It’s now been 3 years since the announcement of Windows 7 and to kick off Microsoft’s Build conference, Steven Sinofsky started by talking about it’s successes. There’s some impressive numbers thrown out, one of the best news for Microsoft is that Windows 7 has finally surpassed Windows XP in usage.

• Approaching 450 million copies of Windows  7 sold
• Windows 7 consumer usage greater than Windows XP
• 1,502 seamless non-security product code changes delivered
• IE9 is the fastest growing Windows 7 browser
• 542 Million people signing into Windows Live services
• 1500 non-security related changes since launch

Stay tuned for more information from Build.

Gold Rabbit is likely a company you’ve never heard of before. The short story is that it was started by Corwin Tse, Accounting and Finance graduate from University of Technology in Sydney. Tse believes Windows isn’t typically showcased in all of its glory, with low-end hardware in the race to the bottom, resulting in a less than desirable end-user experience.

In 2006′s International Microsoft/IDSA Next-Generation Windows PC Design Competition (later merged with the Imagine Cup), Tse’s design was shortlisted, motivating him to start Gold Rabbit. With that intro out of the way, lets talk hardware.

Design
The Gold Class Media Centre PC comes in a sleek black finish, perfect for blending right into your entertainment system and matching most of your other devices. The case feels solid and sturdy, when in turn means it weighs in at 10.9kg. Not light by any means, but its not something you’ll be moving around a lot, so lets move on.

Connectivity
If you want to connect it, chances are you can. Gold Class has a pretty awesome list of connectors. VGA, DVI, HDMI, Mini Display Port, 7.1 surround sound, 4x USB3, 4x USB2, TV tuner. Your really spoilt for choice with this. Don’t forget about the Ethernet or 802.11N wireless. Turns out wireless is a pretty killer feature in a desktop, something I’ve never experienced before. Simply connect power + HDMI and your away and racing.

While we’re talking about adding things, behind the the Gold Class’s front panel (flips down), there’s a Blu-ray drive  also has 2 slots for a hot-swappable SATA drive. Not sure how many people have a media-filled hard drive laying around, but this is the second device that I’ve reviewed that features this option.

Experience
Something you’ll notice very quickly after firing up the Gold Class for the first time is its lack of trialware / bloatware – much appreciated. The Gold Class system features and SSD to get you booted into Windows quickly, on a side, SSD’s are still relatively expensive, but so very worth it.

Shipping with the Gold Class is a couple of accessories. The first is a Microsoft Arc keyboard (strangely no mouse), as well as a PC-enabled Xbox 360 controller. Timing is a little awkward with Games for Windows in hiatus until Xbox Live takes over the desktop gaming hub for Windows. Still, the intention is good.

It’s exciting to see a computer ship wit IE9, something even the big guys like Dell and HP aren’t even doing. Its great to have a hardware spec sheet as long as your arm, but ultimately the experience a user has is with the software. All Windows 7 users will be moved to IE9 eventually, so by shipping with IE9, its just saving time.

Performance
This machine was built to be a powerhouse and it is. Boot-time is impressive, launching applications is virtually instant, Blu-ray startup time was good (probably better than PS3). The bottom line is, this machine can take pretty much anything you can throw at it. One downside of this performance is always heat. The chassis design features a number of vents at the rear, sides and top of the case to allow the hot air to escape. Unfortunately the noise of the system is noticeable. Think Xbox 360 first version. While not a massive issue in-day-to-day use, while watching a movie, the quiet scenes are distracted by the noise.

Specs

• 4GB memory
• 1.8TB usable hard disk drive
• Blu-ray 3D player + burner
• 2 × digital + analogue terrestrial TV tuners
• Up to 300 hours of HDTV recording storage supplied
• 2 × internal hard disk drive expansion slots for additional recording time
• Up to 300,000 12 megapixel photo or 292,500 4-minute song or 300-hour 1080P video capacity
• HDMI 1.4a + Mini DisplayPort + dual-link DVI + S/PDIF output
• Dolby TrueHD + DTS-HD Master Audio output for AV receivers
• Bluetooth 2.1 + Wi-Fi 802.11n + Gigabit Ethernet wireless networking
• Xbox 360 Wireless Controller supplied
• 4 × Xbox 360 Wireless Controllers support
• DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.1 graphic effects
• 8 × USB ports 2 × front, 6 × back
• Wireless remote + keyboard

Price
The Gold Class comes in two versions.

