If you do not know what new features will be included in Windows 7, take a look at the Windows 7 RC

Vista was given a bad reputation for having bad compatibility with many portable devices- has Windows 7 followed in Vista’s footsteps or have they taken another path?

Microsoft has been pouring their heart and soul into creating Windows 7, which could be their best operating system yet, according to analysts.  There has been much controversy over the release of Windows 7 in the last month or so, as you may have observed. Initially, Windows 7 RC was to be announced publicly on May 5th, but earlier for TechNet and MSDN subscribers. However, a couple of days later, it turned out that it had been leaked on P2P file-sharing sites , just what everyone needed after the Pirate Bay trial. Well, now that it has been released, TechCombo would like to review Windows 7 RC for our readers, let’s see what all this hype is really about!

Installing Windows 7 RC

Before you decide to install Windows 7, you must take a quick look at the system requirements that Microsoft suggest:

- 1GHz or faster CPU.

- 1 GB of RAM for 32-bit systems OR 64-bit systems 2GB of RAM.

- 16 GB of available disk space for 32-bit OR 20 GB for 64-bit.

- DirectX 9 graphics device with Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) 1.0 or higher driver.

These requirements are rather low and so the majority will have no problems in passing them. The installation itself is one of the quickest yet, on average taking sixteen minutes. Vista comes close, taking nineteen minutes and XP requires forty five minutes (faster computers will take around thirty minutes.) In addition to the system requirements, Microsoft strongly advise you not to install Windows 7 over Beta as this can cause some difficulties and will, most probably, take up more of your precious time. The “16 minute” installation process is not too demanding at all, needing you to register the product key, edit elementary data like username, and other minor settings.

New and Notable Features

- New Taskbar with “pinned” shortcuts instead of the conventional “buttons” to run a program.

- Capability of hovering over a program in use, and preview a thumbnail. In the case of multiple windows of the same program, the first icon will shrink and the two or three icons will be next to each other accordingly, so that you are able to choose whichever one you want to go on.

- Right clicking has a completely new function. If you were to have a typical program e.g.Firefox on your taskbar,right clicking it in Vista would have brought up ‘properties’ or c’reate shortcut’. However, in Windows 7, a list containing the most frequently used sites as well as programs you have previously pinned, will be brought up.

- Another feature they have edited is the notification region. The ‘show hidden icons’ button arrow face has changed direction; before it was facing westwards but now faces north. What I have noticed is that it seems to hide one more item than Vista.

- Improved “Show desktop” button. It has moved positioned and now has stationed itself on the right of the time icon, in the bottom right hand corner. In addition to the change in placement, whenever you hover over the “Show desktop” icon, all the windows that are open automatically become see-through revealing whatever is on your desktop.

- New “Jump Lists” Jump lists are positioned in the Start menu, which are normally for specific programs like Web browsers or Multimedia applications. You can identify jump listed programs because there is a small black arrow pointing to the right; and in there contains various shortcuts. For example, again I’ll use Firefox, it will show frequently used sites as well as tasks.

New jump lists in start menu

- Windows 7 “Libraries.” Libraries are effectively a virtual network connected to any computer in your home network. It enables you to find and sort all your Documents, Pictures, Music, Videos into one “server.” It also means you can now sort videos by length and photos by when you took them originally. Though, in this library, images are just linked to there, so they are there to view only.

- New “Network” in Homegroups. Pretty clear from the name itself. Homegroups effectively allows you to share files with the nearest Windows 7 computer or laptop on your home network. This is a useful tool because you can print anything from your computer to the same printer that the other Windows 7 users utilizes, though when first set-up there is a exclusive password that cannot be changed, which enables to share files, one tip: do not lose or forget that password otherwise you cannot use this interesting feature.

- Windows Media Centre benefits two countries at least. For the US, TV listings on the Internet have been integrated into the main TV guide which gives various shows. For the UK public, the football fanatics will be bouncing about because you can now watch channels like Liverpool and Arsenal in Extras.

Media Centre makes, USA happy as it has Internet TV listings in their main TV guide, and UK public happy as they can watch favourite football teams online without leaving their computers!

- Added Windows Media Player appearances such as support for .mov files i.e. Quicktime files.

- Newest Internet Explorer 8 embedded into Windows 7, no critics can whine about this problem this time!

- Improved Devices menu in which you can control all your hardware from one location.

- Updated Applications including Paint, WordPad and Windows Update ( now new applications updates, as well as normal updates.)

- User Account Control (UAC) You control the settings now, this means no more MASSIVELY annoying UAC, as was in Vista.

You can now effectively control UAC

Here’s an in-depth video going through what is new in 7:

Our opinion

Pros

- Installation time is 2x faster.

- Much better performance than Vista. Microsoft made performance top priority in the development of Windows 7, and they seem to have done their job well.

- New XP Mode feature

- Fresh User Interface, which is definetely an improvement over Vista.

- Interacts with Windows XP’s assurance and Vista’s homely feeling to produce Microsoft’s best operating system as of yet.

-Backward compatability. There is no need to purchase software or hardware, if you are going to upgrade to 7.

-Some ‘trippy’ desktop wallpapers.

One of the many crazy desktop wallpapers provided. Not all of them are like this though, there are some normal, 'boring' ones as well!

