
• Hold Shift While Dragging to Windows 7 Taskbar to Open Files: All you have to do is hold down the Shift key while dragging a file to an icon on the taskbar, and the tooltip will change to say “Open with” instead of pinning to the taskbar.
• Pin Any Item to the Windows 7 Taskbar: We already showed you how to pin specific folders, and this is just a slightly tweaked application of that method.
• Put a Recycle Bin Shortcut on the Windows 7 Taskbar: Once you are finished, you'll have a separate recycle icon on the taskbar—useful for quick access to deleted files without having to hunt down an icon on your desktop.
• Get a Functional Recycle Bin on Windows 7’s Taskbar: TechSpot's solution—creating a Quick Launch taskbar, removing its text and title, then bringing the desktop Recycle Bin icon into it—covers all the bases, and lets you place your Recycle Bin pretty much wherever you'd like on the taskbar.

Jump lists

• 
• Master Windows 7 Jump Lists to Boost Your Win7 Productivity: For those of you that haven’t yet tried out Windows 7, when you right-click on a taskbar button in Windows 7, a menu slides out with recent documents and application tasks. Here’s a rundown of our favorite Jump List boosters.
• Winfox Adds Jump Lists to Firefox on Windows 7: Jump Lists are one of the best new features in Windows 7, and since Firefox still doesn’t take advantage of them, a small utility called Winfox adds the feature for you.
• Win7shell Adds Windows 7 Jump List Support to Winamp: Once you’ve downloaded, installed the plugin, and pinned Winamp to the taskbar, the Jump List should immediately start tracking your recently played media files.

Built-in Applications

• Set Up and Use XP Mode in Windows 7: Windows 7's new XP Mode lets you seamlessly run virtualized applications alongside your regular Windows 7 applications—so your outdated software will continue to work.
• Calculator: While mathletes, scientists, coders, and statisticians will appreciate Windows 7’s built-in calculator’s programmer, statistics, and scientific modes, everyday people will love figuring out things like hourly wages and mortgage payments without a spreadsheet.
• PowerShell: (A) souped-up command line and scripting GUI that frees you, finally, from the limits of DOS batch scripts.
• Windows 7 Media Center’s Music Player Is Hot Hot Hot: Good news for music lovers excited for Windows 7: The new and improved music interface in Windows 7 Media Center is overflowing with eye candy and usability.
• Windows 7’s WordPad Opens Word 2007 DOCX Files: … The ribbon-style WordPad in Windows 2007 opens Word 2007 files, the .docx kind, pretty handily, albeit with some formatting loss.
• Backup and Restore Center: For the average user with both media and crucial file needs, Windows 7’s default backup features look promising.
• Windows 7 Guest Mode Creates Bomb-Proof Accounts: In the simplest terms, Guest Mode takes a snapshot of how a PC was working before the kid, friend, coffeeshop customer, or whoever else is using the Guest Mode account logs on. That user can’t do much to alter the system, and whatever they can do, like dropping files on the desktop, is discarded when they log off.
• Windows 7 Calibration and ClearType Tools Fine-Tune Your Displays: Windows 7’s color calibration and ClearType tools might be good enough for non-graphic-designers to stick with.

Themes, wallpapers, and login screens

• Windows 7 Beta’s Many Free and Legit Themes: Microsoft is offering 20 fresh themes (in Windows 7). Here’s a closer look.
• Grab Every Region’s Windows 7 Wallpapers in One Download: Microsoft allowed Windows Vista Magazine to bundle up every wallpaper from Windows 7’s regional releases and, boy, we’re glad they did. One file brings a lot of new looks to any desktop, Windows 7 or otherwise.
• Secret Registry Hack Customizes Windows 7 Logon “Button Set”: Rafael Rivera, the same expert Windows hacker that figured out how to customize your Windows 7 logon background, finds another hack that changes the UI to look better with darker background images.
• Microsoft Releases More Free Windows 7 Theme Downloads: The full-fledged themes are specific downloads for Windows 7 users, but anyone can grab the wallpapers from Windows 7’s Personalization Gallery for their system.

