The PC Report

Microsoft Russia has made a major blunder today after posting a screenshot of the upcoming interface of Internet Explorer 9 – the next big revision of Microsoft’s infamous browser. So far Microsoft has teased us with some platform previews showing the JavaScript and HTML5 power of IE9 through the new Chakra engine, but no interface has been revealed.

The image in question, as you can see above, has since been pulled from Microsoft Russia’s press website but they weren’t quick enough for blogs around the internet to download the image and re-post it. Futhermore, Neowin claims to have confirmed the screenshots as real after coercing with sources close to the project.

This single image tells a lot about Microsoft’s direction for IE9. The user interface team has removed the chunky and clunky interface present in Internet Explorer 8 in favor of an ultra-minimalistic design similar to that of Firefox 4 and Chrome. Microsoft has moved tabs to the top area, removed the large Favorites bar to a button on the right hand side along with Home and Settings, removed the search bar and slimmed down the UI as much as possible

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So in a follow up to our original preview showing the latest from the Windows Live Messenger 2011 beta, we now have access to the second beta of the upcoming Messenger update and are here to give you the updates and our impressions. The second Windows Live Messenger 2011 beta comes loaded with bug fixes and improvements including a few new features that we take a look at.

First off, you can download the latest Windows Live Messenger beta from Microsoft’s Windows Live Essentials beta page, and either do a fresh install of Messenger or update, and quite possibly you will want to install some of the other Essentials applications too. Unfortunately regardless of an upgrade or fresh install, you’ll need to restart after you install beta 2.

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Over the next few weeks we will be testing the latest and most popular music players to give you a judgement on which music player is the one to use out of the myriad of players out there. For the first in the series we’ll be taking a look at Windows Media Player, the stock media and music player that comes included with Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

Windows Media Player has been included with Windows since Windows 2000 with Windows Media Player 7, a media player that has slowly evolved from the original “Media Player” that was included in Windows 3.0. The current version, Windows Media Player 12, is included as a component of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and is not available for standalone download. For those of you not running Windows 7, WMP11 is available for download.

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Microsoft has been hard at work in their development labs producing a very cool image manipulation tool called Zoom.it. Basically this is a tool that allows you to share high-resolution images on the web with ease and it works fantastically and looks professional and modern. This new tool is availabe right now at Microsoft’s new website, Zoom.it.

Microsoft uses Silverlight technology, specifically Silverlight’s deep zoom format, to convert any URL (whether it be an image URL or an actual full webpage URL) into a high resolution image that you can share with anyone by a simple URL, via an embed code or via social networks. You can then pan and zoom your way around the image by dragging and scrolling or using the inbuilt controls in the window. Test it out in the above embedded window or by going to this URL for a high-resolution image of The PC Report.

Unfortunately if you try to convert Flash-heavy URLs into high-resolution images you will find that Microsoft’s webpage rendering solution doesn’t support Flash which could be a pain for those trying to review Flash-heavy webpage layouts. It’s surprising to see that the webpage renderer is actually Apple WebKit-based rather than IE9 based, which you would assume it would be considering it’s a Microsoft product. Regardless, it works well save for Flash.

For a really amazing implementation of the technology, check out 70 Billion Pixels Budapest.

In an unsurprising move, Windows 7 has just slipped above Windows Vista in overall market share, just over a year after the full RTM release. Windows 7 usage has risen in this period to claim 19.08% of the operating system market, with Vista sliding down to just 18.37% worldwide. Due to the unpopularity with Windows Vista it is not surprising to see such a quick changeover to the new OS (just look at that rocketing yellow line resembling Windows 7), as you would think these stats suggest.

However, upon closer examination of the above graph you can see that actually Windows Vista market share has been declining rather steadily, but slower than that of XP. XP’s market share is currently sitting at 55.73% having declined from 69.95% in July of 2009, compared to Vista’s 22.71% market share in 2009 slipping to the current 18.37%. This suggests that Windows 7 has consumed proportionately more market share out of Windows XP’s than Windows Vista’s, which is great to see considering XP is a 9 year old and rather outdated OS.

