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Some site updates: Windows 7 TV tuner support, Office 2010 tech preview

May 14, 2009 Paul Thurrott | Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows

I made some minor revisions to two articles that may be of interest. I'm never sure how to promote these things, since they're small changes and don't necessitate re-reading the entire article. This seems like a good way to do it.

Windows 7 Product Editions: A Comparison

I added some info about TV tuner support, which has curiously been an oft-repeated question via email. The basic deal is that in any version of Windows 7 that supports Media Center, you can have up to four TV tuners of each type.

Office 2010 FAQ

I added information about the Office 2010 technical preview (July) and public beta (Q3 2009).

Discuss this Article 56

mikegalos@msn.com
on May 15, 2009
And, of course, if you buy Windows 7 Home Premium and find out later you need some of the extra features of Windows 7 Professional you can buy the Home Premium to Professional upgrade and those extra features are added.
Lindy
on May 15, 2009
Does a Windows 7Home Premium allow it to be connected to via RDC/RDP? It did not under Vista. You could RDC/RDP out but not in.
chuckb84
on May 15, 2009
@waethorn, Certainly the memory mapped IO for ROMs, etc can only subtract from the usable memory space. PAE is what I once knew as the base segment address registers in the 8088 (and always hated compared with the lovely flat memory map of the 68000), and I suppose Apple must now be using that to let me access 6 gigs of RAM in my Macbook Pro. I haven't noticed any slow downs from it, and I have no idea about the details of the implementation, but there are zero compatibility issues that I can identify. I agree that a fully 64 bit world is overdue. "Using 64-bit SIMD instructional code is faster on a newer CPU than using it on a system with only 32-bit wide registers. Why? Because you can stack much more data into less registers." Yep. SIMD is Single Instruction, Multiple Data, and a 64 bit register makes the "multiple" data twice as multiple. SIMD was brilliantly done in the PowerPC architecture and was the source of Apple's claims of the "megahertz myth". They were both right and wrong. Properly coded Altivec programs mopped the floor with contemporaneous Intel chips, BUT: (1) few apps were well coded for Altivec, (2) it was labor intensive and few developers took the trouble, (3) the compiler support, even the IBM XL compilers, wasn't that great. So Apple's decision to switch to Intel is not one I regret. (Plus, it changed everything, since Macs now run Windows natively or at near native speeds in virtual machines.)
mikegalos@msn.com
on May 15, 2009
Lindy, You're right. Not enough coffee yet. Add Remote Desktop Host to the list I gave comparing the two retail versions And, of course, you can get similar functionality with Live Mesh as well.
shark47
on May 15, 2009
So Apple's decision to switch to Intel is not one I regret." Doesn't it bother you that Apple works so closely with a "800 lb Gorilla that has used illegal anti-competitive behaviors to insert itself into everyone's daily life?" (Well, according to the EC at least!)
Waethorn
on May 15, 2009
@Lindy: No. Having full access to a home desktop from remote is a niche market, and also something that businesses don't want users doing from the office because it's not a controlled environment. Windows 7 Home Premium will still allow the library sharing capabilities though. Home users are advised to use Remote Assistance in place of Remote Desktop. @chuck: AFAIK, they don't use PAE. PAE is only for 32-bit operating systems and doesn't make any sense for 64-bit operating systems. In OS X, it's a 32-bit kernel, but supports 64-bit user processes. The reason they use the 32-bit kernel is for driver compatibility and for compatibility with older Intel Core [1] Macs. It may or may not provide additional help coding for older PPC Mac's too, even though the kernel needed to be recompiled. That will be a sore spot in Snow Leopard though, since hardware manufacturers will have to recode drivers to support the new 64-bit kernel. I believe that Apple mentioned somewhere that the kernel WILL be 64-bit in the new version and Intel only, which means that nothing below an Intel Core 2 Duo Mac will be able to run it. That is, unless they provide 2 separate kernels the way Microsoft does. I haven't looked into user processes for OS X, but I imagine that if someone actually codes real 64-bit processes, they'd have to also code 32-bit threads in order for their app to run on older machines. That is, unless Apple provides some sort of hybrid/compatibility mode for their 64-bit API's which can be simultaneously coded in 32-bit. I kind of doubt that though. I would suspect that most devs would just compile separate binaries for full compatibility.

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