Meanwhile, the Redmond company is almost begging hardware vendors to not make the same mistake as happened with Vista. When Vista first came out, finding good drivers for it was hell. One of the most important reasons for this was of course that at the time, Microsoft decide to use a completely new driver model, forcing the vendors in writing drivers for Vista from scratch.

While this is not the case for Windows 7, as it continues to build on the Vista model,  drivers that were built for Vista should work with 7 as well after some minor changes. This is definitely an advantage and will ensure that this new version is not badly perceived from the start (well, concerning drivers at least ).

On the other hand, there probably won’t be that much time for private testing. As said above, a public beta is to come out beginning 2009, and Microsoft is already hinting on an official release later that year. Of course nothing official yet (as usual from the Redmond boys).  Because of this, M$ is urging the HW-vendors to already start testing on the pre-beta, which of course also has been leaked already on many torrent sites.

A little note on this pre-beta though. All of you thinking to take a quick peek already at the new hot features coming up, hold your horses, as this release hardly stocks any of the new goodies. In fact, I tried to install this release myself on my VirtualBox, but the install failed .

Finishing up this article, I’d like to share with you all a rather funny post I found on the Net, concerning Microsoft’s plans to re-release almost every Windows version ever. Have fun!

This new hardware is developed by the Redmond company and is supposed to combine the power of optical and the precision of laser, providing a superior mousing experience.

It’s easy to recharge with the accompanied docking station and also has a whole new design & style, as the mouse emits a cool blue light when you pull it out of its docking.

It works as following, the mouse makes use of a proprietary chip which houses advanced algorithms and pixel architecture for even better tracking. The blue optics used provide superior navigational accuracy just like laser mice. This light also is emitted in a wider and more diffuse beam to aid it earlier mentioned accuracy, while also it’s more incoherent, providing the same experience in a dusty environment as it would on a clean surface. This new toy is available from this month, and priced around $100 (about €75).

While above is all presented very nice, I don’t think the majority of people will really notice the difference. Nowadays mice, especially the laser type, already provide a very good accuracy. Maybe some die-hard gamers will run to the stores to get this goody, but the average Joe is already well served with the existing technologies.

Does this really matter? No! In the end, the existing hardware will have to be replaced sooner or later, it’s just a matter of time before we all have a Bluetrack. On the other hand, since Microsoft has probably patented this technology, this leaves very little possibility for competitors to create their own variant. Either they have to take a licence with MS, or develop their own new technology. I don’t see a company like Logitech eager to use this technology, as they most likely have the resources to come up with something of their own.

I hope this is not going to be another ‘Microsoft-only’ thing, like we had with the Office document standards. Okay, you can in no way compare these to each other, but I wouldn’t be surprised if in the end it’ll be exactly the same deal…

Welcome to my new blog! I’m going to try to write about my life in IT here… This will be about all kinds of topics, but most, if not all, IT related.

Some of the topics I will be covering:

• Operating systems
• Hardware
• Software
• General IT news
• …

Come back soon to see more!