Cons

- 5 “unnecessary” editions rather than one original edition. The 5 that have been released are:

1. Windows 7 Starter.
2. Windows 7 Home Basic.
3. Windows 7 Home Premium.
4. Windows 7 Professional
5. Windows 7 Ultimate.

Most notably, Windows 7 Starter is really just a squashed up version of Windows 7 Home Premium. Perhaps, because we are in the recession, Microsoft need to differentiate consumers in order to squeeze every penny from our pockets to get through the bad economic climate.

-No Quick Launch bar (thankfully it can be created manually)

- Startup control has been removed from Windows Defender

Conclusion

I think that Windows 7 is the best operating system Microsoft have ever produced, it is surprisingly solid and stable. This Windows 7 RC offers exactly what Microsoft initially said, with improved features and a stable operating system set up perfectly for the final released of Windows 7. For anyone using any other Windows platform such as Vista or XP, this is now the time you should consider upgrading because, you never know, you could be in for a pleasant surprise! As a consumer, when the final Windows 7 edition, when all the bugs are completely mended, it will almost definitely be a huge success, especially as Microsoft are giving users the chance to use it for 1 year for free.

If you have used the new Windows 7 RC, let TechCombo know your views! Just fill out the comment box below along with any feedback you have.

Many People always wanted Ubuntu. Ubuntu has many things like Open Office which can edit Microsoft office documents and Desktop effects like wobbling effects and a lot more! This Tutorial is going to teach you how to install linux on your computer. More specifically how to install Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, or Mythbuntu on your Windows based computer.

Requirements:

Memory 256 MB memory

Hard disk Space 5 GB

Operating System Windows 98, 2000, XP, Vista

There is an easy way of installing Ubuntu rather than installing it by a process known as dual booting you can install Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, or even Mythbuntu on your Windows based computer which includes Windows 98, 2000, XP, and Vista. Before installing Ubuntu you’re gonna have to create a new Hard Disk drive partition. Follow these below steps to install Ubuntu or others like Xubuntu.
1. Download Wubi from http://www.wubi-installer.org

2. Make a new partition. For more info on how to make a new partition click here.

3. Open the wubi installer and select the New partition u made Under installation Drive

4. Select the desktop environment you want and the language you want and finally enter the password twice then click on Install.

After clicking on install wubi will download the Desktop Environment you’ve selected and it will ask you to restart after its done.

After you restart your computer you’ll have to select the operating system you want to login to. Also known as dual booting.

This tutorial goes through the process of dual booting and shows you how to dual boot on your computer. To dual boot an operating system you need the .ISO image of the the operating system you want to install. For example you want to install “Ubuntu” on your computer which has Windows Xp or Windows Vista you can download the .ISO image from http://www.ubuntu.com/download and burn it to a disk. You may also want to try the new windows 7 beta which u can download from torrents.

If you would like to dual boot your computer with Windows 7 beta you can just Google“Windows 7 beta build 7000 torrent” and select one of the results to download the torrent. you need to have a torrent client like “utorrent” or “Bit torrent” to download torrents. If you would like to get more info on that click here.

If you don’t know what your doing then don’t do this! You can mess up your whole computer if you don’t know what you are doing.

NOTE: If you want to install UBUNTU then download wubi from  here. Wubi installs ubuntu as a program in Windows so it is recommended that you install it this way.

To burn an .ISO image to a disk you need to have the right program to burn it to. Tech combo recommends that you use infra-recorder to burn the ISO file and burn it to an empty disk. You may burn the ISO image to a CD or DVD. if the ISO image is “less than” 700 MB then you can use a CD if it’s more than 700 MB then you should use a DVD, if its more than that then you’re gonna have to use a dual layer DVD which can hold up to 8.54 gigabytes. We are going to use Infra recorder (which you can download from here to burn the image. To burn an ISO image just follow the below steps

1. Put an empty CD or DVD in your Optical drive  (place where you put your CD or DVD)

2. Open Infra recorder and click on “Write Image”

3. Select the .ISO image and click open.

4. For write speed select the lowest speed possible to get
better results ( the higher the speed of burning process the greater the chance
of disk unfunctionality is possible)

5. Then click OK and wait for it to finish

After that make a new partition.

***Note: If you cancel the process your CD or DVD may not be usable again unless it is a CD-RW or DVD-RW.

To make a new partition follow these steps:

This process applies to Windows Xp and Windows Vista.

(You can also open run by Pressing Windows key+R on your keyboard if you’re on XP)

1. Click on start

2. Right click on Computer and click on “Manage”

3. from the left side bar click on “DISK MANAGEMENT”

which is Under Storage.

4. After that right click on your main hard disk

drive(”C drive”) and click on “Shrink Volume”

5. Then enter the amount of space you want to shrink it to (15 GB or more is recommended).

After you’ve made a new partition & burned the CD put it in the OPTICAL DRIVE or the place where you put CD or DVD, and change your boot order to DVD drive. If you don’t know how to change the boot order then click here. After you change the boot order press any key on the keyboard when it says “press any key to continue…” to boot it from CD. While installing make sure you install it on the “NEW PARTITION”. If you install it on your main hard disk drive then you’ll loose all your data on that drive.

Then follow steps and install the operating you want to install.

If you have any questions or comments leave them below.