Windows 7

The DVD storage format has been around since the 90’s. Blue Ray, designed by Sony, is an optical disc storage medium which is designed to replace the DVD format. These have a higher density than DVD, and use a different wave length compared to a standard CD or DVD. A Standard DVD uses a 650 nanometer red laser, whereas Blu-ray uses a shorter 405 nm wavelength blue-violet laser. This permits almost six times more data storage than a DVD.

Blue ray uses codec’s, which are program algorithms to compress data onto a disk. There are two main codecs:

• H.264 otherwise known as MPEG-4 Part 10.

• VC-1 a video codec that has was implemented by Microsoft in Windows Media Video 9 (WMV)

These codecs are largely available to other software, but are not part of the Windows 7 media player.

Windows 7 support codecs:

Nevertheless, there are other codecs that can be used that will allow media and audio to be played on the Windows media center. They allow movies, tv recordings, and audio to be played from a blue-ray disk. Here are three such options.

1. Windows Media Player Plugins. There are three that can be used.

• Plugins which are utilities add or extend the built-in functionality of Windows Media Player.

• Skins which are Small programs that change the appearance of Windows Media Player.

• Visualizations allow you to view Windows Media Player in different way, but allowing you to listen to music and so on.

2. Corel WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray. This Codec will allow you to use Blu-ray, HD DVD and standard DVDs.

This codec will play a variety of HD video formats like AVCHD, AVCREC, MPEG-4 AVC (H.264), MPEG-2 HD and WMV-HD.

You might have noticed the legal battle between Microsoft and the European Union about the integration of Internet Explorer in the Windows operating system.The European Union is pressuring Microsoft to provide alternatives or ship the next installment without Internet Explorer much like the Media Player-less installations that are available in the European Union as well.

The guys over at AeroXperience seem to have discovered that Microsoft is indeed offering an option to remove Internet Explorer 8 from the Windows 7 operating system. To be precise: The option to remove Internet Explorer 8 has been found in Windows 7 build 7048. It was not there in the beta release of Windows 7 which seems to suggest that Microsoft is working on a way to comply with the European Union in the matter.

It should also be noted that uninstalling Internet Explorer 8 from the Windows 7 installation will not remove all of its components from the computer system. Microsoft has integrated Internet Explorer into the Windows operating system that it would practically require a full rewrite to get rid of it completely.

Only the actual Internet Explorer executable will be removed from the Windows 7 build if the option to remove Internet Explorer 8 is selected. Here are the steps to undertake to remove Internet Explorer from Windows 7:

There is no word yet if the uninstallation of Internet Explorer in Windows 7 affects any other areas of the operating system. Several components but also third party tools use the rendering engine of Internet Explorer.

For all its new multi-touch goodness, Windows 7 only has about 7 basic gestures. So if you're all about the touch (and say, have a tablet PC) BumpTop's stack of unique new gestures could be a very good thing.

As we've mentioned in the past, BumpTop isn't a new OS or shell replacement, it just adds a 3D workspace to your desktop. The $30 mulit-touch version of the software is available now, but you'll need to have Windows 7 (and a multi-touch tablet, laptop or all-in-one PC). The good news: we're going to see a bunch of those arrive alongside the new OS on October 22.