With this Kin, Microsoft wants to forward social networks to the next level and get a valuable part of the mobile phone consumers.

To merge social life with real life, Microsoft even made an experiment and picked a girl called Rosa to visit her social friends. The social experiment can be followed on Facebook. Now let’s get back to the social phones.

As we see in the screen shot taken from the official Kin website, both phones come with a sliding QWERTY keyboard and a bright, clear touchscreen. A 5 or 8 megapixel flash camera is on the back of each model with great low light shooting ability. Kin One(5 megapixel) shoots videos in SD quality, while Kin Two(8 megapixel) shoots them in HD quality. The other difference between One and Two is the internal memory 4Gb vs. 8 Gb and the speakers which are mono vs. stereo. Both phones use the media player powered by Zune.

Microsoft described Kin as the phone which brings three user experiences from PC:

-Kin Loop is the name of the home screen and is the place where you will always be updated with latest social things(status, messages, feeds, photos) from your friends. It’s the same screen we described when we announced Windows Phone 7 Series.

-Kin Spot is the place where you will be able to share(videos, photos, text messages, Web pages, location and status updates). A dot spot will appear in the bottom center of the screen indicating that there you should put your things and then choose the friends you will like to share with.

-Kin Studio is the most interesting thing and features your social life in a browser. All photos, contacts, videos, call history are backed up and you can view it like a timeline.

Latest cool thing we want to present is the Zune experience. With a Zune subscription you will have access(over 3G or Wi-Fi) to everything from your Zune Library: Music, Videos, FM Radio and podcast playback.

As Microsoft stated, Kin One and Kin Two will be available in US from the beginning of May and in the rest of the world starting this autumn. A price has not been revealed yet.

Brought to life through partnerships with Verizon Wireless, Vodafone and Sharp Corporation, KIN is designed to be the ultimate social experience that blends the phone, online services and the PC with breakthrough new experiences called the Loop, Spot and Studio. KIN will be exclusively available from Verizon Wireless in the U.S. beginning in May and from Vodafone this autumn in Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Source

Before talking about the new Taskbar, we want to speak a little about boot time in Windows 7. After we first open the computer, this is the phase when the PC loads it’s bios and then starts to boot the operating system that is installed on the hard drive. We discovered and we can confirm the fact that a system boots up faster when Windows 7 is installed. Is something close with what we all experienced at the first days after we installed XP and the system wasn’t load with  programs. It’s useless to compare it with Vista boot up time, because we all know it took more than 30 seconds to finish.

Taskbar

After the boot phase completes, Windows opens and we can finally use our computer. You should see the desktop looks something like this

Looking at the taskbar, the first thing that you discover is  his transparent effect which now expands your desktop wallpaper inside all bars or taskbars that you’ll use. Also the taskbar is taller than Xp or Vista and pointing your mouse to a taskbar icon will show you a thumbnail preview of open files or programs. Right Click-ing the applications from the taskbar will unveil a Jump List, which offers you the option to choos something related to that program. Show Desktop/Aero Peek button is now moved on the right side of the taskbar after the clock/date infos. Weather are placed in quick launch or the notification area zone, the icons can be reordered as we want.

Windows 7 introduce a new concept called Aero:

-Aero Peek effect shows a preview of the desktop, by minimizing all windows, but keeping their transparent bar shapes.

-Aero Snap help you if you intend to expand your window on half of the screen, left or right for comparison reasons for example. If you want to maximize back the window you should drag it to the bottom or top of the screen should restore it back.

-Aero Shake works like this: let’s say we have 4-5 program windows opened; if we hold click on the bar of one window and shake it the rest of the windows will minimize. To restore them back we shake that window again.

Start Menu is situated as usual on the left side of the taskbar and has a new effect when the user moves the mouse over it. It contains on the right side last used programs and on the right side Control Panel, Documents, Music. At the bottom is the Search box and the Shut Down icon which has been replaced with a link that tells you what action you can do(Shut Down, Restart, Log Off, Stand By). You can easily switch between them because near this link is an arrow that allows to choose the default one.

But stay a little because Windows 7 is not all about a simple taskbar, Microsoft added a lot of cool features and we hope that in the coming weeks we will have the time to cover them all.

Stay tune!

Windows Vista was the previous operating system that Microsoft claimed to be a new wave inside our computers. We all know Vista has been just a pain in the arse: lack of drivers, resource killer, security problems and a lot of related issues destroyed our faith in Microsoft’s operating systems(XP).

Introduction

Windows 7 is a simplified version of previous operating system made by Microsoft(Xp + Vista). It comes with several fixes and tweaks to make our experience smoother and close to what we all expected.

Versions

You will find in stores 3 different types of Windows 7, each having more or less features:

• Home Premium is the cheapest version available(from 120$) and perfect for those who use their personal computer to do usual things and features: speed, improved desktop navigation, Internet Explorer 8, Windows Media Center.

• Professional is the middle version with a price starting from 200$ and has basically Home Premium features + more: Xp Compatibilty Mode, Domain Join, Full Backup/Restore.

• Ultimate is the highest version of Windows 7 available(from 220$) and includes 35 language packs and Bitlocker feature(data encryption).

System Requirements

Not all of us will be able to use Windows 7 on our computers, but we don’t have to panic because is not pretentious as Vista was. If you want to run it you will need:

• Processor: 1Ghz (x32) or (x64) processor
• Physical Memory: 1GB RAM (x32) or 2GB RAM(x64)
• Internal Memory: 16GB (x32) or 20GB(x64)
• Graphic Device: DirectX 9

We opened this new topic about Windows 7 in Software so in the coming weeks you will discover here some of the top features that will hopefully make this new Microsoft operating system become a success.

Will Bill Gates and his stuff find the path to deliver the perfect experience to world-wide users?

Did the user opinions count when Windows 7 was built?