Mouse and Keyboard Shortcuts

• The Best New Windows 7 Keyboard Shortcuts: Windows 7 has more cool new shortcuts than you can shake a stick at.
• Aero Shake: When you want to focus on the task at hand on a desktop cluttered with windows, just grab the window bar of the app you want to work in and shake it back and forth to clear away the rest. Another shake will restore the background apps to their former state. You can also drag and drop a window to the edge of the screen to maximize it, and click on its top bar again to restore its previous size.
• Snap windows to half screen size: … Dragging a window to the top of the screen maximizes it. Following that, if you drag a window all the way to the left or the right of the screen, Windows 7 will display a glass overlay on the desktop. Let go of the mouse button and it will snap the window onto that overlay, which is half the screen's size—a handy helper for widescreen monitor owners.
• Maximize Windows Vertically with a Double-Click in Windows 7: Reader John points out that you can simply move your mouse to the top of a window until the pointer switches to the resize icon, and then double-click your mouse to instantly maximize the window to fill all the available vertical space.
• Shift and Right-Click to Expand Windows 7’s Send To Menu: Just as with Vista, holding down the Shift key while right-clicking in Windows 7 gives you a fuller range of options.
• Activate Windows 7 Jumplists with the Left Mouse Button: You don't have to right-click on the taskbar buttons to activate Windows 7's Jumplists—you can hold the left mouse button and drag upwards.
• Windows 7 Creates New Folders With a Hotkey: To create a new folder, simply press Ctrl+Shift+N with an explorer window open and the folder will instantly show up, ready to be renamed to something more useful.

Tweaks, fixes, and customizations

• The Best Windows Tweaks that Still Work in Windows 7: The final version of Windows 7 is being released this week to the general public, and after you get your hands on it the first thing you’ll need to know is: Do all my tweaks still work?
• Customize or Disable Windows 7’s Action Center: Windows 7’s Action Center does a great job of compressing all of Windows’ update/alert/whatever notifications into one icon, but it takes some tweaking to make it show what you want, or disable it entirely.
• Add text to the Windows 7 taskbar buttons: Just right-click the taskbar, select Properties, then change the Taskbar buttons drop-down from “Always combine, hide labels” to “Never combine.”
• Set Default Printers Based on Network in Windows 7: Windows 7 sports a great new feature that allows you to set default printers based on what network your computer is connected to, perfect for folks who carry laptops from network to network.
• Get Quick Access to Windows 7’s Jump Lists From the Keyboard: When we showed you how to master Windows 7’s new Jump Lists feature, there was one extremely useful tip that we left out: you can also access them from your keyboard.
• Create and Share Custom Themes in Windows 7: Microsoft’s Engineering Windows 7 weblog details how to create, save, and share your own custom Windows 7 themes, complete with wallpaper, window color, and sounds.
• Get the Old "Show Desktop" Back in Windows 7—Kinda: The short version: Create a folder, place a “Show Desktop.scf” file in there (either your standard Google-found kind or the script available at the bottom link), then right-click your taskbar to create a “New Toolbar” that points to that folder. Turn off the text and titles on that new toolbar, change the icons to large size, and then put your new one-button toolbar where you’d like.
• Hidden Windows 7 Tool Troubleshoots Sleep Mode Problems: The report lists all of the devices that are causing problems with sleep mode, explains the different power saving modes your computer supports, and even gives you detailed information on your battery—invaluable information when your system takes forever to go in and out of sleep mode.
• Disable the New Libraries Feature on Windows 7: Simply download, extract, and double-click on the provided registry hack file, then restart your computer and you’ll see that the Libraries are completely gone. There’s also an uninstall registry script provided just in case.

