| Windows 7 and Logo Partners at the Consumer Electronics Show
If you are a partner participating in the Windows 7 Logo Program, we would like to invite you to participate in the Windows 7 presence at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, January 7-10, 2010. First, we are providing all exhibitors with access to an evaluation copy of Windows 7 Enterprise for use in demonstrations at the show. Then, in addition, if you are a logo partner, you will receive a Windows 7 Logo Marketing Kit for CES. This marketing kit allows you to differentiate yourself on the showroom floor and demonstrate that you support the latest Windows technologies. It also connects you back to the larger Windows 7 presence at the show. Here is how to participate: 1. Download an evaluation copy of Windows 7 Enterprise for your PCs at the show by visiting the Windows 7 at CES page ( http://www.microsoft.com/windows/build/ces2010.aspx). Enter code CES2010. 2. Reserve your Windows 7 Logo Marketing Kit for CES by sending an e-mail to ceswin7@microsoft.com with the following information: - Contact information, including your name and phone number - Company name - Booth number or meeting room Kits will be delivered at CES between January 4 and January 6, 2010. We are looking forward to seeing you at the show!
News for Windows Hardware and Driver Developers
Content Posted from the Windows Device Partner Ecosystem Summit Thank you to those of you who attended the Windows 7 Device Partner Ecosystem Summit, December 1-3, 2009, on the Microsoft campus in Redmond. We have posted the slide decks and video recordings of the sessions online. For those who were unable to attend, the purpose of the event was to foster broad adoption of Windows 7 device experience features by the Windows partner ecosystem. Our goals in providing this content broadly are to increase the number of Window 7 hardware products that qualify for a logo, expand the community of Windows hardware partners who logo their products, and thereby increase the satisfaction of our customers. We hope this event and its content increase excitement for Windows 7 in the hardware ecosystem and promote education about Windows 7 features, resources, and opportunities for community interaction. Whether or not you were able to attend the event, you can find the presentations and video recordings of the event sessions on the Windows Hardware Developer Central Web site: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/resources/IHVEcosys_Win7.mspx.
How to Create and Submit a Sync Plug-In for Windows 7 Device Stage Device manufacturers can use the new Device Stage feature in Windows 7 to show their customers the applications and services that are specific to their device. The Device Stage interface is an extension of the Devices and Printers interface and provides a new way for users to interact with their mobile phones, cameras, printers, and portable media players. If your device supports personal information such as contacts and calendars, you can enable the sync capability in Device Stage. This capability allows customers to sync their mobile phones, music players, and other mobile devices with a computer that is running Windows 7. If you want your customers to be able to sync their personal information from a program on your device, you must design a sync plug-in for that program. If you create a Windows 7 sync plug-in, you can ask Microsoft to list your plug-in on the Device Stage Referral page. This enables people who use Windows 7 to easily find the plug-in from within the Device Stage interface. http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/DeviceExperience/DevStageSyncPlugIn.mspx
DPI Configuration for Small PCs: A Guide for OEMs This paper provides information about the high-DPI (dots -per-inch) feature for the Windows family of operating systems. This feature helps to compensate for the small text size that results from high-resolution displays. This paper is for display vendors and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of ultramobile PCs who must determine the best default screen resolution for their hardware. It explains the concepts that are involved in effective screen resolution, provides guidance for OEMs to determine the appropriate effective screen resolution, and includes a case study that shows the potential trade-offs that vendors might encounter. http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/display/DPIConfig_SmallPCs.mspx
Mobile Broadband Changes for Windows 7 Windows 7 defines a new driver model for mobile broadband devices. The model defines a new interface for mobile broadband devices to integrate with Windows and uses new features introduced by Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS) 6.20. Network applications that were written for NDIS 6.0 or earlier and perform packet capture, filtering, or injection at the media access control (MAC) layer-such as firewalls, antivirus filters, and virtual private network (VPN) clients- might require updates to work with mobile broadband devices. This paper discusses important changes in the mobile broadband stack for Windows 7, provides guidance for testing applications for compatibility with mobile broadband, and describes the changes that are required to update the applications to work with mobile broadband devices on Windows 7. This information is intended for application developers who create or maintain network applications such as firewalls, antivirus filters, and VPN clients. http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/connect/MB/MBChangesWin7.mspx
What's New in Blogs for Hardware and Driver Developers
"Preventing Race Conditions in Code That Accesses Global Data" by Jonathan Morrison in his "It Goes to Eleven" Blog Race conditions in C/C++ code are amazingly easy to introduce and notoriously difficult to debug. The costs associated with a race condition can vary from 0 to "very expensive" depending on where in the code they occur. For example, if there is a bug in a driver that causes it to write to memory that it doesn't own, the symptoms will most likely be totally arbitrary, possibly showing up as kernel or user mode heap corruptions, stack trashes or hardware malfunctions. Developers throughout different parts of the system could spend a lot of time debugging issues that are really just symptoms of a problem in the underlying code. This is why it is so important to code defensively against race conditions. Even in environments where the behaviors of the system are known (like an embedded system) it is important that the code express the intent of the programmer, even if the output that the compiler generates for that code does not exhibit bad behavior today. That code can and will be copied and potentially ported forward to new environments, thus propagating any existing bugs. It is important that code be free of race conditions at all levels - source code level, assembly code level and object code level. Read more: http://blogs.msdn.com/itgoestoeleven/archive/2009/11/11/preventing-race-conditions-in-code-that-accesses-global-data.aspx
Windows Logo Program News
Windows Logo Kit 1.5 Released The Windows Logo Program would like to inform our partners that we released Windows Logo Kit (WLK) 1.5 on November 25, 2009, through the Microsoft Connect Web site ( https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=668). WLK 1.5 will be a required kit for logo submissions effective February 1, 2010. Partners can choose to use either WLK 1.4 or WLK 1.5 for logo submissions until February 1, 2010. WLK 1.4 expires on February 1, 2010. Please note that we no longer provide hotfixes (QFEs) for WLK 1.4, effective with the release of WLK 1.5 on November 25, 2009.
New Means to Identify Preview Tests in WLK 1.5 In Windows Logo Kit (WLK) 1.5, we introduced a significant change to the way new tests and points of failure are identified. The new preview filters are intended to mask the failures generated by preview tests. When a preview filter is applied to a new test in WLK 1.5, the following will occur: - In WLK, the filtered error in the log is like a modified "autotriage" error. The test still appears as failed and is not moved to a passing log. This help you to identify which failures must be fixed when the test becomes required in the future. - On the Windows Quality Online Services (Winqual) Web site, when you upload a CPK that contains a preview filtered log, any preview filter error is treated as an erratum and is given a pass. For more information about preview filters in the WLK, see the logo program webcast, Windows Logo Kit Preview Filters: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/media/WinLogo/WLK_Preview_Filters.wvx
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