Now you can purchase the latest Windows 7 operating system from your nearest IT store.

Price details after the jump!

In conjunction with the launch, Microsoft and partners(Intel, HP, Dell, Acer, DiGi, AMD, Asus and Lenovo) will be holding roadshows at Plaza Lowyat, KL (2 – 8 November), Ikano Power Centre, PJ (4 – 8 November), Gurney Plaza, Penang (6 – 8 November), and City Square, JB (13 – 15 November).

Via LowYat.net

Windows 7 is not even launched and there are already lots of talk on Windows 8.

“I’ve seen a few Windows 8 references out there focused around the server version that mention new functionality Microsoft is working on to make Windows 8 Server an even stronger datacenter operating system. That dovetails with Microsoft’s slow but steady push toward offering customers not just a public-cloud hosting capability, but also a private one. For Microsoft, a private cloud will revolve around Windows Server. Some of the features/functionality developed by the Windows Azure operating system (Red Dog) team will undoubtedly find their way back into future iterations of Windows Server.

It’s still early. Windows 8 is unlikely to debut until 2011, at the earliest, given the way Microsoft is delivering Windows releases these days. I’ll be interested as to how Microsoft execs characterize Windows 8, given they decided to deem Windows 7 a “major” release and Windows Server 2008 R2 a “minor” one.”

Read full post here

Google recently announced the new Google Chrome Operating System that it plans to develop for small netbooks to full-size desktop systems.

In its official blog, Google said that Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and they are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year.

“The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.” said Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management and Linus Upson, Engineering Director, Google.

Some of the companies that Google are working with include Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.

The largest search engine in the world said that Chrome OS is different from Android operating system as Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks although it may overlap. However Google said that more choices will benefit consumers including Google.

Video: Chrome OS: Will it succeed?

Must read:

• 10 Questions for Google’s New Chrome OS
• Google’s Chrome OS: Reaching for the Cloud
• Google Chrome OS takes shine off Windows
• HP, Acer Developing Google Chrome OS Netbooks
• Google sees separate paths for Android, Chrome OS
• Intel cozying up to Google Chrome OS

Microsoft latest Window 7 was successfully installed on Amtek U560 UMPC running Intel A100 600Mhz processing speed, and 512 MB Ram.

Video after the jump.

A court in southern China convicted 11 people on Wednesday of violating national copyright laws and participating in a sophisticated counterfeiting ring that for years manufactured and distributed pirated Microsoft software throughout the world.

The men were sentenced by a court in the city of Shenzhen to terms of 18 months to six and a half years in prison, according to court papers released late Wednesday.

Microsoft applauded the sentence in a statement released late Wednesday Beijing time, saying they were the stiffest sentences ever handed down in this type of Chinese copyright infringement case.

Microsoft has called the group part of “the biggest software counterfeiting organization we have ever seen, by far” and estimated its global sales at more than $2 billion.

Some legal specialists consider the case to be a landmark because it involved a joint antipiracy effort by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Chinese Ministry of Public Security. Law enforcement officials said it was also notable because the group operated like a multinational corporation, producing and distributing high-quality counterfeit software that was created and packaged almost identically to the real products, despite Microsoft’s antipiracy measures.

The counterfeit goods, like Windows XP and Office 2007, were sold over the Internet and shipped from China, mostly to the United States and Europe, where they commanded relatively high prices, investigators say. American and Chinese officials say they broke up the criminal ring in July 2007 with the arrest of 25 people in China, the dismantling of several manufacturing facilities and the confiscation of counterfeit software valued at more than $500 million.

“This is absolutely unprecedented,” David Finn, Microsoft’s associate general counsel for worldwide piracy and counterfeiting issues, said. “The size and scope of the operation is unlike anything we’ve seen before. We found their products in 36 countries.”

A separate trial involving nine suspects in Shanghai has not yet reached a verdict. That group has been accused of counterfeiting Microsoft and Symantec software and distributing it worldwide.

Legal specialists say that software pirates are becoming increasingly sophisticated and that the two court cases show that China is capable of exporting high-quality, fully packaged software that could easily be sold as if it were the real thing. Even customs officials have been fooled by the counterfeits, which contained hologram markings and Microsoft’s difficult-to-replicate “certificates of authenticity,” investigators say.

Counterfeiting experts say the ring appeared to be less interested in selling its products inside China, where counterfeit Microsoft software can be purchased for as little as $3. It sought the higher-value export market.

Microsoft said its 75-member antipiracy team had been tracking the ring since 2001. The F.B.I. began its operation, code-named Summer Solstice, in 2005 and cooperated with Chinese officials.

