Last week, the tech blogosphere was abuzz over the news that Bill Gates had inadvertently slipped up and disclosed that Windows 7 would arrive in 2009 instead of in 2010 as originally forecast. The buzz was all based on a single offhand remark that Gates made during a Q&A session in Miami: "Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version [of Windows]."

Well, there you go. Windows 7 in 2009. Gates said so! Then, as quickly as it began, the story apparently began unraveling and a wave of follow-ups began to appear, reflecting the new conventional wisdom that Bill was getting confused about beta versions or something and that Windows 7 is really going to be out in 2010.

So, what caused this sudden, whiplash-inducing turnaround? A few journalists contacted Microsoft for an official comment on the story, and here’s what they got (as reported by Todd Bishop of The Seattle P-I):

We are currently in the planning stages for Windows 7 and development is scoped to three years from Windows Vista Consumer GA. As is standard with the release of a new product, we will be releasing early builds of Windows 7 prior to its General Availability as a means to gain tester feedback. We’re not sharing additional information at this time.

That’s it. Even in Microsoft’s post-Vista climate of “translucency, as opposed to transparency,” this is an almost impenetrably dense statement. Bishop, who is an honest-to-goodness journalist, reported the statement without comment or interpretation. But bloggers with itchier trigger fingers spent 10 seconds or so looking at the statement and then leaped to conclusions. Here’s a sampling of headlines and relevant quotes from yesterday:

Engadget: Windows 7 still slated for 2010 says Microsoft, Bill Gates just crazy-talking

"Microsoft wants to chill everyone out with the somber news that its got no plans to introduce Windows 7 any earlier than January 2010 (three years from the launch of Vista)…"

Techspot.com: Windows 7 still slated for 2010

"Though many welcomed the news of an OS refresh ahead of schedule (while bashing Vista at the same time), it appears that Windows 7 won’t be ready in its final version any earlier than 2010 – three years from Windows Vista’s rocky introduction to market."

InformationWeek: Windows 7 in 2010, Microsoft says

"Windows Vista was released to consumers in late January 2007. That means Windows 7 would not be released until January 2010, according to Microsoft’s statement."

Did Microsoft really say it has no plans to introduce Windows 7 any earlier than January 2010? I keep looking at that statement and trying to figure out what it really means. A lot of very highly paid corporate communications professionals no doubt worked on that statement for days, and it was, without question, approved by people very near the top of Microsoft’s org chart. Here, read it again:

“…development is scoped to three years from Windows Vista Consumer GA…”

Odd language, isn’t it? “Development is scoped to three years”? What the hell does that mean? One logical interpretation is that the scope of Windows 7 (the full feature set to be included) is based on what can be done within that three-year period. If you’re a manager on the Windows team with a cool feature, you have to be able to guarantee that your code will be fully written, tested, and debugged by the end of next year. If you can’t, your cool feature gets postponed to the release after Windows 7.

And where does Microsoft’s carefully parsed statement say anything about release dates? Yes, “Windows Vista Consumer GA [General Availability],” was on January 30, 2007, and if you add three years to that you get January 30, 2010. That’s the impression that statement was no doubt intended to give, but that’s not what it says.

In fact, I think that date makes no sense at all, as I explain in my latest post over at ZDNet. I’m betting that Windows 7 will be ready in the second half of 2009. I’m even going on the record with my very own wild-assed guess. Think you’re smarter than me when it comes to forecasting what Microsoft will do? Cast your vote in the Windows 7 release date prediction pool.

I finally got sick of constantly moderating and deleting trackback and pingback spam (for a definition, see sping at Wikipedia). So I’ve disabled all trackbacks on all posts, old and new. Comments are still gladly accepted and pretty much open. (You should get approved automatically if you have had a comment previously approved; if you’re a first-time commenter, you might have to fill in a Captcha.)

That’s a shame for the legitimate sites that want to use trackbacks for their legitimate purpose, but I’m sorry to say those sites are being outnumbered by about 20:1.

Using Google to find answers to esoteric questions has built-in risks. In terms of wisdom and experience, the crowd is not always right and certainly not consistently reliable.

Today’s case in point involves a new system I placed into service last week. It’s a Dell Inspiron 530, purchased for about $500 from the Dell Outlet Center two weeks ago, with an Intel Q6600 quad-core processor, 4 GB of RAM, and a 500 GB hard drive. Its role is to replace a three-year-old dual-core Pentium D830 system that I use for testing Windows Server stuff. Installing the RTM version of Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition (x64) was fast and easy. Getting the release candidate of Hyper-V working was a little trickier (more on that later) but it’s also working just fine.

However, this morning, when I went to create a new virtual machine running Windows XP, I was surprised to see an error message telling me I didn’t have enough RAM. Really? I had two other VMs running at the time, each using 1024 MB of RAM. There should have been enough left over for the 512 MB I had specified.

But when I looked at Task Manager on the server, I saw that the system was only recognizing 3.3 GB of RAM. This problem shouldn’t crop up on a 64-bit operating system, unless there’s a problem with the hardware.

So I asked The Google to help, searching for 4gb x64 inspiron 530. And in the top five search results I saw a post from Ubuntu Forums with preview text reading, “The Inspiron 530 has had its BIOS tweaked so that it is not possible to use all 4GB, including windows (Even in 64-bit mode).” A commenter on the same forum as recently as February insisted:

You can search dell community forum and get the same answer. The manual said 4 gb max with note(*) that you will not see 4 gb; so you cannot win this argument with dell. It is crippled in the bios. This is Dell line of low end desktop so people will tell you that Dell will probably not going to uncripple the bios.

