If you’re one of the brave souls who’s grabbed a copy of the pre-beta version of Windows 7, which is currently burning up the torrent sites, you’ll want to have a look at the new “Blue Badge” hacking tool.

Windows 7 hacker Rafael Rivera has released a new version of Blue Badge which unlocks several of the very cool, but hidden features in early builds of Windows 7. Although the pre-release features seem to work just fine, Microsoft has an unusual lock in place — you need to be an Microsoft employee with proper clearance to use them.

Rivera’s software sidesteps that requirement by patching a number of files to remove any locks. The result is a more complete picture of Windows 7 — you can try out the new taskbar, Aero gestures (grab a window and shake it to hide other windows), the rotating desktop wallpaper and more.

One thing to keep in mind is that Blue Badge doesn’t back up your files before patching them, so you’ll want to do that before running the software. Rivera has a list of the files to backup on his blog.

Obviously, since Rivera’s software is a hack being applied to a pre-beta, unofficial release available only on torrent sites, don’t be surprised if you encounter some problems. Still, if you’ve got a copy of Windows 7 (specifically build 6801) and you want to try the new features, this is the easiest method we’ve seen.

If you give it a try, be sure to let us know what you think.

[via Lifehacker]

See Also:

• Windows 7 Preview Proves Popular With Bittorrent Fans
• Windows 7 to Dump E-Mail, Photo Editing Software
• PDC 2008: The 7 Coolest New Features in Windows 7
• Windows 7 Will Be Less Annoying Than Vista

v

The Windows-on-a-Mac virtualization race is heating up again. Parallels has just unveiled version 4 of its virtualization software for Mac OS X, which brings some much-needed speed boosts, better support for top-end Apple hardware, the ability to run Mac OS X Server and some 50 other changes and tweaks.

Parallels Desktop for Mac 4.0 represents a huge speed gain over its predecessor. Thanks to under-the-hood improvements and new features like the Adaptive Hypervisor — which improves the way Parallels load balances between the Mac OS and your virtual machines — this version is 50 percent faster than Parallels 3.0.

The Parallels team demoed the new app for Webmonkey last week and indeed the speed improvement is the most noticeable, and welcome, change. Having run Parallels 3 and its main competitor, VMWare’s Fusion for Mac, side by side, Fusion was the clear winner when it came to speed. However, this new release changes that, giving Parallels a decided edge in the speed department.

But speed isn’t the only major change in this release, Parallels 4 also ups the ante for high-end Macs allowing you to now dedicate up to eight CPUs and 8 GB RAM to each virtual machine. Naturally the number of processors and RAM available depends on your system, but the upper limit means that those of you with top-of-the-line Mac Pro workstations can now take advantage of all the power at your disposal.

Also new in this release is a new viewing mode by the name of Modality. Modality Mode offers control over the transparency of the guest system and allows you to resize the window — making it ideal for monitoring what’s happening in the background, without dedicating a full window to your virtual machine.

Parallels has also updated the ground-breaking Coherence mode, which lets Windows apps run right alongside your Mac apps. Coherence mode now moves all the Windows taskbar items up into your Mac menu bar for easier access. It’s a small change, but in practice it makes interacting with Windows much easier.

Although it isn’t part of this release, a Parallels spokesperson did say that adding support for Coherence mode with other OSes (Linux for instance) is “on the roadmap.” The company hasn’t given us any hint as to when it might arrive, but if it does it’ll offer a clear edge over Fusion.

Another small but welcome addition in the latest release is the ability to start Virtual machines in a new Safe Mode. All your apps will run as usual in Safe Mode, but any changes you make are not saved — perfect for testing beta software releases or other potentially system-damaging experiments. If something goes wrong, shut down the virtual machine, restart and you’re right back where you started.

As part of this release Parallels has backed in some new anti-virus and security software — Acronis Disk Director Suite, Acronis True Image Home and Parallels Internet Security powered by Kaspersky. That adds up to about $175 worth of software for free, which makes Parallels a bit more like buying a new PC, rather than just a virtualization suite.

Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac should be a welcome update for those of you using version 3.0. If you’re trying to decide between Parallels and Fusion, unfortunately for you, this release makes the decision even more difficult. Both are very capable. We like the new Parallels interface a bit more than Fusion, which feels outdated by comparison, and the additional anti-virus software make Parallels an excellent choice — especially if you’re nervous about Windows security issues.

Parallels for Mac 4.0 is available now for $80. There’s a free trial version you can use to test it out and upgrades from Parallels 3 are $40. Also note that if you bought version 3 on or after September 1, 2008, you qualify for a free upgrade to version 4.0.

See Also:

• Parallels Updates Desktop for Mac, Makes Windows Integration Even Tighter
• Fusion 2 Upgrade Brings Mac and Windows Harmony
• Parallels Server: Turn Your XServe Into a Virtual Playground
• Parallels Beta Resolves Some Leopard Issues

From FireEagle to iPhone apps that use your current location, everyone it seems is racing to get on the geo-aware software bandwagon. So far most geo-aware features have been opt-in and offer reasonable privacy controls (FireEagle is a good example of this), but Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 7 plans to offer developers location tools at the operating system level and the company doesn’t seem to think users care about control or privacy.

Before you freak out at the thought that Redmond will soon be tracking your every move, keep in mind that the new features will be disabled by default. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that if you turn the geo features on, there are very few controls available and, yes, Microsoft could easily track your every move. Now you can freak out.

According to CNet, which saw a demo of the new geo features, once the service is turned on, there are only two means of limiting the geo-tracking — you can either limit to a specific user, or you can limit it to just traditional applications (rather than services running in the background).

But here’s the essential problem: If you enable the geo-tracking for say, a restaurant searching app in your gadgets collection, there’s no way to stop other apps from accessing your location as well. It’s an all or nothing feature.

While geo-aware locations are certain a hot item in the software world right now, they’re also at the heart of many ongoing privacy debates. Unfortunately Microsoft’s new feature is exactly the sort of thing that turns people’s mild suspicions into full, raging paranoia.

Here’s Microsoft’s explanation for why the geo-tracking will not offer much control. It’s also the paranoid’s greatest fear in a nutshell:

The reason, Microsoft officials say, is that Windows doesn’t have a reliable means of determining that an application is what it says it is, so any attempt to limit the location to a specific application would be easily spoofable.

So the short story is Windows 7 has geo-tracking features, but aside from turning them on and off, you have basically no control.

That strikes us as a recipe for disaster and something that will eventually blow up in Microsoft’s face (whether justified or not) because geo-tracking is a very sensitive issue and this implementation seems entirely ham-fisted and ill-conceived. Of course it’s a little better than past attempts by the company, which don’t even offer an on/off switch.

But why, for the love of all thing sane, would Microsoft not at least offer to notify you when an app is trying access geo-information? Indeed, that would be a good start. Then add the ability to deny the application access and you’re getting to the useful stage. Unfortunately, Microsoft reps tell CNet that such controls are “not currently on Microsoft’s roadmap for Windows 7.”

CNet’s report comes from the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference happening this week in Los Angeles and cites several reps from hardware vendors who don’t seem to think users care about privacy controls — because it’s too complicated. There may be some truth to that, but we suspect, as geo-tracking features become more widespread and people start to realize what they are capable of, people are going to care.

The only real saving grace is that Window 7 remains in the active development stage and there’s no telling what the finished product will really look like. But that said, we think the geo-tracking capabilities are off to rocky start. No doubt the company would love to be able to offer advertisers location-specific ads that target niche areas, but will users stand for it?

So what say you Webmonkey readers? Worried about OS-level geo-tracking tools that, once activated by you, essentially run amok? Or are you perfectly okay with letting the world, and Redmond, know where you are? Let us know what you think.