American politicians and corporate executives have been pressing China for years to crack down on piracy and intellectual property rights abuses that included music, film and expensive software products. Software piracy is rampant in China, where about 80 percent of computers are believed to use counterfeit software, according to the Business Software Alliance.

The counterfeiting has caused some friction between American and Chinese officials, but China insists that it has made significant progress in its fight against intellectual property violators. The successful prosecution of one of the biggest software counterfeiting rings is seen by the government as a major breakthrough.

Shenzhen officials declined to comment Wednesday on the court verdict. While the F.B.I. and Chinese officials say hundreds of millions of dollars worth of material were seized in a variety of international raids, the Shenzhen court found on Wednesday that the suspects on trial there had sold less than $200,000 worth of counterfeit products overseas.

It is unclear whether others pocketed much greater sums or whether many more ringleaders are still at large.

Most of those convicted Wednesday had completed only middle school, according to court documents. But members of the group had access to one of China’s biggest disk manufacturing companies in Shenzhen through the use of fake licenses, court papers said.

The counterfeit Microsoft software was produced using manufacturing equipment that costs millions of dollars, investigators said, and appeared in English, German, Italian, Korean, Spanish as well as other languages. The Chinese government found warehouses filled with molding machines, gilding machines, sealing machines and air compressors.-Ny Times

Both wireless carriers and software developers are already holding devices with the new Palm “Nova” OS, Palm chief executive Ed Colligan revealed in a financial earnings conference call yesterday.

Speaking with financial analysts, Colligan aggressively promoted the new Nova platform, saying that it would play a major role in returning the company to profitability in fiscal 2010.

“Our first next generation phone is set for launch in the first half of calendar year 2009 as planned,” Colligan said. “It’s early in this space, and there’s an enormous amount of opportunity left” for new handheld OS and device entrants, he said.

Palm is widely expected to announce Nova and the first Nova devices on Thursday, January 8 at the CES trade show, though the company hasn’t officially confirmed that date.

Palm has been “extremely pleased at [the] positive reaction” it has seen from carrier partners when showing them the new platform, Colligan said. The company has also brought some existing software developers into the fold, to make sure the new platform launches with third-party software already available, he said.

“There are existing developers that we’ve briefed; we want to make sure that we have a robust set of applications as we launch the product, but we haven’t made it a broad-based thing at this time,” Colligan said.

Palm will also continue to develop Windows Mobile products, Colligan said. The new OS will be targeted more towards consumer applications, where “Windows Mobile will continue to be our platform of choice for enterprise devices.”

Colligan also said that the Palm Treo Pro, currently available through limited AT&T and T-Mobile channels, will be launched “in partnership with a major U.S. carrier” over the next quarter.

It also sounded like Palm won’t have any upgrades for the existing Centro or their PDA lines, which include the Z22, E2 and T|X models. Apart from new Nova devices, Palm will focus on refreshing and expanding the Treo Pro line, Colligan said. The company will continue to sell PDAs, but not make any new ones, he said.

“We will push those out into the marketplace as long as there is sufficient demand … we’re not developing new ones, so there’s an inevitable end, but I think that right now we’re playing it out,” Colligan said. “We’re going to continue to sell them as long as there is demand for those products.”-PC Mag

The Wall Street Journal reports Motorola Co-CEO Sanjay Jha has decided to adopt Google’s Android mobile operating system as one of the company’s three platforms for building next-generation cellular handsets and smartphones.

Jha, who left Qualcomm to join Motorola in early August, also reportedly intends to further trim the company’s workforce. Citing people familiar with the matter, the newspaper said Jha will announce the company’s next round of job cuts when Motorola reports its quarterly results on Thursday.

Jha informed company employees last month that he intends to reduce the number of handset operating systems that Motorola supports from seven to just three: Android, the company’s homegrown P2K mobile platform for low-cost handsets, and Windows Mobile, whose second-quarter smartphone deployments rose 20.6 percent year-over-year, according to Gartner. So cuts in the company’s development team won’t necessary hamper Motorola’s ability to innovate.

Hitching A Ride

Motorola’s continuing commitment to Windows Mobile was evident earlier this week when the company announced the availability of the Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system on its rugged mobile computers and enterprise digital assistants. However, with Apple’s iPhone enjoying raging success and with Android looking poised to follow suit, Motorola clearly needs to find a way to hitch a ride on the wireless industry’s high-growth curve.

Motorola recently told BusinessWeek it is “excited about the innovation possibilities on Android and looking forward to delivering great products in partnership with Google” and other Open Handset Alliance members. The publication also reported that Motorola has given spec sheets for its first Android-based handset to several major wireless carriers worldwide.

The bad news is that Motorola’s first Android-based handset may not be ready for a U.S. launch until the second quarter next year or go on sale in Europe until the following quarter. In the interim, Motorola is betting its investments in another potential wireless game-changer will pay off, both at home and abroad.

