Since Windows 7 has been out for a while now, it’s time for some real-world benchmarks to start rolling in. I haven’t seen too many yet, but a first look appears to place Win 7 slightly above XP in some tests…but slightly below it in others. And in a totally unsurprising non-revelation, Vista didn’t win a single test.

This said, the tests that PC Magazine ran weren’t exactly exhaustive. They tested things like comparative start-up and shutdown times, video encoding, and also ran a few basic benchmarking tools. And while Win 7 won 3 tests, it only won the “shutdown time” and SunSpider comparisons by a large margin. Otherwise, the results aren’t all that different from XP. I’m sorry, but shutdown time is probably so irrelevant as to be useless as a test. I doubt most users care how long this process takes, since they’re likely to tell the machine to shut itself down and walk away for the night.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t upgrade to Windows 7 from XP. Upgrading might be the only way to make use of some newer hardware or applications (though the latter is probably debatable). This will become more evident over time, as Microsoft loses interest in XP and starts putting it lower on the patch/upgrade food chain. Eventually it’ll be put out to pasture, and you’ll be stuck upgrading to some newer Windows release.

If you have Vista however, the choice is somewhat clearer. Vista has low acceptance, is filled with annoyances and flaws, and didn’t win any of the tests (at best it was somewhere in the middle). Windows 7 is at least better than Vista, even if it doesn’t truly beat XP.

If you do decide to upgrade, remember that both Vista and Win 7 require more memory (1GB vs 256MB), CPU, and disk space than XP. Thus, your current machine may be a total dog after you upgrade. If your system is more than 3-4 years old, you might want to seriously consider a new machine. Prices are currently low, and you can make the migration from your older OS to Windows 7 in stages if necessary. If you try to upgrade XP to Windows 7 (which may not be possible at all) you may end up with an unusable system.

Don’t forget to take a backup if you try an upgrade, whether from XP to Vista or Vista to Windows 7.

It was only a matter of time, with Windows 7 now on the shelves and available for sale. Already the complaints have started piling up, but this time fewer seem related to the OS itself than to the upgrade process. Apparently some users either can’t be bothered to read the fine print when buying software, or certain retailers aren’t providing a clear enough description of a product on their websites.

The hullabaloo I’m referring to is a report that “a number of” users have bought the wrong upgrade from either Microsoft or Digital River, and experienced installation failures as a result. The users in question were running 32-bit Windows Vista (whether on 32- or 64-bit hardware isn’t mentioned) and tried running the 64-bit Windows 7 upgrade. This doesn’t work, as Microsoft clearly documents. You can upgrade a 32-bit installation of Vista to 32-bit Windows 7, but you can’t “cross the streams” and use a 64-bit upgrade copy.

Of course, the users are blaming Microsoft. Redmond responded by telling the affected users to get a refund from Digital River and repurchase a 32-bit upgrade copy instead. Whether DR will allow them to do this (its site says it won’t accept refunds on software) is unknown at this time.

On the other hand, XP or 2000 users who waited out the Vista morass are being punished by being required to run a “custom” (AKA “clean”) upgrade in order to get to Windows 7. This means you have to back up everything on your machine, boot the Windows 7 Upgrade process, and let it install a brand new copy of itself…no in-place upgrade from XP is possible.

“If you want to move from Windows Vista 32-bit to Windows 7 64-bit, or if you are running Windows XP [emphasis mine], you have to do a “Custom” or clean installation that must be started by booting off the Windows 7 64-bit DVD,” Michael stressed.” That’s going to anger lots of users, myself included. I suspect my next “upgrade” will be to Linux of some variety, rather than to another version of Windows.

It’s now only a matter of hours before Windows 7 officially hits the market. I bet the folks in Redmond are busily planning their “release parties” (the biggest joke of the season thus far) and hoping to get some downtime after the product ships. But how did we get to “7″ in the first place? Given the strange and sordid genealogy of Windows, a quick rundown and history lesson seems in order.

Originally, Windows wasn’t even an OS. Instead it was just an add-on to DOS (remember that?). You installed DOS 5 or 6, then put Windows on top of it. You booted to a DOS prompt, then started Windows when you wanted it. In those days, Windows 1 (which no one used), 2, and 3 were the available versions. But in around 1994, things started getting complicated.

