This initial $900 Z5610 also lacks the built-in Blu-ray drive or TV tuner we saw in our April preview. If you're after an all-in-one that doubles as a TV, you might be better off looking at HP's TouchSmart 600 or Sony's Vaio L. The $1400 Gateway ZX6800 has a TV tuner, but not Blu-ray.

In terms of looks, the Z5610 holds its own. An ambient lighting strip between the display and sound bar illuminates the keyboard in the dark, and the PC's chrome legs create room to stow away the keyboard and tilt the display 10-20 degrees.

The rest of the specs are pretty basic, though: 4GB DDR3-800 RAM (expandable to 8GB), 320GB hard disk, 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD4570 graphics, SuperMulti optical drive, 6 USB slots, and one eSATA port. You also get 802.11n and Gigabit networking, plus a bundled wireless keyboard and mouse.

Underpowered, yes. But not bad for the price. The Aspire Z5610 arrives sometime before Christmas for $800.

The prototype was shown at the Intel Developer's Forum last week, so it probably has an Atom processor of some description. That'll explain why it's a little sluggish. As you'll also see in the video, it has two USB ports, audio in/out and an SD card slot. Hopefully the final version will be cheaper than the roughly $500 Archos 9. [GottaBeMobile via Slashgear]

An Acer product manager is quoted saying "touch-enabled netbooks may see good market acceptance if they are to be marketed as cheaper alternatives to tablet PCs." Unfortunately, the report doesn't make it clear whether such a netbook is one of the three initial Windows 7 products or not. Either way, we know at least one: the Aspire Z5600 multi-touch all-in-one PC.

Meanwhile, Though Intel has apparently postponed Pine Trail-M to the first quarter of next year, DigiTimes says MSI intends to launch the platform ahead of schedule—in netbooks expected to run Windows 7 and have touch screens. No time frame was given, but we'll keep you posted. [DigiTimes]

This, even though the laptops use Intel Core 2 Duo processors with Intel's Virtual Technology (this, or AMD's equivalent are needed to run Windows XP Mode). Set to be included with Windows Pro 7 or above, many users have been looking forward to XP Mode because it allows software designed for XP to run without breaking like it might in Vista.

Over at the Windows 7 blog, Sony's Senior manager for product marketing, Xavier Lauwaert, responded that the company had:

…received very little if any requests to enable VT technology up until very recently.

In addition, our engineers and QA people were very concerned that enabling VT would expose our systems to malicious code that could go very deep in the Operating System structure of the PC and completely disable the latter.

For these two reasons we have decided, until recently, not to enable VT. However, with the advent of XP Virtualization, there is impetus for us to relook at the situation and I can share with you that we will enable VT on select models.

Though, I fear to say that the Z series will not be part of our VT-enabling effort. Indeed, we will focus on more recent models.

Some good news: There are online guides that claim to run through re-enabling hardware virtualization on Vaio laptops that use either a Phoenix BIOS, or the Insyde H2O UEFI framework (like the Vaio Z). [The Register via Engadget]

But you—regular guy—probably won't run into it, Ed Bott says after hours of testing the bug this morning. Not only are the conditions are pretty specific, CHKDSK actually throws up a few roadblocks along the way to meet those conditions, and the bug's not even 100 percent reproducible—Microsoft's working on reproducing it themselves, so we'll likely see a patch for it waiting for everybody on Windows Update at launch if it really is that critical.