See Also:

• Windows 7 Preview Proves Popular With Bittorrent Fans
• PDC 2008: Microsoft Debuts Sleeker Windows 7 on a Netbook
• PDC 2008: The 7 Coolest New Features in Windows 7

Free software advocate Richard M. Stallman, once a devotee of Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child project, has written a scathing criticism of the group in response to the reversal of its policy of only using free software.

As the OLPC project prepares to begin shipping its laptops to underdeveloped countries en masse, Negroponte announced newer revisions of the OLPC XO Children’s Machine will be redesigned to run Windows. Not surprisingly, RMS sees this as a profoundly negative development, adding, “the world would be better off if the OLPC project had never existed.”

Thus opines RMS in Boston Review:

Teaching children to use Windows is like teaching them to smoke tobacco -— in a world where only one company sells tobacco. Like any addictive drug, it inculcates a harmful dependency. (Bill Gates made this comparison in a 1998 issue of Fortune Magazine.) No wonder Microsoft offers the first dose to children at a low price. Microsoft aims to teach poor children this dependency so they can smoke Windows for their whole lives. I don’t think governments or schools should support that aim.

Only some of the machines, such as those to be delivered to Peru, will come with Windows pre-installed. The rest will still ship with the OLPC’s customized Sugar OS, a free, Linux-based operating system.

“But even the OLPCs delivered with GNU/Linux will be easy to convert subsequently to Windows,” Stallman says. “It only requires a small card that is supposed to cost $7. (I expect Microsoft will hand these out to the kiddies like free samples of cigarettes.)”

Stallman was initially a supporter of the OLPC Project. He took issue with the machine’s commercial BIOS and its use of a non-free driver for its wireless hardware. But a few modifications and a few deleted files later, he saw a usable and promising machine, a free software success story. He praised it in speeches, showing it off on stage. Those days are over.

So what is RMS using now? He says he is preparing to switch to a new machine from Lemote, a Chinese company which makes a MIPS-based laptop containing only free software.

And he’s not worried about Lemote switching to Microsoft any time soon.

“Windows does not run on the MIPS processor,” he says. “It never has.”

[Thanks to Boston Review’s Katie Koch for the tip]

Microsoft gave away copies of a pre-beta version of its coming Windows 7 OS at its recent Professional Developers Conference. Naturally it was only a matter of hours before those copies of Windows 7 began floating around on the Pirate Bay and other bittorrent sites.

While there are plenty of Windows 7 previews out there (see our coverage of the seven best features in Windows 7), clearly nothing is quite as exciting as some hands on experience. Already thousands of Windows fans all of the world are downloading and playing with the new release. Although it is a pre-beta release, and therefore buggy and unstable, judging by comments on the torrent sites people are much happier than they were with Vista.

Aside from some complaints about slow downloads (which does seem odd given that the Pirate Bay lists over 1000 seeders) most of the feedback is cautiously positive. There are a few posts noting that Windows 7 is clearly evolutionary not revolutionary, but that is after all one of Microsoft’s stated goals for this release — fixing and refining Vista.

Bearing in mind that this a pre-beta, the enthusiasm should give Microsoft a ray of hope after the public floundering of Vista.

Of course who knows if Microsoft tracks comments on the Pirate Bay, but we suspect it does to some degree. The software giant had to know that these version of Windows 7 would leak and so far the company hasn’t made any effort to crack down on the torrent sites.

We don’t recommend spending the time to download Win 7 just yet. If nothing else the version provided to Professional Developers Conference attendees lacks the revised taskbar and some of the other more impressive tools shown during the of Windows 7 preview.

For those of you willing to wait for something more legitimate, Microsoft says the first official beta versions of Windows 7 will ship in early 2009.

Still, if you just can’t help yourself and you’ve already grabbed a copy and installed it, be sure to let us know what you think of this early preview version.