Motorola recently has been helping Sprint prepare its Xohm-branded WiMAX network in Chicago. Moreover, earlier this month Motorola announced it will build the infrastructure for a WiMAX system in Pakistan, and it plans to open a new WiMAX research center in Malaysia’s high-tech corridor in cooperation with the nation’s fledgling Multimedia University.

Risky Business

By embracing Android and cutting jobs, Motorola hopes to revive its struggling cellular handset business, which has been falling behind number-two Samsung Electronics in recent quarters. According to Gartner, Motorola’s second-quarter market share dropped 4.5 percent year on year, though the company did retain the global number-three slot ahead of LG Electronics.

Gartner Research Director Carolina Milanesi attributed the decline to Motorola’s “lack of 3G and ‘hot’ applications, such as GPS and good-quality Internet browsing” — which just happen to be two key features of the Android platform. “Motorola runs the risk of having to lower the prices of its handsets to compete because of a lack of features,” Milanesi said.

However, Co-CEO Greg Brown told investors in July that Motorola’s investment in its product portfolio for the second half and next year “would reflect an emphasis on 3G devices, improved platforms, and enhanced experiences such as messaging and touch.” This will further enable the company’s mobile devices to compete more successfully, he said.-News Factor Network

Microsoft Corp. is scheduled to stop selling its Windows XP operating system to retailers and major computer makers Monday, despite protests from a slice of PC users who don’t want to be forced into using XP’s successor, Vista.

Once computers loaded with XP have been cleared from the inventory of PC makers such as Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co., consumers who can’t live without the old operating system on their new machine will have to buy Vista Ultimate or Vista Business and then legally “downgrade” to XP.

Microsoft will still allow smaller mom-and-pop PC builder shops to buy XP for resale through the end of January. A version of XP will also remain available for ultra-low-cost PCs such as the Asus Eee PC.

A group of vocal computer users who rallied around a “Save XP” petition posted on the industry news site InfoWorld had been clamoring for Microsoft to keep selling XP until its next operating system, Windows 7, is available. The software maker has said it expects to release Windows 7 sometime in 2009.

Last week, Microsoft said it would provide full technical support for six-year-old Windows XP through 2009, and limited support through 2014.-AP

January

• Internet access and international telephone calls throughout Malaysia and most of Asia were disrupted for weeks due to an earthquake in Taiwan that damaged the underwater Asia Pacific Cable Network 2 link. Everything returned to normal in February after repairs by ship were completed.

• TIME Engineering Bhd signed an agreement with MSC Management Services, a subsidiary of Multimedia Development Corporation, to provide wireless broadband nationwide via WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) and WiFi.

• Malaysia won an award for its eBario Project, which provides information and communications technology to an isolated community in Sarawak. The 2006 International Innovations Gold Award came from a Canada-based non-profit organisation, the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management.

• The Recording Industry Association of Malaysia moved to stamp out illegal “over-the- counter” sales of song downloads to mobile phones.

• The Multimedia Development Corporation announced that the pilot of the animated series Saladin was ready to be screened.

• A new music download site, www.bimbit.com, was launched. It allows users to buy music using a points system instead of a credit card.

• PC maker Dell Inc announced it was building an 18,600sq m global business centre in Cyberjaya, which will be operational by year end.

• e-Commerce spending in Malaysia grew 70% in 2006 from previous years, announced industry researcher IDC.

February

• After five years of development and several missed deadlines, Microsoft Corp’s Vista operating system was finally launched.

• Trials of Maxis Telecommunications Bhd’s WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) service, with communications infrastructure provider Motorola Inc, began.

• More than 300,000 underprivileged women benefited from the Microsoft Unlimited Potential Grant. The funding is used to train women in the use of information technology to better their lives and livelihood.

• Four local outsourcing companies did the nation proud. They were among 100 global companies selected for the 2007 Global Service 100 list. They were Consulting Asia Pacific Sdn Bhd, Scicom (MSC) Bhd, SnT Global Sdn Bhd, and Vsource Asia Sdn Bhd.

• Despite considerable progress in combating piracy, the International Intellectual Property Alliance recommended that Malaysia remain on the US Trade Representative’s piracy watch list. It has been on this less criticial list since 2001.

• MDeC and Mimos signed another MoU, this time with the Islamic Development Bank for the provision of information and communications technology solutions to member countries of the Organisation of Islamic Conference.

• Malaysia’s first blog advertising network was launched. Nuffnang was introduced.

March

• Advertlets, Malaysia’s second blog advertising network was launched.

• A couple of RFID (radio frequency identification) technology companies in the country announced that the just-launched Malaysian Microchip has the potential give the industry a boost.

