Microsoft

Download Windows 7 For Free And Use It For A Year, Legally

Windows 7 BETA was available for download only for testers, MSDN and TechNet subscribers, but interestingly Microsoft has now released its much talked Operating System for public download.

Here’s what you need to know:
Source: microsoft.com

This is pre-release software, so please read the following to get an idea of the risks and key things you need to know before you try the RC.

You don’t need to rush to get the RC. The RC will be available at least through July 2009 and we’re not limiting the number of product keys, so you have plenty of time.

Watch the calendar. The RC will expire on June 1, 2010. Starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Windows will notify you two weeks before the bi-hourly shutdowns start. To avoid interruption, you’ll need to install a non-expired version of Windows before March 1, 2010. You’ll also need to install the programs and data that you want to use. (Learn more about installing Windows.)

Protect your PC and data. Be sure to back up your data and please don’t test the RC on your primary home or business PC.

Tech details/updates: Before installing the RC, please read the Release Notes and Things to Know for important information about the release.

Keep up with the news. You can keep up with general technical information and news by following the team blog. And, you can get non-technical news, tips, and offers by subscribing to the monthly Exploring Windows newsletter.

Keep your PC updated: Be sure to turn on automatic updates in Windows Update in case we publish updates for the RC.

Installation: You can install the Windows 7 RC on a PC running Windows Vista without backing up the PC—but we encourage you to make a backup for safe keeping. If you’re running Windows XP or the Windows 7 Beta, you’ll need to backup your data, then do a clean installation of the RC, then reinstall your applications and restore your data. If you need to do a backup, please see How to back up your PC for more details and a suggestion for how to backup a PC running Windows 7 Beta or Windows Vista.

To install and use the RC, you’ll need to know how to:

Troubleshoot problems. You’re pretty much flying solo, so you’ll need to handle your own tech support, and rely on other RC testers for their know-how

Burn an ISO file to make an installation DVD

Install Windows

Backup and restore your PC

Set up a network

Create and use a system recovery disk

To learn more about the Windows 7 RC, see frequently asked questions.

System Requirement:-

Internet access (to download Windows 7 RC and get updates)

A PC with these system requirements:

1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

1 GB RAM (32-bit) / 2 GB RAM (64-bit)

16 GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20 GB (64-bit)

DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

There are 2 versions of Windows 7 for download, 32- and 64-bit versions available in five languages: English, German, Japanese, French, and Spanish.

Do not hurry and download the wrong version of the OS, and realize later that it doesn’t support your current system. This public download will be available till the end of July 2009 and its not limited to specific number of users, so take your time and test your system specifications before starting to download.

Windows 7 is rumored to be released some times in June – July 2009. So you will be still using this free public download version even after the final version of the Operating System is in the market. And more interestingly you will keep receiving the updates till 1 year.
Note that there will be no official system to support users queries, but there are geeks who will be eager to help you at any time, so I think its a worth thing to download and try on your system(if your system meets the requirement). So far our experience with Windows 7 is just awesome(or better than Vista!).

Here is the link for you to register and download Windows 7 for FREE.

Microsoft Windows 7 and Multi-Touch Technology

hh_promo_windows7_cropped Windows 7 is the next version of Windows for PCs, which mainly promises things like enhanced reliability, responsiveness, and faster boot and shut-down. Make everyday computing tasks easier, like connecting and syncing devices, browsing the web, and managing a home network.
Here is a Video showing the power of multi-touch, which uses Windows 7:

This video shows the multi-touch innovations first previewed in Surface that will ultimately play a part of the next version of Windows.
The OS you see in the video is Windows 7, which looks much like Windows Vista.
Windows 7 is expected to be released sometime later in 2010! So it has a long way to go.
[ But Windows 7 Beta Version is already available to download in net, its not a official release, so use it on your own risk. ]
Windows Vista wasn’t a big hit, so Microsoft wouldn’t take a chance again and we believe that Windows 7 will be much better.

Windows 7 Multi-Touch @ PDC08(HP Computer):

Being a programmer and a geek myself, I have a desktop computer dedicated for testing all the software releases. So we have used almost all Windows OS. WindowsXP SP2 was simply great, while Windows Vista wasn’t so bad(our experience).

Anyway, we use and recommend Unix and we don’t find any other product to be better than that. OpenSource, reliable, secure etc.

Would like to here your views..

Free Microsoft Software for Students

Microsoft DreamSpark Student Program, gives free software to college and high school students worldwide, and has now expanded to India. Bill Gates was in India and among other initiatives, he launched the DreamSpark program for all technical students in India.

If you are a student(anywhere in the world) then just go ahead and check www.dreamspark.com whether your country is listed or not. If listed:
Sign In using your Windows Live ID. Get verified as a student. The system is linked to schools and organizations around the world that can confirm student status. Simply choose your country and organization, enter your info and hit submit. Download your products. Some files are quite large, so make sure you have the bandwidth and enough space to bring them to your machine.
It supports the latest versions of both Internet Explorer and Firefox for your download.
Microsoft-free-software
Other Free Tools:
Microsoft-free-tools
If you are in India, you can download it online or else visit the Microsoft program partners like NIIT, Aptech and Hughes Net Fusion Centers – Simply show your college identity card and collect your free DVD containing the Microsoft software package.