First, Windows NT 3 (”New Technology” showed up. It was a totally new, 32-bit OS and few applications were available for it. It did not boot a DOS kernel, and DOS was only available in a console window. It was designed for the professional/technical market. At roughly the same time, Windows 95 came out. It was the first “user level” version to boot directly to the Windows logo…but it was still DOS under the covers.

Later, we got Windows 98 and NT 4.0. 98 started the process of removing the underlying DOS kernel, but it was still there in all its 16-bit glory. NT 4.0 was actually a pretty good OS, and more applications became available for it (mostly from Microsoft). Then there was the much-maligned Windows ME (”Millennium Edition”) at the user level, circa 1999. Few remember it, and they’re still in therapy.

With Windows 2000, NT and the ‘9x’ versions started converging. DOS was basically gone by this time, and 2000 was a very good, stable platform that integrated the 32-bit NT kernel with some nice user-level improvements. But then Microsoft started selling “home,” “professional,” and “server” editions. The whole morass of “which release do I want?” started getting worse. For myself, I’ve only ever used Professional editions and generally despise anything that says “Home” on the label.

Vista got its name, allegedly, because some clever idiot in marketing decided you could “see a vista through a window” (or something like that). Well, we all know how that ended.

Now we have Windows 7, which indicates Redmond is going back to the traditional 1, 2, 3 naming path. ‘95/’98 were “4,” 2000 was “5,”, XP/Vista were “6.” Or so I’ve read, anyway. Now we get to see whether it sells. And I’ll bet some people in Redmond are partying down while burying copies of Vista in a cemetery at midnight. Probably with stakes driven through the CD and installer guides.

Advance copies of what (one would expect) are the final release copy of Windows 7 have been available to certain parties, such as trade magazines and developers, for some time now. As a result, we’re starting to see the first reviews of the actual product, as opposed to the not-ready-for-prime-time “release candidate” versions that were under test earlier in the year. So far, the new Windows seems like it’s a big step up from Vista…but that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Naturally, we really won’t know how the new release behaves until it actually hits the street. No matter how much testing is done by reviewers and other early adopters prior to the magic release date, bugs will certainly be uncovered. Some people will love it. Others are guaranteed to hate it. The big question, of course, is “should I upgrade?”

According to at least one review, the answer is probably a resounding “no.” If you’re happy with Vista, or with XP, you’re probably better off staying with your existing OS. The upgrade to 7 will cost $120, and it may just not be worthwhile. Now, it’s a different story if you’re buying a new PC. Then you’ll probably want Windows 7 over much-maligned Vista, and it’s generally a good idea to buy the latest OS with a new machine anyway.

Early indications suggest that XP users won’t have fun upgrading their existing OS, since 7’s installer will effectively trash their existing system. Apparently “users will have to reinstall all their programs and find their files in the folder where Windows 7 tucks them away,” both of which are really stupid side-effects that have me scratching my head. Were I an XP user (which I am) intending to migrate to 7 (which I am not), I’d buy a new machine with 7 pre-installed and migrate my files/applications by hand.

Some new features sound pretty good, like the improved task bar and “library” concept that allows users to organize files based on function (e.g. photos or music) rather than by folder. But unless you truly hate Vista and know your machine can handle Windows 7, you’re probably better off where you are now. Windows 7 will be there come the next round of hardware upgrades, so you’ll have plenty of opportunity to take it out for a spin.

Redmond has taken its share of legal lumps over the last few years, especially in terms of the $2.5 billion it paid to settle EU (European Union) antitrust complaints. These were related to IE and its tight integration into the Windows OS, of course (if you didn’t know that already, where have you been?). Now it looks like another chapter in this legal battle is about to close, as it prepares to settle another aspect of the same case.

Numbers don’t lie, though of course the people who use them certainly can (and do). For instance, Microsoft has consistently claimed that Vista has been a rousing success despite the word on the street and numerous articles to the contrary. But the percentages just don’t add up. Two years after its release, Vista is installed on less than 30% of all PCs worldwide. And even worse, it seems few people actually bought it. Instead, they got it pre-installed on a new machine.

The numbers say it all: “those that [run Vista] are almost exclusively the Home Premium version, meaning that Vista is employed mainly by home users who likely got Vista preinstalled on a new PC.” Now that’s probably the lowest adoption rate for a Windows release since, oh, maybe Windows ME back in the late 1990s. The boys in Redmond have to be sweating bullets over the impending Windows 7 release. If it also flops, Microsoft is in trouble. At least in terms of OS sales.

Those folks have other worries as well. Despite a relatively good showing (so far) for IE8, the Pulse pages show Firefox gaining ground in the browser wars, with around 50% of all PCs running it. Of course, IE still has a huge lead since it’s present on all Windows PCs by default…but only a few years back, Firefox was to be found on 5-10% of all running systems. 50% is a pretty big jump.

Other statistics are very interesting. Office 2007 is the biggest Office release at present, and Word is (as might be expected) the most popular of all Office applications in terms of actual use. Poor Visio barely shows on the graph, and even Access isn’t that high on the food chain.

These numbers are also useful if you’re buying a new system or considering an upgrade. For instance, most Windows PCs now have between 2 and 3GB of RAM installed, so you probably don’t want to buy a machine with less than that. 4GB is overkill unless you’re running memory-intensive applications or just want to buy ahead of the curve (a practice I support). And as would be expected, Intel and Dell are the biggest names in CPUs and hardware, respectively.

Now, these numbers are just samplings so they shouldn’t be taken as the last word. Statistics can be difficult to interpret, and there are certainly under-represented configurations (for instance, Linux users and others who prefer not to offer data to the Pulse information-gathering effort). What will the market look like in a year? In five? Come back and see!

A while back I decided to try out Amazon.com’s “Unbox video” feature, which allows subscribers to view videos using either a streaming technology or by downloading them to their PC for later viewing. I installed the player on one of my spare laptops, bought a few videos (mostly “House” episodes, if anyone’s interested), and was generally happy with the service. Playing the videos on my HDTV rig was very easy and the quality was definitely acceptable.

However, yesterday I decided to move the downloaded videos to a different machine that I’m dedicating for use as a movie/TV server. Imagine my surprise when attempts to run the newly installed Unbox player application were greeted with DRM-related errors. The message basically says “there’s something wrong with the DRM on this machine, and you need to reset it.” The application even helpfully routes you to a Microsoft URL where a fix is allegedly available. However, the “install” box on this URL is grayed out, so either the site is broken or the fix is already installed on this machine.

As it turns out, the Unbox player uses Microsoft’s massively broken (and long since hacked) DRM model. I still haven’t worked out the details, and there’s no support to be had on Amazon’s Unbox site, but it appears the player was written for Media Player 9, and doesn’t work properly with version 10 or above. And since the Unbox videos are DRM-protected, you can’t just play them with any old media player application.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Draconian DRM, sponsored by media-company paranoia over lost licensing income. Basically, if you buy DRM-protected media and something happens to the provider, you’re out of luck. Unless I can get Unbox to work on this machine (or, hypothetically, hack the DRM-protected files to remove those nasty headers, which is patently illegal) I’ve lost the money spent on these videos. Too bad for the consumer. It’s like buying hundreds of Betamax tapes, then having all the players die due to a hardware glitch…the consumer is out of luck.

Entertainment companies just throw up their hands and claim they need to protect their rights. And I agree with that…to an extent. The system is fundamentally flawed when protecting these rights renders legally purchased media unplayable.

Probably everyone who subscribes to Windows Update noticed a large number of “critical security fix” patches in the most recent Patch Tuesday release. The total I noted was around ten, with a few dedicated to the Malicious Software Removal Tool and other unrelated areas. These patches addressed 19 vulnerabilities, of which a whopping fifteen were deemed “critical.”

Some of the fixes were indeed pretty serious, and are already being exploited by those folks who’d love to hijack your machine as the latest member in their worldwide botnet. According to one commentator, “Many people are going to be looking at the WINS (039) anonymous remote code execution attack as a potential worm vector, but they shouldn’t minimize the IIS denial of service attack or Bulletin 038. These vulnerabilities mean that anyone could become infected simply by opening a movie file. Who doesn’t use the Internet these days to watch videos?”

These patches are pretty much no-brainers for home users. If you’re running Windows, you should keep it patched. In my experience, you’re unlikely to download an update that will result in a negative impact on your daily activities. If one does, you can always back it out later.

