What does this all mean? To be honest, not all that much — mostly, it means that there are just more computers out there every year. But what’s kind of heartening, to me at least, is that it also means the general public is more and more tech-savvy: An OS release is a huge deal for nerds like us, but it’s starting to be a big deal for Joe Sixpack as well.

Given that Windows 7-packaged hardware sales are actually lower than Vista-packaged hardware in this time period, it means that people are installing a new OS on existing computers, something that’s no big deal for us but could be intimidating for a tech neophyte.

So this is a victory for nerds everywhere. Go us! [Microsoft via NYTimes Twitter]

This release date would be consistent with the schedule Microsoft has been maintaining, but I suggest they don’t rush it. I still can’t let go of some Windows XP installs, much less jump to Windows 8 so quickly. [MSFT Kitchen via Electronista]

In a response to Computerworld’s article on NSA involvement in Windows 7 development, Microsoft stated: “Microsoft has not and will not put ‘backdoors’ into Windows.”

Not to nitpick here, but doesn’t this denial leave another “door” open? As in, couldn’t the NSA have stuck their own backdoor into Windows 7 while official Microsoft employees turned a blind eye? Or — and this may come as really shocking — could Microsoft have simply lied to us in the interest of national security??

Of course, but if you freak out over this potential lack of digital autonomy, you’re clearly a terrorist. [Computerworld via Digg]

According to the NSA’s Information Assurance Director, Richard Schaeffer, it’s important for the agency to work with Microsoft and other software makers because otherwise the increasing reliance on “private-sector computing products” could put national security at risk. By creating and maintaining high security standards, the agency hopes to reduce the danger of the “rising threat of cyberattacks”. Whew. That actually sounds quite reasonable and like a good thing, rather than cause to panic after seeing “NSA” and “Microsoft” in the same sentence. [NPR via Crunch Gear]

According to Zhongyi Electronics, Microsoft “only paid to use [their] software for its Windows 95 system”. They say that the two fonts weren’t even covered in the agreement to begin with. Yikes. Microsoft is appealing the court’s decision by claiming that the fonts were in fact covered by the agreement and that there was a “legitimate right” to use them. [Obama Pacman]

It’s official: Windows 7 mania has reached a fever pitch. First a burger dedicated to the OS, now fifth-grader Will Smith gives us this adorable performance of “Windows Rising,” set to the tune of CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising.”

According to the source, Will wants to program for Microsoft when he gets older. Let me tell you something, kid: If you show this video to anyone at Microsoft, there’s no way they won’t give you a job on the spot.

And one other thing, Will: You do far more justice to your source material than the majority of CCR cover bands out there. Keep up the good work. [TechFlash]

The new hack nullifies sppcompai.dll, and even deactivates all the reminder popups that would otherwise ask you to activate indefinitely. But don’t expect the party to last long. This crack closely mirrors an old Vista key workaround, and if Microsoft patched it easily then, they’ll patch it easily now.

There’s one point to this story I find particularly annoying. According to My Digital Life,

The crack is possible probably due to leniency allowed on the part of Microsoft on [the] activation mechanism to avoid getting too many false-positive or complaint on activation error [sic].

It just sucks that this game will continue. Microsoft obviously wants to make activation as painless as possible, but will probably beef up the security next time to fix exploits these sort of exploits. Like most of you, I’m sick of DRM causing headaches for the ones who legally purchased the software, and developments like this certainly won’t help.

And please, let me say this: I love you guys, and I really do love getting emails from readers. But I don’t know how to do this hack. I have no idea how the hack specifically works. I don’t even have a copy of Windows 7. So please, send me emails about anything else, but not about how to unlock your new copy of Windows 7. Gracias. [My Digital Life via The Register via Ubergizmo]

Your Phone

Windows Mobile: To sync with your Windows Mobile phone in Windows 7, you’re going to need Windows Mobile Device centre 6.1. Just like in Vista! Except this time around, Windows is savvy enough to auto-install the suite, which saves a little time and potentially a lot of Googling. (Just give it a minute after you plug in your device via USB.)

This will take care of calendar, contact and media syncing for the most part, though a lot of newer Windows Mobile phones depend on microSD storage for music and movies. For this, you simply mount the disk as a folder, and drag and drop.

iPhone: As always, this is a job for iTunes. However, Windows 7 is compatible with doubleTwist, an alternative media manager that doesn’t just sync with your iPhone — it works with almost anything else, too.

Speaking of which, Android: Android generally isn’t a “syncing” kind of OS, intended instead to be kept up to date by tapping into Google’s services over the internet. That said, doubleTwist will work for music syncing with most Android phones, and HTC Sync will keep their phones, like the G1 (aka Dream), MyTouch and Hero, in sync with your Outlook Address book, contacts and calendar.