Third-party helpers

• Logon Changer Customizes the Windows 7 Login Screen: Tiny system customizing utility Logon Changer for Windows 7 swaps out the logon screen wallpaper easily. Using the utility is simple—just select a new wallpaper, test it, and you are done.
• Xdn Tweaker Updates to Tweak Windows 7: If you want your system to remember or not remember how you sort certain folders, edit what’s accessible through the right-click menu, or de-hook Windows Media Player from all the files it tries to glom onto, Xdn does those things for Windows 7.
• Glass CMD Enables Aero Transparency for the Command Prompt: Glass CMD for Vista forces command prompt windows to use Aero’s glass transparency effect.
• Gmail Notifier Plus Adds Email Alerts to the Windows 7 Taskbar: Gmail Notifier Plus displays your unread email count right in the Windows 7 taskbar, including popup message previews and Jump Lists integration.
• Switch Power Management Plans With a Hotkey: Once you've created the shortcut, you can assign a hotkey in the properties dialog—even better, put the shortcut in a location to be indexed by Launchy or the Vista start menu search, or even add it to your AutoHotkey automation script.
• CSMenu Brings the Classic Start Menu Back to Windows 7: Application launcher CSMenu makes up for the lack of a classic start menu option in Windows 7 by creating a menu that looks and works just like the ancient Windows 2000 menu did.
• Ultimate Windows Tweaker Updates, Improves Windows 7 Support: Ultimate Windows Tweaker adds new features to an already excellent tool for tweaking all of the hidden Windows settings you normally can’t access.
• VistaSwitcher is an Absolutely Awesome Alt-Tab Replacement: It’s a little difficult to showcase how well this thing works with just a screenshot, but you can see the partially transparent Alt-Tab switcher window, complete with a massive preview window and the window titles easily readable.
• Windows 7 Recovery Discs Gets Your System Out of Tight Spots: Boot your system from NeoSmart’s CD, and you’ll get a stripped-down Windows system with a window offering startup file repair, Restore Point returns, recovery from a whole-cloth image, memory testing, and a command prompt for those dire moments when only frantically Google-d terminal instructions can save you.
• Hulu Desktop Integration Brings Hulu to Windows 7 Media Center: Free application Hulu Desktop Integration brings Hulu’s remote-friendly desktop app to your Windows Media Center.

We hope you found at least one link in that rather large list that helps you get settled into your new OS. Did we miss anything? Got a favorite tip or link you feel Windows 7 newcomers should consider? Share it in the comments.

Windows 7 already has a good batch of stylish themes and eye-pleasing wallpaper, and now Redmond has opened up its vaults and released new themes and wallpapers, some of them with sponsored partners.

Gearheads and greasemonkeys (the kind that aren’t into custom JavaScript/CSS tweaking) will probably dig the sponsored themes crafted by Ferrari, Ducati, Infiniti, and Porsche. Those looking to spruce up their desktop with frames from around the world can grab international themes from more countries than originally included in Windows 7’s Release Candidate packages.

The full-fledged themes are specific downloads for Windows 7 users, but anyone can grab the wallpapers from Windows 7’s Personalization Gallery for their system. Got another source for your newly-installed system’s theme? Tell us about it in the comments.

Ruh roh. A senior tech manager at a “top tier PC maker” has come out with some entirely unofficial and equally ominous thoughts on what he (or she) sees as the tough road to proliferation for SuperSpeed USB. Pointing out that the new interconnect “won’t get real traction until it gets integrated in the chip sets,” the source opines that Intel won’t be offering motherboard integration before 2011 — an assertion Intel has declined to comment on. AMD and NVIDIA have been vocal critics of what they see as purposeful delays by the Pentium maker, and if this latest scuttlebutt is accurate, their wild finger-pointing will have been at least somewhat vindicated. Although Intel did release the 3.0 controller spec eventually, this wouldn’t be the first (or probably last) time when it has been seen to drag its feet where doing so is in its interest (eh hem, Light Peak). For our money, plenty of people who’ve been waiting for the new standard to show up in machines before pulling the trigger on an upgrade will be disappointed by such news, especially as 3.0 devices are just beginning to ship.