[via the Register]

See Also:

• PDC 2008: Microsoft Debuts Sleeker Windows 7 on a Netbook
• PDC 2008: The 7 Coolest New Features in Windows 7
• Windows 7 to Dump E-Mail, Photo Editing Software

The official next generation release of Ubuntu Linux has just landed. Intrepid Ibex, as this version is known, promises a number of subtle but important feature updates that help make Ubuntu even more user-friendly.

Overall not too much has changed from the beta release we tested earlier, but there were a few last-minute additions worth mentioning: “Cruft Remover” is new utility that tries to get rid of unneeded software packages, and there’s also a new tool for creating a bootable USB stick.

Ubuntu 8.10 is already burning up the torrent tubes, but if you’re holding back here’s a few of the new features that make Ibex a worthwhile upgrade:

• GNOME 2.24 — Tabbed windows! Need we say more? See our review of GNOME 2.24 for the gritty details.
• Network Manager — now manage WiFi, 3G and other connections all in one spot. No need to mess with manual configuration files.
• Guest users — The user switching app had been moved to top right corner and now offers a guest account if someone wants to use your PC and you don’t want them messing things up.
• Xorg 7.4 — hotpluggable devices (tablets, keyboards, mice, etc) and better stability.
• More — there are some other small but nice additions — support for encrypted private directories, a new versions of Samba, LDAP and more.

Of the new stuff in Ubuntu 8.10, the most useful in my testing has been the updated version of GNOME. In addition to the tabbed file browser windows many of the GNOME panel applets have seen some very nice updates. The Deskbar search app for instance can now perform calculator operations, search Google and even update Twitter, which has made my old solution — Gnome-do — largely unnecessary.

One thing that still hasn’t changed is the Ubuntu look — the default theme remains more or less the same with some new desktop art. Experienced Linux fans are of course experts at customizing their systems so for many it probably isn’t a huge deal since they’ll change the defaults anyway. Of course there is a new dark theme (pictured above), but you’ll need to delve into the themes panel to enable it (we really like this look, it stays true to Ubuntu’s esthetics, but is considerably more polished).

However, from a new-user point of view, Ubuntu’s look is, well, looking a bit long in the tooth. And with Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth publicly calling for more emphasis on interface design it seem odd that, thus far, the default theme remains nearly the same.

Still, despite the familiar look (which may be a good thing for some users) Ubuntu 8.10 is a worthwhile upgrade. You can grab the latest version from the Ubuntu downloads page. And as with all Ubuntu releases, Kubuntu and the other derivatives have been updated as well.

See Also:

• First Look: Ubuntu ‘Intrepid Ibex’ Beta Delivers Improved UI, New Features
• Ubuntu Linux Looks to the Cloud for ‘Jaunty Jackalope’
• Upgrade Your Linux Desktop Experience With GNOME 2.24
• First Look: Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex Alpha 1

LOS ANGELES — On Tuesday, Microsoft gave the first full public demonstration of its sleek new Windows 7 operating system to developers. The new operating system is a redesigned version of Vista so streamlined it was demonstrated on a low-powered netbook.

The redesign is an attempt to leave much of Vista’s more infamous features — like clutter, bloat and those annoying alert pop-ups — in the past. The release also contains several user interface enhancements like an updated Taskbar, new animated desktop effects, context-sensitive menus and a smarter desktop search tool.

The demonstration was made at the opening keynote for day 2 of Microsoft’s annual developers conference — this year’s event in Southern California. Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie and senior vice president of Windows engineering Steven Sinofsky took the stage to demonstrate just what was done to Vista to meet the demands of today’s operating system.

As far as performance goes, Sinofsky isn’t willing to offer any hard benchmarks, but he claims Windows 7 shows an across-the-board performance boost over Vista. In fact, Sinofsky demoed the OS using a netbook with a 1-GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM. After booting it, half the machine’s RAM was still available.

