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Filed under: Windows, Microsoft, Beta

"Superbar" unlocked in PDC build of Windows 7

Windows 7 Superbar
Certified reverse engineer and rather impressive hacker (in the good sort of way) Rafael Rivera, of Uxtheme patching fame, announced on TWiT that he discovered our sneaky friends over in Redmond actually did enable that cool new "superbar" version of the taskbar in the version of Windows 7 that was handed out to guests at PDC (you know, that one that Lee showed off). The superbar was demoed during the various Windows 7 presentations, but the general consensus was that the feature hadn't been completed by the time the PDC handout build was prepared.

However, Rafael simply couldn't take no for an answer, and dug down into the innards of the pre-release version of Windows 7 to find that some rather sneaky developers at Microsoft simply rigged it to only appear for certain users with computers on Microsoft domains. Upon flipping a bit, he discovered that the superbar (albeit a slightly lesser version than demoed) could be enabled on the pre-beta build. He posted a very simple walkthrough guide and helper application for those of you that are graced with the PDC build of Windows 7, but still longing the shiny bits shown off by Steven Sinofsky at the Windows 7 keynote.

Filed under: Design, Developer, Fun, OS Updates, Video, Windows, Microsoft

Windows Longhorn concept video - does Vista live up to it?

Longhorn promotional videoOver on Digg, a user named anog has posted a link to a YouTube video which purports to be a promotional video made by Microsoft showing off Longhorn (Vista's development codename) for PDC 2003 attendees. Watching it really does get you excited about the possibilities for the next version of Windows, until you realize that what they showed really isn't what Vista turned out to be.

So, have a gander at the video for yourself, and tell us: would you rather have Vista as it has turned out, or this vision of Longhorn? Or, maybe a better way to phrase the question would be: Do you think Microsoft is delivering on the Longhorn vision they put forth with the upcoming release of Vista?

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Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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