In the meantime, just don't follow those super specific steps to crash out your computer. [InfoWorld, ZDNet]

That's it. There's going to be a family pack for three users. Nobody knows what the pricing will be, but Apple's Leopard family pack pricing is $199 for five users, and Snow Leopard is $49. Only three (Mom, Dad and Junior) can use Windows 7, so theoretically it should be lower than $199. But when you look at the pricing for a standalone one-user copy of Home Premium, it's $120 for an upgrade and $200 for a full version. So somewhere between $120 and $199 for an upgrade Family Pack, and somewhere between $200 and infinity for a retail Family Pack. [Kristian Kenney via ZDNet]

Starter Edition will serve two primary purposes for Microsoft: it'll provide a low cost, serviceable OS for markets where regular Windows pricing is simply unrealistic; and it'll give OEMs (and only OEMs) a more affordable version of the OS for netbooks, which Windows 7 has been thoroughly optimized for. Now, OEMs are telling Digitimes that Microsoft is asking $45-$55 for Starter Edition—a good price for Windows at retail, but prohibitively high for manufacturers that are used to paying around $15 for XP.

If Microsoft wants Windows 7 to become the de facto notebook OS, which it is well-positioned to become, this could be a serious miscalculation. The difference may sound relatively small, but given the choices of sticking with XP (or Linux) or hiking prices by $35+, netbook manufacturers—a proudly stingy bunch—wouldn't have a hard time choosing. [Ars--Thanks, Sicarious!]

A good deal of their article is aimed at overclockers—which isn't so surprising given the audience. But there are some notable gems inside. For instance, does anyone know what "PFN_LIST_CORRUPT" might mean? The explanation is ironically shorter than that handy error code. Faulty RAM.

If you're a Windows user, the link offers good read, and probably a decent bookmark, too. And if you feel like seeing one of the biggest BSODs of all time, you can check that out here. [MaximumPC and image]

Let's just say, conservatively, that "several" netbook editions means four of them. (A couple would be two, a few would be 3-4, so several, to us, means at least four.) We already had six on the table: Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate. True, the average consumer won't see be a few of these, but if Bloomberg is right, that still means there will be 10 versions of Windows 7 running around. What happened to keeping things simple? [Bloomberg via BoingBoing Gadget]

According to a PC contractor that builds for Acer, HP and others PC manufacturers, the software should be available in either late September or early October. Microsoft still maintains that Windows 7 will be available three years from when Vista was shipped, but evidence would suggest it's nothing more than a safeguard against expectations and any faux paux in releasing the OS. [Electronista]

This means win7rc1 was compiled at 4:25PM last Wednesday. Microsoft hasn't said anything official yet, so remember our first rule of rumors. If you find this in any Torrent tracker, proceed with caution: Only Build 7032 has been detected in the wild so far. [Softpedia]

TOUCH AND MULTITOUCH
In order to make use of the touch interface in Windows 7, you need a compatible PC with a touch monitor and the right drivers. We used an HP TouchSmart PC, which Microsoft has also been using in demonstrations.

In the video below, you can see the basic gestures associated with Win 7 touch:
Tap: A single click with an accompanying droplet-ripple effect
Tap and hold: The equivalent of right-clicking, indicated by a swirling circle around your finger
Flick: Inertial menu or window scrolling set in motion by a quick flick of your finger (there's also a related inertial "toss" behavior for flinging photos and other objects around the screen, where they bounce to a halt)
Type: A pop-up keyboard lets you type for real
You'll also see the multitouch gestures:
Zoom: Spreading or tweezing two fingers to make a picture zoom in or out
Rotate: Swirling those two fingers around to make the photo move
Draw: In Paint, you can even draw with two fingers
As applications harness the multitouch capabilities of the OS, more behaviors (like air hockey) will become apparent.

[More on touch and multitouch (including a virtual Air Hockey demo)]

PEN INTERFACE AND WRITING RECOGNITION
The Pen interface is similar to the touch interface, with inertial gestures and other new behavior. Though Microsoft's Tablet PC interface has been around for a long time, there are three key additions to the writing software: Custom dictionaries, math recognition and shape recognition.

Custom Dictionaries
This may not sound like much, but custom dictionaries make it easy for people who use Tablet PCs at work to get their weird job-specific terminology across. Think of a doctor and a prescription pad—how many tries does it take for handwriting recognition to tell a hastily written "fexofenadine" from a similarly scrawled "fenofibrate"? In this case, the doc would be able to add the terms, so they become at least slightly more distinct.

