| From the Editor
Advancing the Platform at WinHEC US: Next Up, Asia!
With our two major hardware events behind us in the US-DDC and WinHEC-we look forward to the three WinHEC events taking place in Beijing, Taipei, and Tokyo in December.
If you did not make it to the U.S. events and have the opportunity to be in Asia, the Asia events will bring you the same high-quality Windows 7 technical information. Plus, you will receive a copy of the Windows 7 pre-beta build given out at the WinHEC conference in Los Angeles. Find more information on these events below.
One of the windfalls of events like WinHEC is that we work with the Windows engineering teams to prepare a lot of technical documentation in support of the conference. As a result, we have many newly published white papers to highlight. This month we focus on those papers related to Connected PCs and Devices.
To those who did make it to Los Angeles earlier this month, we want to thank you for attending, engaging, partying, and providing feedback. We had a great time.
- The WHDC Web Team.
WinHEC News
WinHEC 2008 Asia Events in December
In December, we take many of the technical sessions, keynotes, and demo stations from WinHEC 2008 U.S. on the road to our three WinHEC 2008 Asia conferences. Like the US conference, the Asia events will focus on designing PCs, servers, and devices that run and interface with Windows with a special focus on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Also, copies of the same Windows 7 pre-beta build that was given out at WinHEC US will be distributed at the WinHEC Asia events. If you're in the area, we hope you can attend one of these events. WinHEC 2008 China December 3-4, 2008 Beijing Marriott Hotel City Wall Beijing, China Register HereWinHEC 2008 Taiwan December 9-10, 2008 Taipei International Convention Center Taipei, Taiwan Register HereWinHEC 2008 Japan December 16, 2008 Le Theatre Ginza Tokyo, Japan Register Here
Get WinHEC 2008 US Presentations and Post-Event Information
Whether or not you were able to attend this year's WinHEC conference, you can now view and/or download each of the PowerPoint slide decks from the technical sessions at this year's conference from the WHDC Web site. Go to the 2008 Conference Presentations Web page. The slide decks are arranged by WinHEC track and then alphabetically. Of course, use F5 to search the page by keyword. If the file name is not descriptive enough, you can view abstracts of each session also on WHDC at the Conference Sessions page.
WinHEC U.S. Keynotes, Virtual PressRoom, and Blogosphere
It's just like being there! Check out the WinHEC 2008 home page to see, hear, and read about the technical details of working with Windows 7, as presented at WinHEC in LA:  Check out the 2008 keynotes, which are filled with demos, from Steven Sinofsky and Jon DeVaan on Windows 7 client and from Bill Laing on Windows Server 2008 R2. Find out highlights of what was presented each day of the conference in LA at the Virtual PressRoom. Read what the blogs had to say about this year's event.
WinHEC Calls to Action
News for Windows Hardware and Driver Developers
WinHEC 2008 Sponsor, Industry, and Microsoft Conference Papers
Check out the conference white papers published on WHDC in support of our WinHEC events. This month, we'd like to highlight a sampling of the papers published in support of the Connected PCs and Devices track at WinHEC:
Windows Device Experience
Windows 7 introduces a collection of new features to improve how users discover and use devices that are connected to their PC. These new user features are supported by system and platform features that define how device makers present their devices - and related applications and services -in Windows. New features include Devices and Printers Folder, Device Stage, Device Containers, and Device Metadata System. For more info and links to in-depth white papers, visit the Windows Device Experience overview page. Note that the list of white papers will grow as we continue to work toward the Windows 7 beta release.
Windows Portable Devices: Driver Development Guide
This Help file contains the design guide, programming guide, and reference needed to create device drivers for Windows Portable Devices (WPDs).
How to Enable USB Selective Suspend for Human Interface Devices
This paper provides information about enabling the USB selective suspend feature for human interface devices (HIDs) in the Windows family of operating systems. Through this feature, Windows can selectively suspend idle HIDs. This allows Windows to efficiently manage the power requirements of the overall system.
Design Guidelines and Considerations for Building Windows Certified Network Media Devices
This paper describes requirements and recommendations for building Network Media Devices that work well with the Windows 7 operating system. Consumers want their personal media collections available throughout their homes. To enable consumers to unlock the potential of their Windows PCs and enjoy widespread media access, personal and premium content must flow smoothly between Windows PCs and networked media devices. This paper describes the Media Sharing functionality in Windows 7 and the Windows logo requirements that are associated with network media devices, so that manufacturers of networked media devices can develop products that are highly interoperable with Windows.
Best Practices Guide for Developing Printer Drivers
This paper provides information about printer drivers for the Windows family of operating systems. It gives printer driver developers and testers important information about how to build a high-quality printer driver. In particular, it calls out many of the best practices to implement during driver development and testing.
What's New in Blogs for Hardware and Driver Developers
This post is about disk space and the disk space "consumed" by Windows 7. Disk space is the sort of thing where everyone wants to use less, but the cost of using a bit more relative to the benefits has generally been a positive tradeoff. Things have changed recently with the availability of solid-state drives in capacities significantly smaller than the trend in spinning drives. Traditionally most all software, including Windows, would not hesitate to consume a 100 MB on a specific (justified) need when looking at a 60 GB (or 1,500 GB) drive; with desirable machines shipping with 16 GB of solid-state storage, we are looking carefully at the disk space used by Windows-both at setup time and also as a PC "ages". We also had a specific session at WinHEC on solid-state drives that might be interesting to folks. This post is authored by Michael Beck, a program manager in the core OS deployment feature team. -Steve. More. Note: The E7 blog is available in several languages. These translated versions are available at the link above.
