Microsoft launched a new website demo for Windows 7, where you can test drive many features of the new version of Windows, without need to install it.

Everything is going to work inside a web browser, with a couple of clicks. That’s the only purpose of the website.

If, for some reason, you don’t want to test it online, you can also download or watch videos that demonstrate the new features of Windows 7.

But before you go to the site, you first need to meet the minimum requirements to be able to see it properly.

Minimum requirements for Windows 7 online demo

Microsoft Windows:
Only Microsoft Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows 7 are supported.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or later:
Only Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or later are supported. I would never recommend you to use Internet Explorer but for this occasion, there is no other way.
If you do not have IE 6 or later, you can download it here

Screen Resolution:
The Virtual Demo sessions are best viewed at a screen resolution of 1024×768 or greater. Otherwise you may experience clipping of content.

US English Keyboard:
These online Virtual Demo sessions are in US English and only support US English Language Keyboards.

Cookies Enabled:
You must have cookies enabled to run these Virtual Demo sessions.
To enable cookies, follow these steps:

• Select “Internet Options” from the Tools menu.
• Click on the “Security” tab.
• Click “Custom Level” button.
• Scroll down to the “Cookies” section.

To enable:

• Set “Allow cookies that are stored on your computer” to “Enable”.
• Set “Allow per-session cookies” to “Enable”.
• Click “OK” to save changes.

ActiveX Control:
The Microsoft “Virtual Machine Remote Control” Active X control is required by this site. If you do not have it installed, you will be asked to when launching the Virtual Demo. There are instuctions relating to this located during the install.

Just a few more notes

If you meet all of the above requirements, then you’re good to go. However…

Once you have passed the requirements, you may have need to wait a few moments while you experience the Windows “start up” since it loads a full-functioning version of Windows 7 Professional, so you can take a look and try all of the new features, without having to install the full version on your own computer.

From there on, you can follow the instructions on the website itself, because I found it to be very user friendly.

Now go ahead and visit Windows 7 Online Demo Website, and don’t forget to share your thoughts here in the comments.

RC will stop functioning on June, 1st. That does not mean that you can use it properly to that date, because Microsoft will start shutting down your computer every two hours, starting from March.

That’s why it is time to make a decision to either buy the final version of Windows 7, or go back to your old OS, like XP or Vista (not my recommendation).

If you decided to go for Windows 7 final version, then you need to know that you can’t just upgrade to final version. Microsoft demands that you install a new copy of Windows 7, which means deleting all software that was once installed and maybe even losing some data.

To skip all those problems, here is a workaround that will enable you to simply upgrade your Windows 7 RC to the final version, without need to install a clean copy and delete any software or data on your PC.

This is the error message you will see if you try to upgrade:

Just a quick note before we begin:
The Windows 7 beta and RC versions were Ultimate edition, so you’ll only be able to upgrade to Final version if you are installing Ultimate Edition.

Follow these steps to enable the upgrade:

You will need to edit a file inside the Windows 7 installation DVD. And to be able to edit files, you need to extract all files of the DVD to your hard drive.

1. If you have a DVD, then just copy all files to a new folder on your PC.

If you use ISO image to install Windows 7, you can extract the files from ISO by using 7-Zip archiving software, which is free, and you can download it here.

2. After you’ve extracted the files, Find the “sources” folder and open it.

3. Inside that folder, find the file named “cversion.ini“, and double click to open it.

4. You need to change the “MinClient” value to some number less than the current number of the build you are using (e.g. build number of RC version  is 7100). So for the RC release, you need to change it to “7000″.

Don’t forget to leave that zero, near the value edited, as it is. (it should look just like on the image above)

5. Now just launch the setup.exe right from there (hard drive) and upgrade the system. Or if you prefer, you can burn these files to a DVD and then install it… That’s up to you.

When you launch the setup, you should see the welcome screen, like on the image below. Go ahead and click Install Now.

When you get to the point where it asks you about the type of installation, choose the “Upgrade” option.