Math Recognition
I love this idea, since in all the years that I actually did math, I could never use a computer to do it, because I didn't want to figure out how to use all those symbols and keyboard shortcuts. (Mind you, I haven't done math in centuries, but still, I have painful memories of how confusing it was.) Now you just write the equation, with finger or pen, and you get the equation you want. Most of the time. The Math Input Panel (above) is a stand-alone Windows accessory that will paste into any math-aware application, but there's also a Math Input Control API for integrating into software.

Shape Recognition
Tired of your triangles turned into A's, or your boxy rectangles guessed as D's or E's? Now that the OS actually recognizes shapes, you can draw a flow chart or some kind of diagram and not worry that all your beautiful brainstorming will be converted to the bloody Roman alphabet. Note: We did not test this feature, mostly for an utter lack of need of any kind of flow chart, but it does sound business groovy.

WHAT MACHINES?
While there aren't that many multitouch computers on the market just yet, there are a few. HP has both the TouchSmart PC and the tx2 touch laptop, while Dell has an impressive multitouch-capable laptop too, the XT2. (If you're wondering about the embarrassingly similar names, Dell thought of theirs first.) There are new monitors cropping up all over, too, and as long as they have Windows 7 drivers, they're in business.

Most single-finger touch gestures—including all that fun with inertia—are also pen gestures, meaning most newer Tablet PCs will be able to run Windows 7 and look sharp doing it. If you've already put Win 7 on a Tablet PC and have something to share, please do. We have not had the pleasure.

1. First, right-click on the taskbar and turn off "Lock the Taskbar."
2. Right-click the taskbar, hover over Toolbars, and select New Toolbar.
3. When it asks you to select a folder, enter this string: %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
4. Find Quick Launch (it may be on the right side of the taskbar), right-click the divider and disable "Show Text" and "Show Title." Make sure "Small Icons" is enabled.
5. Drag the divider to rearrange Quick Launch on your taskbar (using left-click).
6. Right-click and lock your toolbar again.

You're welcome. I love you too. [MaximumPC]

View our other Windows 7 tips and our continuing coverage here.

You have to start downloading Windows 7 before Feb. 10, but you have until Feb. 12 to finish it, and product keys will be available after Feb. 12, though they don't say for how long after. Which essentially means you now have all the time in the world to install Windows 7. You can download it from Microsoft now and get a key way later, or, from the way it sounds, you could even grab a torrent after Microsoft stops offering downloads and then still get a key from them.

So yeah, it really is kind of like a free upgrade, at least until it self-destructs on Aug. 1. [Windows Team]

The interesting bit is that, using the testing workloads they came up with, they were able to find that Vista and 7 were almost exactly the same, barring some tweaks, and very different from XP under the hood. Our analogy would be that Windows XP is an orange, and Vista and 7 are a banana and a ripe banana, respectively.

Another point Infoworld brought up is that both Vista and 7 are actually more optimized for multicore performance than XP, naturally.

Taken to its logical conclusion — and disregarding for the moment external factors, like bus speeds, I/O contention, and memory latency — Vista would ultimately overtake XP when the core count reaches between 32 and 64.

And in Windows 7, they suggest that it will overtake Windows XP at around 16 or 24 cores. So although it may be slower now, in a few years, when you have 16 or 24 cores, you're going to be thankful for Microsoft for their work. But until then, Ballmer can expect lots of angry fist shaking. [Infoworld via Slashdot]

Update: Apparently when the Windows Team said they were removing the limit on Windows 7 downloads through Jan. 24, they didn't mean you wouldn't be able to download it after Jan. 24. The Windows Team announced tonight that you actually have until Feb. 10 to start downloading Windows 7 and through Feb. 12 to finish downloading it. And you'll still be able to get product keys after Feb. 12, though they don't specify for how long.