BlackBerry: BlackBerry Media Sync still reigns supreme, for contacts, apps, media and software upgrades.

Palm Pre/Pixi: doubleTwist, again, at least until Palm fully withdraws from their silly slapfight with Apple over iTunes and makes their own client.

Your Zune, iPod or other PMP

Zune: Zune’s software plays nice with Windows 7, but it’s your only choice. And even more so than Apple products, the Zune HD is locked to its client software, meaning there aren’t any alternatives for the time being. Luckily, Zune 4.x is fantastic software — it’s just a shame it’s not optional and that it doesn’t work with other devices.

iPod: As with the iPhone, you’re more or less stuck with iTunes or an app like doubleTwist for music and movie syncing, but that’s not so bad: iTunes in Windows 7 comes with some nice enhancements, including jump list shortcuts that can quickly take you to the iTunes Store, and hoverable controls, which give you quick access to skip, play and pause functions. In some ways, Windows 7 is actually better on Windows 7 than it is on OS X.

Other PMPs: PMPs that rely on raw mass storage never took an advanced degree to use, so it’s interesting to see that they’ve gotten a little simpler in Windows 7. The “Devices and Printers” system in Windows 7 can claim a few advantages over its predecessors, with much better icons — you generally get an reasonable approximation of whatever you’ve plugged in on the devices screen — customised Device Stage interfaces, seen left, and something called Device Containers, which group components of the same device into one icon. Like, if your 3rd-party PMP has internal and expandable storage, Windows won’t just act as if there are two different devices attached; it’ll group them together. Just click them to expand.

And if your third-party PMP does have a syncing app, be wary. Many of them, especially for older players, won’t have been updated for Windows 7. Install them in a compatibility mode for XP or Vista — whichever they’re most compatible with &mdash ;to avoid any potential problems. [pic via]

Your Camera: Camera support is pretty great in Windows 7 so you’ll often be able to just plug your camera in and go. As with PMPs, printers and the like, cameras with multiple storage devices will be lumped into the same icon in Device Stage, which will also (hopefully) display other device info, like remaining battery, photo import options and alternative sync apps.

Windows also puts quick shortcuts in the taskbar for supported cameras.
Unfortunately, Windows 7 doesn’t add anything in the way of RAW support, so you’re going to have to go third party for that. FastPicture’s codec pack supports most of the popular RAW formats used in dSLRs from Nikon, Canon, Sony and the like, and it’s perfectly compatible with Windows 7. And free!

Your Displays

Adding a second monitor to Windows has never been particularly complicated, but the methods have never been all that apparent, either. Along with a refreshed multi-monitor displays settings interface, Windows 7 adds a fantastic shortcut: Windows+P will bring up a monitor management widget, which lets you set your monitor to either off, display duplicate or display extend.

The shortcut also works for enabling a projector. Laptop manufacturers have been adding functionality like this with their own software for years, so it’s good to see Microsoft taking their ideas onboard in 7 — it’s easier for everyone that way.

Windows 7 also ships with a monitor calibration tool — again, something that had to be previously furnished by third-party software or monitor manufacturers. It helps you adjust brightness, contrast, gamma and colour settings with a simple wizard, accessible by navigating to the Display panel in Appearance and Personalization in the Control Panel

Your Other Computers

These are the gadgets your Windows 7 PC has to play nicely with — your other computers. Windows 7 file sharing has gained some new features, but just as many quirks.

Windows 7 PCs: Since most people just want to share some files and get networking setup over with, Windows 7 includes a feature called Homegroups, which lets you share files and media between Windows 7 PCs with almost not setup at all. Think of it as the old network setup wizard from XP and Vista, except much, much simpler. To create a Homegroup, you need to have a version of Windows 7 that’s better, or, uh, more expensive than Starter or Home Basic — those two can connect to Homegroups, but they can’t initiate one.

To create one, just navigate to “Network and Internet” in the Control Panel, or search “Homegroups” in the Control Panel search bar. At the “Share with other computers running Windows 7 page, select “Create a Homegroup,” and designate the types of media you’d like to share. Joining a Homegroup in Windows 7 from Windows 7 should be easy: as soon as you connect to a network with available Homegroups, Windows will prompt you to join. Just enter the passkey generated during the Homegroup creation process.

