Mighty Gadget Blog: The latest technology news & reviews in the UK

Although officially not released by Sony yet, Tesco had put up a new Sony Vaio M Netbook for sale for just under £300 but now it appears to have been removed from the site probably due to the fact Sony are keeping quiet about its official release, oops.

A nice little black number the Sony Vaio M if pricing is true will be the cheapest Vaio we’ve seen to date and if you’re looking for a netbook this offers some pretty decent spec and the obvious recognition of quality Sony craftmanship. Inside the 10.1” Netbook will be Intel’s latest Atom chipset the N450(an improvement in speed and power consumption) powering a 250GB HDD, 1GB RAM and Windows 7 Starter Edition.

As said Sony haven’t confirmed it for sure and are still staying coy about it and although it appeared on Tesco the other day, I’m struggling to find it now but surely it won’t be long till it’s in officialdom.

The GE600 is MSI’s new 16” gaming notebook bringing together Intel’s HM55 chipset with a Core i5 processor, offering the latest tech in computer spec. Unfortunately we can only fill you in with the spec details as MSI haven’t released prices or release dates yet. What we do know though is that MSI will be giving two “theatre class” speakers and its own ECO Engine Power with the laptop.

So what’s the spec for this new laptop that “enables customers to enter a new era of mobile video/audio enjoyment experiences," ?

• Windows 7 Home Premium
• 2 DDR3 RAM SO-DIMM slots
• 1920x1080 16” HD LCD screen
• ATI Radeon HD5730 1GB DDR3
• 250, 320 or 500GB SATA HDD
• 4 in 1 card reader
• Bluetooth
• 802.11 a/b/g/n
• HDMI out

The lappy also has a 720p HD webcam and features a built in sub woofer with SRS Premium Sound. Also customers can choose between a standard 6 cell battery and a more gaming orientated 9 cell.

Today Microsoft has revealed official release dates and for its forthcoming OS. The release has been set for October 22nd so not long now till we get the opportunity to ditch Vista (yay!)

Like Vista, 7 will be coming in a Home Premium package for £149.99, a Professional package at £219.99 and Ultimate at £229.99. Don’t worry though you wont have to pay the full amount as Microsoft are offering an “upgrade” price up until 31st December. You can upgrade upgrade to Home Premium for £79.99, Professional for £189.99 or Ultimate for £199.99 (not a massive saving but better than nothing).

However if you pre-order Home Premium you can pick it up for £49.99 or Professional for £99.99. This offer starts on 15th July and Ends on August or “whilst stocks last” (can’t see the world suddenly running out of discs in a hurry) also if you buy a Windows Vista PC after June 26, you’ll get a free upgrade to Windows 7.

Archos have just held an even in France and announced the Archos 9, a nine-inch Windows 7 tablet. It has an 1.2GHz Atom Z515 processor, 80GB disk, Bluetooth, and dual DVB-T antennas.

Looking at the specifications it is essentially a netbook in a tablet form (a netlet?).

We already new that Windows 7 would be released in 2009 and we have previously speculated it would be available on 23rd of October, but now Microsoft has given us an official date of October 22nd.

This is one version of Windows I think we will all be happy to upgrade too.

The senior vice president of the Windows Business at Microsoft, Bill Veghte, has confirmed that Windows 7 will be available to customers in time for the holiday shopping season. He said:

We're tracking well to deliver Windows 7 in time for holiday availability based on the groundswell of feedback we received from the partner ecosystem, customers and through our own internal testing from pre-beta to now.

Microsoft have been coy about the release date of Windows 7 and have only stated that Windows 7 would be available no later than three years after the general availability of Windows Vista - 30th January 2010.

Many people seem to believe these dates to be quite conservative. The beta of Windows 7 was released in January and it was the only Beta to be released. The beta has been widely praised with many users commenting that it was faster and more stable than its predecessor even in its beta stages.

The Release Candidate has recently been released which will be the only RC release unlike the usual 2 or 3. The RC release has improved on the beta even further (obviously) with most of the bugs ironed out and new features made available.

Acer also previously leaked that the Acer Z5600 all-in-one PC, which is due for launch on October the 23rd will be bundled with Windows 7.

Microsoft will start offering a free upgrade to Windows 7 on new PCs shipping with Vista.

I have to say I am quite excited about Windows 7, I think most people agree that it looks like it will be the best Windows release for a long time. RC1 has been teasing us even more with some cracking new features such as XP Mode and streaming your library over the net. So it is no surprise we are all a little eager to find out when Windows 7 will be released!

Well good news according to Bobby Waltkins, marketing director of Acer UK, the Z5600 all-in-one PC, which is due out on October 23rd, will come pre-loading with a genuine copy of Windows 7.

Granted this isn’t confirmed by Microsoft but we can hope it is true.

Microsoft have officially announced you will be able to get your hands on the legit Windows 7 Release Candidate 1.

The release candidate will also have 2 new features that should help win over more fans.

You will now be able to stream your library over the Internet with Windows Media player

This is a fantastic little feature, though perhaps not quite as easy to set up as you would like. Windows Media Player's Remote Media Sharing will let you access your media library from anywhere over the internet. You need a Windows Live ID that you associate with your Windows 7 user account using a tool you have to download. You will also need the same version of WMP on both computers.

Once it is all set up you will be able to view the library under “Other Libraries” in the navigation panel.

Windows XP Mode: Windows XP virtual environment

For users running Windows 7 Pro, Enterprise and Ultimate you will be able add Windows XP functionality via an additional download for free. Unlike the compatibility mode in Vista the Xp mode should is a proper virtual environment using Microsoft's Virtual PC which should avoid any possible compatibility problems for older software.

Below Windows XP Mode running Word 2003 under XP and Word 2007 under Windows 7 via SuperSite Blog.