Here's where you get the download and product key—pick 32- or 64-bit (go 64), and you'll need a Windows Live account. After punching in your user and pass, you're presented with a product key and a download link. If you're at work and can't download right now, what you could do is go ahead and grab a product key (or two) so you'll have 'em, and then grab the install files later. Not sure if Microsoft will still be hosting the download afterward, but there are other places to get the Windows 7 install files, luckily.

Don't know what to do once you've got it downloaded? We've got you covered with a complete guide to installing Windows 7, pretty much pain-free, so you can test drive Windows 7 while keeping your current OS install totally intact. Here's how to make it happen on Boot Camp on Macs.

For everything else Windows 7—tips, analysis, and more—click here.

Who Should Go 64-bit?

Basically, anyone geeky enough to read this. If you have an Intel Core 2 Duo or newer processor, you've got a 64-bit CPU, and you should install the 64-bit version of Windows 7 to play with. (Here's how. You've got like 5 days left, BTW.) Microsoft itself is pimping 64-bit over 32-bit now and notebook makers have already started pushing 64-bit Windows Vista over 32-bit. Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard will be 64-bit down to its kernel, so you won't be alone by any means. 64-bit is going mainstream.

Why Should I?
We explained what's so awesome about 64-bit in detail a couple months ago, but to recap in a single word: Memory. With 32-bit Windows, you're stuck at 4GB of RAM, and even then, you're only using about 3.3GB of it, give or take. With 64-bit, 4GB of RAM is the new minimum standard, and with 4GB, you can run tons of applications with zero slowdown. Windows 7 (and Vista for that matter) runs so beautifully with 4GB of RAM you'll wonder how you ever did with less. It makes your system more futureproof too, so you can take your system to 8GB, 32GB or even a terabyte, before too long.

Who Shouldn't Go 64-Bit?
If you're not planning on going to 4GB of RAM anytime soon, you might wanna hold back, since you need 4GB of RAM to take full advantage of 64-bit's memory management. That said, RAM is so disgustingly cheap right now, and has such an intense bang-to-buck ratio, you should definitely upgrade to 4GB if you haven't already. Anyone who runs specialized or older gear (see below) should probably not jump into 64-bit.

64-bit Sniggles
It's true that 64-bit Windows used to be dicey on the driver and compatibility front, but from Vista onward, it's typically nothing you have to worry about. Most new hardware has 64-bit drivers, and even though most applications aren't 64-bit native yet, 32-bit ones usually run just fine.

Still, the biggest issue is hardware. If a gadget doesn't have 64-bit drivers, it won't work with your 64-bit OS, since 32-bit drivers aren't supported. Most non-crusty gadgets should be okay. (Seriously, I've run 64-bit Vista for a year, and now Windows 7, and everything I've tested for Giz plugs in just fine.) But if you run legacy goods, it might be kinda sticky, and you should still double check your gear just to be safe.

There are a few software issues to look out for, too. Google's Chrome, for instance, doesn't play nice with Windows 7 64-bit for some people (like me). Adobe Flash doesn't run in 64-bit browsers, but that's not really a problem—you can just run the regular 32-bit browser instead. iTunes had problems with 64-bit versions of Windows in the past, too (granted, Apple's not the most fastidious Windows app developer out there). Most of these issues have been or will be resolved, but if you use specialized mission-critical software, definitely read up on its 64-bit compatibility.

Really, Go 64-Bit
The caveat section looks longer than the "DO IT" section, but really, you'll probably be just fine running 64-bit. A ton of other people will be 64-bit with this generation of OSes/hardware too, so you won't be alone. The benefits of oodles of RAM, given all the crap you're running simultaneously, are just too good to pass up, especially once more apps are 64-bit native. Besides, the more people that jump on the 64-bit Express, the faster developers will transition their apps to 64-bit, and any bumps in the road will be smoothed out. So don't just do it for yourself, do it for everyone.