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The new Windows Live Messenger Wave 4 Beta has been released, and is packed with possibly the most alterations of any Messenger since the old interface. It appears that this revision of Messenger attempts to connect all social aspects of the internet and integrate them into one program.

Updating from to the beta is very easy, and follows a similar process to the current version. Once updated, you’ll have to reboot which is a slight annoyance but nothing too strenuous. When you open the program for the first time, you’re greeted with a set of options asking whether or not you wish to connect to various services (such as Facebook, Myspace, YouTube and heaps more, but oddly no Twitter yet) or update your profile information. This process takes about a minute and is pretty straight forward.

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After the recent revelation that Windows 8 could contain some sort of application store to try and make it easier for users to find and install applications that they like, I have a few words to say. Basically, the Windows 8 app store is bound to fail.

Most readers here are probably used to some form of app store – maybe it’s a smartphone app store like the Android Market or the Apple App Store or maybe it’s a game app store like Steam. These things work. Smartphone app stores work because it’s the easiest and pretty much only way to download apps to your phone, and Steam and other game services work because they’re cheap and offer a load of great features.

Some how I don’t think these great qualities of other app stores will carry over to the app store we might be seeing in Windows 8.

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There has recently been a huge leak of confidential details concerning Microsoft’s plans for Windows 8 via “Microsoft Enthusiast” Francisco Martin’s blog. It appears as though Microsoft is heavily focusing on performance improvements in the next major revision of Windows.

Microsoft will enable high-speed data transfer solutions such as USB 3.0 and Bluetooth 3.0 in Windows 8 to thankfully bring the operating system up to speed on the latest revisions. However, it would be nice to see these specifications enabled in Windows 7 as well, maybe through an update or service pack.

Windows 8 will also be optimized in such a way that the system can be booted nearly instantly or much more quickly than previous Windows versions. Systems should also be ready to use without any major delays and available content in their systems such as email, media and sports scores will be ready to use at the drop of a hat with speedy performance. Performance improvements are always welcome, especially with plans for instant-on boot-up which should be fantastic for people who want instant access to their powered-off systems.

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In a follow up to our previous post on HTML5 we now have a video showing a speed comparison between Firefox 3.7, Internet Explorer 9, Opera (unspecified version) and Chrome 6. The latest test preview of IE9 utilises hardware acceleration as well as a new JavaScript engine and better HTML5 support. The Firefox 3.7 Alpha also uses hardware acceleration that matches IE9′s in terms of performance, and Chrome 6 tries to use its engine but ultimately fails miserably.

Most notable from the video below is that Firefox 3.7 actually beats IE9, which recently has been shown to be a speed demon, by around 5%. Both IE9 and Firefox 3.7 used the least CPU power during the test as well. As these browsers are in testing phases one would hope that by a final version things would be even smoother and faster and hopefully with interface improvements (*cough* Firefox *cough*).

It’s quite surprising to see Chrome in last place when it comes to browser speed considering that it was the fastest browser around when it was released and consistently beats non-beta Firefox and Internet Explorer versions in the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark. This could be due to (as stated in the video) an early implementation of hardware acceleration or it could mean that Firefox and IE9′s devs are just better at coding these features into their browsers.

We wait in anticipation of the full releases of all these browsers

Today, as announced via the Windows Team Blog, Microsoft has released their Office Web Apps which tie in with the release of Office 2010 next week. Available now via office.live.com you will be able to edit and create Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets and OneNote notes for free and stored via Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud service. Of course because the apps are free and on the web, there is limited functionality compared to the full Office 2010 software suite

The Office Web Apps are available around the world, but as of right now they are only available in English until Microsoft translates the suite. Using your SkyDrive, you are given a free 25 GB of online storage which is plenty for your online documents, as well as uploaded documents from the desktop version of Office 2010. Web Apps also allows collaboration between multiple people editing a single document simultaneously, which is a nice addition if you want a group Office project.

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