Microsoft Hardware Newsletter for August 6, 2009

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From the Editor Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM Editions This edition of the Microsoft Hardware Newsletter focuses on the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems for ecosystem partners. A lot of great work by Microsoft partners already has contributed to the positive reception of the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta and Release Candidate (RC) builds. Thanks and congratulations to all of you who have been working hard to deliver some significant device compatibility, performance, and reliability success stories for Windows 7. With RTM, we mark the next major milestone in Windows 7 development on our way to general availability (GA) on October 22, 2009. To help you along during this next critical stage in the development and release of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, this newsletter provides you the latest information on downloading and working with these RTM versions. Cheers! - The WHDC Web Team Top Story Windows 7 RTM Is Here! With your feedback and partnership throughout our Windows 7 planning and development process, we have reached a critical milestone: RTM! Building on the substantial investments in Windows Vista to improve PC performance and security, Windows 7 is faster, more secure, and more reliable. We are pleased to make these RTM releases available for your product and compatibility testing, and your ongoing efforts to make the most of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 capabilities. Get the RTM Builds You can download the RTM versions of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 from the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) or from TechNet. Windows 7 is available starting August 6, 2009. Windows Server 2008 R2 is available starting August 14, 2009. - MSDN: Log on or subscribe to MSDN to access the RTM builds through your MSDN Subscriber Downloads. After you log on to MSDN, go to Subscriber Downloads and look under Operating Systems for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. - TechNet: You can also visit the TechNet Web site to log on or subscribe and get the RTM builds. Test and Verify Windows 7 Compatibility Test your applications and device drivers to verify that they function properly on Windows 7 and, if necessary, update your code to help ensure that customers have a great experience with your product and Windows 7. New white papers and Help files on the WDK Developer Tools site help you start testing for Windows 7 and include Driver Verifier in Windows 7. Take advantage of the latest Windows Driver Kit and the Windows Logo Kit (WLK) 1.4 release. (Find out more about the Windows Logo Program in the next section of this newsletter.) After component-level testing, measure and analyze system performance of your products by using the Windows Performance Toolkit v.4.1.1. This kit helps to ensure that your device, driver, and applications are resource-efficient and responsive with minimal effect on overall system performance. Obtain a Windows Logo The Windows Logo Program offers tools and resources to help you identify and resolve potential compatibility issues with Windows 7. You can use these tools and resources to help your product obtain the "Compatible with Windows 7" or "Certified for Windows Server 2008 R2" logo: - Test, Qualify, and Maintain: Get Started with the Windows Logo Program - Opt in to Receive Logo Program News: Windows Logo Program Newsletter - Learn about Logo Program Value: Windows 7 Logo Program Showcase Video If your product is already verified compatible with Windows 7 but you don't yet have a Windows 7 Logo, we encourage you to maximize the value of your investment by obtaining the Windows 7 Logo. To do so, you must demonstrate that your product passes Microsoft-endorsed standards for compatibility and reliability on computers running Windows 7. Announce That Your Product Is Ready Ensure that your organization is ready to promote your product's compatibility with Windows 7. Here are four activities that your business can undertake to take advantage of your compatibility: - Promote Your Compatibility: Display your Compatibility Status on your Web site and system specs. It's important to let your customers know that you are ready by updating your product and support Web pages and your packaging and marketing collateral to list your 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 support status. - Get Listed: Get listed in the Windows 7 Compatibility Center and reach millions of customers. We are adding products daily to prepare for the launch of Windows 7 Compatibility Center. Make sure your products get listed by submitting compatibility status or pledging your support on the Product Submission Page. - Display Your Windows Logo: Display the "Compatible with Windows 7" logo on product packaging. Distinguish your product through the logo and the power of a recognized Microsoft brand. Customers will look for the logo to identify products that are compatible and reliable on Windows 7. Make sure you communicate your commitment to compatibility and reliability by displaying the Logo. To qualify to display the Logo, you must first pass the Windows 7 Logo Program requirements. For hardware program details, see the Windows Logo Program Overview page on WHDC. - Prepare to Sell: Get ready to sell your product with Windows 7. Learn about