Windows 7 may be built upon Vista technology, but this time around Microsoft joins the 21st century by building an operating system that utilizes underpowered and low-cost netbooks and cellphones, sleeker interface interactions and web applications.

“It’s getting harder to find things that haven’t been impacted by the internet in its brief life,” says Ozzie. “To date, we’ve barely scratched the surface of how we can use the PC to extend the value of what we do on the web. It is our objective to make the combination of the PC, the phone and the web of clearly more value to our customers than just the sum of their parts.”

Where Windows 7 stretches to meet this goal is where the biggest change in Microsoft’s traditional way of thinking becomes apparent. In the past, Microsoft has supplied a soup-to-nuts user experience out of the box, with all of the tools for sending e-mail, managing photos, listening to music and editing video included. But for Windows 7, these apps have been stripped out in favor of web applications. Rather than include an e-mail client or a desktop photo manager with Windows 7, Microsoft is encouraging users to make the switch to its Windows Live services, which offer both of those as hosted web apps. New features in Internet Explorer 8, which will ship installed on Windows 7, allow offline access to these apps on the desktop.

“This really represents what we think of as a complete communications and sharing experience across the phone, PC and web,” says Sinofsky.

The user interface enhancements to the Windows 7 desktop are largely intuitive, and they go a long way toward making the OS easier to use. There’s an integrated desktop search tool that learns the more you use it, bringing your most frequent queries to the top of the list. The new Windows Taskbar, which incidentally looks and behaves a lot like the Mac OS X dock, is more customizable. Users can drag and reorder the program icons. The icons are bigger, and hovering over an icon shows a live thumbnail preview of the window. Click on a Taskbar icon and a list of choices specific to that program pops up (Microsoft calls these Jump Lists).

See our companion article, The 7 Coolest Features in Windows 7, for an in-depth look at the user interface enhancements.

There are also some new mouse tricks with the Aero interface that automatically resize windows or make them transparent to expose the desktop. Again, there are no clicks or little icons to drag around — just sweep the windows to the sides or top and bottom of the screen to make them change shape.

Home networking, printer sharing and file sharing, all of which cause nightmares for some, are simplified by a new feature called HomeGroups. Put multiple Windows 7 PCs on a single network and they’ll all find and connect to one another, forming a HomeGroup. Users can then browse all of the media stored across the multiple PCs as though they were all on the same hard drive. Sharing within any folder can be disabled for security reasons.

Sinofsky says Microsoft focused on fundamentals like boot speed and responsiveness in particular, really looking at the Start Menu and Taskbar and performing kernel-level tweaks to make searches and menus respond instantaneously.

The pre-beta version of Windows 7 was released to attendees of Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. A first beta is expected in early 2009 with a final version released later in the year.

See Also:

• The 7 Coolest Features in Windows 7
• Windows 7 to Dump E-Mail, Photo Editing Software
• Windows 7 Will Be Less Annoying Than Vista

Microsoft debuted Windows 7, its newest desktop operating system, on Tuesday. The release is only in prebeta stage and won’t arrive until early 2009, but developers at Microsoft’s PDC conference in Los Angeles got a first look at the new desktop.

Microsoft is rushing this release in order to gain momentum lost with its previous Windows Vista release. While much of the improvements in Vista and Windows 7 are behind the scenes, in many ways the newest operating system interface picks up what Vista lacked.

The most-wanted feature is customizable security dialogs that cut down on nagging the user for permissions — a much-ridiculed feature in Vista. Other advancements take and expand innovations from other operating systems, like window management via invisibility and taskbar innovations that make it easy to launch your most-used applications.

Here are the most impressive user interface enhancements we can expect in Windows 7.

