Archive for December, 2008

Microsoft getting ready to lay off 17% of staff

The rumor that Microsoft was set to lay off people on January 15th, 2009 is no longer a rumor but a fact. Staff at Microsoft have been informed that the company is readying major layoffs to its worldwide operations and it’s not a small cut, either.
Currently Microsoft employs about 90,000 people across the world and from what we’re hearing, some 15,000 of those are expected to be giving marching orders come January 15th. That’s almost 17 percent of Microsoft’s total work force, not exactly a small number.
So far, we haven’t managed to confirm what departments or regions will be hit the worst, but we’re hearing that MSN might be carrying the brunt of the layoffs. We’re also hearing rumors about the possibility of somewhat larger staff cuts at Microsoft EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa).
It’s unlikely that Microsoft will be laying off a lot of people in departments and regions that are doing well, and considering the recent upturn in console sales, we have a feeling that at least most of the people working in the Xbox 360 departments will be pretty safe.
The layoffs will take place a week before Microsoft’s Q2 earnings report, which takes place on the 22nd of January 2009, and it doesn’t seem like the date set for the layoffs is coincidental. We’ll bring you more on this subject as it unfolds.

Source- Fudzilla

E7:At Home with HomeGroup in Windows 7

For more information on the beta, please stay tuned to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7 which is where we will post information about participation.

This post is about a Windows 7 feature that covers a lot of territory—it is about networking, user interface, sharing, media, printing, storage, search, and more.  HomeGroup is a way of bringing all these features together in a way that makes it possible for a new level of coolness in a home with multiple PCs running Windows 7.  A lot of us are the sysadmins for our own homes and for many others (friends and family).  We set up network topologies, configure machines, and set things up so they work—HomeGroup is designed to make that easier so it can be done without a volunteer sysadmin.  It makes for some challenges in how to describe the feature since the lack of such a feature has each of us creating our own private best practices or our own techniques for creating and maintaining a home network.  HomeGroup is about making this easier (or possible for everyone else) and at the same time giving you the tools to customize and manage—and no matter what, under the hood the file and printer sharing, media sharing, and networking you are already familiar with is there should you wish to stick with the familiar ways. HomeGroup is a deep feature that builds on a lot of new infrastructure/plumbing new to Windows 7, though in this post we’ll talk about it from the experience of setting up a network. 

Check more at the E7 blog here

Virtual Earth Data Release – December, 2008

We’ve been doing some housecleaning the last 2 months with some of our road network data. As a result, a small blog post to let you know of a HUGE refresh / release (48TB worth) of all tile sets where vector information is included – Road, Hybrid Aerial, and Hybrid Bird’s Eye. Thus, we’re cleaning up the streets (as it were):

• Global vector data updates.
• Multi-lingual tile sets for all zoom levels (French, Italian, German, Spanish).
• Japan localized tile sets.
• All oblique (Bird’s Eye) photography reprocessed with new road labels (minus Japan).
• New data source for the following countries:
  • Greece
  • Estonia
  • Latvia
  • Lithuania
  • Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia
  • Slovakia
  • Hungary
  • Slovenia
  • Croatia
  • Bosnia and Herzegovina
  • Serbia
  • Montenegro
  • Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia
  • Albania
  • Bulgaria
  • Romania
  • Mexico

Source- Virtual Earth Blog

Windows 7:Introduction to the Windows Biometric Framework (WBF)

This white paper provides information about the Windows Biometric Framework (WBF) for the Windows 7 operating system. It provides an introduction to WBF, together with guidelines that independent hardware vendors (IHVs), independent software vendors (ISVs,) and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) should follow when they integrate fingerprint biometric devices with the Windows 7 platform.

WBF is discussed in detail, including the following:
• An overview of WBF and its components.
• An overview of the biometric user experience that WBF provides.
• Guidelines for developing WBF-compatible biometric device drivers and components.
• Guidelines for the distribution of WBF-compatible biometric device drivers and components.

This information applies to the Windows 7 operating system.

More information : http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/input/smartcard/WBFIntro.mspx

Source- Technet Blog

Microsoft advised to lay off over 9,000 employees

The world’s top software firm Microsoft has been asked to cut its workforce by 10 per cent, or about 9,100 employees, to tell the
market that profits are more important than revenue growth in difficult times.
Brokerage firm Oppenheimer & Co’s analyst Brad Reback has said in a report on Microsoft that such layoff exercise "would be a healthy move for the company."
The move would be well received by the market and would "signal that profitability is more important than revenue growth during this very difficult time," Reback added.
Calling for a 10 per cent reduction on the company’s payrolls, Reback said in his report for the institutional investors of Microsoft that this would result in an approximately 10 per cent gain in its earnings per share.
The software giant had close to 91,000 employees on its payrolls at the end of July-September quarter.

Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com

New NUMA Support with Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7

The 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 support more than 64 Logical Processors (LP) on a single computer. New processors are now appearing that leverage non-uniform memory access (NUMA) architectures. Within the near future, a system with 4 CPU sockets, 8 processor-cores per socket and with Simultaneious Multi-Threading (SMT) enabled per core, will achieve 64 Logical Processors. Many server-class solutions will need to be architected with NUMA awareness in order to achieve linear performance scaling on 64+ LP systems.

Check more about it here

(Christmas Giveaway from it’s my Windows) Wondershare PPT2Flash Professional

Our friends at itsmywindows.com is giving away 3 FREE licenses of PPT2Flash Professional sponsored by Wondershare. PPT2Flash Professional(worth $199.95 each) provides most features you may want in a PowerPoint to Flash converter product — and works best in situations where you want to create small output files in Flash SWF that you can put on your website, CD, or send as an email. Click here to view more info about this product.

To enter the giveaway you just need to do the following things

• You must be subscribed to it’s my Windows Newsletter- If you aren’t subscribed, then subscribe now and it’s free.
• Write down a significant comment in this topic. While leaving your comment, use the same email ID which has been used to subscribed for it’s my Windows newsletter otherwise you won’t be eligible for this giveaway.

The winners will be announced on 31st December 2008. ALL THE BEST !!!

So go over to itmywindows.com and do take part in the giveaway.

Windows 7 beta build 7000 leaked

  The First and probably the only beta version of Windows 7 that was released to the selected group of testers,the previous weak has been leaked on the net.The build version of the leak is 7000.0.081212-1400.The release has been made available on many different torrent sites.Probably again it was the chinese site bbs.pcbeta.com which leaked this version and now it is available on different forums for download.The torrent is available as an ISO file contrary to the previous leak build 6956 which was available as the VHD file.The torrent  states the file to be - 7000.0.081212_1400_client_en_us_Ultimate_GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso

We would like to say that it’s better to wait for the public beta release then to download this leaked version, which would be released pretty soon in just a week or a two.

Source- win7.in