In terms of design, every conventional Windows Phone will have three buttons at the front of the phone situated at the bottom below the screen: this will include a Start, Search and Back button. Having the three buttons allows for user consistency between different smart phones e.g. the Nexus One.

The software

Microsofts introduction of ‘integrated experience hubs’ is one of many features they have incorporated with their new market smashing smart phone. Starting with People – this allows you to sort the people you know from various sources e.g. Outlook, Facebook and more.

The section is split into various panes separating recent contacts from personal information and social networking updates through Twitter, Facebook and other social network sites.

Pictures – this shows galleries and synced items along with a social network pane that allows you to view recent pictures from your friends on Facebook – you can see that Microsoft have gone on the integration synergy with Facebook and Twitter an awful lot with this phone. Pictures allows you to upload and manage Facebook albums directly from your phone – pretty cool huh?

A bit more predicatble more than anything but Yes – Microsoft have called their business tool hub ‘Office’. Once opened from the main screen, users are prompted with an option of creating new pages, view most recent open documents, spreadsheets and more.

Users can find a full list of documents in the middle panel followed by a final panel which manages SharePoint – that’s if you are a SharePoint user.

Games and Music + Video hubs – these Hubs pretty much sell themselves hopefully. Microsoft have incorporated Xbox Live so you can manage trophies, user profiles and friends from your Windows Phone 7. Not only allowing users to manage their Xbox Live account, users can sync their Windows Phone 7 games with Xbox Live.

Music + Video is Zune HD and from reviews the Music + Video hub works pretty damn well.

Summing up Windows Mobile 7

Windows Phone 7 in comparison to its predecessor Windows Phone 6.5, it is a completely different experience from the interface through to the integration with Hubs and Social Networks. I have a feeling we haven’t seen everything from Windows Phone 7 as hopefully a new firmware update in the new year will give the handset that cutting edge it needs to compete against other smart phones enabling – copy and paste.

With HTC, Samsung and LG already pumping phones out with Windows Phone 7, Microsoft will simply start to pick up on the smart phone market and who knows – Microsoft could increase their market size.

-For more information go to the original article source here at Zath

Windows XP is all around us, what a lot of people don’t know is that Windows XP is even installed on ATM’s. I remember the old ATM I used to use in Woolworths which used to Blue Screen but it’s not only ATM’s that use Windows XP, the self-checkout tills in Tesco and Asda are running as well.

For any users who currently use the old Service Packs of Windows XP it’s essential that you upgrade your copy of Windows XP Home, Professional, Media Centre Edition or Tablet Edition before 13^th July 2010 or you won’t receive any help from Microsoft as they are stopping support making Microsoft’s Service Pack 1 and 2 a ‘legacy’ software.

So if you are on Service Pack 2, you can upgrade through Windows Update which is under ‘All Programs’ accessible through your ‘Start’ button at the bottom left of your screen. However, if you are on Service Pack 1, it’s not as easy to go straight to Service Pack 3. You firstly need to go to Service Pack 2 and then upgrade to 3.

Service Pack 3 was released as an upgrade to existing computers running SP2 on 29^th April 2008 (quite a while ago in computer terms) with more security updates and newer features compared to its predecessors. Microsoft didn’t necessarily aim their update to consumers but to businesses that are deploying computers.

Service Pack 3 contains three new areas not in the previous versions:

Networking

• Network Access Protection (NAP) modules and policies have been migrated from Vista. NAP is more of a corporate update
• New updates and patches making it more stable and secure
• Improvement to black hole router detection, for people who don’t know what a black hole router is one that discards packets of data silently.

Security

• A new kernel that provides access to cryptographic algorithms
• To aid users into not selecting the incorrect security settings, Microsoft have made the Control Panel more descriptive.

Miscellaneous

• A new Windows Product activation that doesn’t require users to input a product key during setup
• Can detect routers discarding data
• HD audio support which is going to be beneficial for gamers

To upgrade to Service Pack 3, it’s an easy process to upgrade, just simply go to ‘Start > All Programs > Windows Update’. Once forwarded to the Internet Explorer page, just select ‘Express (Recommended)’ and Windows will do all the updates for you. You will however have to make sure that any current programs are closed, shut, saved and preferably backed up to an external hard drive or another peripheral as your computer will have to restart towards the end of the update.

If you need more information on updating to Service Pack 3, please click here.