The fun part is that both sides can use it as ammunition: “We sold more copies in a month than you’ve sold in ten years!” or “A month later and only 5% have upgraded? Either Windows 7 sucks or you’re all stupid, or both.” Good points all around, guys.

The total share of the net commanded by Windows 7 (and by OS X, as they’re currently tied) is around 5%. Windows in its various forms makes up 95% of web traffic, a statistic I found surprising. Windows’ total proportion has gone up a touch since the 7 launch, but that’ll likely revert soon as redundant installs and such are cannibalized.

The Two-way, NPR’s news blog, has a cursory story about the help NSA provided. Usually known as a spook organization intent on spying on people, the NSA is also “charged with protecting the nation’s national security computing infrastructure from online assaults.”

“More and more, we find that protecting national security systems demands teaming with public and private institutions to raise the information assurance level of products and services more broadly,” Schaeffer said.

The dominance of Microsoft Windows as a general-purpose computing platform means that the NSA has a vested interest in making it as secure as it can. The alternative is to enter into the OS development market to make GovOS, the only sanctioned operating system for use on U.S. government PCs. That’s impractical, to say the least.

Oh, and while the NSA is providing consultative services to the security models used in Microsoft operating systems, it can also surreptitiously insert backdoors to make it easier to spy on us. :)

Windows 7 users would be well-advised to block outgoing ports 139 and 445. Microsoft has confirmed the existence of a vulnerability that affects SMB in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 RC2. Worst case scenario: you connect to a malicious server then it crashes your PC.

The beauty here is that, in a perfect world, these ports would be blocked by default, making the exploit much less troubling. Let’s say you’re messing around on your computer, and all of a sudden Windows (or your firewall of choice) prompts you to open port 445 for a connection. So you say to yourself, “Hmm, I’m pretty sure my game of chess doesn’t need to access an SMB share to work properly, so I’m going to go ahead and deny that port-open request.”

But that’s now how the real world works.

It comes down to this: block those two ports when you’re not actively using them. No problems.

I could make some sort of snide remark about this being the first of many (maybe!) Windows 7 exploits, but let’s face it: when you’re dealing with so many lines of code, you’re bound to find a few bugs in there.

Oh, and Microsoft hasn’t said when it plans to patch the exploit. Presumably it will do so with its next big first Tuesday of the month patch day.

via Slashdot

Somebody should tell Doug “netbook” Aamoth that Windows 7 seems to be a battery hog. The fine folks at Laptop magazine have put three different netbooks to the test, determining their respective battery life under both Windows XP and Windows 7. Looks like Windows XP is the winner.

The netbooks test include the Toshiba mini NB205, ASUS Eee PC 1008HA, and HP Mini 311. They were all subjected to Laptop’s standardized test, which consist of Web browsing over Wi-Fi. You know, like you do in real life. Any and all “power-saving” features were turned off, so as not to give one netbook an unfair advantage over another.

The winner? It seems Windows XP is more energy efficient than Windows 7, with the older operating system lasting, on average, 47 minutes longer than the new kid on the block.

Of course, now you’d have to give up all the improvements that are present in Windows 7. Then again, you are using a netbook, so you’re already walking in with a loss.

Jajaja! Major Nelson, of Xbox fame, sent his fellow Microsofties this big banner congratulating them on releasing Windows 7. One billion Achievement Points! I’ve had an Xbox 360 for three years now, and I only have around 5,000 such points. I guess I’m a failure.

PCR-Online interview,

One of the things that people say an awful lot about the Apple Mac is that the OS is fantastic, that it’s very graphical and easy to use. What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7 – whether it’s traditional format or in a touch format – is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics. We’ve significantly improved the graphical user interface, but it’s built on that very stable core Vista technology, which is far more stable than the current Mac platform, for instance.

I’m thinking that last sentence could be debated seeing as OS X is built on top of Unix, but whatever. Windows 7 works great and that’s all I really care about.

[image via arstechnica]

The service takes about 40 minutes and includes a full install as well as a quick crack. Win7 Family Edition costs $11.