When, or if, you reach the Compatibility Report screen like in the image below (if it doesn’t show up at all, you should be happy), you’ll see the list of applications that might not work once you have finished the upgrade.

To be honest, this is not 100% accurate, because, from my experience, many of them will work without any problems. But just in case, uninstall them, and then install them again, after the setup finishes.

After you finish all those steps, you should see that Windows 7 started installing.

Now go get a cup of coffee and find something to do in the meantime, because this will take a while to finish.

You may think that this window pops up with a reason, so you shouldn’t disable it, right? Well, if you are not so familiar with Windows, and don’t know much about computers at all, then you should probably leave it enabled.

But if you know that the software you installed, actually IS working, and Windows 7 still gives you this message, then I’m sure it gets pretty annoying. That’s why you should definitely disable it.

Here’s another reason to consider. Windows 7 displays this message even if program is installed correctly and it works 100%. This is why the sentence “This Program Might Not Have Installed Correctly” has a word “might” in it.

This is how it looks:

Now let’s see how to disable it and finally stop the annoyance.

This message pops out because “Program Compatibility Assistant” process runs in the background. In fact, this service starts right at the system startup, so it’s even slowing down the System’s startup time a little bit.

Follow these steps to disable it:

1. Click the Start button on your taskbar.

2. In the search box, type “services.msc” (no quotations) and hit Enter.

3. When new window opens, find “Program Compatibility Assistance Service” in the list (see image below).

4. Right click on it, and then click “Stop” (image above)

Now we have finished the first part. We stopped it from running in the background. But if we restart computer, it will automatically run with startup again (remember?) and will continue to show you that message. To stop it from running with the system startup, we will do just a couple of additional steps.

5. Once the service is stopped, right-click on it again. Now go to “Properties”. In a new window, find the option “Startup Type“, and on drop-down menu of it, select “Disabled” and click OK. (image below)

Now you just need to restart your computer.

To confirm that you did everything right, open Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) and look for “PcaSvc” in Services tab. If you don’t find it… Congratulations the service has been disabled!

If you’re not shortcut-type of person, and don’t usually use shortcuts when working on your computer, you really need to reconsider that habit now.

At least when it comes to Windows 7 (or any other operating system) where you do so many things. Sometimes, there’s simply not enough time and you need some speed to tackle your daily tasks.

That’s why knowing these will definitely be of huge help. It gets a little bit hard at the beginning, because you need to remember all (or some) of them and try to make yourself really use these instead of just “knowing” them.

But eventually after a week or so, you will get completely used to it and you’ll notice how much time you save just by using them.

Here’s the list of 22 windows 7 shortcuts worth knowing (I’ve also included a couple of universal shortcuts that work on XP and Vista too):

Ctrl + Mouse scroll wheel
Change the size of icons on the desktop

Windows logo key + Tab
Cycle through programs on the taskbar by using Aero Flip 3-D

Ctrl + Windows logo key +Tab
Use the arrow keys to cycle through programs on the taskbar by using Aero Flip 3-D

Windows logo key + T
Cycle through programs on the taskbar.

Windows logo key + Spacebar
Preview the desktop.

Windows logo key + Home
Minimize all but the active window.

Windows logo key + Shift+ Left Arrow or Right Arrow
Move a window from one monitor to another.

Windows logo key + number (1 for the program that is nearest to start button, 2 for second nearest and so on…)
Start the program pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number. If the program is already running, switch to that program.

Shift + Windows logo key + number
Start a new instance of the program pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number.

Alt + Windows logo key + number
Open the Jump List for the program pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number

Ctrl + Windows logo key + number
Switch to the last active window of the program pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number

Ctrl + Shift + Esc
Quick Direct launch of Task Manager ( no need for ctrl+alt+del and then choose Task Manager from the list. This starts it automatically.)

Windows logo key + P
Choose a presentation display mode

Windows logo key + D
Shift to Desktop / Minimize all windows

Ctrl + W
Close the current window

Ctrl + Shift + N
Create a new folder

Shift (when you insert a CD)
Prevent the CD from automatically playing

Right or Left Ctrl+Shift
Change the reading direction of text in right-to-left reading languages

Windows logo key + M
Minimize all windows.

