Via Todd Bishop comes the reminder that “Monday marked 25 years since the unveiling of Windows 1.0.” As Todd notes, it took another couple years before the product actually shipped. And of course even the most rabid fanboi has to admit that it was roughly seven years (Windows 3.0 in 1990) before Windows was really worth using on a daily basis.

I know I have shrink-wrapped boxes of Windows 3.1 here, but I am pretty sure the earlier versions long ago disappeared from my garage.

Anyway, Happy birthday, Windows

Last weekend I was part of a fun panel discussion where the main topic was what went on at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference in LA. You can listen to me and fellow guests Paul Thurrott and Rafael Rivera as host Leo Laporte tries to keep things mostly on track (and mostly succeeds). We talk about Windows 7, Azure, and a few other developer-related topics.

Listen here: This Week in Technology, episode 167

Bonus media: a shot of me at a PDC press event, taken by Paul Thurrott:

An incredible likeness, don’t you think?

It’s been almost three years since DirecTV announced its intentions to release a digital tuner that would allow Windows Media Center PCs to receive, record, and play back high-definition satellite programming.

Since then, the DirecTV tuner has become almost as mythical as Bigfoot or Nessie.

So imagine my surprise when I found a signed device driver for the DirecTV HDPC-20 in the pre-beta release of Windows 7 given to attendees at PDC.

Details over at ZDNet.

CNET’s Ina Fried, today:

In a presentation on its somewhat secretive Velocity program to improve PC quality, Microsoft director Doug Howe showed a slide saying that the Vista Velocity program would continue through next spring as Microsoft worked to improve Vista machines that ship in next year’s back-to-school time frame. He went on to say that Microsoft would continue the Velocity effort with Windows 7.

The slides and Howe’s presentation appeared to confirm what has been widely speculated–but something Microsoft has not outright said–namely that Windows 7 is aimed to ship around mid-year, in time to be on machines that ship for the 2009 holiday buying season. [emphasis added]

Huh. Imagine that,

Since I got back from PDC, I’ve been doing two things: working as a volunteer in this year’s election campaign (including 14 hours at the polls on Tuesday) and shifting among five separate Windows 7 installations to see exactly what’s new and different. And I still have two additional installations on my to-do list.

I’m mostly recovered from the double whammy of a PDC followed by the end of the world’s longest Presidential campaign EVER. (Sleep is a marvelous thing.) Next week I begin posting some of my Win7 discoveries. Meanwhile I’m curious to hear from you all. If you’re using the pre-beta PDC build of Windows 7, what do you think? If you’ve read about Windows 7 but haven’t used it yourself, any thoughts, reactions, and questions? Is there anything you’ve heard about in Windows 7 that makes you want to upgrade?

I’m especially interested in hearing from XP users who plan to skip Vista. Is there anything you want me to look at it in more depth so you can decide whether it’s worth upgrading?

The comments section is open…

If you’ve been following the Windows 7 beta sites, you probably caught the buzz last night when Within Windows blogger Rafael Rivera demonstrated how to unlock the flashy new Windows 7 taskbar in the PDC build.

Props to Rafael for some A-level sleuthing. But before you get too excited, hop over to ZDNet, where I explain the crucial differences between the unlocked interface and the one that Microsoft was showing off in its PDC demos:

That “unlocked” Windows 7 taskbar is also unfinished.

After nearly a week of using the pre-beta PDC release of Windows 7, I’m starting to notice the little things. Like this:

See that number in the lower right corner? In Windows Vista, the maximum value for any subscore is 5.9. Clearly the scale is now higher, as that 6.3 (solid-state drives are fast) indicates.

So how high is the upper limit? If you’re running the pre-beta Windows 7 build, share your Windows Experience Index scores in the comments.

In today’s PDC keynote demo. Media Center got no love at all. It also got no love at the reviewers workshop I attended over the weekend. Fortunately, Microsoft’s Charlie Owen is on the case, with a very detailed and thoroughly illustrated  look at Windows Media Center in the PDC Build of Windows 7.