I haven’t actually seen any Win7 cracks – it just never came up in my searches – but this points to the possibility that either Win7 is hard to install (which I don’t believe is the case) or that the cracks are quite complex right now, similar to the old tricks you had to play with XP.

via Shanzai

So what kind of gain is Redmond looking at? Round-about a 1% increase in October. Now before you put your flaming hats on, Mac-lovers, that’s a 1% absolute increase, meaning that the percentage of computers running 7 in the world went from 1.75% to 2.82%. That’s a pretty significant gain, though I admit it is ripe for mockery by the ignorant.

The 1% gain, indicated by statistics collected by StatCounter, is accompanied by a 1.2% drop in Vista and .5% drop in XP installs. It’s worth considering that since these are based on computers browsing around the internet, a lot of business PCs and servers are probably left out of the count — though they too will take a while to ramp up as IT departments figure out just how they want to go about it.

OS X gained half a point during October too, so they’re not standing still either. 7 represents a bigger threat than the divided XP/Vista front. In a year that 2.82% will probably have the decimal point moved right one place, and its user-friendly features and critically-acclaimed status may actually put a bit of pressure on Cupertino. We’ll soon see, though.

via PCWorld

How keen are you on touchscreens? Keen enough to navigate Windows 7 while using such a monitor? Acer has a new one, the T230H, which will allow you to do exactly that. A big selling point is that it’ll increase your productivity, but I’m not so sure.

I mean, is it easier to use a touchscreen to navigate Excel, or flip about Firefox? You’ll still have a keyboard, I should think, so it’s not like the iPhone where you’re forced to get used to this radical, new interface; you have no other choice. Here, you’re split between touching the screen and typing away on a traditional keyboard.

But I’m still not the biggest fan of touchscreens yet, so my bias is palpable.

Anyhow, the specs:

• 16:9, 23-inch, 1920×1080 LCD.

• HDMI interface

• 2ms response time, which should placate the twitch gaming crowd

• 80,000:1 contrast ratio

And so on. Again, there’s got to be a market for these things, but I’m not so sure I’m a part of it.

The video is strangely disturbing, and I’m not sure exactly who the costumed heroes are (Ballmer? Gates?) but that’s not the really funny part. You’d think that someone being on stage demo’ing a technology would have looked at the thing first. Had he done that, he would have learned that using your fingernail doesn’t work, and not looked like an chump.

To be fair, crashes happen during demos. It happens to everyone, you’re showing off your shiny new thing and oops, there it goes. This was user error and shouldn’t be blamed on Win7.

“Family Guy Presents: Seth and Alex’s Almost Live Comedy Show” has already been made, of course, and will air as usual, but it won’t be Microsoft sponsoring its the advertisement-free presentation. Microsoft decided that “riffs on deaf people, the Holocaust, feminine hygiene and incest” weren’t a good fit for its brand image. Really, Microsoft? Then why did you decide to partner with a show that jokes about those things every week without fail?

[via TechFlash]

Oh, dear. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was on The Today Show (international viewers: The Today Show is a morning news and entertainment program that airs on NBC, a big TV network here) to unveil Windows 7. Call me crazy, but isn’t that a first-gen MacBook Pro in the background? Good job, NBC!

I’ve embedded the video from Hulu for our U.S. readers, and for international readers here’s a few screencaps:

Once again, bravo, NBC, for a job well done! (And people call us sloppy, with a budget one-zillionth that of The Today Show!)

It blows my mind that some marketing guru would think that slapping the Windows 7 name onto a seven patty burger would improve the Windows image. Of course it took an equally moronic Burger King suit to agree to sell out and show the world that Burger King is willing to create the world’s most unhealthy foods. Look at that thing. It’s a tower of cardiac arrest. The meal better come with a voucher for a buy one bypass, get one free. Gross. Just gross.

[thanks for the pics, Christoph]

Look at these early Windows start-up sounds. They look primitive now but imagine being a young man in the late 1980s and your parents have just brought you home a new Packard Bell x86 machine. Back in those days sound cards were premium items and to hear an operating system sing to you when you start it up was a really big deal. The vast majority of computer users during that time would have never heard most of these sounds.

The Windows 7 version isn’t nearly as impressive, as evidence below, but I think we’ve replace sexy sounds with sexy videos in this visual age.