Eligibility(To get the software for FREE):
Undergraduates or graduate students with their college ID card, are eligible to receive free software.
*They will expanded this exclusive offer to high school students(of India) by early 2009.

This program is active in many other countries. Checkout dreamspark.com, to know whether this offer is available in your country or not. If this offer is not available in your country, then wait till Bill Gates comes to your country! or just send a request to include this offer to your country students, hope Microsoft will here it.

[ Don’t be surprised, if someone(refuse to give you the Free Microsoft software DVD) at the Microsoft program partners like NIIT, Aptech and Hughes Net Fusion Centers do not know about this offer by Microsoft! Just bring them to this article and show them all the websites link we have given in this article. ]

Blogging Made Easy by "Windows Live Writer" – A Small Review

This is my first post in Technotip.org about Windows Live Writer(WLW) and I am now writing this article using “WLW” itself. I have previously used it to write articles for my blogger blog.

Why we thought about an alternate editor, when we have a simple and good editors(Visual & HTML) in WordPress ?

As always, we wanted some more features to write articles and we use to face some problem while using default WordPress editors.

Problems that we had faced in default WordPress editor:

1. We had problem with adding and aligning the images. Each time we added a image to our article, consumed lot of time.

2. Sometimes when we open the old posts and save it again, we noticed that some irrelevant “Category” got added to it automatically from our “Categories” list.(Hope this is a typical problem only with us!)

3. Loading time….(I agree that, loading time has been improved a lot with new versions of WordPress, but WLW loads superfast as it is an Desktop application.

4. Problem inserting “tables” :- There is no option to insert a table in WordPress editors. This surprises me!

We need to have “insert table” feature that will be of use many times. We know that, using tables may slow down the page loading time, and its good to use CSS/DIV to get the tables, but everybody using WordPress are not programmers or geek’s to do that. And many blogger’s don’t have patience and time to do it.

5. Each time we see the preview of the article it even loads the advertisements. This will make our own impressions on those advertisements. Those impressions will be OK, if they are less in number, but I don’t want any advertisers to pay me for my own impressions on my own blog.

6. We had problem with italicizing the words. When we press the Italicize button, the selected word would be in Bold!

We use to insert <i> </i> tags in html mode to get the results.

7. And the <code> </code> was not working!

(Hope many problems listed above are topically problems only faced by us. Because we have never seen anybody else reporting these problems).

Actually I like the new WordPress editors for many reasons, but the above mentioned points make me to use WLW.

Actually, I write articles in WLW and then save it directly to my WordPress draft and then again modify it there if necessary.

Why we like “Windows Live Writer” ?

This is the actual reason to write this article..

1. Many features, and many tools/plugins to make blogging much more easy.

2. Offline blogging. This will really help a lot. Just try this for 1 week and you will know the power and impact of offline blogging.

No distraction from Chatting buddies, emails etc. In the beginning I got irritated, as there was no Internet connection, but now I am getting used to it and my articles are now more focused. And actually I have installed “WLW” in my laptop and I can now start blogging from almost any place I love.

And more importantly, I can now keep blogging, even when there is problem with my “ISP”(Internet Service Provider), and I can publish the posts by taking my laptop to my friends home, who are using someother ISP.

3. Lot of options to play with images I insert into my articles now. We can revert the image in one click, we can contrast, sharpen etc.

4. Faster loading..Saves lot of time, over time.

5. Publish to most major blog services: Including Windows Live Spaces, SharePoint, WordPress, Blogger and many others.

6. Insert photos and videos, maps, tags and lots of other cool content, all in a snap. Powerful editing features include tables, spell checker, and quick hyperlinks.

7. We can write for multiple blogs using the same “WLW” :

Just add another weblog account and you can start writing for both blogs.

8. All the other options which is present in WordPress are also present in “WLW”.

There are many advantages of using Windows Live Writer and We recommend everybody to give it a try. Mac users can try Ecto. And for people who want to use simple and neat interface can try blogdesk.

Whatever you use and try, but don’t forget to give a try to “Windows Live Writer“, it has been improved a lot over time, and its latest release will really impress you, by the way it works.

Here are some screen shots of installing “WLW”:-

Select the software you want to install from the list and sit back and do whatever you want to do. Internet connection needed!

After installing “WLW”, click on the shortcut and configuration window opens- See Below screenshot, to configure your weblog account.

Weblog Homepage URL: Put your blogs homepage. Ex:- http://technotip.org

And in the username and Password section, type the username and password of your account(Windows Live Spaces, SharePoint, WordPress, Blogger or any other, that you use as your blogging platform.)

After successful installation and configuring, you can just test the power of “Windows Live Writer”.

WLW is a must use tool for bloggers using blogspot.com(bloger.com). Blogger(Blogspot) editor seems to be too bad(my personal opinion), using WLW helped get rid of all silly problems and now blogging has become more friendly.

What’s your opinion about “WLW” ? Which editor do you use ? Do you still use the default WordPress/blogger editors ?