The New Windows Taskbar

The Taskbar, the strip along the bottom of the Windows desktop that shows active applications, has been redesigned. Now, it feels and behaves a lot more like Mac OS X’s dock. You can reorder applications by dragging them. You can further customize the Taskbar by dropping in icons that launch your most-used apps. And, you can see live thumbnails of what’s inside the window of each open application right there in the Taskbar. If you have multiple tabs open in your browser, you’ll see each browser tab in its own thumbnail, and you can jump straight to the tab you want. If you’re listening to a song or watching a movie, hovering over the thumbnail will bring up cover art and controls to pause or resume playback.

Jump Lists

These context-sensitive menus are available for each program in your Taskbar and your Start Menu. Click on the programs’ name or icon to get a list of the most recent or frequently-requested tasks. For example, you can click on the Internet Explorer icon in the Taskbar and see your recent browsing history or choose from a list of your most-visited websites. Or, click on your MS Word in the Start Menu and see a Jump List of your most recently viewed documents.

Aero’s New Moves

Microsoft first debuted the glossy, animated Aero user interface environment in Windows Vista. At the time, many noted that several visual cues within Aero seemed borrowed from the Mac OS X desktop. Aero returns in Windows 7 revamped and pumped-up. One of the new enhancements, Aero Peek, seems to borrow from Mac OS X’s own animated window manager, Expose. Hover your mouse over the far right side of your Windows Taskbar and your active windows become transparent, exposing the desktop.

The new Snap feature lets you expand and maximize windows simply by dragging them to different edges of the desktop. Drag a window’s top edge to the top of the screen to maximize it, and drag it away to restore it to its original size. Line up any window’s edge to either side of the desktop and that window will snap to fill up that half of the screen. Do the same with another window on the other side and you’ve got two equal-sized windows on either side of the screen.

Unified Search

The old Start Menu gains a greater amount of utility in Windows 7. The clunky nested menus are gone, and they’ve taken with them all the guesswork involved in finding your favorite apps. A search box in the Start Menu offers lightning-quick suggested search results as you type. Search extends into contacts, e-mail subjects, names of documents, playlists, song titles and even the names of individual settings in your Windows Control Panel. It also learns from you, bringing the things you use the most to the top of the results.

Fewer Annoying Pop-ups

Remember the famously intrusive User Account Control system in Vista? The feature that constantly displays yes/no prompts asking you to approve system status updates, butting in all too often like a nagging nanny? How could you forget, right? As expected, Microsoft has scaled back the pop-ups for all users. Furthermore, advanced users with admin rights can set a slider based on their own preferences. That way, only the most important messages get through, and notifications for things like the built-in firewall can be disabled.

HomeGroups

Put multiple Windows 7 PCs on a single network and they’ll all find and connect to one another, forming a HomeGroup. Users can then browse all of the media stored across the multiple PCs as though they were all on the same hard drive. Sharing within any folder can be disabled for security reasons. You also get location-aware printing — click print and the system will pick the printer closest to you.

Device Stage

Windows 7’s device manager gives you a single window for interacting with your various gadgets. Plug in your cameras, MP3 players and printers, and you’ll be able to see all of them listed in the Device Stage window. Click on a device to get details on its status — battery charge, available storage space, the time and date of your last sync and so on. From within the same interface, you can sync it, manage your photos, music or ringtones you have stored on it, or any other device-specific task. We haven’t tested Device Stage, so we don’t know how well it will work with iPhones and iPods, but for cameras and Windows Mobile smartphones, it looks very cool.

Later today, Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie will take the stage at the annual Microsoft Professional Developers’ Conference in Los Angeles where he is expected to reveal more details about the highly anticipated Windows 7.

Ozzie is no Steve Jobs, but for Windows fans this is probably the most anxiously awaited announcement at the PDC2008. So what can we expect from Microsoft? Well, Ozzie is being joined by Steven Sinofsky, vice president for the Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, which means we should get some more nitty gritty details about what’s under the hood in Windows 7.