the overarching vision, new key features, and benefits of Windows 7 and Windows Internet Explorer 8 with The Business Value of Selling and implementing Windows 7 and IE8 (enrollment required). Use the Windows Demo Toolkit to build and develop a Windows demo PC. Take advantage of Windows demo scripts to sell your product with Windows 7 to your customers. Visit the Online Readiness Toolkit for more great resources. Continue to Build on Windows 7 Capabilities Microsoft's investment in key areas of Windows 7 continues to offer opportunities for hardware partners after RTM and GA. To get an idea of what is possible, view a video overview of new capabilities for devices in Windows 7. You can also learn more about taking advantage of Windows 7 advances in the following areas: - Develop Rich Device Applications. Device-specific applications are a way to extend your product's brand and services. Take advantage of opportunities in Windows 7 by evaluating the Windows 7 Developer Guide. - Capitalize on Natural User Interaction. Windows Touch enables new input capabilities, including ink and gesture support, plus handwriting recognition. - Support Enhanced Graphics. Support for the new display and graphics technologies in Windows 7 allows users to experience high quality graphics and media. Learn how you can support Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) version 1.1; DirectX technologies, including Direct3D 11, Direct3D 10, and the new Direct2D API; enhanced video playback; simplified connecting and configuring displays; improved color management; high dots per inch (DPI) and increased readability; multi-GPU systems; and linked display adapters, also called co-rendering. - Create Better Device Experiences. Device makers can unlock new value with a collection of features introduced in Windows 7 that improves how users discover and interact with devices connected to their PCs. The new Windows Device Experience Platform enables you to extend your brand and services to your customers every time they connect one of your devices to their PC. - Enable Simple Device Connectivity. Seamless user experiences begin with the ability to connect devices easily. With Windows Rally Technologies, Windows 7 shows users all wireless devices available for them to install and use-they simply pick a device, confirm the connection, and start using it. - Provide More Media on More Devices. Windows 7 makes it easy to use your home audio-video system and other networked media devices to play music, watch videos, and display photos that reside on your computer. News for Windows Hardware and Driver Developers Hardware Design for Windows 7 On the Hardware Design for Windows 7 Web page, we have collected in one location the current technical information about Window 7 for hardware engineers and driver developers that is available on WHDC. We continue to update this page as new technical papers and resources become available. For a look at the Hardware Design for Windows 7 page, see (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/hwdesign/HWdesign_Win7.mspx). Mobile Battery Life Solutions for Windows 7 This guide outlines issues and solutions for advancing battery life for portable computers that run the Windows 7 operating system. It provides system design, power policy guidelines, and preinstallation configuration recommendations as well as test configuration recommendations. This guide is an updated version of the Mobile Battery Life Solutions Guide for Windows Vista. Many of the recommendations are the same for designing both Windows Vista and Windows 7 platforms for optimal battery life. However, to simplify reading, we provide a separate version of the guide for Windows 7. The Windows 7 guide includes optimization information based on new operating system features and validation utilities (https://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/pnppwr/mobile_bat_Win7.mspx). Memory Sizing Guidance for Windows 7 This paper provides an approach that information technology (IT) professionals and system builders can use to determine how much memory is required to successfully run a set of programs. It explores how the choices in machine architecture, hardware devices, driver version, and memory configuration affect the amount of memory that is available to users' programs. This paper covers: - How Windows 7 categorizes memory usage and what each category means. - How to determine the size of the different memory categories and how to measure the amount of memory that is available to applications. - Factors that affect the amount of memory that is available to applications. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), IT professionals, and enthusiasts can use this information to understand how Windows uses memory and to determine the optimal memory size when they configure a PC to run Windows (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/hwdesign/MemSizingWin7.mspx). What's New in Blogs for Hardware and Driver Developers "Our Next Engineering Milestone: RTM" by The Windows 7 Team in the "E7" Blog This is a milestone we could not have achieved without the broad participation across the PC Ecosystem we have talked so much about on this blog. Windows 7 is a product not just of Microsoft, but of a whole industry of partners of all kinds. Throughout the development of Windows 7 we've seen an incredible engagement from so many people that have contributed to making the Windows 7 engineering project one