Windows 7 News
Windows 7 Sparked Surge in Business Demand for PCs
Nov 20th
A senior Dell executive is bullish about a recovery in PC demand from businesses, saying the Oct. 22 release of Windows 7 sparked a surge in PC sales for the company.
This surge in PC sales led by the release of Windows was preceded by slowdown as customers put off plans to buy new computers. This helps explain why Dell’s third-quarter revenue came in below analysts’ expectations, said Steve Felice, president of Dell’s business unit that’s focused on small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), during a conference call with reporters on Friday.
“At the beginning of October, we saw demand decline as customers put off their decision to buy, to wait for Windows 7 to fully launch. As soon as Oct. 22 hit, both our consumer business and our SMB business had a very healthy increase in demand,” Felice said.
Prior to the launch of Windows 7, Dell’s direct sales in the Americas were running at about 80 percent of the company’s expectations. However, once Microsoft released the new operating system, sales surged and that figure rose to 110 percent, he said.
“We didn’t just see that increase in the last 10 days of October, we’ve now seen three weeks of November where that demand has been pretty consistently up,” Felice said.
“That’s why even though analysts had expected even more revenue, we’re still quite bullish on the recovery that’s happening with the demand cycle in the commercial business and we believe you’ll see that in Q4,” he said.
Unlike larger rivals Hewlett-Packard and Acer, which have benefitted from a consumer-led recovery in PC demand, Dell remains heavily dependent on PC sales to large companies and SMBs, even as the company works to diversify the range of products and services that it offers.
“We’re not surprised to see the recovery at Dell come a little later than others might have reported,” Felice said, noting Dell’s earlier comments that the second quarter represented the bottom of the downturn and the company would see the beginning of a recovery during the third quarter.
“That’s exactly what we’re seeing and I think you’ll see continued strength in Q4,” he said.
Source:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/182724/windows_7_sparked_surge_in_business_demand_for_pcs.html
Windows 7 RC expected to be publicly released in May 2009
Mar 18th
Release Candidate Dates:
* Windows 7 RC escrow build and Windows Server 2008 R2 is scheduled for release on the fourth week of April 2009. They will be internal escrow builds.
* Windows 7 RC1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 will be publicly released at the end of May 2009
Other Important Dates:
* The most recent build compiled is 7061 and was compiled on March 11th, 2009
* The Windows 7 pre-RTM Creative Test build will be compiled by the last week of July 2009
* Distribution of Windows 7 RTM Master image will be distributed to Technet/MSDN subscribers in August 2009
* Officially, the new products, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 will be presented at the IT Forum at the beginning of November 2009 (The source did not state clearly whether this would be a release, announcement, or demo and used a bad choice of words)
* Office 14 Beta will show up in the first few days of July and won’t be public. Beta 2 will be released five months after. Office 14 RTM will be released sometime in the beginning of March 2010.
Windows 7 latest Build 7025 Screenshots with IE8 RC1 – download may leak soon
Jan 27th
The official Windows 7 Beta was released by Microsoft with the build version of 6.1.7000.0 (build 7000). This had leaked earlier to Internet via torrents. Before the official beta was released by Microsoft, screenshots of several different builds like build 7004, 7012, 7015 and 7016 of Windows 7 came up on different forums online.
The latest build to show in screenshots is Windows 7 build 7025. Microsoft has not confirmed anything about it yet but this might be true. The screenshots of Windows 7 build 7025 have been posted by a beta tester on Chinese forum. There’s are no conclusive changes in the user interface except some user interface touch ups to Control Panel, Media Player and different versions show up for installation now just like Windows Vista. Hope Microsoft will not confuse its customers like it did with Vista with many version releases.
The most notable thing in the said build 7025 is that Internet Explorer 8 has changed from Beta to Release Candidate 1 version 8.0.7025.0. The said screenshots show that Windows 7 Build 7025 has build version of 7025.0.x86fre.winmain.09120-1850, and is compiled on January 20th, 2009 at 1850 hours. The installed copy of Windows 7 Build 7025 will expire on July 2nd, 2009 too.
Above clearly shows the build and version of Windows 7 build 7025.0.x86fre.winmain.09120-1850. It might leak to Internet sooner or later and download links and torrents of build 7025.0.x86fre.winmain.09120-1850 might show up soon.
Some other images from the said build:
