Windows Vista was easily qualified as a resource hog in comparison to its precursor, Windows XP, but judging from the five-year gap separating the two clients, the label doesn't exactly fit. Some users, especially business customers, fear that after coughing up a consistent amount of money and upgrading their computers, or hardware infrastructure in the case of businesses, in order to accommodate Windows Vista, they will have to do it all over again, just a couple of years later, and in the context of a global financial crisis. This will not be the case.

In terms of system requirements, Windows 7 Beta reveals that Vista and its successor are on par. This means that users will not have to pay for a hardware upgrade just to accommodate Windows 7, if they are currently running Windows Vista on their machines. Those who have bought new machines tailored to Vista, beyond the Home Basic SKU, namely Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate editions, will also be able to run Windows 7 without any problems.

According to Microsoft, Windows 7 Beta's “Minimum recommended specs call for: 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor; 1 GB of system memory (RAM); 16 GB of available disk space; support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128 MB memory (to enable the Aero theme); DVD-R/W Drive; Internet access (to download the Beta and get updates).”

The Redmond company warned that the specifications could be modified during the development process of Windows 7. “These are the Microsoft minimum hardware recommendations for systems that will be running the Windows 7 Beta. These recommendations are specific to the beta release and are subject to change,” the software giant stated.

By comparison, the minimum system requirements for Windows Vista Home Premium / Business / Ultimate are: “1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor; 1 GB of system memory; 16 GB of available disk space; support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128MB memory (in order to enable Aero theme); drive: DVD-R/W drive; Internet connection (to download the Beta and get updates),” Microsoft indicated. Windows Vista Home Basic can go as low as “800 MHz processor and 512 MB of RAM on a 20 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space,” the company claimed, but considering this system the OS would virtually be unusable.

I have been running Windows 7 Beta and pre-Beta on a laptop with under 2GHz processor and with just 1 GB of RAM, and in virtual machines with even less. Moreover, I have also been running Windows 7 Beta and the Milestone releases on a 3GHz Intel Core Duo with 4 GB of DDR3. I found that Windows 7, even if still under development, delivered, on the same machine, a performance superior to Vista's. However, in order to get the best out of Windows 7, users should have computers with at least 2 GHz processors and no less than 2 GB of RAM.

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Bethesda Softworks is announcing that the Broken Steel expansion, set to arrive in March, will, amongst other things, increase the level cap for characters created in the game to 30. This means that players will be able to max out more skills and enjoy more perks as they go through the Capitol Wasteland.

Jeff Gardiner, who is the lead producer on Broken Steel, has talked to Eurogamer, confirming that the new level cap would also mean that the ending of the game as it stands at the moment would be amended. He stated that “along with removing the game's 'ending' with Broken Steel, we figure raising the level cap would allow them to. We plan on raising it to level 30 - but it will be a long, hard climb to get there!”

It's good to see that Bethesda has taken to heart the rather tough reaction that players have had towards the ending of the game, which felt rushed and not thought through. The final choice particularly felt out of place in a role playing game struggling at every moment to offer meaningful choice, which felt natural to the situation and to the character. Removing it might be the best way to make sure that the open ended nature of Fallout 3 is preserved and also allows Bethesda to create as much added content as they want.


Until March, Bethesda will deliver two other pieces of DLC for Fallout 3. In January, gamers will receive Operation: Anchorage, which will offer a chance to fight a simulated liberation of Alaska, while in February, The Pitt will arrive, taking role players to Pittsburg to fight for or against vicious gangs.

Don't forget that there's also a GECK out for Fallout 3, a complete modding tool allowing players to create everything from perks to weapons, enhancing those aspects of the game that felt neglected by Bethesda.

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Mac-driven mouths are becoming vocal on the absence of Snow Leopard at Apple's last Macworld keynote address. While some believe Apple committed a huge mistake by not even hinting at a release date, others are pretty sure the Windows 7 release closing in could have only harmed Apple's new “cat” on the block.

Joe Wilcox, of Apple Watch, writes that “Apple has made a strategic error by not getting in front of Microsoft, which is ramping up anti-Mac marketing and building some excitement about Windows 7.” He goes on to explain that “Apple and Microsoft are vying for the same customers: Windows XP PC users who haven't moved to Vista. Fewer of the customers will choose to buy Macs during the economic downturn,” he continues. “Meanwhile, Microsoft may have in Windows 7 an attractive alternative to Vista computers and to Macs."

OK, that's one opinion. So says an analysis over at Osnews. The source claims it makes perfect sense for Apple not to show off Snow Leopard at this moment. The argument: “First of all, Windows 7 is about to explode all over the media. There's no way that Apple will be able to conquer the media headlines with Snow Leopard with Microsoft officially launching the first Windows 7 beta this week. In addition, it's CES time right now, and Microsoft is sure to show off Windows 7 in Vegas. Apple might be the darling of the media, but there's only so much that will help in the coming waterfall of Windows 7 media attention,” the post reads.

The author trusts Apple to launch Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard when the Windows 7 hype diminishes, “or when Microsoft messes something up.” According to the analysis, “It makes no sense to taut Snow Leopard right now.”
How would you put it? Did Apple do itself a whole lot of good by holding off on Snow Leopard? How about the possibility of not finishing the software in time for the Macworld keynote?

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Another improved version of the Nvidia proprietary video driver for the Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris open source operating systems was made available by the Nvidia Corporation on January 8th, 2009. The major feature brought by the Nvidia 180.22 display driver is the initial support for Linux kernel 2.6.28 and for the following GPUs: Quadro FX 2700M, GeForce 9400M G, GeForce 9400M, GeForce 9800 GT, GeForce 8200M G, GeForce Go 7700, GeForce 9800M GTX, GeForce 9800M GT, GeForce 9800M GS, GeForce 9500 GT, GeForce 9700M GT, GeForce 9650M GT, GeForce 9500 GT. Among other features and fixes brought by the new Nvidia 180.22 video driver for Linux and BSD systems we can notice :

· Added OpenGL 3.0 preliminary support;
· Added support for PureVideo-like features (via the VDPAU API);
· Added support for CUDA 2.1;
· Added performance optimizations for OpenGL workstations;
· Added SDI full-range color support;
· Improved stability and X pixmap placement on GeForce 8 series and newer GPUs;
· The glyph cache was enabled by default and it is now available on all supported GPUs;
· The shared memory X pixmaps option (AllowSHMPixmaps) is now disabled by default;
· Fixed an nvidia-settings issue. The application crashed if the xorg.conf file contained the Device and Screen sections but no ServerLayout section;
· Fixed an nvidia-settings issue with the SDI sync skew controls;
· Fixed a Compiz Fusion issue for Geforce 6 and 7 series GPUs;
· Fixed monitor sync range parsing issue in xorg.conf;
· Fixed crashing issues with some SDI applications;
· Fixed Linux OpenGL library issue. The library crashed when used inside the FreeBSD's Linux emulation layer.

How to install the Nvidia video drivers?

Log out of your current session and hit the CTRL+ALT+F1 key combination, in order to enter a text-mode session. Log in as root (System Administrator), go to the folder where you've downloaded the Nvidia driver installer (see below for links), and type:

sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-180.22-pkg1.run (for x86 users)
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-180.22-pkg2.run (for AMD64 users)

Then, follow the on-screen instructions to install the Nvidia video driver. Please note that the Linux kernel headers and a GCC compiler will be required to complete the installation!

Download the Nvidia display driver 180.22 for the x86 architecture right now.
Download the Nvidia display driver 180.22 for the AMD64/EM64T architectures right now
Download the Nvidia display driver 180.22 for the FreeBSD systems right now.

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Engineers in Microsoft's Live Labs have released the company's first application for Apple's popular smartphone - even before making it available on Microsoft's own mobile platform.

Seadragon Mobile, which was added to Apple's App Store on Saturday, is a free image-browsing app that allows users to quickly "deep zoom" images while online and is intended to demonstrate what is possible with a mobile platform. Seadragon is the backbone for Microsoft's Photosynth, which allows users to take a grouping of photographs and stitch them together into a faux 3D environment.

Other iPhone apps are reportedly in development in Redmond; Microsoft's Tellme unit was expected to release the company's first iPhone app in the form of a voice-activated search for a variety of phones, including iPhone and BlackBerry. A Microsoft representative told silicon.com sister site CNET News.com in September that a public version of that program would likely be released in a few months.

So where's the Windows Mobile version of Seadragon?

Alex Daley, group product manager for Microsoft Live Labs, told TechFlash: "The iPhone is the most widely distributed phone with a [graphics processing unit]. Most phones out today don't have accelerated graphics in them. The iPhone does and so it enabled us to do something that has been previously difficult to do."

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Intel's new quad-core Core i7 processors were only launched in late November, but desktop systems featuring the CPUs--from the likes of Dell, Falcon Northwest, Micro Express, and others--have already made an impact on PC World's Top 10 charts.

As explained in "Getting to the Core of Intel's New Core i7 CPUs," these new processors are the company's first to be based on its long-previewed "Nehalem" architecture. The Core i7 family doesn't just mean new CPUs, they use a new chipset, a new system bus, and a new socket structure; Intel's first major technology jump since mid-2006, when Core 2 CPUs showed up on the scene.


Mainstream Desktops

Three of the six PCs to debut in our newly refreshed Top 10 Power Desktop chart boast Core i7. The Micro Express MicroFlex 92B (our Best Buy) and our fourth-ranked Dell Studio XPS use the midrange 2.93-GHz Core i7 940 CPU, which costs about $580 on its own. Though both machines are competitively priced at less than $2000 (without monitor), each returned performance results only just behind the fastest system we've seen in the category: Polywell's $3950 Poly X4800-Extreme (ranked fifth). That system's 3.2-GHz X9770 processor, 4GB of speedy DDR3-1625 RAM, and two 10,000-rpm VelociRaptor hard drives (in a RAID 0 configuration) propelled it to a WorldBench 6 result of 141. By comparison, the Micro Express (3GB of DDR3-1333 RAM) and Dell (6GB of DDR3-1066 RAM) achieved WorldBench 6 performance scores of 138 and 136, respectively. Not too shabby at all. Polywell's newer, Core i7-equipped Poly X5800i desktop currently ranks 8th on our Power Desktop chart.


Gaming Desktops

Meanwhile, the Best Buy on our new Top 5 Gaming PCs chart goes to Falcon Northwest's Mach V. Equipped with a high-end 3.2-GHz Core i7 Extreme 965 processor (about $1050 on its own) that's been overclocked to 3.8-GHz, a whopping 12GB of DDR3-1600 RAM, and two ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphic boards, the Mach V prevailed in almost every graphics test we threw at it. Even so, both the Xi MTower HAF-SLI and the Hardcore Computer Reactor (which rank second and fifth, respectively, on the chart) equaled the Mach V's record WorldBench 6 result of 163.


More On The Way

We're also in the midst of testing more Core i7 desktops. Reviews and benchmark results of systems from Gateway, Alienware, iBuyPower, CyberPower and AVA Direct will be featured on our Desktops Product Center over the next few weeks. And just to keep things interesting, reports suggest that AMD's upcoming Phenom II CPUs--and desktops with them--could arrive as soon as early January. Like you, we're looking forward to see how they might compare.

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Can mobile OS leader Symbian keep up with rising competition from the likes of Apple, Microsoft and RIM? Natasha Lomas speaks with company CEO Nigel Clifford.

Nigel Clifford is CEO of mobile OS maker Symbian, the market leader in the smart phone operating system space. The 49-year-old CEO, a Cambridge University graduate who also has an MBA from Strathclyde University, joined Symbian from another telecoms software business - Tertio Telecoms - and has also worked at Cable and Wireless, heading up its UK operations, and at BT where he held a variety of management roles.

Earlier this year - and some three years after Clifford joined Symbian as chief exec - the company announced it would be going open source, shifting from a proprietary business model to one that offers access to its millions of lines of code to developers everywhere via the Symbian Foundation. Or as Clifford puts it: "At the heart of [this decision] is a belief that the power of many is better than the power of the few and that by making ourselves open we then have the opportunity to use millions of brains who perhaps previously were held a little bit distant from us."

silicon.com caught up with Clifford recently in his loft-style office at the company's Southwark HQ in London to discuss the finer points of going open source; the challenges posed by mobile newbies like Apple and Google; how to build 'usability' into an OS; and how a humble mobile app helped him best his two teenage boys in a triathlon.

Rising competition

Symbian's history is a long one, for the tech industry. The company was established a decade ago by Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Psion, and by 2006 there were 100 million Symbian phones in the market - a figure that has more than doubled two years later as the smart phone market continues to grow year-on-year.

Today the company remains undisputed market leader in the smart phone space, largely owing to the strength of Nokia - the world's number one handset vendor - which uses the Symbian OS. But Symbian knows the mobile game is changing - as the CEO writes on the company website: "Our market today is very different from the one we've been operating in successfully in the past 10 years. We're clear that powerful competitors are vying for this space."

And while these "powerful competitors" are not name-checked on Symbian's site, they are very familiar brand names indeed - Apple, BlackBerry, Google, Microsoft - all encroaching on its territory.

According to analyst house Gartner, Symbian claimed well over half (57.1 per cent) of the smart phone OS market in Q2 2008, followed a distant second by BlackBerry-maker RIM (17.4 per cent), after which comes Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS with 12 per cent. However the stats also show Symbian's lead is shrinking. Back in Q2 2007 Gartner gave Symbian 65.6 per cent market share - which means the company has seen a not inconsiderable 8.5 percentage point drop in market share in a year. And rival platforms continue to cut bigger slices of the pie - most notably BlackBerry-maker RIM that has seen an 8.5 percentage point increase over the same period.

Beyond the mobile

Freed by the Foundation, the CEO sees no reason why Symbian software might not end up being applied to non-mobile hardware, such as a set-top box, say, or an e-book reader, camera or navigation device.

"That's one of the really exciting things - now there isn't a point of control or a point of 'we will only allow Symbian to be used here'," he says. "We are saying it can be used anywhere that is decent, legal and truthful. It should be available for that experimentation, so you could have someone who's looking at putting together components for a unique product offering or service offering and we just become one of those components.

"You could see developers saying, 'Well I know this [Symbian software] works with cameras because they're on phones so why don't I take this and then I'm going to come up with a whole new camera concept using this mobile OS' or 'I know it works with navigation - because a third of our products had navigation on last year - so I can be confident and take this fragment and go and play with this in a navigation context.' So it's interesting that the output now becomes two ways."

Road to open source

Symbian's road to an open source future began in October/November last year, according to Clifford, after the company's annual strategy round. "There were probably half a dozen of us in the strategy team and the leadership team who were beginning to think a lot about what's the future of competition in this marketplace, what do we need to do to be able to compete effectively, how do we take this to the next stage, how do we engage more actively with more developers across the world, how do we free up that 200 million devices for experimentation - all of that," he says.

"And coincidentally we bumped into other people coming from other companies who were thinking about these same kinds of things. And through a series of conversations that got developed and developed and then ultimately in June we got to the point where the 10 board members were in agreement and we could make the announcement on the 24th. So it wasn't the planning of five years but it wasn't the planning of five days either. It was kind of neatly in between."

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Yuichiro Nakada proudly announced two days ago a new release of its Linux distribution, Berry Linux 0.94, which is now powered by the Linux kernel 2.6.27.10 and based on the famous Fedora 10. Berry Linux is a Fedora-based Live CD that features a customized KDE 4 desktop environment. The new release updates a few important packages, such as Firefox, Adobe Flash, Wine or even Samba, but the most important thing in this release is the K Desktop Environment, which is now in sync with the version from Fedora 10. Let's a have a look at the main changes since version 0.93 of the Berry Linux Live CD:

KDE 4.1.3
· X.Org 7.4
· Adobe Flash Player 10.0.12.36
· Mozilla Firefox 3.0.5 (also available in Japanese)
· Inkscape 0.46
· Samba 3.2.5
· Wine 1.1.9
· Digikam 0.10.0

Under the hood:

· Kernel 2.6.27.10 (with SMP, bootsplash and ndev/udev)
· Glibc 2.9
· GCC 4.3.2

Why should I use Berry Linux? Because:

· Berry Linux can boot from USB sticks;
· Berry Linux uses WHIZ, a very sharp Kana-Kanji conversion system;
· Automatically recognizes USB storage and shows icons;
· Berry Linux uses free Japanese True Type Fonts;
· Berry Linux uses bootsplash when booting;
· Berry Linux uses DHCP to connect the Internet (PPPoE is also available);
· Berry Linux can save personal setting in Live mode;
· Berry Linux is Red Hat/Fedora compatible.

Berry Linux is a Live CD Linux distribution, based on Fedora Linux, with automatic hardware detection and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices, and various other peripherals. It includes Firefox, OpenOffice.org, Wine and many other Microsoft Windows compatible pieces of software. Because it's a Live CD it can be used as an Educational CD, a rescue system CD or just as a Demo CD to showcase the powers of Linux to your friends, colleagues and family. Download Berry Linux 0.94 now.

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