And indeed, another post in the top five search results was from the Dell Community forums, with the heading “Inspiron 530 BIOS 1.0.12 does NOT correct 4GB RAM problems … If you read the actual post, you might infer that his real problem is the fact that he’s using a 32-bit version of Windows XP Pro, which will not see more than 3.25 GB of RAM. But how many people will just see that title in the search results list and file away the “fact” that this BIOS update doesn’t work? A search of other posts on the Dell Community forums didn’t turn up any more encouraging words.

Now, I had previously noted that this BIOS update was available (the system I received was using BIOS revision 1.0.10) and had downloaded but not installed it. So I ran the BIOS updater, restarted the system, and … well, see for yourself:

That number had previously been 3316 or so. The only change I had to make to unlock that extra RAM for my 64-bit OS was to update the BIOS. And the conspiracy theorists who were certain that Dell was deliberately “crippling” this system to force customers to buy more expensive hardware? They were … what’s the word I’m looking for here? Oh yeah. They were wrong.

I had a similar experience last week, when I ran across an add-in that promised to make the SnagIt screen capture program (one of my 10 favorite Windows apps of all time) work with Windows Live Writer (another one of the all-time faves on the list my ZDNet readers created). The only review at Microsoft’s Windows Live Gallery said “Doesn’t work. Unusable.” So I tried anyway. And you know what? It works. In fact, it works exactly as advertised and it’s a real timesaver.

Like I said, don’t believe everything you read.

Update: I’ve now upgraded this system to 6GB of RAM. Windows recognizes and uses the entire amount.

Windows Vista Inside Out, Deluxe Edition will probably head off to the printer this week, and Amazon.com is now taking pre-orders for it. The deal is actually a very good one: You place the order and you get 5% off the current (discounted) price of $37.79. If the price changes between now and then, you get the lowest price. Your credit card isn’t charged until the book ships, presumably in June, and you can cancel any time.

Full disclosure: I get a commission from Amazon when you order through this link. I think this is an excellent deal, but if you can find a lower price somewhere else, I won’t be offended if you order from that source.

Update: I’ve mentioned this edition before, but I guess it’s unfair to expect people to sift through the archives to find those older posts, so here are some details about this update:

It includes about 300 pages more than the original edition. The main difference, of course, is that it incorporates full coverage of Service Pack 1. It also includes more than a year’s worth of details we’ve learned about Vista that we didn’t know in December 2006, with double the coverage of Windows Explorer and Search, as well as a greatly expanded chapter on performance. And it includes coverage of some advanced features that we left out of the first edition, like speech recognition, Tablet PC support, and Group Policy.

Sadly, I think this momentary display is probably inaccurate:

Sure enough, it displayed a mere 5 hours of estimated remaining battery life just a few seconds later. Which actually isn’t that bad, if it’s accurate.

For the past six months, my main Media Center PC has been a Dell XPS 410 with a pair of CableCARD tuners. How’s this fully digital, cable-compatible, high-definition configuration working out? Let’s just say you’d have to pry the Media Center remote from my cold dead fingers. In this new post at ZDNet (with accompanying image gallery), I give you a peek under the hood. I also tackle the question of whether this type of system is right for you.

Windows Media Center meets Cable TV in HD

See the full Media Center/CableCARD image gallery

Questions? Ask in the comments here or over there.

If you’ve fallen for the latest round of breathless posts about how you can save a lot of money by buying an upgrade version of Vista and using it for a clean install on new hardware, please go to ZDNet and read my latest post:

The Vista license "loophole" that isn’t

I wrote about this way back in February 2007, when the same sources issued the same breathless reports. Nothing has changed since then. If you qualify for an upgrade license, this technique allows you to do a clean install, legally. If you don’t qualify for an upgrade license, then doing a clean install with this technique is technically possible but violates the terms of the license agreement. That distinction seems to be lost on the folks who are dredging up this old story. So allow me to explain, again.

Short version: How you do the install (clean versus upgrade) is a completely separate issue from the license you purchase:

• If you have a PC with an old version of Windows that qualifies for an upgrade, you can buy an upgrade version of Vista and do a clean install. Legally.
• If you are setting up a new PC (or a virtual machine) that does not currently have a Windows license that qualifies for an upgrade, you need either a full retail license or an OEM copy. Although you can use an upgrade version to do a clean install in that circumstance, in that case you are violating the terms of the license agreement.

Why is this so hard for people to understand?

The editors of PC World have some April Fool’s fun at the expense of their InfoWorld cousins. Savedos.com takes you to this very elaborately constructed special site:

Save DOS: The Ultimate Antidote to Vista’s Bloat

I love the image gallery. The scary thing is, I remember this cover, because I was Managing Editor of PC World when it was published.

$149 for PC Tools Deluxe? Wow.

Don’t miss the feature comparison: DOS Trounces Vista

Even scarier, a year or so later, when I had jumped to PC Computing, we did a I (Heart) DOS bumper sticker and bound it into every copy. To the best of my knowledge, that one is not on the Internets. Yet.

Windows supersleuth Long Zheng hooks up with an “anonymous and disgruntled Microsoft employee” and uncovers a new Windows Vista sound scheme that will ultimately be released as an Ultimate Extra.

Very cool. Sounds like something Robert Fripp would have done 10 years ago when he was still cool. I have no idea whether it will sound as good tomorrow, though.

The mysterious Shipping Seven blogger* reappears after an absence of more than two months. And I was about ready to assume that he or she had been sent to Area 51.

[* For those who haven’t been following, Shipping Seven is a reference to the development process for the next version of Windows. Despite the name, this blog doesn’t actually contain much about Windows 7. At least not yet.]