we, collectively, feel good about. The feedback and collaboration throughout the development of Windows 7 has been outstanding and valuable beyond measure. This work has created the kind of experience so many of you have talked about in this blog-the ability to use a broad range of PC hardware and peripherals with a great setup and out-of-box experience. On behalf of the Windows team and all of the successful installations and device connections, please let me extend an incredible "thank you" to all of our hardware partners who have done such excellent work. http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/07/22/our-next-engineering-milestone-rtm.aspx New Things Happening with the WDK Windows Driver Kit 7.0.0 Is Available Windows Driver Kit (WDK) 7.0.0 contains the latest release of files, tools, and documentation used to develop drivers for Windows. This release applies to Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2003. Updates to WDK 7.0.0 include the following: - Debugging Tools for Windows - Latest header files - 1,400 new API reference topics - 826 new Driver Design Guide topics - 1,100 documentation bugs and work items completed Get the WDK: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/DevTools/WDK/WDKpkg.mspx. Get the WDK documentation only: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa972908.aspx. For more details on WDK 7.0.0, see the online version of the WDK Release Notes (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=155362&clcid=0x409). Windows Logo Program Tools and News Logo Program Requirement Reports on the Winqual Home Page We are pleased to announce that prepared requirement reports are available on the Winqual home page without logon. See the Requirement Report link in the "Helpful Links" section of the Windows Quality Online Services (Winqual) home page (https://winqual.microsoft.com/). Running the Enhanced Power Management AQ Test Systems that qualify for the Windows Server 2008 R2 logo are eligible for the Enhanced Power Management additional qualification (AQ). The test for this AQ verifies that the system meets two requirements: - The system must support p-states and must expose at least one p-state to the operating system. - The system firmware must expose at least one Win32_PowerMeter object whose CurrentReading and ConfiguredBudget properties are both within the range 25W - 5000W. If a system meets both requirements, the Enhanced Power Management AQ test passes. All test cases return PASS or FAIL. Review the test results in the log file for specific details about failures. Note: Before running the test, you should ensure that the system has at least one Power Meter device with a Hardware Limit (also called Configured Budget) value between 25W and 5000W. If this value is unspecified, the Power Meter will output 0 for the Hardware Limit, which will cause the system to fail the test. For more information about power management in Windows, see: - Recommendations for Power Budgeting with Windows Server (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/pnppwr/powermgmt/Svr_PowerBudget.mspx) - The Plug and Play, Power Management tab on the Windows Hardware Developer Central (WHDC) Web site (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/pnppwr/). Edition for August 6, 2009 In This Issue: From the Editor Top Story News for Windows Hardware and Driver Developers What's New in Blogs for Hardware and Driver Developers New Things Happening with the WDK Windows Logo Program Tools and News Tools and Links for Developers Windows Driver Developer Kits, Tools, and Programs • Windows Driver Kit • Windows Logo Kit • WDK Documentation (monthly updates) • Debugging Tools v. 6.11.1.404 (March 2009) • Windows Symbols (August 2009) • Windows Logo Program Developing Drivers with the Windows Driver Foundation Buy the Book WDF Resources on WHDC Events Professional Developers Conference 2009 November 16-19, 2009 Los Angeles, California USA The Microsoft Hardware Newsletter provides manufacturers and developers the latest technical details for how to succeed with the Windows platform. Register now, if you're not already receiving the Microsoft Hardware Newsletter. To cancel your subscription to this newsletter, reply to this message with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the Subject line. You can also unsubscribe at the Microsoft.com Web site. You can manage all your Microsoft.com communication preferences at this site. Legal Information. This newsletter was sent by the Microsoft Corporation 1 Microsoft Way Redmond, Washington, USA 98052 Sign up for other newsletters | Unsubscribe | Update your profile © 2009 Microsoft Corporation Terms of Use | Trademarks | Privacy Statement

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MSDN Flash - Windows 7 to-do's now that RTM is ready