[Thanks, Jacob]

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Peripherals

USB 3.0 held back by lack of Intel chipset support? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Have you ever wished you had an extra Hard Disk to store files, share, or set aside as an encrypted vault? One of the new features in Windows 7 is the ability to create Virtual Hard Disks and we’ll show you how.

Create a Virtual Drive 

This process creates virtual disks in the .VHD format where the minimum size is 3MB. To begin, Right-click on My Computer and select to Manage. Alternately you can type diskmgmt.msc into the Start search box and enter.

The Computer Management screen opens click on Disk Management then Action and Create VHD.

Browse to the directory you want the disk to reside, choose the size you want it to be, and select dynamic or a fixed. If you want the disk to expand in size as you add files to it, then pick Dynamically expanding. Check Fixed size if you want a specific size and for it to stay that way.

In Disk Management you will see the virtual drive listed as unallocated space.

To begin using it you’ll need to Right-click and select Initialize Disk.

In the initialize disk box just keep MBR selected and hit OK.

Create a Volume

Now it is time to create a volume by Right-clicking the unallocated space and select New Simple Volume.

The New Simple Volume Wizard starts up and it’s just a matter of completing it.

Choose the amount of space you want to use for the volume.

Assign it a dive letter that is not currently being used.

Format the new volume as NTFS, FAT32, or FAT. Check if you want a quick format and file compression.

The wizard is complete, click on Finish.

If you have AutoPlay enabled it should pop up for you to open up your new virtual hard disk.

It will be listed with the other disks in Disk Management.

Of course you will also see it listen under My Computer.

This is a cool new feature that will let you use the disk as you would any type of real disk. You can encrypt it, share it out to other systems, store files to it…however you would use an extra disk connected to your system.

This is a cool new feature in Windows 7 that will add extra functionality and options to your current system. There are several ways you can use your VHD including making it bootable. If you have used your geek imagination and have come up with unique ways to use a VHD, leave a comment to tell us about it.

On the eve of the Windows 7 launch, we’ve been doing some reminiscing, but it hit us: There have been way more than six uniquely named prior versions of Windows. So how does Microsoft count?

1, 2, and 3: These were the original DOS-based Windows that started it all. Windows 3.1 is the first version I remember (and even that only vaguely).

4: Windows 4.0 includes Windows 95, 98, ME and NT 4.0.

5: Windows 2000 and all the flavors of Windows XP.

6: The oft-maligned Windows Vista (and Windows Server 2008).

And that brings us to Windows 7. What a long, strange trip it’s been. [Wikipedia]

Big telecom companies such as Bell and Rogers can interfere with internet traffic only as a last resort, the CRTC says. Instead, they should use “economic measures” to combat congestion.

Well, hello there! Those Dell MID rumors we’ve been hearing have finally received vindication in the form of a nice, picture-heavy leak courtesy of some industrious folks in Vietnam. What we know as of now is that there’s an 800 x 480 capacitive touchscreen display (with multitouch zooming), WiFi, Bluetooth and 3G WWAN connectivity, all riding atop an Android 2.0 (aka, Donut Eclair) install. A dual-LED flash 5 megapixel camera adorns the back, and there’s a 1,300mAh battery to power all that goodness. See pics below and a video awaits after the break, where an old friend of ours plays with the jumbo smartphone.

[Via SlashGear; Thanks, Nicky N.]

Continue reading Dell Streak is a 5-inch Android 2.0 MID, packs 3G and WiFi (video)

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Dell Streak is a 5-inch Android 2.0 MID, packs 3G and WiFi (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Oct 2009 06:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Opinion: There’s been a steady flood of news about the emergence of solid state drive (SSD) systems in mainstream products. Samsung has a 64GB miniSATA SSD about half the size of a business card; Dell offers its Adamo XPS notebook with a 256GB SSD; Teradata delivers a data warehouse appliance packed with SSD storage, and IBM has begun to use SSDs in its storage area network systems.