<IT
WORLD> Windows users in seventh heaven By Martin J
Young
HUA HIN - After months of
testing, touting, evaluating and marketing,
Microsoft's Windows 7 finally hit the shelves this
week. October 22 had been the long-awaited launch
date for all of those that have struggled with
Windows Vista over the past year or two. Windows 7
will come pre-loaded on new PCs as of this week,
and the new operating system promises to deliver
above and beyond its much-maligned predecessor.
The formal launch will take place over
several days in New York at a number of events
with attendees including Microsoft chief
executive, Steve Ballmer, and a number of other
senior company executives. To coincide with the
launch, computer manufacturers are expected to
unveil shiny new Windows 7 machines packed
with gizmos such as
touch-screen monitors.
The launch is
likely to be low key compared to attempts to plug
previous incarnations of the software by the
company to wow its audience, when the likes of
Jerry Seinfeld and the Rolling Stones were paraded
for the audience. Vista users who have had their
19th nervous breakdown may see this week's release
as a welcome relief, and they can upgrade for free
if they have purchased Vista in recent months.
Others can buy Windows 7 in various retail
versions ranging from US$120 to $220.
Windows 7 home launch parties have been
encouraged in a marketing campaign to promote the
product between family and friends, but the
concept has only really succeeded in the comedy
value of a cheesy, earnest infomercial-tutorial
the company posted on YouTube. A rock band
certainly would have made a bigger bang.
With six editions of Windows 7 to choose
from, version confusion remains, however, the most
common will be Home Premium and Professional. The
32- and 64-bit editions are available in the same
package, so no need for extra versions on that
front, and selection is made on installation.
A winning move by Microsoft with this
iteration of the planet's preferred operating
system is that it will run comfortably on older
computers and lower-specification net-books, which
have taken the market by storm this year. It is
the first time that the software giant has not
doubled the hardware requirements for a new
Windows release, indicating that it has finally
got it right under the hood.
Upgrading for
XP users could prove tricky, however, as a
complete disk format and fresh installation is
required. Experts recommend doing this with any
new operating system anyway to keep the
installation clean and free of problematic
remnants of its predecessor. Another
recommendation, as with any new operating system
release, is to wait a year for all the bugs and
hardware incompatibilities to be ironed out.
If previous versions are anything to go
by, there will be a whole stack of them with
Windows 7.
However, love it or hate it,
Windows runs on over 90% of the world's PCs and
while Vista was labeled a failure, it sold more
copies than any of its rivals combined. This alone
speaks volumes, so if Windows 7 can live up to the
hype it is highly likely to increase Microsoft's
already burgeoning software monopoly, despite
rivals' efforts to get everyone to ditch their PCs
and start working from Google servers in the
clouds.
Internet Twitter may
have become a household name, but the site has yet
to really make a stand in terms of generating
serious revenue, despite its 55 million monthly
visitors. New deals with both Google and Microsoft
this week could change all that as the company has
made its stream of online messages - or "tweets" -
available to both search engines. Users of Google
and Bing, Microsoft's search engine, will be able
to request Twitter messages in query results which
will enable them to get up-to-the-minute
information on the topics they have requested.
It is highly likely that both Google and
Microsoft will include their ads along with the
results. The agreement will expand the coverage
and usage of the micro-blogging website and
integrate the real-time web with search
technologies.
Industry Amid all
the doom and gloom of revenue results this year in
the tech industry, two companies have shone above
the rest to report substantial profits for the
previous quarter. Apple Inc posted a 47% profit
jump for its fiscal 2009 fourth quarter and shares
responded rapidly by climbing 7.5% on Monday. The
California-based company defied the recession by
selling 3.05 million Macintosh computers, 10.2
million iPods and 7.4 million iPhones. The
unveiling of a faster iPhone in June, a new Snow
Leopard operating system for Macs in August and a
new iPod Nano in September all contributed to the
bumper sales figures. For all of fiscal 2009,
Apple said its profit rose 18% to US$5.7 billion,
or $5.36 per share, revenue climbed 13% to US$36.5
billion.
The other company also posting
profits increases came as no surprise. Google
announced that its revenue was up 7% from last
year. Total revenue reached US$5.94 billion, and
up from US$5.52 billion last quarter. Profits were
US$1.64 billion, up 27% from US$1.29 billion in
the third quarter of 2008, and up from US$1.48
billion during last quarter.
Stronger ad
sales were the catalyst for the increase as
advertisers vie for the attention of consumers who
are slowly loosening the grip on their wallets.
Company chief executive, Eric Schmidt, declared
that the worst of the recession was over and that
Google was starting a new phase of investment,
hiring and acquisitions ... as if they'd ever
stopped!
Martin J Young is an Asia Times Online correspondent based in Thailand.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times
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