Windows Weekly 157

Windows Weekly Episode 157

Topics

• Embedded in Redmond
  • My week in the belly of the beast (literally)
  • Hands on with the KIN ... And a little bit about Windows Phone 7

• The New Hotmail
  • Microsoft unveils the next version of its Hotmail webmail service. Due in mid-to-late June
  • Slightly modified new UI (more Gmail like), filtering (Quick Views and mailbox filters), conversation view (optional, unlike Gmail), integrated Messenger, major photo/Office document sharing improvements (10 GB per email, 200 docs/photos per email, each up to 50 MB big; hosted on SkyDrive), Active Views.
  • The best bit: They're adding Exchange ActiveSync support for mobile devices (finally). There's also a new mobile site for email/calendar that works on iPhone/Android/etc.
  • This is the beginning of the Windows Live Wave 4 stuff.

• No huge surprise here: Office Live Workspace accounts moving to Office Web Apps this year

• Smart phone Q1 2010 sales
  • 1 - Symbian, 24m units sold, 44 percent market share, down 5.5 percentage points
  • 2 - RIM, 10.5m units, 19.4, down 2
  • 3 - Apple, 15.4m units, up 5
  • 4 - Android, 9.6m units, up 8 (up 707 percent in NA!)
  • 5 - Windows Mobile, 6.8m units, down 3.4
  • Notes: 54m smart phones sold in first quarter, up 49 percent (PCs are selling 1m a day/90m quarter)
  • Last year, iPhone and WM were neck and neck at 10.5/10.2 percent
  • Android expected to surpass Apple by end of year, early 2011

Windows 7 Feature of the Week: Windows Experience Index

• My PC goes to 11
  • Started in Vista, used to rate overall PC performance on a scale of 1 to 5.9; now goes to 7.9 [1]
  • Ostensibly used to ensure that certain applications (especially games) will run properly but it's really just a way for support people to quickly gauge potential system bottlenecks.

Windows 7 Tip of the Week: Map SkyDrive to Windows Explorer without Microsoft Office

• A number of readers have written in with tips about mapping SkyDrive folders to Windows Explorer without using Microsoft Office 2010. There's even a utility to make this easier. [2]

Software Pick of the Week

• Aqua Snap - An Aero Snap extension with some other interesting features too
• Thanks to Victor Sacco for the tip!

• Tiny Spell - "Occasionally you need to check spelling in an application that does not include a spelling checker and you don't want to launch your word processor just for that. This is when tinySpell becomes handy. It is a small utility that allows you to easily and quickly check and correct the spelling in any Windows application."
• Thanks to Dan Gardner for the tip!

Significant Products

• Link URL and optional brief description

Sponsors

Audible

• Audible.com/windows
• ad times: 1:06-1:13 and 59:04-1:05:15

Picks

The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria (UNABRIDGED) Narrated by Fareed Zakaria

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (UNABRIDGED) Narrated by Jonathan Davis, Paolo Bacigalupi

GoToMeeting

• GoToMeeting.com/WindowsWeekly
• G2M#5
• ad times: 0:34-0:48 and 25:37-27:25

Carbonite

• Carbonite.com offer code WindowsWeekly
• Carb #2
• ad times: 0:50-1:05 and 44:56-48:13

Production Information

• Edited by: Tony
• Notes:

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