Windows 7 Tip of the Week

Windows has had a Performance Monitor since the earliest days of NT, but with Windows Vista, Microsoft added a great new utility, the Reliability Monitor, which tracks the overall reliability of your PC over time, keeping up to a year of PC use history. In Vista, the Performance Monitor and Reliability Monitor were part of a combined tool. But now, in Windows 7, they live as separate tools. You can access the Reliability Monitor, shown here, by typing relia into Start Menu Search.

The Reliability Monitor assigns a reliability rating to your PC on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is horrible and 10 is perfect. Out of the box, Windows 7 gets a perfect 10 but from there on its all downhill: Any glitch or failure in any application, hardware, or Windows will cause the reliability rating to immediately plummet. Meanwhile, days with no problems are barely rewarded, with only a slight upward bump. If anything, Microsoft is being too hard on itself, as most of these problems aren’t even the fault of Windows. But then, the Reliability Monitor isn’t monitoring just Windows. It’s monitoring everything on your PC.

Internet Explorer has continued its gentle drift southwards, having missed any boost from last year’s release of IE 8 and the sales onslaught behind Windows 7.

Meanwhile, rival Firefox saw its forward market-share march apparently halted by continued uptake of Google’s Chrome for the month of January.

Netmarketshare numbers for January 2009 reveal that Microsoft’s browser has lost more than seven per cent market share compared a year ago, taking it to a new low of 62.12 per cent for all versions of IE. The browser is also down from 62.69 per cent in December 2009.

IE 8, released in March 2009, has 22.37 per cent market share, just inching past the browser-that-won’t die, IE 6, on 20 per cent. While it was crowing about IE’s growth and overlooking the market share decline, Microsoft repeated past calls for customers to abandon IE 6.

The decline in market share for Microsoft’s browser came despite what should have been a fillip produced by the sale of new PCs running Windows 7 during the last three months of 2009. Microsoft last week claimed 60 million licenses of Windows 7 have been sold to date, a fact that saw income for its Windows business unit grow 98 per cent to $5.3bn on revenue that also grew 69 per cent to $6.9bn.

Firefox seems to have lost a fraction of its market share to Google’s Chrome according to Netmarketshare. Firefox’s market share for January was 24.43 per cent versus 24.61 per cent in December. Chrome scored 5.22 per cent, up from 4.63 per cent. A year ago, Firefox had 22.11 per cent market share while Chrome scored 1.52 per cent.

Ascotpc.com has coughed up OEM pricing details for Windows 7 this week, revealing deep discounts from the full retail version. If you want Microsoft’s latest OS on the cheap and missed out on earlier promotions, it’s certainly not a bad way to go.

Strictly speaking, OEM copies are intended for computer builders, but there’s really nothing keeping a thrifty individual from purchasing a copy for their own PC. But there are several drawbacks to consider. OEM versions are licensed only to one machine, barring a user from transferring the software to another PC. The OEM version also requires a clean install that wipes the hard drive and comes with little to no support from Microsoft. It also comes with a bare minimum of packaging and no literature on the operating system. On the other hand: cheaper price = good. (Linux folks may skip directly to the user comment section from this point to input snark).

Microsoft unveiled pricing of the main three editions of Windows 7 this June, showing a lineup pretty much in line with Vista prices.

According to Ascotpc.com, the 32-bit and 64-bit OEM versions of Windows 7 Home Premium cost $139.

The 64-bit OEM version of Windows 7 Professional is priced at $179.

Next up, the 64-bit OEM version of Windows 7 Ultimate will cost $244.

For more information you can visit Ascotpc.com

By Kelly Fiveash • Get more from this author

Expert analysis, debate and answers – The Register Agile Data Center Summit

An iPhone blogger has revealed a way of legally unlocking the device after paying off his mobile contract.

TheAppleBlog.com’s Olly Farshi claimed he legitimately unlocked his two-year-old iPhone 3G by taking advantage of what appears to be a European loophole.

