Microsoft on Friday confirmed it will issue no more beta releases of Windows 7 and will instead move directly to a single release candidate (RC) and then the final release. The company offered no guidance on when we can expect the Windows 7 release, however.

“The next milestone for the development of Windows 7 is the Release Candidate or ‘RC,’” Microsoft senior vice president Steven Sinofsky confirmed in a blog post. “We’ve released the feature complete Beta and have made it available broadly around the world. The path to Release Candidate is all about getting the product to a known and shippable state both from an internal and external standpoint.”

Sinofsky notes that the RC version of Windows 7 will be “Windows 7 as Microsoft intends to ship it” and will place the OS on a fast track towards RTM (release to manufacturing), when the code is literally completed, and general availability (GA), when it is made available to the public. No timeline for the RC, RTM, or GA were provided. “The answer [to the schedule questions] is forthcoming,” Sinofsky added.

“We are taking a quality-based approach to completing the product and won’t be driven by imposed deadlines,” Sinofsky claimed. “We’re promising to deliver the best release of Windows we possibly can and that’s our goal. Together, and with a little bit more patience, we’ll achieve that goal.”

It’s pretty clear that Windows 7 will, in fact, be delivered well before the 2009 holiday and back-to-school seasons, which are key sales bump periods in the consumer market. Insiders Expect to see the RC version of Windows 7 in April alongside Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2), and the RTM release by mid-2009.

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In February Microsoft will announce its plans for the various Windows 7 product editions it will sell when that OS is released to the public sometime this year. The announcement was eagerly awaited because of the confusing and broad range of Windows Vista product editions, with their overlapping feature sets.

Unlike with Vista, where Microsoft crowded the market with lots of versions of Windows, Windows 7 will ship in just a handful of common-sense product editions. And also unlike with Vista, these product editions are all supersets of each other, so there are no overlapping feature sets (which is good) and simpler upgrading (which is even better).

For this version of the OS, Microsoft and its PC maker partners will market just two mainstream product editions, Windows 7 Home Premium–the recommended choice for consumers–and Windows 7 Professional, which is aimed at enthusiasts and IT professionals.

Here’s how the complete product line breaks down (where each product edition is a superset of the one before it.)

Windows 7 Starter. This version will be sold only through PC makers to users in emerging markets. As with previous Windows Starter Edition products, it is limited in some ways: You can run only three applications at once, you don’t get Windows 7′s full mobility capabilities, and you can participate in but not create a Home Group.

Windows 7 Home Premium. The volume Windows 7 offering for consumers builds on Starter and includes Mobility Center, Aero Glass, advanced windows navigation features like Aero Snap and Aero Peek, and multi-touch, as well as the ability to both create and participate in Home Groups. Home Premium will be sold at retail and be included with new computers.

Windows 7 Professional. This version builds on Home Premium and adds features like domain join, Group Policy controls, location-aware printing, advanced backup, EFS, and offline folders. Pro will be sold at retail and be included with new computers.

Windows 7 Enterprise. As before, Enterprise is aimed at Microsoft’s Software Assurance (SA) volume-license customers. This time, however, Enterprise is a superset of Professional and adds much-heralded Windows 7 features like Direct Access, Branch Cache, BitLocker, and BitLocker To Go.

Windows 7 Ultimate. For those few customers who simply must have everything, Windows 7 Ultimate offers all of the features from Enterprise but loses the volume-licensing requirement. So you can think of Ultimate edition as Enterprise for consumers (and other retail customers).

So you may be looking back over this list and thinking, well, hold on a second there: That’s five product editions. Are they really simplifying anything? Yes, they really are. Microsoft and its partners will focus most of their efforts selling Home Premium and Pro to the retail and consumer markets, and Enterprise to volume licensing business customers. Ultimate and Starter are, by definition, niche products that are available only to address low-volume but important markets. But what really makes this work is the “Russian doll” structure where each version is a true superset of the one below it. With Windows Vista, Home Premium had some features that Business did not and vice versa. That made choosing a product edition difficult.

A few other product edition notes: It will be possible to electronically upgrade from any Windows 7 product edition to a higher-end product edition, and to do so quickly and easily. So even a Starter edition user will be able to upgrade all the way up to Ultimate if they so choose.

Vista users will face simple upgrade choices: You can go from Vista Home Basic or Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium or any higher product edition, for example. XP users? They can only “upgrade” by performing a clean install of Windows 7–Microsoft will not support an in-place upgrade–but there will be utilities to smooth the process and get data transferred over easily.

This info comes from Paul Thurrott with the Windows IT Pro magazine.  Read the article at http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/101416/microsoft-details-windows-7-product-version-plans.html

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When Windows begins to run slowly (and it will..) what you need is a Windows Tune-Up!  This is a guide to those Essential Applications to keep Windows running like new.

I’m going to focus on Windows XP since the target audience of this article is those individuals that know better than to run Windows Vista.  No seriously, most of these applications will run on Vista and since Windows 7 is based upon the same architecture they should work on the next version of Windows as well.

There are four main aspects to tuning up Windows-  removing unnecessary and temporary files, optimizing file structure and location, removing ready-state programs, and removing viruses and spyware.

Step One- Remove Junk Files

Any time you have a problem with an Internet application the first thing they tell you to do is to delete the Internet temporary files and history.  This is a good tip too because Internet cache or temp files can easily exceed 1 GB on current computers.  These extra files will not only slow down Internet usage, but disk reading as well.  It’s easy enough to delete the private data in Internet Explorer or Firefox or Opera or whatever web browser you use, but that doesn’t remove any of the resident Windows temporary files that are left over after installing software or Windows updates or even during daily use.  To do this easily you need an application.  I suggest a little jewel I’ve used for years called Windows Cleanup.  This is a very small program written by Steven Gould.  I’ve tried all sorts of cleanup programs from Xclean to Advanced System Care and none are as simple and work as well as Windows Cleanup for deleting unneeded files.  The current version is 4.5.2 however I am a bigger fan of 4.0 because it doesn’t ask you to donate after each run. Oh, and this application is so good that it shouldn’t be free… but it is.  Download it from http://www.stevengould.org .