• Gold Class with Blu-ray (Windows Experience Index of 7) – $2,800 (free delivery)
• Gold Class with DVD (Windows Experience Index of 6) – $2250 (free delivery)

That comes with a 30-day money back guarantee, but I’d suggest you’d be fitting the bill for shipping it back. There’s also a 3-year warranty, the terms of which I’m unsure of. Payment options available are currently PayPal and Direct Deposit, as Gold Rabbit grows these will need to extend to credit card etc. For more information about pricing visit Gold Rabbit.

Gallery

Overall
This machine lets you flick from recording 2 shows in HD via Windows Media Center, to playing a 3D games, to watching Blu-ray movie or surfing the web all on your HDTV. I think the decision to ship it without a mouse is an interesting one, probably something that could be included for little cost that would really complete the experience.

The remote was ok, not great. After a week of use i was still unable to comfortably know where buttons were without looking. The arrangement of key buttons was a little awkward, something that’s a must when your using it everyday.

One thing to be aware of is the control uses IR, this means using the Media Center button will turn on your Xbox 360 if its close by. I have a low-line entertainment unit which stores all the consoles and set-top-boxes, this happened multiple times. Actually its a difficult problem to solve, one of which only Boxee has really dealt with adequately by using RF.

Buying off an unknown company is always scary, that if your an enthusiast looking for a media centre PC and can’t be bothered building your own, then take a look, Gold Class may suit your needs. There’s a lot included for the price, but I can’t fathom paying $2k+ for a machine of any kind in 2011.

More information @ http://gold-rabbit.com/

A little after its 1 year birthday and 300 million licenses sold Windows 7 gets its first Service Pack, SP1, and it is available in its various forms for download to the public.

According to sources, as of today, 20% of the worlds internet connected PC’s run some form of Windows 7 and work on SP2 is already underway.

There are reports of it taking over an 1 hour to install on recent laptops so make sure you set aside some time for it to fully install and let’s hope it goes better than some of the WP7 updates, especially the Samsung Omnia ones.

The download links are here for you:

Download Windows 7 SP1 RTM (32-bit) (537.809 MB)

Download Windows 7 SP1 RTM (64-bit) (903.196 MB)

Download Windows 7 SP1 RTM ISO (32-bit & 64-bit) (1953.3 MB)

Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 users with a MSDN or TechNet subscription can now get Service Pack 1. Built on the same codebase, the two operating systems will both receive the SP1 update, so what’s included ?

If your doing you’re job properly, you’d be paying attention enough to understand Service Packs today are significantly different to what they used to be. One of the most famous new features introduced in XP SP2 was the introduction of a software firewall that was on by default.

Big new features like this are all but gone from service packs, today they are much more of a hotfix rollup than anything else. If you’ve been a good Windows citizen, you’ve been applying Windows updates as they are released. If your in this category, Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 will be a relatively quick and painless process. After applying the update, you won’t notice any difference.

On the business side of things, SP1 does actually add a couple of goodies. Client-side support for RemoteFX and Dynamic Memory are two new virtualization features. Microsoft are claiming up to 40% increase in number of virtual desktops supported on the same hardware.

Overall end users should update to SP1 when it reaches general availability (Feb 22nd, 2011) to ensure all your updates are installed, but make sure your expectations are setup for much of the same. Enterprises using Server 2008 R2’s Hyper-V technology should definitely build the SP1 update into their project plans.

More information on the Windows Blog.

As part of the quarterly earnings announcement today from Microsoft, they revealed that more than 300 million Windows 7 licences have been sold. Naturally this includes a combination of home and business users, but its clear, Windows 7 has arrived.

