This post also appears at windowsteamblog.com
I'm pleased to announce we've expanded support for the Windows 7 Compatibility Center. The fantastic Windows 7 momentum continues with a 150 million licenses sold to date, so ongoing support for the huge number of products that work with Windows is critical.
Since my first announcement on the Windows Compatibility Center and Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor, we’ve had over 25 million visitors and have been busy adding thousands of compatible applications and devices to our database. We now track over 100,000 consumer and business products across the globe. While this is just a sample of everything available on Windows 7, we aim to provide compatibility information for the most popular products with links to software upgrades, device driver downloads, and help resources should you need them.
So here’s what we’re releasing today….
The Windows 7 Compatibility Center now supports searching and browsing over 100,000 products across 17 markets and 12 languages. When visitors in Australia, Brazil, Canada (English & French), China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and the United States go to www.windows.com/compatibility, they will automatically be directed to the market and language that matches their browser setting. From there, visitors can search and browse applications and devices relevant to their local market or use the ‘market picker’ at the top of the page to see what’s available in other languages.
We also have a couple of new search tools for Internet Explorer 8 that hook right into the Compatibility Center. You can download this IE8 Search Provider to search from your browser’s toolbar and this IE8 Accelerator which lets you right-click a product’s name on any website to get instant results from the Compatibility Center. (These are only available in English for now.)
Finally, we really want to hear from our customers about how it’s going with your devices and applications on Windows 7, so we encourage you to let us know by using the Compatibly Center feedback forms. Also look for links to the Microsoft Answers forum where you can post questions and search for answers from the community and Microsoft folks.
Cheers, Mark
Get The Windows Live Beta Here
I recently talked about the Windows Summit 2010 and today I want to give everyone a quick update on the event and some new content that went live earlier today. If you have not yet heard, the Windows Summit 2010 is an online event for hardware and software designers, developers, engineers and testers who want to build great products on Windows 7.
Over the last few weeks we have launched the first two of the three content tracks:
Feedback from those who have already viewed the series has been extremely positive. To date, the sessions have been viewed more than 15,000 times and people continue to tune in to the series. If you haven’t had the chance yet you can access the content from those sessions at the Windows Summit 2010 website.
Today, the Software track launches with Dean Hachamovitch as the opening speaker. Dean is focusing on how to build applications that are easy to use, visually appealing, and offer high performance on Windows 7. Following Dean, you’ll have access to the fantastic Software track sessions such as Developing Multi-Touch Applications for Natural Experiences and Windows 7 Ribbon: The Next Generation User Experience for Presenting Commands in Windows Applications. With all other Summit content, the videos can be found here.
The good news doesn’t stop there! Based on the feedback we’ve received from you, the Summit team will extend the Devices Track and launch 17 new sessions on June 30, 2010. Eleven of those sessions are virtual workshops that will walk you through creating Device Stage experiences and will cover tools that simplify implementation of Device Stage for your products.
Our goal for the Summit, as with all our outreach to the ecosystem around Windows, is to deliver you the content and tools you need to bring innovative software and hardware to life. Remember that all our content is on demand for you to view 24x7 so you can watch it at your own pace.
Enjoy!
Mark Relph, Sr. Director – Developer & Windows Ecosystem (@mrelph)
A good head to head example posted over at the Windows Blog.
Hello Everyone -
It is my pleasure to announce that the Windows Summit 2010 kicks off today.
Those of you who have heard about Windows Summit 2010 know that it is a virtual comprised of three tracks – Device, System and Software. The event designed for hardware and software designers, developers, engineers and testers who want to build great products on Windows. Members of the Windows team have been working hard for weeks to prepare and record a full agenda of great sessions. The event opens today with comments by Michael Angiulo - General Manager, Windows Planning & Ecosystem.
After Mike, 10 sessions from the Device Track will go live. The Windows Summit 2010 doesn’t stop there - the Systems track launches on June 2 with a kickoff by Brad Brooks and Dean Hachamovitch is kicking off the Software track on June 16.
I’m excited to let you know that I’ll be kicking off the Device Track this morning. I am a real gadget geek and I love to take advantage of Windows 7 features like Device Stage and Play To. The Device Track is going to walk you through those technologies (and more!) and learn how to differentiate your products with Windows 7.
Here are some of the sessions that I am most excited about from each track (but be sure to check out the website for a full list!)
Devices Track: May 25
Systems Track: June 2
Software Track: June 16
It should be a great event and we hope you can join us for it! The content will be available for download, so you can consume it at your own pace. Go to the Windows Summit 2010 website to register and hear Mike Angiulo open the event at 9am PST today.
"Microsoft is pleased that Western Digital has earned the Compatible with Windows 7 logo and is supporting the Play To feature with WD TV Live HD media player," said Mark Relph, senior director, Windows Ecosystem Product Management at Microsoft Corp. "Now more than 100 million Windows 7 customers will have an affordable and easy way to play files to their HD TVs and other devices from their PC."
http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/default.aspx
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=735
If you haven’t heard, we really want to see people move off of IE6. I thought I’d call out this webcast on some suggestions to our business customers of how to do it: (link)
http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/26/sony-shutting-down-japanese-floppy-disk-sales-by-march-2011-kil/
Sony gets out of the floppy disk business… the end of an era along with Polaroid film…..