IT pros, however, are in a difficult place. Most corporations and other entities require pre-testing of new patches prior to release to the general user population. This means corporate systems folk will be beavering away, testing each update to make sure it won’t break some application and cause some sort of company-wide outage. With 19 fixes in this latest bundle, many companies will be burning the midnight oil for some time to come. Hopefully the people who have to run the tests will get comp time, or something of reasonable value (i.e. not just a back-slap and an “attaboy”).

Four of the most critical issues are “server-side exploits – IIS 7.0, Workstation, MSMQ and Wins.” That’ll make the testing process even more critical, since a patch-induced failure in any of these areas may take down critical servers, which are a whole lot more important than most desktop machines.

The economy continues to dominate aspects of the tech market. Even though services-and-software companies like IBM and Google are doing fairly well, Microsoft is taking a major hit from slumping sales and diminished revenue. Today Redmond announced Q2 earnings, and missed not only analysts’ expectations but their own as well.

A 29% quarterly drop is good news for no one. And the bleeding may continue as users turn to less expensive options. Of course, “executives pointed fingers at the poor economy and at low PC sales.” But that’s not the whole story. One component of the issue is that Microsoft is banking revenue from Vista-with-Windows 7-upgrade software sales, so some of this income won’t be realized until 7 is released. They’re also selling fewer copies of expensive versions of Vista due to the booming popularity of Netbooks, many of which use XP (or Linux).

In unsurprising news, software services continue to drag at Microsoft’s bottom line. They’ve been hammering at the lucrative search-engine market for years, and have never been able to show a profit. Even much-vaunted “Bing” isn’t helping, and “with the rollout of Bing, Microsoft is losing more money than ever on its always-a-drag on profits Online Services Business.”

So overall, things are not looking good for Steve Ballmer and other Microsoft execs. They haven’t had a real “hit” in the marketplace for years. Individuals and corporations are holding off on major purchases, and my impression is that many folks will sit tight with whatever they own (Vista, XP, or even something older) because upgrades really don’t offer anything interesting that they also truly need.

Why buy a new OS just to get the latest browser when Firefox, Chrome, and Safari are available for free? Why go to a newer Windows with a “better” firewall or security when you can grab one of many commercial or free alternatives? Why buy Office 2007 if you’ve no need for its new and shiny features (not to mention its horrible UI)?

Microsoft needs a bit win. And they need it soon. If they don’t see one in the next year or two, I suspect the company will break itself into business units that will either sink or swim on their own. They may not have a choice.

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) came out a month or so ago. I haven’t heard much about it since, and now I suspect this may be due to the fact that it, unlike previous versions of IE, is actually standards-based. This is a departure for Microsoft, and it may actually cause problems in terms of acceptance.
Here’s why.

IE6, which was the de-facto standard browser across much of the world a few years ago, adhered to Microsoft’s “private” version of various Web implementations. Developers had two choices: either use hacks to make their applications browser-agnostic, or abandon every other browser and write solely to the IE “standard.” Many businesses appear to have chosen the latter course for their in-house applications…which means they’re not upgrading to IE8 just yet. In fact, I’m hearing that many are simply not upgrading at all and have suppressed distribution of anything above IE6 pending upgrades to their corporate suites.

Plus, Microsoft is now getting ready to distribute an IE-free version of Windows in the EU. This means people can pick and choose any browser they want, since one won’t be bundled with the OS by default.

This presents an opportunity for Firefox and other browsers, which have been gaining traction in the marketplace anyway over the last few years. They’re actually ahead of the game in many respects, and Microsoft is still playing catch-up. While IE still has some advantages in terms of easy provisioning and distribution within an enterprise, other players are offering tempting tools for the enterprise. Witness: “with the release of Firefox 3.5, due at the end of the month, Mozilla will offer tools for Web developers who want to recreate corporate applications using standards common to the modern Web — standards that Microsoft only began supporting in earnest with IE7.”

Now that companies will have to upgrade their applications to handle standards-based IE8, they’re free to look at any browser they want. Whatever they write will render identically on IE8, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, or Safari…so it’s no longer a simple choice. As “companies think about migrating those older applications and their mandated browser from IE6, they might choose a competitive browser instead of upgrading to a newer version of IE.”

Are IE’s days as the one and only browser of world domination numbered? We’ll see.