• The Motion Picture Association (MPA) strengthened its efforts against movie piracy in the country by coming down harder on websites that hawk pirated DVDs on the global market.

• The Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs flew in two specially-trained labrador retrievers to sniff out mailed packages for optical discs – a move to better combat the smuggling of pirated movies, music and software. The initiative was a huge success.

April

• Standards body Sirim Bhd ended a battle between IBM Malaysia and Microsoft Malaysia over competing technologies – the open-source based Open Document Format versus OpenXML, a proprietary solution owned by the software giant.

• A delegation of 27 Malaysian companies from the creative multimedia sector secured RM93mil worth of deals in Hong Kong.

• Applied research and development organisation Mimos Bhd agreed to establish research laboratories with organisations in Taiwan and South Korea.

May

• Telekom Malaysia Bhd and 16 other telecommunications companies in the region signed an agreement to build a US$500mil (RM1.75bil) undersea fibre-optic cable linking Asia to the United States. Called the Asia-American Gateway, it is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2008.

• DELL Inc agreed to work with Microsoft Corp and Novell Inc under an alliance that the rival software developers formed last year, to make it easier for the Windows operating system and the increasingly popular Linux operating system to work together.

• The Government establishes the intellectual property court to specially deal with cases involving music, software and movie piracy.

• Industry regulator the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission announced a plan to create a database of lost handphones, to aid the recovery of such devices and to discourage cellphone thieves.

July

• Popular computer game Tomb Raider, starring heroine Lara Croft, celebrated its 10th anniversary. To mark the occasion, developer Crystal Dynamics released Tomb Raider: Anniversary, which pleased local fans of the game.

• Standards body Sirim Bhd was handed the new task of helping local universities to research and develop products or services that could be marketed internationally.

• DELL Malaysia unveiled a range of colourful notebooks in a bid to take back its lead from rival Hewlett-Packard Co.

• An upgraded PlayStation3 console, with a bigger (80GB) hard drive for storing more videogames and high-definition movies, showed up in local stores.

• Alam Teknokrat founder and chief executive officer Tengku Farith Rithaudeen unveils his book about how to be successful in the local IT market.

• Microsoft Malaysia unleashes a new server operating system, Windows Server 2008.

• The Government revised the household broadband penetration target from 75% by 2010 to 50% by the same year.

August

• The Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) and India’s Satyam Computer Services Ltd launched Campus Link, a programme to turn local graduates in knowledge workers.

• Malaysian Skype users were among the 220 million worldwide that experienced a breakdown in the popular and free Internet-based phone service. Skype said the failure was not due to any malicious activity.

• MDeC upped its efforts to develop the local creative content industry by holding the first buyer fly-in programme in the country. About RM385mil worth of content was sold.

• The Halal Industry Development Corp teamed up with Microsoft Malaysia to come up with an online halal certification and processing application service called Remote Halal Certification.

September

• Nokia launched its Ovi digital media portal, which includes the Nokia Music Store – a virtual music shop offering downloadable tracks.

• Registration for the World Congress on Information Technology 2008, which will be hosted by Malaysia in May 2008, was opened.

October

• Sony put its 12-megapixel Alpha 700 DSLR camera on local shelves, marking its second foray into the DSLR camera market.

• Local Macintosh fans get Apple’s OS X Leopard operating system, which boasted more than 300 new features.

• MDeC announced a plan to build a Cyberjaya training facility to train local graduates to work in the information technology industry.

November

• The Entertainment Software Association launched “Operation Games Attack” to eradicate videogame piracy in Malaysia.

• Asus’ Eee PC ultra-portable notebook, weighing less than 1kg and features a 4GB solid state drive, WiFi connectivity and integrated card reader, makes an impact on local computer users. Stores reported that the first batch of 200 units sold out quickly.

• Google offers US$10mil (RM35mil) in prizes for developers worldwide to build software for its mobile phone operating system, Android.

• MakCik PC introduced. Claimed as the world’s slimmest PC.

• Third blog advertising network was launched—-GradMyAds

December

• The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit launched two new products – MyMeeting and MyWorkspace – at the Malaysian Government Open-Source Software Conference 2007. Both applications were designed as office productivity tools.

• Fourth advertising network was launched. Called Nufflets, it targets the Asia market and it is the first to use CPC text ads similar to Goolge in Malaysia.

Other source

“The stereotype for each OS is well known: Mac OS X is elegant, easy-to-use, and intuitive, while Ubuntu is stable, secure, and getting better all the time. Both have come a long way in a short time, and both make excellent desktops. So we have two great desktop operating systems out at roughly the same time. Let’s see how they stack up against each other.”

Read the review here