Posted: 22 Feb 2010 03:11 PM PST

An ex-employee of Microsoft Corp. has reportedly released a pdf document that gives some info on the release date of Windows 8 OS.Apparently, Microsoft plans to launch the next-generation client OS already in the middle of next year.

Chris Green, who is believed to be an ex-Microsoft developer, has revealed a document called "Estimated Product Support Life Cycles" on a Microsoft blog. The document unveils product support schedules and product launch dates for tens of Microsoft's major software products. Even though the document was removed from the blog, it was then republished by Hexus.net web-site. The complete PDF document can be had here.

Based on the data in the document, Microsoft plans to launch Windows 8 operating system on the 1st of July, 2011, less than two years after Windows 7 OS hit the market. Even though authenticity of the document could not be verified, all the dates in the document regarding the already launched product seem to be correct. Accordingly, it may be assumed that at present Microsoft plans to launch its next-gen OS in mid-2011, not in 2012, as it was anticipated earlier.

microsoft roadmap leak Microsoft to Launch Windows 8 on 1st week of July 2011

In the nineties and early eighties, Microsoft released a new desktop operating system every two to three years, at least, this was true for Windows 95, 98, ME and XP and was not particularly true for workstation OSes – there was a four-year gap between the NT4 and 2000. However, Windows Vista – shipped over five years after the XP because the company had to reassign software developers to patch the latter and release service pack 2. Windows 7 release about three years after Vista brings Microsoft back on track with two to three years cadence and Windows 8 may further shrink that cadence to about two years time.Microsoft did not comment on the news-story.

In addition to this a blog post titled “What’s in store for the next Windows?”, an unnamed member of the Windows Update team shed a little light on Microsoft’s next major release and didn’t stop short of throwing a few major punches.

Describing the release as “completely different from what folks usually expect of Windows”, the anonymous Microsoft employee claims that the Windows team will continue to use lessons learnt from the well-received Windows 7. Specifically, he/she suggests that Microsoft won’t make lavish promises and won’t reveal a final product name until the next version of Windows is finalized.

Although it has quickly become known as Windows 8 in the media world, Microsoft, at least internally, appears to refer to its 7 successor as Windows.next.

Despite not wanting to float ideas that leave people “frustrated when things don’t turn out the way they expected”, the Microsoft blogger seemingly couldn’t contain the excitement and went on to state that the themes behind Windows.next “truly reflect what people have been looking for years”.

It will change the way people think about PCs and the way they use them. It is the future of PCs,” says the blog post.So things seem true by this leak, what’ s say ?

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Microsoft to Launch Windows 8 on 1st week of July 2011

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NVIDIA releases Optimus Technology

Posted: 22 Feb 2010 12:02 PM PST

NVIDIA is debuting their new technology called Optimus technology.The solution is actually based of one of the company’s older technologies which got canned roughly a year and a half ago.Do you remember something called as "Hybrid SLI" and "Hybrid Graphics,".Optimus is going to enable end-users to dynamically and automatically switch between discrete (GPU) and the integrated graphics chips.

NVIDIA’s Optimus technology will in it’s bare essence enable consumers to take advantage of the performance enabled by a discrete graphics chip when it is required, while switching back to Intel’s integrated graphics to save battery life once the GPU is not needed anymore. Switching between the integrated graphics or the discrete graphics chips should be pretty straightforward, effortless and nearly undetectable according to NVIDIA.

optimus 250x144 NVIDIA releases Optimus Technology

The solution will be Windows 7 only as Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system allows users to install two graphics drivers at simultaneously. The only thing is for Intel only.

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NEC Triples USB 3.0 Speed to 16GB/s

Posted: 22 Feb 2010 06:16 AM PST

Engineers at NEC have come up with a method to boost the speed at which data can be transferred over USB to a whopping 16Gb/s. The new technology increases the upper speed of USB 3.0 from an already rapid 5Gb/s to 16Gb/s – potentially allowing the transfer of hordes of data in the blink of an eye.NEC's new technology works just like USB 3.0 and sends data as a stream of binary 1s and 0s. The difference lies in its ability to deliver and maintain high speed data transfer signals. The company has not actually developed a completely new bus; rather the scientists have come up with a way of delaying the rate at which data is fed back to the input signal.

It is first necessary to understand how SuperSpeed USB 3.0 works. When data throughput rates are very high, signals tend to become distorted.The new SuperSpeed USB 3.0 uses something called ‘adaptive equalisation’ to increase the stability of the carrier signal, allowing the data to be transferred significantly faster than has been previously possible without corruption.Under this technology, the signal is split into two and one part is fed back onto the input signal to give it stability.

However, when the frequency increases, the bus chip is expected to work a lot faster in order to complete the feedback and keep distortion in check. To work around this problem, NEC boffins seem to have found a method of adding a delay tied to the data rate to the feedback waveform.

"This procedure greatly reduces the nearest-neighbor inter-bit interference in the signal waveform and thus successfully alleviates the issue of feedback-time constraint inherent in conventional equalizers," NEC's scientists claimed. While the entire process might seem too complicated to be understood by normal computer users, it definitely seems to work.

So for all purposes, NEC now has a USB chip with the ability to transfer data at 16Gb/s. It now has to wait for the licensing bodies to license the new technology and open the doors for its use at a commercial level.

Although the technology only exists in prototype form, the next step for NEC is to apply to the USB Promoter Group – the licensing body for the USB standard – for permission to market the device under the USB brand. Assuming the technology works as well as NEC claims it does, it should only be a matter of time before the new speeds become standard fare.

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