He simply paid off a two-year contract with his carrier, Sonera. The Finland-based firm then forwarded the request to Apple and the next time Farshi synched with iTunes he was prompted to install an official carrier update.

“When upgrading to the iPhone 3GS, those same customers are given the option to pay off the remainder of their original 3G contract. Paying off the contract, and thus completing the two years prematurely, entitles the customer to have their iPhone 3G unlocked,” he wrote.

An official message popped up confirming that his “iPhone had been officially unlocked”.

Farshi described Sonera, which is the exclusive iPhone distributor in Finland, as a “less-repugnant version of AT&T”, before adding that the telco had “turned out to be a somewhat benevolent carrier”.

He claimed that “going the legit route was a much more painless process than using a proxy SIM or the Dev Team’s unofficial unlock”.

According to Farshi the unlock is permanent, allowing him to keep updating the iPhone’s OS, as well as being able to use any carrier SIM in the device.

Apple and Sonera could not immediately be reached for comment at time of writing.

By John Leyden • Get more from this author

A US man has been fined $210,000 for selling illegal copies of software through internet auction sites.

Matthew Miller of Newark, Delaware, was hit with $195K in damages and $15K in legal fees by US District Judge Susan Illston in the case brought in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. Miller sold unlicensed software packages from Adobe, Autodesk and Microsoft through a site called iOffer, frequently offering huge discounts.

Since Miller was offering dodgy software copies at car boot prices, it seems likely he might struggle to pay the six-figure fine imposed by the court.

iOffer, the online marketplace used by Miller, has appeared in other piracy cases, according to the BSA, whose statement on the case singles out the marketplace for criticism. “Pirates who have used iOffer to sell illegal copies of various software products have now been sued in several different lawsuits,” it said.

The auction site itself has a policy of taking down listings for items that infringe copyright, so a difference of opinion between the BSA and iOffer would revolve on how effectively this policy is enforced.

The BSA is noted for chasing businesses over software license infringements. It rarely takes enforcement action against individuals but made an exception in Miller’s case because his transgressions got too much.

“We prefer to educate and inform the public about the risks and consequences of using illegal software,” said Jenny Blank, senior director of Legal Affairs at the BSA. “But there are instances when the activities of individuals are both reprehensible and blatant, requiring the BSA and its members to act swiftly and definitively.”

Consumers ought to be wary of “too-good-to-be-true” offers from unscrupulous vendors, she added.

In related software piracy crackdown news, the BSA has reportedly agreed to a settlement worth a total of £50K ($87K) with four UK manufacturing firms over instances of alleged software license infringement. The figure includes licensing shortfalls for the use of software from Autodesk and Microsoft, but omits legal fees or other costs.

The four firms named in the case were Samuel Bruce Limited, J Tools Limited, Garran Lockers Limited and International Automotive Components Group Limited, CRN reports.

by MG Siegler on July 30, 2009

Mozilla’s Firefox browser is about to hit a major milestone: 1 billion total downloads. As you can see on this Twitter account set up to monitor the download numbers, it just crossed the 999,000,000 threshold earlier today. Judging by the rate at which it’s increasing, it could hit the milestone as early as tomorrow [update below, it will hit it tomorrow].

And Mozilla is preparing for the big day with a new site (not live yet), called www.onebillionplusyou.com, which will go live on Monday. There, you’ll find information about the one billion downloads Firefox has seen, we’re told. When the browser hits the milestone, more information should also be available here.

Firefox has made a major dent in Internet Explorer’s marketshare over the past few years. The latest numbers put IE’s share just over 54%, while Firefox approaches 30%. That’s pretty incredible when you consider that just a few years ago, IE had over 90% marketshare.

picture-156This one billion number is obviously for all the versions of Firefox, since it was launched in 2002 (though the Firefox name officially took hold in 2004). The most recent version, 3.5, launched exactly a month ago. It zoomed past a million downloads very quickly, and had 5 million downloads after day one — a huge number, though not quite as huge as the Firefox 3.0 launch.

Firefox Has now reached 1 Billion!!
Get your Firefox now