Windows XP and Vista: Homegroups are nice and new and WOW and all, and they don’t work directly, as Homegroups, with Windows XP and Vista. Thing is, under all the fresh trappings, Homegroups are the same old Windows networking protocols. Accordingly, XP and Vista can still access Windows 7 PCs, just not under the official “Homegroups” guise. So, first: Set up a user account for your client PCs to log in to:

Click the Start button, type “user accounts” in the search box, and then click User Accounts and Family Safety.
Click Add or remove user accounts, and then click Create a new account.

Type a name for the new account, such as “share”.

Click Standard user, and then click Create Account.

Click the tile for the user account you just created, and then click Create a password.

Log on as the user you created (for example, share), and then log off. (This is required so that the user account is created with the correct credentials.)

Now that you’ve got the account set up, connecting should be easy: On Vista, just click Start, then Network, then open the computer you want to access.—.it should be listed by default. Enter the user name and password you’ve just created and you’re there. For XP, the process is similar: Just go to My Network Places, the click View Workgroup Computers, open the computer you want to access and enter your credentials.

From a Mac, the process isn’t necessarily so straightforward. If you’re lucky, your Windows 7 share will just show up in your Finder sidebar, where you can click on it and enter login info when prompted. (Windows 7 still uses basic SMB shares, which OS X is more than equipped to access.) If it doesn’t show up, the process is a little more complicated. Deferring again to MS:

In [Finder] the toolbar, click Go, and then click Connect to Server (or use keyboard shortcut Command +K).
In OS X 10.3.x and later, click Browse, select the computer running Windows 7, and then click Connect. (Or follow the common instructions below.)

If that doesn’t work, click Connect to Server again, and manually enter smb://username@computername/users as the network address, where username is your newly created user account, computername is your Windows 7 machines network name, and users is literally the word users — don’t change that. Alternately, you can use the smb://username@ipaddress/users syntax, where ipaddress is your Windows 7 computers local IP (as in 10.0.0.2 or 192.168.1.102).

Your Streaming Devices and Consoles

Play to: Play To was one of the most touted features in Windows 7, and yeah, it’s pretty cool. Here’s a breakdown:

One of the most potentially groundbreaking features of Windows 7 is “Play To,” the ability to send music, video and photos to any compatible devices on the network, without running any kind of proprietary software, and without any initial setup. Sending a song to a Sonos or a video to an Xbox is-theoretically-just a right-click away.

The important thing to remember here is that “compatible devices” include — or rather, will include — anything that adheres to the DLNA 1.5 standard, from connected TVs to your Xbox 360 to other Windows 7 PCs with Windows Media Player 12. Play To devices show up automatically once they’re connected to your network, it’s just just a matter of enabling the functionality in Windows:

Before using Play To, you will first need to turn on Streaming. To do this, with media player open, click Stream and then click Turn on media streaming. You will then be given some options for sharing media and which devices you wish to allow.

You can right-click the item that you wish to play and move your cursor to the Play To option and select the device you want to receive that media file.

That’s it! To allows a Windows 7 PC to receive Play To streaming, just enable Play To in the receiving computers’ Media Streaming options, located in the Network and Sharing centre in the control panel.

Consoles: As I said before, Play To will stream to the Xbox 360 if it’s in Media Extender mode (that is, connected to a Windows Media centre PC). Chances are, though, you’re going to just want to stream media from your Windows 7 PC to your Xbox 360, controlled from your Xbox 360. Good news: the same old methods work fine here, so shared files with certain codecs, or anything in your Windows Media Center library, are all fair game, and should work straight away. Likewise, the PS3 will play a limited number of video and audio formats streamed from your PC with virtually no configuration, but the utility is limited — especially if you do a lot of downloading, or archive video in a rare codec or container. For both, the solution is the same: Get TVersity, because it’s awesome. Setup isn’t super-easy, but the results are worth it: Pretty much any video you can come up with can be transcoded on the fly to stream on your console. Full instructions are here.

So that’s about it! I’ve only scratched the surface here — this is like Windows 7 Gadget Mediation 101, or maybe 102 — so add your favourite tips and trick in the comments, since your feedback is a huge benefit to our how-to guides. And if you’re still curious about Windows 7 in general, look no further than our Complete Windows 7 Guide.

The security features are really more like anti-piracy measures, but that’s developer stuff — what about us consumers? Well, the new online portal seems like a solid idea, albeit one that implicitly acknowledges that app browsing is not that great on a WinMo 6.5 phone. You can access the portal from any browser, taking advantage of your computer’s larger screen and faster loading to find apps that much quicker. They’ll be downloaded as soon as you open the Marketplace app on your WinMo device. The site looks nice, too — cleanly organised and easy to use. It’s not a substitute for a good on-device app store, but it’s a nice feature to have. [Windows Team Blog via Engadget]