Windows logo key + Shift + M
Restore minimized windows to the desktop.

Windows logo key + L
Lock your Computer or switch user

Shift + Delete
Permanently Delete the selected item without moving to the Recycle Bin (be careful with this one)

If you use a shortcut that you think is very useful, share with us in the comments below (except those like ctrl+c… I guess pretty much everyone uses them).

I can not say exactly how much faster, since it all depends on your computer specifications (processor, RAM, hard-drive and stuff like that…), but from my experience, this tweak decreased the time to boot-up for about 9-10 seconds.

Now you see how great this registry tweak is and it will get even better when you see how simple it is to apply. I will do my best to show you step-by-step and make it plain simple and of course with screenshots included.

How to make Windows XP start faster:

1. Click on “Start” on the taskbar.

2. Click “Run” located in the start menu.

3. Then in the “Run” panel, type: “regedit” without the quotation marks. (that will open up the Windows registry editor)

4. Then click on “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE” and expand it.

5. Then click on “SYSTEM” and expand it.

6. Then scroll down, and expand “CurrentControlSet”.

7. Under that, expand “Control”.

8. Then, under that one, locate and click on “ContentIndex”. (so when you click on it, it needs to be highlighted and it’s options need to show up in the right panel of Windows XP Registry Editor)

So to sum up, here’s where you need to navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ ContentIndex

Let’s continue… You have just 6 more steps until the finish line!

9. When you have clicked on “ContentIndex” and it is highlighted and you see the options and parameters on the right side of the panel… Among those, you need to scroll all the way to the bottom and find the Registry key named “StartupDelay”.

10. Double-click on it and a new window panel will pop-up.

12. The new window has a field to enter value (and a default value entered already). But before you change the value, you need to change the base from Hexadecimal to Decimal. Take a look at the screenshot below to see what I am talking about:

Now when you change it to Decimal, it displays a different value (480000 instead of 75300).

13. So now, all you need to do is change the value from “480000” to “40000” (forty thousand)

Many people ask me if they can change it to an even smaller value than 40000, but I would not recommend doing that. I tested it and it doesn’t work. I did not feel any difference in boot-up time when I change it to value less than 40000 (and no, you can’t put 0 either).

14. After you’ve completed all the steps above, click “OK” and close the Registry Editor.

And one just one little thing you need to do to finish all this registry tweaking…

15. Restart your computer.

Now you can notice big difference in time that your system takes to boot-up. Mine was faster for 10 seconds than usual. How much faster does your Windows XP boot now? Share in the comments below!

It is kind of strange though, that the official announcement of the release hasn’t yet spread fully over the net. Even the link to download the latest version of ZoneAlarm on their official website leads to a page at Download.com where you can download only version 8 (I hope they will fix that soon).

It seems that the news about the new version of ZoneAlarm doesn’t seem to have got past the ZoneAlarm forum…Yet. But who cares. You can download it right now and enjoy the internet security that this famous firewall provides.

So what are the major changes and add-ons in the latest version of ZoneAlarm (9.1)?

1. One of the most important things is that this version of ZoneAlarm is now fully compatible with Windows 7. That means you can relax and don’t need to worry whether it will crash your system or cause any conflicts with other installed software on your computer (which could, yet again, lead to system failure).

2. There is a new browser security toolbar included with installation. This is helpful if you happen to go to some malicious website that tries to install some kind of malware on your pc. But I also think this browser toolbar will suck in additional RAM memory and if you have many add-ons installed (Firefox anybody?), then it could become pretty messy. (but only for those with less RAM capacity)

So let’s sum up the features that this ZoneAlarm Browser Toolbar has:

- Spy site detection
- Signature and heuristic phishing detection
- Website safety check and rating (pretty useful)

That’s it! Here’s the link to official download page of ZoneAlarm 9.1 where direct download is available.

Download ZoneAlarm 9.1 Windows 7 compatible.