(This post can also be seen on the Windows Team Blog)
Any Saturday afternoon you are likely to find me at the local Best Buy or Fry’s. You see, I am a gadget nut and I love finding that next great product that helps me do something new or better. This is, of course, a good thing for the guy who heads up Ecosystem marketing for Windows. A big part of what makes Windows great is the universe of partners around it. My last few purchases (a Wacom Bamboo tablet, a Seagate FreeAgent Go 1TB portable drive, a Netgear WNDR3700 router, a Samsung netbook and a new Microsoft mouse) all have something in common – they all shine with Windows 7. This got me thinking a lot about the great support we are seeing from the ecosystem (something we have talked about before) and how these partners help enhance the Windows experience for all of our users.
When I think about the ecosystem around Windows, three things really stand out for me:
Last week, we announced sales had reached more than 100 million licenses, which means more people are choosing Windows 7. These people choose Windows in part because the apps and devices they care about simply work. I often get asked to characterize how many products work with Windows 7. The answer is simple – the number is huge. Let’s talk about the hardware first. Thanks to an analysis of a random sample of millions of PC’s that have opted in to participate in telemetry we know that over a quarter of a million devices work with Windows 7.
The universe of software is even larger – that same telemetry shows more than a million applications running on Windows 7 PCs around the world. This software comes from the largest tech industry titans serving tens of thousands of users right to the developer building customer software for their small business. The products people want are ready for Windows 7. Based on NPD and Download.com rankings, 14 of the top 15 applications are compatible with Windows 7 – products like WinZip, Turbo Tax, and Microsoft Office. Looking at other key rankings by NPD…
Having millions of things work is one thing, but tens of thousands of products have gone the next step to earn the Compatible with Windows 7 logo. The logo is the sign to the customer that the vendor has tested their product to work well with Windows 7. There are now more products with the Windows 7 Logo than any past Windows logo program. There are nearly 18,000 products that have earned the logo, over 20,000 if you include PCs. That’s 5,000 applications and 13,000 devices and components. This means that all these products have passed our rigorous testing so in any category, you can find a product with the logo. It’s not the small guys either… 10 of the 15 most popular applications sold or downloaded in the US carry the logo. We’re talking all the top names: Intuit, Adobe, Symantec, Canon, Sage, McAfee, Cisco, D-Link, and HP.
With such a broad and vast ecosystem, we also continue to invest in compatibility tools and resources to help customers. We have seen over 15 million downloads of the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. That’s larger than the population of Sweden and Singapore combined. IT professionals are also taking advantage of the Windows 7 Application Compatibility list with over 83,000 downloads. We’ve also continued to expand on the Windows 7 Compatibility Center to help people easily check the compatibility of thousands of devices and software programs for 32-bit or 64-bit versions of Windows 7. The site also provides links to drivers and software updates to help get your PC running with Windows 7. The site represents a self-reported sample of applications and devices so it changes every day. With an ecosystem as large as the one around Windows, it is nearly impossible to report on all products, but our goal is to provide the best information on the products people care about most. Since launch, we have seen over 17 million visitors to the Windows 7 Compatibility Center representing 78 million page views.
Finally and perhaps most importantly we continue to see innovation around Windows 7 by our ecosystem partners. If you want amazing products you can find them on Windows. In hardware, Onkyo announced the first Windows 7 compatible A/V receivers and now there are great products like the WD TV Live that enable Play To in legacy devices, the new Toshiba TV (the first TV to earn the logo), and Sierra Wireless announcing Device Stage support for all their Aircard line of products. Not only do all of these products carry the Compatible with Windows 7 logo, but they enhance your Windows experience in compelling ways. In software, more applications are taking advantage of unique features in Windows 7. The team at Graphic.ly is testing a next generation Windows 7 comic book reader, Seesmic created Look a twist on how people can access Twitter, Winzip 14.5 beta has added the Windows Ribbon, even Google and Mozilla have added support for Jump Lists in their browsers.
Huge support, the most products with the Logo and new innovations – all reasons why I am excited about what our partners are doing. I like to call it “Ecosystem Awesomeness”.
Design rock star and Canada’s own Bill Buxton speaks at MIX10.
The folks who run TalkingAboutWindows asked me to do a video for the site and it is up now…
http://talkingaboutwindows.com/archive/2010/02/15/mark-relph.aspx
From MIX -
I’m down in Vegas for MIX – I am here to see the IE9 keynote in particular. This is the recording of the keynote (delivered in Silverlight, of course)
There was an extra treat, however – Bill Buxton. He might just be the best presenter at Microsoft right now. Scroll into the video to about 2:15:00 to find his presentation on design and NUI.
At CES 2010 I was hard at work with a video crew visiting some of our partners at the show. We stopped by the Canon booth.
This is also posted on the Windows Team Blog
I was hard at work visiting Microsoft partners at CES 2010. My first stop is AMD.
Also posted on the Windows Team Blog
My team and I were down at CES this year showing off some of the great work being done by our partners around Windows 7.
They had me working hard recording a series of videos highlighting what some of our key partners were showing at the show.
The first video was a quick tour of our part of the Microsoft booth. You can also check out the post on the Windows Team Blog here.
(thanks to Ina Fried at CNET for the video)
I had breakfast with several reports and bloggers today before the launch event… here is some of the coverage:
eWeek Microsoft Watch - “How Microsoft Ensured That Windows 7 Would Improve Over Vista”