Microsoft provided technical details on the new features at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Los Angeles this week. The company also said it will support more than 64 processors in the next version of its operating system for PC servers.
The company gave the estimated 2,000 hardware engineers attending WinHEC pre-beta copies of Windows 7. Microsoft aims to release a full beta of the operating system early next year. It postponed the annual show, which normally would have been held in April, so it could distribute the new code at the event.
Developers got their first look at a new applications programming interface which expands the current pen interface on Windows Tablet PCs to include support for two-finger gestures such as zooming, popularised by Apple's iPhone. Microsoft also showed DeviceStage, a new way for devices such as cell phones or digital cameras to expose their features on a Windows PC.
"As devices get smarter they tend to become multi-function, so a device with three functions may appear as three devices in Windows today, and that might give end users trouble making it work," said Gary Schare, director of hardware ecosystem product management at Microsoft.
DeviceStage provides a single interface to any features on a system linked to a Windows PC. OEMs can use the facility by supplying metadata to Windows 7, or if they prefer they can create their own client software to create a more detailed and customised user interface to the device.
"We leave it to their imagination what kinds of user experiences they want to supply," said Schare.
In a WinHEC demo, Microsoft showed DeviceStage working on a Windows 7 PC with a Canon SD990 digital camera and a Nokia N95 smart phone.
"We have been working closely with Microsoft to help ensure compatibility and connectivity between our smart phone software S60 on Symbian OS and Windows 7," said Eero Kukko, head of S60 platform marketing at Nokia.
Brother, Epson, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and Sony also expressed support for DeviceStage.
Separately, with Windows 7 users can now get on cellular data networks using the same interface Windows XP currently supports for finding and accessing Wi-Fi nets.
"In the past you had to install a whole different software stack to connect to those," Schare said. "Now you just plug the card in and shows up in your 'View Available Networks'" box, he added.
Separately, Windows Server 2008 Release 2 will use a new concept of groups to expand beyond support for 64 processor cores. Each group will include up to 64 logical cores, typically on a single chip or group of chips physically close to each other. Microsoft released at WinHEC a technical paper describing the new approach.
The new release will also support an ability to move virtual machines between different host processors.
In tandem with the opening of WinHEC, Microsoft released more than two dozen technical papers on Windows 7 related issues for hardware developers.
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