Microsoft: IE9 Won't Support Windows XP

Windows XP users will not be able to run the final version of Internet Explorer 9, according to Microsoft executives, cutting out a decade-old, yet still popular operating system.

In fact, the Windows IE9 Platform Preview, as well as the final version, won't run on anything but the latest Microsoft operating systems. Users trying to run the preview code on an XP system will receive the following dialogue box: "Windows Internet Explorer Platform Preview does not support any operating system earlier than Windows Vista SP2."

And of course, don't even think about versions for non-Windows operating systems. IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch told us that Mac and Linux versions weren't currently in the company's plans.

The reason IE9 doesn't work in XP is that it uses the Direct2D feature of DirectX when accessing the graphics hardware to accelerate image creation and drawing. Direct2D was introduced in Windows 7, but then added to Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 R2. But not to WIndows XP.

When I asked the IE9 team about their plans for the legacy OS, they confirmed that XP was not in the cards:

"Windows XP users have a fast, safe, reliable and private browser in Internet Explorer 8," company representatives said in an emailed statement. "As the Web has continued to change in everything from security to the future HTML5 applications developers are starting to build today, browsers should require the modern graphics and security infrastructure that has come along since 2001.

Internet Explorer 9 requires the modern graphics and security underpinnings that have come since 2001, and is intended to be run on a modern operating system in order to build on the latest hardware and operating system innovations."

It only makes sense the the OS vendor wants to give people as many reasons to upgrade their PCs to Wnidows 7 as possible, and not spend developer man-hours updating software that debuted nine years ago. Still, this probably won't make XP loyalists smile. They may even jump ship to fast browsers that do run on their platform – like Chrome, Opera, and Safari.

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Sky Downloader Helps You Pull Music and Video From the Web

Looking for a simple-to-use way to find music, video, TV shows and other goodies to download? Then try the free SkyDownloader, an attractive downloader with a built-in music and video player.

SkyDownloader is an excellent downloader and media player.>

Search for what you want from right within SkyDownloader, select your downloads, and Sky Downloader gets to work. Each download is rated by other users, so you have some advice to go on before you download. SkyDownloader uses both the Gnutella file-sharing network and the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol, so that you get the best of both worlds.

You can pause and resume downloads, and SkyDownloader handles your downloaded files as well. Its media player is exemplary. And SkyDownloader does more than just search for files, manage them and play them. You can also watch TV shows from inside it from Hulu.com, and listen to Internet radio stations.

If you're looking for a pleasing-looking download and media player, SkyDownloader is a solid bet.

Download
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,81849-order,4/description.html
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Ubuntu 10.04 beta now available for download (screenshot tour)

With the final release of Ubuntu 10.04 due in just under a month, things appear to be right on schedule at Canonical. Yesterday the Lucid beta download page went live and eager testers rapidly descended upon the mirrors.Watching Lucid evolve has been exciting.

It's clear that Canonical is intent on creating a version of Ubuntu which can appeal to a broader base of computer users with a more select set of default programs, new visuals, built-in easy access to social networks via Gwibber, and loads of other improvements.

One key addition to the beta is Wubi. If you're not familiar with it, Wubi is a Windows program which allows you to install Ubuntu on the same drive as your Windows install. It's an extremely simple way to take Ubuntu for a test drive -- or make it a permanent fixture on your system.

you give Ubuntu 10.04 a try at this point, it's important to remember that you will encounter glitches. There's still plenty of work to do (and bugs to squash) at this point. Wubi, for example, was able to install 10.04 and modify my Windows boot menu, but GRUB failed to load and I couldn't boot into Ubuntu.

Overall, however, the Lucid beta feels fast, it's very usable, and I can definitely see myself using 10.04 as my primary OS. Will the computing masses feel the same way? Probably not, but there's no doubt that the improvements in Lucid will help increase in Ubuntu's market share.

You can download the Ubuntu 10.04 beta and try it out for yourself

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/downloadmirrors

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Chrome 5.0.356.0 Dev Available for Download

Just one day after it introduced the 4.1 minor update to the Stable version 4.0 of its open source browser, Google offered early adopters a new taste of Chrome’s next major iteration. Google Chrome 5.0.356.0 is now available for download through the Dev channel, delivering a range of fixes for all supported platforms. “The Dev channel has been updated to 5.0.356.0 for Windows, Linux, and Google Chrome Frame,” Anthony Laforge, from the Google Chrome team, revealed.
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While Chrome 4.1.249.1036 was released exclusively for Windows users, the Dev channel milestones are being released concomitantly for all platforms, with the development process synchronized across the three flavors of the browser. Although it delivered updates for Windows and Linux first, by the end of yesterday, Google also kicked up a notch Chrome for OS X.

Laforge enumerated some of the changes introduced by the latest Dev channel update. “Form autofill enabled by default for new profiles. [Just for ] Linux: Client SSL Certificate Support (UI) for Linux. Renderers can now figure out how much memory they're using and release it properly. Chrome Frame: Chrome frame should use ‘parentNode’ instead of ‘parentElement’ to get the DOM.

Better integration with host (InternetExplorer) popup blocker.”For Mac, “Implement Mac Address Book ‘me’ card integration with Autofill. Various improvements to the bookmark folder menus. Fix beach ball/performance issues with the cookie manager. Better integration with host (InternetExplorer) popup blocker,” Laforge added. Windows users that have jumped the gun and are running, testing or developing on top of Chrome 5.0 will notice that the browser is more stable after the latest update. Google introduced a number of reliability fixes that resolve a number of crash issues.

Laforge also noted that problems still existed. “Cannot drag anything (text or images) in a content area. For example, dragging a thumbnail on the new tab page hangs the page.”