Here’s a brief rundown of what we know about Windows 7 so far:

• Windows 7 will use the same kernel as Vista which means it probably won’t require yet another hardware upgrade.
• Microsoft is dumping some desktop applications like a native e-mail client and photo editing software from Windows 7 in order to concentrate on developing the core OS features.
• The desktop apps will be replaced by web-based Windows Live equivalents, which signals a significant shift to web (also emphasized by the recent announcement of Azure).
• The endless permissions dialog boxes rampant in Vista have been scaled back.
• Vista’s Desktop Search feature has been improved and will reportedly be much faster.
• The overall look of Windows 7 will be similar to Vista, but with refinements and speed improvements.

From what we know of Windows 7 so far, it looks like the OS will amount to a revamped and updated “take two” of Vista. Many are viewing the release as Microsoft’s big chance to improve upon Vista’s many stumbles, both as an operating system and as a business milestone. Vista, which was released to customers a year and a half ago, has been roundly criticized as a buggy and half-baked OS, with many a Microsoft customer choosing to stay with the older, yet more stable and user-friendly Windows XP rather than upgrade.

Hopefully Windows 7 will prove the Vista that Vista should have been. Be sure to check back later today when the official details are available.

See Also:

• Windows 7 Announcements Expected at Microsoft Developer Conference
• Windows 7 to Dump E-Mail, Photo Editing Software
• Windows 7 Will Be Less Annoying Than Vista
• Windows 7 Arriving Early, Microsoft to Show Off New OS on October 28
• Leaked Screenshots Reveal Windows 7 is Vista Refined

From chatting with the independent developers leaving the Microsoft PDC keynote event on Monday, you can detect the buzz of excitement about Windows Azure, but there are also a number of questions. The developer sessions, which are spread out over the week-long conference, should answer many of those.

Microsoft has launched an in-depth website dedicated to the entire Azure platform. We had a chance to ask direct questions to a collection of Microsoft spokespersons. Here are some points of note:

• The key to understanding Azure on the most basic level is to think of it as Windows Server 2008 running on the web. You can develop, debug and deploy your apps using your local server and local resources, then deploy that same code to Azure, connecting to the platform’s databases, storage and identity management resources.
• The app architecture and development environments are the same, but once you move to Azure, you get the advantage of working without the constraints of your local infrastructure.
• Moving a pre-existing or legacy app from your local Windows server to the Azure platform will require only minimal changes. A Microsoft rep says “Azure’s services have heritage in the Windows Server environment.”
• Azure only runs inside Microsoft. It’s not available as a product you can use to create your own cloud environment.
• Azure’s data centers are only in North America right now. Microsoft is investing in data centers now to increase its geographic footprint.
• OpenID support will be available in Azure. For identity management, Microsoft LiveID is available now as part of the Live Services, but a rep says this is only the first step towards being a full OpenID provider. Update: Here’s the official word on OpenID support from Microsoft. We’ll have a follow-up post soon.
• The SDK has support for VisualStudio right now. Support for Eclipse, Python, Ruby on Rails, and PHP is listed as “coming soon.”
• Development tools include an isolated environment for testing with dedicated storage and processor resources. There are also command-line tools and VisualStudio plugins that will allow local debugging.
• Pricing details have not yet been announced, but Microsoft says there will be a tiered pricing plan competitive with what’s already on the market. That means storage, processor resources and database size will be charged on an as-needed basis, just like Amazon EC2 except (most likely) on a much larger scale.
• Unlike EC2, it’s unclear if the storage service will be persistent. So far, we know that once you deploy to Azure your data will be physically stored “close to your computational resources,” there will be triple replication for fail-safe performance, and you have access to your data via REST. A Microsoft rep says that data will be a “priced service node,” which the company isn’t ready to discuss. But it sounds like you’ll be able to choose between persistent and non-persistent data storage services, each at different prices.

Want to follow the buzz on Monday morning’s debut of Windows Azure? The best place to look is Twitter. Do searches for the hash tags #pdc2008 and #azure to see what the developers in attendance (and those listening in from afar) are saying.