Microsoft Confirms Windows 7 Family Pack, Code Delivery Dates

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The federal government is at risk of being unable to fight off attacks on the nation's computer networks unless it strengthens its cyber-security work force, according to a report released Wednesday.
Microsoft Confirms Windows 7 Family Pack, Code Delivery Dates

Microsoft on Tuesday confirmed a Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack, as well as the date the first people can get their hands on the RTM build.

MacChat: Move over Apple, there’s another underdog

FOR nearly two decades, the operating system wars have been about Mac the underdog versus Windows the Goliath, with Linux occupying a geek niche on the sidelines.

Now there’s a new player with a familiar namea household name.

Not content with dominating the online search market and eating into the office application and browser markets, Google has announced it will enter the operating system market as well.

Chrome OS, which shares its name with Google’s web browser, will be an internet-centric system geared towards web surfing, emailing, instant messaging and social networking. It will thus be perfectly suited to netbooks, those ultra-portable stripped-down laptops mainly used for online pursuits.

Software giant Microsoft has the most to lose from Google’s move, as netbook makers will offer Chrome as an alternative to Windows.

The implications for the Mac platform are less clear. Apple does not compete in the netbook market yet, although it considers its iPhone and iPod touch as netbook substitutes. (Google already makes a smartphone operating system, Android.)

And Apple customers are the most loyal in the consumer electronics industry, valuing the unique quality and user experience made possible by Apple controlling “the whole widget’’hardware and softwaresomething not possible for Chrome.

Chrome OS will have a more immediate effect on Apple’s management. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt sits on Apple’s board of directors, and Google’s foray into operating systems may prove one conflict of interest too many. Because of Android, Schmidt already must excuse himself from Apple board meetings when the iPhone is discussed.

He said he would discuss the implications of Chrome OS with his fellow board members.

For its part, Apple has offered web services for most of the past decade, but as an adjunct to its operating system rather than part of it.

It began with the free iTools service, which then became the paid Mac service and, more recently, MobileMe.

MobileMe is closer to the idea of a web-based operating system, with email, address book and calendar applications that look and feel like their desktop equivalents.

Apple also has launched the iWork.com beta, which allows users of its productivity suite to share documents online.

Its original intention was for the iPhone and iPod Touch to only run web-based applications. Apple relented to developer and user pressure for stand-alone native apps, spawning the hugely successful App Store, but web apps are still possible.

Meanwhile, Palm has launched its own WebOS on its new Pre smartphone.

This move towards web-based operating systems and “cloud computing’’ is a return to the “thin client’’ vision championed by the likes of Oracle and Sun in the mid-’90s, where “the server is the computer’’.