Thanks to Windows Server boss Bill Laing, we now know that Windows Server 2008 R2 will be released this calendar year. Since Windows Server 2008 R2 is the server version of Windows 7, we can deduce from this announcement that the successor to Windows Vista will certainly arrive before the end of the year. And what's up with the "quite major announcements" about Windows 7 Microsoft is talking about?   Bill Laing revealed the plans for 2008 Server R2 during an interview. Generally, the server ve

It had been announced a while ago already, but today Microsoft finally took the wraps off its latest server offering: Windows Server 2008 Foundation. Foundation is a cut-down version of the Server 2008 family, but Microsoft uncharacteristically did not remove all that much. It won't be sold as a stand-alone product; rather, OEMs get to sell it pre-installed.   The limitations imposed upon Windows Server 2008 are fairly reasonable. It can only serve up to 15 users, but does not support virtuali

The Windows 7 beta release is already a few months old now, and Microsoft has already made quite a number of changes to its new windows release after that, as detailed in the Engineering 7 weblog. These changes would make it to the public via the release candidate, but it has always been a bit unclear as to when it would arrive. Thanks to a slip-up, we now know the RC is coming in May.   via > http://www.osnews.com/story/21204/Windows_...e_Coming_in_May

About a year after the first beta (which was followed by another beta and a release candidate), Microsoft has announced the release of the final version of Internet Explorer 8, the company's newest browser. The focus of Internet Explorer 8 is better standards compliance, security, and making "common online tasks faster and easier".   more > http://osnews.com/story/21163/Microsoft_Re...rnet_Explorer_8

"Over the weekend, I put Windows 7 build 7000 on my desktop and Windows 7 build 7057 on my laptop, and went through trying to spot as many changes between the two as I could. Although I go deeper than I did with build 7048, this is still not a comprehensive list. There is almost three months difference between the two builds: the beta was compiled on December 12, 2008, at 2:00pm and the leaked build 7057 was compiled on March 5, 2009, at 8:00pm, so there's a lot of work to cover. This post is ab

Update: RC-escrow builds are not the same as RC builds released to public and thus updated the article's title and content to reflect the same.   Neowin earlier reported that Windows 7 RC is expected on April 10, 2009, but it looks like Microsoft has updated its schedule. Russian website Wzor has given some interesting tidbits about the revised 2010 TAP schedule of Microsoft. Wzor gives us the following dates related to Windows 7, Office 14 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010.   Windows 7  

In the latest Windows 7 build (7057), recently leaked to the public, Rafael Rivera over at Within Windows has found that users can customize the UI logon background images to include custom images.   Rafael reports that the functionality was probably designed for OEM manufactures to include custom images for Windows 7 in pre-configured computers, but users can now include their own images without the need to use a simple third-party program. After enabling a registry setting, users can use any

The Remote Desktop Client in Windows 7 is equipped with new features and enhancements via Remote Desktop Protocol 7 (RDP). The most interesting enhancement is the support for Desktop Composition, full Aero glass effect.       Below are the features introduced in Windows 7 Remote Desktop Client   * Windows 7 Aero support * Direct 2D & Direct 3D 10.1 application support * True multi-monitor support * RDP Core Performance Improvements * Multimedia enhancements