In my first Pushing the Limits of Windows post, I discussed physical memory limits, including the limits imposed by licensing, implementation, and driver compatibility. This time I'm turning my attention to another fundamental resource, virtual memory. Virtual memory separates a program's view of memory from the system's physical memory, so an operating system decides when and if to store the program's code and data in physical memory and when to store it in a file. The major advantage of virtual memory is that it allows more processes to execute concurrently than might otherwise fit in physical memory. More...
New Things Happening with the WDK
WDF Developers: New Versions of KMDF and UMDF to Ship with Windows 7
This release of KMDF 1.9 and UMDF 1.9 includes down-level redistributable packages that are shipped with the Windows Driver Kit (WDK). Remember that the framework is updated when a new driver is installed on the system and your driver will link to the new version. Even though we do a lot of testing to ensure compatibility from version to version, we can't test your bits in your scenarios, so it is important that you do testing on your own drivers. You can begin testing today with the frameworks on Windows 7 and with the down-level frameworks in the WDK we shipped to DDC, PDC, and WinHEC attendees. You will be able to continue testing with the beta versions, which will be released shortly. Please let us know if you find any compatibility issues in the new version 1.9. As always, we can be reached at wdfinfo@microsoft.com. Following are some hints for testing: 1. Install your existing driver package on the pre-release of Windows 7 and test the common scenarios. Windows 7 has both KMDF 1.9 and UMDF 1.9 as the native framework versions. 2. Update your INF file to use the new 1.9 redistributables from the WDK and install those redistributables on the down-level platforms you support. Make sure the installation of your driver works and the new framework is present and active. 3. For testing purposes, rebuild your driver with the Windows 7 WDK and test it with the driver verifier turned on. The driver verifier now makes additional checks for framework drivers, which will help ensure compatibility and stability. 4. Install your drivers with the previous frameworks and then test an upgrade to Windows 7. Note to UMDF Developers: Please check the WDK release notes for information about a new co-installer for WinUSB. This new installer will not be available with the Windows 7 WDK Beta but will be posted shortly afterwards. The new installer will be needed to fully test UMDF drivers against UMDF 1.9 on previous Windows releases.
WDK Documentation Survey Summary
The Windows Driver Kit (WDK) documentation team would like to thank each and every member of the community who participated in our annual survey, which ended October 3. We had 357 respondents and the great news is that of those respondents who voiced an opinion, 82% thought that the quality of WDK documentation had remained the same or improved and 87% thought that the quality of WDK sample drivers had remained the same or improved in the time since the respondents had started writing Windows drivers. In addition, we were pleased to learn the following details about our audience: Roughly half the respondents are non-native English speakers. English-only documentation is preferred strongly over machine translation or human translation. ** Respondents use the WDK documentation online and offline about equally. **NOTE: If you are interested in machine translation, check out http://translator.live.com As a result of this survey, we've identified the following areas for improvement: More documentation on Kernel-Mode driver architecture. Reference sections across all technologies. Index enhancements in offline documentation. As we move forward, our plans for improving documentation will be based on these focus areas. Please watch this newsletter for future announcements and pointers to newly published documentation. As always, if you would like to submit feedback, please send your comments to: ddksurv1@microsoft.com.
Windows Logo Program Tools and News
Windows Online Services FAQ Updates We have included a few questions we have received from you below. Please submit question suggestions to: winqual@microsoft.com. To view the entire FAQ document, please see the WinQual website. Q. What is the DUA submission and how much does it cost? A. DUA means Driver Update Acceptable submission. For an already-approved submission, this type of submission lets you make changes only to the INF file. You cannot change the driver binaries (such as .sys, .dll, and so on). No test log files, and therefore no Readme.doc file, are required for a DUA submission. The Winqual Submission Tool (WST) tests some of the same things that ChkINF does. On the back end, the Winqual site performs a Windiff to make sure that no binaries have changed. The charge for a DUA submission is $250 for each operating system family. We do not charge per driver package. For example, if you submit for Windows XP x86 and Windows XP x64, the charge is $250. If you submit for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 x86, the charge is $500. Q. How can I sign legal agreements? What permissions do I need to sign these agreements? A. All legal agreements must be signed online. Note: You are no longer required to send the agreement copy to Microsoft by fax. To sign the agreement online at any time: 1. Log on with Sign Master Legal Agreements permissions. 2. Click Member Services, and then click Legal Agreements. If you do not see the Legal Agreements link or a text box for signing a particular agreement, the appropriate permissions might not be enabled for your account. To receive permission to sign legal agreements, ask your company's administrator to do the following: 1. Click Member Services. 2. Click Users, and find your name on the Permissions tab. 3. Select the Sign Master Legal Agreements check box. 4. Save the changes. You will now be able to sign the legal agreement. Q. How can I obtain technical help with the Windows Logo Kit (WLK)? A. To obtain help with the WLK, open a support case with CSS. They will provide technical support. Customers who have a Premier support contract should work with their Technical Account Manager (TAM) to open support incidents. For customers who do not have a Premier support contract, professional support options, including telephone numbers and pricing information, are available at: http://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?&prid=11880 If we determine that the support issue is related to Microsoft, you will not be charged for the services. We either do not charge for the service or credit your account if a charge has been made. Some examples of Microsoft-related issues are a test issue, errata being processed or errata filter not working, a documentation issue, or a WLK product issue.
| 