Windows 7 was released to PC manufacturers like Dell and HP on July 22nd, 2009 and the general public on October 22nd, 2009. This means Microsoft sold the 300 million Win7 licences have been sold in just 1 year, 6 months and 6 days. The sales number is also up from 240 million in October last year and now accounts for 20 of all internet connected PCs.

While some businesses have been slow to make the move to implement Windows 7, but its clear Windows 7 is most certainly a hit across the board. On almost a weekly basis now, we see press announcements from companies or government departments upgrading hundreds or even thousands of seats.

On the home front, its been some time since you could actually purchase a PC with anything other than Windows7, so its unsurprising the number is growing rapidly. The computer upgrade cycle of 2-4 years is definitely hitting its stride right now, so expect the strong sales to continue.

With Windows 8 approaching quickly, scheduled for a beta later this year and release in 201, should those who haven’t already made the move skip Win7 all together ? Given a lot of businesses skipped the PR nightmare that was Windows Vista, that would mean in 2012, you could be sitting in front of an operating system that’s more than 10 years old.

Personally I think businesses should make the move to Windows 7, it has an amazing collection of features and improvements over XP that I simply can’t live without. Windows 8 is likely to build on the same platform as Windows 7, meaning most of the applications that run on Win7 will continue to run on Win8. Alternatively if Microsoft do make dramatic changes, virtualisation is likely to allow legacy applications transparently to end-users.

New software is released every day that requires Windows 7 as a bare minimum, meaning XP users are out in the cold. That reason, pared with the power savings available should be reason enough to update.

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is due any day now, with leaked builds making their way to bit torrent.

More information @ All About Microsoft

It’s been around a year since the launch of Windows 7, so in the final interview from Tech.Ed last week, I discuss the current state of Windows 7. In an interview with Moragh Blyth and Michael Niehaus from Microsoft we discuss Win7 Service Pack 1, business adoption and a whole lot more.

Check out the 11 minute video below.

For what seems like an eternity, home users have had to search for ways to get content from their computers to their TV. Interim solutions have often been via set top boxes or game consoles, but ultimately this solution was only a workaround to what should have arrived years ago.

Toshiba will be the first manufacturer to ship a TV with a ‘Compatible with Windows 7’ logo. This means the network port in the back of their UX600 Cinema Series LED HDTVs will allow users to stream content directly from a Windows 7 PC to the TV. Making use of the ‘Play-to’ feature in Win7, getting content on your biggest screen in the house is finally a simply process.

Other TV manufacturers take note, this is the new benchmark, make this standard across all sets as soon as humanly possible.

More @ The Windows Experience Blog

Whilst only a mild .1 update, Apple’s latest Bootcamp drivers make a massive difference to your Windows on Mac hardware experience. One of my biggest issues with my Macbook was the screen brightness could only be dropped to around half of what it was in Snow Leopard. Not only overly bright in a dark environment, this also meant the screen was sucking loads of power, killing battery life.

The news gets even better when it comes to your Windows rating. With Bootcamp 3.0 drivers, the Macbook scored 3.7, after updating to Bootcamp 3.1 drivers, that score now sits at 5.2. An impressive increase. The update should also fix reported track pad issues.

This also means Windows 7 is now officially supported by Apple. My advice, get the update now.

Available from Apple, (x86, x64).

There’s been a lot made about Windows 7 pricing, especially the premium for Australian customers. Last week seen Microsoft announce the Windows 7 family pack, now the price of a Windows 7 upgrade for students is only A$49.95.

The full upgrade price for Windows 7 Home premium is A$199, which makes this deal a $150 discount.

A valid .edu.au email is required and this offer is good through March 31st, 2010.

More @ Microsoft

Rather than write a thousand words about the app, it’s much more impressive just to show you in screen shots.

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Actually what you can’t see from the screen shots is the sweet transition animations between screens.

Get it yourself at – http://www.fishbowlclient.com/