High points:

• All the good stuff from TV Pack is in this build.
• H.264 playback is now supported out of the box with Windows 7 — including on Media Center Extenders.
• There’s a desktop gadget (no more Sidebar) that shows TV and recorded shows in the order they are recorded.
• Music playback is greatly improved.

And, drum roll…

Rating your content has never been easier in Windows Media Center. By enabling Rating Shortcuts you can press the 1 through 5 buttons on the remote or keyboard to rate the music (or picture as this is one of the shared features) in real time.

If you’re a Media Center fan, this is a must read. If you’re a Media Center developer, be sure to read the follow-up post, which documents changes to the Media Center platform.

Awesome stuff, Charlie. I can’t wait to begin using this.

My ZDNet first look is now live:

A first look at Windows 7’s pre-beta PDC release

Image Gallery: See features from the pre-beta release as well as later internal builds not yet publicly released.

OK, the gang of all-star Windows bloggers is mostly in place. If you want to follow along, here’s where you can find us:

In preparation for the public unveiling of Windows 7 tomorrow, Microsoft has renamed its flagship blog. The Windows Blog has a new look to go with its new name. It’s down at the moment as the upgrade goes through, but I was able to sneak a peek this morning while it was very briefly live. It looks remarkably like builds of Windows 7 that I’ve seen. Something tells me there will be a bunch of new stuff there tomorrow.

Ironically, windows7.com and windows7blog.com are owned by domain-squatters, as is windowssevenblog.com. And windowsblog.com is apparently a Greek site, offering “Aegean windows” for gracious Mediterranean living. It’s hard to find a good domain name, apparently.

Update: Looks like someone at Microsoft managed to snag the windows7.com domain, whoch now works properly. Thanks to an anonymous commenter for the tip.

I have no idea how well this will work, so consider today’s session a dry run for tomorrow.

Today will be a discussion of cloud computing. Tomorrow is the public unveiling of Windows 7.

In a new report on Microsoft’s anemic Windows sales for the most recent quarter, Steve Lohr of the New York Times writes:

Microsoft has said that Windows System 7 will ship by late next year.

Uh… Windows System 7? You guys have been hanging around Apple too much lately.

Update: The Times has fixed its error without acknowledging it. Thank goodness for screen captures!

Safe Mode is an important troubleshooting tool for all versions of Windows. Safe Mode starts the system with a minimal complement of drivers and services and no auto-start programs, giving you the opportunity to make configuration changes, delete files, or perform tests that are impossible in normal mode.

I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find it difficult to get Windows started in Safe Mode. The official way, of course, is to press F8 at startup and then choose a Safe Mode option from the startup menu, but timing is critical. Too early and your keystroke doesn’t get noticed. Too late and you miss your window of opportunity and start in normal mode.

The solution? If you’re already running in normal mode, use the System Configuration tool to restart in Safe Mode. In Windows Vista or Server 2008, click Start and type msconfig in the Search box, then click the shortcut that appears at the top of the Start menu. Click the Boot tab and select the check box next to Safe Boot, as shown here. (If you have a multi-boot system, be sure to select the correct entry from the list in the top window.)

You don’t need to make any other changes. Just click OK and then restart when prompted. The next time you start, you’ll go straight to Safe Mode.

In XP or Server 2003, the procedure is slightly different. Click Start, Run, type msconfig in the Run box, and press Enter. In the System Configuration Utility window, click the BOOT.INI tab and select the /SAFEBOOT option.

In all cases, after you’re done working in Safe Mode, open the System Configuration utility again, click the General tab, choose Normal Startup, and click OK. When you restart, you’ll be back in business.

Here’s how old Windows XP is:

When you install a fresh copy of XP, as I did today in a virtual machine, little billboards appear during different phases of the installation. One of them talks about support for “new classes of hardware” (or something like that – it blew by pretty quickly). As an example, it mentions Zip drives.

When was the last time you used a Zip drive? I think I threw away all my Zip disks in 2003.

Bonus snark from Wikipedia: “In 2006, PC World rated the Zip drive as the 15th worst technology product of all time. However, in 2007, PC World rated the Zip drive as the 23rd best technology product of all time.”