I also noticed Steven is running a website powered by Joomla and I’m a big fan of that as well.  But that’s another story.

Step Two- Fix those fraged files

Ok, so we’ve deleted all the junk files from the computer.   Our next step is to defragment the hard drive.  The internal defragmenters in all versions of Windows really blow chunks so we need a better application for this as well.  If you are in a real bind and can’t download this next tool, running the builtin defrag tool will work better than not running it.  I’ve tried all of these tools as well on every version of Windows since Windows 3.0 and Windows NT 3.51 on both the server and workstation flavors.  The ones I’ve tried are PerfectDisk, Diskkeeper and others.  Yet for all the thousands (literally) of dollars I have spent on these commercial applications none have performed as well as IOBits Smart Defrag.  Oh, and did I mention that this tool is FREE as well??  This is another one of those tools I would tell you to buy, but it’s free.  Gotta love that!  Download Smart Defrag from http://iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html.

IOBit also has another exceptional tool for the average computer user that needs an all-in-one system care package called Advanced System Care.  They have a free version but for the true all-in-one software you will need to buy it.  Buying it bundles Smart Defrag into one interface and all levels of system care are handled with just the push of a button.  This is ok for some, however I believe following the steps in this document results in a better tune-up and doesn’t cost anything.  It does however take a little more time but I think it’s worth it.

Step Three- Remove unwanted startup items

Our next step is to get rid of the “ready state” applications that run in the background and hog system resources.  Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t hate all applications that run in the background.  But when there are so many running it really does become a pinch point on system performance and can severely slow even the most powerful system.  I haven’t found any good software packages that take care of this aspect of a Windows Tune-up and that’s because each system is so different in the software that’s installed.

Performing this next step is not for the faint of heart nor for the computer layman.  You should have a pretty darn good understanding of how Windows works before you attempt this one.  For this step we’ll use the built in tool msconfig.  Click start and go to Run and type msconfig.

MSConfig has lots to look at but we’re only going to focus on two tabs, the Startup tab and the Services tab.

First click the Startup tab-

This will show you all the items that start when Windows starts running.  Most of these items happen in the background and most are not needed.  There are a few essential items here that you do not want to uncheck- make sure any antivirus software is left to run.

In my case here I would not uncheck VMWare tray or VMWare user because those are essential items that are needed for my version of Windows running under VMWare on my Mac.

In this case I could uncheck qtask which is the Quicktime quick launcher and Reader_sl because that is also a quick launcher for Adobe.  And I could disable the CorelPhoto Downloader.  This is the utility that allows Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo to see a digital camera and allow it to do the downloads through it.

See what I mean about needing to know what you’re doing here a bit?  For the most part removing all the items here will not hurt anything and you can always run them manually after starting Windows or run msconfig again to re-check those items.

Secondly you will want to go to the Services tab-

Make sure first that you check the “Hide all Microsoft Services” check box otherwise this tab is very intimidating.  Now your list is much shorter.  The next thing to do is make sure you remove all non-essential services from starting.  Once again, leave your antivirus software and other essential services.

Once you complete this task click on the Ok button and the System Configuration Utility will ask you to reboot the system so the changes can take effect.  You can now or later but be aware that you will see a message upon the next restart from the System Config Utility telling you that some startup items have been disabled.  There is a check box to NOT show the message again.  Check it!

Next we can move on to our next step- removing Spyware and Viruses.

Step Four- Removing spyware and viruses

The number one cause of a slow PC is spyware.  The number one cause of a slow PC is spyware.  No that’s not a typo- it’s that important!  Spyware slows down your computer because it affects all of our three previous steps and removing it is like a double bonus!  There are lots of good spyware applications our there and most antivirus software even catches the worst kind now, but to cover yourself the best for the least amount of money keep reading.  Spybot Search & Destroy is by far the best free spyware removal tool.  It’s so good that you SHOULD donate to the cause because it’s that good!  It can be downloaded from http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/ .  Ocasionally you will get some bad little buggies that Spybot doesn’t have the latest and greatest definitions for and in that case I suggest you get MalwareBytes from http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php .  This is another EXCELLENT choice and they have a version you can buy although I never have so I can’t even tell you what the difference between the free and commercial version is.

If you use Spybot make sure you imunize after downloading the latest definitions because this will help prevent spyware!  What a concept!

As far as antivirus is concerned, be very picky.  The big commercial named software isn’t always the best.  I’m a big fan of AVG Free Antivirus because it’s… well… it’s free.  AND it works very well especially for the price !  You can downlaod AVG from http://free.avg.com/ .  I’m not a big fan of McAfee, Norton, or Trend Micro.  Sophos is ok although I would suggest F-Prot because it is the by far the best and most lightweight antivirus software out there!  We ran it on the network for years before being talked into one of the “name brand” packages.  I have regretted it ever since and can’t wait until our contract expires so we can go back.  It is so light weight that you cannot tell it’s running on a 1 ghz machine running XP with 265 mb of ram.  Keep in mind however, you will need to buy F-Prot.  Visit them here http://www.f-prot.com/.

Armed with these four simple tactics you will be able to revive the weak and struggling PC back to good health!  Along with these steps make sure you are keeping Windows updated by running Windows Updates and even better opt into Microsoft’s newer Microsoft Update which updates all the MS software like Office as well as Windows critical updates.

Leave comments of email me and I will be happy to take or make suggestions!

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