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Volume 13, Number 16: August 3, 2009 Top News Windows 7 RTM Available for MSDN Subscribers on August 6, 2009 Developers will be able to complete their testing on the final version of Windows 7 by accessing the Windows 7 RTM bits via their MSDN subscriptions beginning August 6, 2009. Not a subscriber? Order your subscription online. MSDN Magazine: Multitouch Capabilities in Windows 7 From implementing the default gesture support to the more advanced raw touch messages, The Windows 7 Multitouch Platform gives you a lot of power with relatively simple implementation. This article walks through several scenarios by which you can enhance applications using the Windows Touch Platform features. Front Runner Windows & Windows Server 2008 R2 Is Here We are very excited to announce the launch of the Front Runner for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 program. Front Runner is an early adopter program that helps you make your applications compatible with the latest Microsoft technologies. Windows Mobile Race to Market Challenge: Win a Microsoft Surface Table Sign up to develop now and get your mobile application on the shelves of Windows Marketplace for Mobile. When you submit your app, you'll also be eligible to win the Race to Market Challenge and exciting prizes, including a Microsoft Surface Table and developer kit, online marketing and promotion, and a one-of-a-kind trophy. Your Featured Content Update Your Selected Topics Ensure that the content most relevant to you is presented in this section. Web Resources Channel 9 Video: Learn What's New from the Microsoft Security Science Group By identifying and prioritizing unique crashes according to security risk, the !exploitable Crash Analyzer tool cuts down the number of crashes that need to be investigated. Larry Larsen from Channel 9 chats with Jason Shirk to learn about this new tool in a 10-minute interview with demo. Security for Developers Active Template Library Security Update for Developers Get detailed information and guidance for controls and components built with the ActiveTemplates Library. ATL, MS09-035, and the SDL URL Rewriting Session at Black Hat More Security... Training & Books Ramp Up with New ASP.NET Tracks: • Web Development with ASP.NET - This track should enable you to quickly learn some basic skills with ASP.NET, and provide foundational knowledge to get started down the path of building Web applications with Visual Studio. • Move from ASP to ASP.NET - This course is designed to help ASP developers learn the nuances of building Web applications with ASP.NET, without presuming existing knowledge of earlier versions of the technology. • Move from PHP to ASP.NET - Designed to help PHP developers learn the nuances of building web applications with ASP.NET, without presuming existing knowledge of earlier versions of the technology. Case Studies Italian Car Maker Forms Stronger Customer, Fan Connection with Top-Performing Web Site Ferrari migrated from a Java-based infrastructure to SharePoint Server 2007 to streamline development, simplify content management, and improve user experience. Site traffic has increased by 237 percent, with a 150 percent increase in unique visitors. More Case Studies... Partner News Free Software for Agile Teams By combining VersionOne's industry-leading Agile Project Management expertise with the needs of small teams, V1: Agile Team gives you visibility to stay on schedule and deliver software on time. Received MSDN Flash from a Friend? The MSDN Flash is full of pointers to in-depth technical information that we encourage subscribers to forward to friends and co-workers. If you've received this issue from someone via e-mail and would like to receive the free MSDN Flash newsletter biweekly, all you have to do is register. ____________ In This Issue: Your Featured Content Web Resources Security for Developers Training & Books Case Studies Partner News Inside MSDN Magazine Visualizing Information with .NET Entity Framework: N-Tier Application Patterns Employing the Domain Model Pattern Resources • MSDN Events and Webcasts • Windows Developer Center • Microsoft Office Developer Center • Expression Web Home Page • patterns & practices Developer Center • MSDN Evaluation Center • MSDN Magazine • TechNet Flash • TechNet Magazine • Solution Accelerators for Partners Webcasts & Online Events All times Pacific Time geekSpeak: Inside the Microsoft Web Deployment Tool (Level 200) August 5, 12:00 noon In this geekSpeak, Mark Rosenberg introduces us to the Microsoft Web Deployment Tool and shows us how the tool is used to easily move configuration information, content, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates, and other types of data associated with a Web server. Webcasts listed in an easy-to-use calendar format: MSDN Webcast Calendar National and Global Events Devscovery Redmond 2009 August 18 - 20 Redmond, WA Attend Devscovery Redmond 2009 and get 33 in-depth technical sessions from industry experts like Jeffrey Richter, Jeff Prosise, and John Robbins. Microsoft Tech·Ed Europe 2009 November 9 - 13 Berlin, Germany This five-day event is a chance to explore the latest and soon-to-launch products and technologies that will help to accelerate your learning and release your developer potential. It offers in-depth technical training tailored to your individual needs, covering Windows 7, Visual Studio, Windows Azure, and more. DevConnections November 9 - 12 Las Vegas, NV First 500 attendees receive SQL Server 2008 Standard with 1 CAL. Follow DevConnections on Twitter. To cancel your subscription to this newsletter, reply to this message with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the Subject line. You can also unsubscribe at the Microsoft.com Web site. You can manage all your Microsoft.com communication preferences at this site. Legal Information. This newsletter was sent by the Microsoft Corporation 1 Microsoft Way Redmond, Washington, USA 98052 Customize MSDN Flash | Sign up for other newsletters | Unsubscribe | Update your profile © 2009 Microsoft Corporation Terms of Use | Trademarks | Privacy Statement