The latest release of Google Chrome 5.0 is available for download http://download.softpedia.com/dl/fc711a013563fe139160cccd71ac9700/4ba5f6c1/100108166/software/internet/browser/chrome_installer_stable3.exe

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What to Do When Gmail Overflows

If you’ve maxed out the seven gigabytes of space you currently get with a Gmail account, there is a way to sling your old mail into another account. But it takes a few steps.

First, sign up for a new Gmail account at www.gmail.com and make note of the new address and password. Next, log into your original Gmail account.

At the top of the mail page, click on the Settings link and on the next screen, click on the Forwarding and POP/IMAP link. In the POP Download area of the page, click on the button next to Enable POP download for all mail. In the pop-up menu right below, choose what you want to do with all the old messages.

When you pick the “keep Gmail’s copy in the Inbox” selection, you can go back and delete the nonessential messages you don’t want to keep in your original account to reclaim space.

(If you don’t need all the old mail in this account, another option here automatically deletes all the messages from the Gmailbox after they are downloaded elsewhere.) Click the Save Changes button when finished.

Next, log into your new Gmail account and click on the Settings link. Click on the Accounts and Import link. Skip the “Import mail and contacts” area and go to the “Check mail using POP3” area, then click on the button to add a new POP3 e-mail account.

In the box that pops up, fill in your original Gmail account name and password and click the Add Account button. (The server address is pop.gmail.com.)

Gmail then imports all the messages from the original account. If you have several gigabytes of mail, it could take hours to fetch it all.

In your original account, you can now manually delete the less important messages. Finally, return to the Setting screen and disable the POP download function so the new mail stays on your original account.

Or you could pay Google $20 for 80 gigabytes of storage — if that seems easier. (Google has more information about pricing at and importing mail from other accounts at)

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StarHub Develops Double Mobile Broadband Download Speeds

StarHub has recently concluded a trial seeking to develop mobile broadband download speeds hitting up to 42.2 megabits per second. The test has been successful. The hence acquired downloading speed comes out to be double the current speed.

Working with its technology partner Huawei, StarHub has managed to upgrade its HSPA+ network.

The company said that the upgradation will be expanded gradually to boost total efficiency of the network.

With the recent achievement, StarHub has become the first mobile operator in Southeast Asia to have installed the Dual Carrier technology on its HSPA+ network. The Dual Carrier technology basically operates on the principle of joining two carrier channels.

The company is however, seeking the least requirement of upgrading the hardware.
Huawei Singapore Managing Director He Rong said that the increased speed will enhance the ease of the users and will boost communication.

StarHub has already initiated the technical experiments for the next generation mobile broadband set.

"The deployment of 42.2Mbps HSPA+ Dual Carrier technology is a straightforward upgrade of our current HSPA+ network that will double our current downlink peak rate", said Peter Cook, StarHub's Vice President.
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Microsoft IE9 developer preview with HTML5 support ready for download

On March 16, Microsoft is making a first developer preview of Internet Explorer (IE) 9 available for download from http://www.ietestdrive.com/

The IE 9 Platform Preview doesn’t include the IE 9 user interface; instead, it is the plumbing, specifically the new Microsoft JavaScript engine (which is codenamed “Chakra”) and the new graphics subsystem, coupled with a home page full of test sites. There’s no back button and no built-in security. It’s basically the IE 9 rendering engine and early developer tools.

Microsoft officials will show off the IE 9 developer preview and discuss Microsoft’s planned support for more of the emerging HTML5, CSS3 and SVG2 standards with that product during the Tuesday morning Mix 10 keynote.

“We love HTML5 so much we actually want it to work,” quipped Dean Hachamovitch, the General Manager of the IE team, during a briefing I attended at Microsoft last week about IE 9.

As Microsoft supports more of the HTML5, CSS3 and SVG2 markup, the company expects its ACID3 ratings to go up, officials said. At the Professional Developers Conference in November, Microsoft officials showed a very early build of IE 9, which earned an ACID3 score of 32. The build out today is up to 55, according to company officials.

HTML5 applications are a lot richer and demanding, in terms of graphics and speed than Ajax applications. So it’s logical they’ll work better on multi-core machines where the browser can take advantage of multicore performance, Microsoft officials argue.

That’s why Microsoft’s new JavaScript engine is built to take advantage of two cores, with the second core compiling JavaScript down to native machine code to help speed up the browser. (Once the native code is available, there’s no need to use interpreted code on Core 1, meaning an app spends less time in JavaScript.)

Microsoft is planning to deliver a lot more preview builds of IE 9 before it hits beta. In fact, the team is committing to delivering an update every eight weeks, and to interact with developers via the Microsoft Connect feedback loop.

Microsoft officials wouldn’t say when to expect the first IE 9 beta or to provide any kind of ship date target for the final release. (I’m still betting Microsoft will deliver the final a few months before Windows 8 ships, in 2011 or so.)

Microsoft’s high-level goals for IE 9 include making the browser snappier, maintaining compatibility with Web sites at at least the same level as IE 8 and, ultimately, enabling developers to use the same markup across IE 9 and other non-Microsoft browsers.

That last of these three guiding principles is more theoretical and real at this point, but it’s interesting Microsoft is thinking this way.

I’ll be curious to hear what developers think of the preview once you download it.

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Samsung Galaxy Spica grows up to Android 2.1

Also known as the Galaxy Portal in the UK, Samsung's i5700 is today officially entering the Eclair portion of its Android existence. We got a nice leak of the 2.1 ROM in February, whose small glitches will no doubt have been ironed out in this official release.

You'll need to either hook up to the Samsung neural network using their proprietary PC Studio 7 software to leech the upgrade or just buy a new handset -- it all depends on the ratio between your disposable time and income. Guess this will make the Spica that little bit more seductive to Rogers customers, who only just got the option to own the handset last week.

Full PR after the break.
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