Windows Vienna / Windows 7

Windows 7 (formerly codenamed Blackcomb, then Vienna) is a future version of Microsoft Windows. It is expected to be the successor to Windows Vista. Microsoft has confirmed that the planned development time frame is at least three years, putting the release date around 2010. On July 20, 2007, Microsoft confirmed that Windows 7 is "the internal name for the next version of the Windows Client OS".Microsoft has refrained from discussing the details about Windows 7 publicly as they focus on the release and marketing of Windows Vista, though some early details of various core operating system features have emerged at developer conferences such as Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in 2006.


Focus
On February 9, 2007, Microsoft's Ben Fathi claimed that the focus on the operating system was still being worked out, and could merely hint at some possibilities: “ We're going to look at a fundamental piece of enabling technology. Maybe it's hypervisors. I don't know what it is" [...] "Maybe it's a new user interface paradigm for consumers.” Bill Gates, in an interview with Newsweek, also suggested that the next version of Windows would "be more user-centric." When asked to clarify what he meant, Gates said: “That means that right now when you move from one PC to another, you've got to install apps on each one, do upgrades on each one. Moving information between them is very painful. We can use Live Services to know what you're interested in. So even if you drop by a [public] kiosk or somebody else's PC, we can bring down your home page, your files, your fonts, your favorites and those things. So that's kind of the user-centric thing that Live Services can enable. [Also,] in Vista, things got a lot bet er with [digital] ink and speech, but by the next release there will be a much bigger bet. Students won't need textbooks; they can just use these tablet devices. Parallel computing is pretty important for the next release. We'll make it so that a lot of the high-level graphics will be just built into the operating system. So we've got a pretty good outline.

Features
Microsoft is maintaining a policy of silence concerning plans and aspirations for Windows 7. As a result, very little is known about the feature set. However, from interviews and speeches of company executives certain features have been known.

Availability
The client versions of Windows 7 will ship in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.Server versions of Windows 7, however, will be exclusively 64-bit.

I had a very simple idea yesterday to get Gmail to work through IMAP and wanted to share it in case it is of use to anyone else.

Warning: This is clearly not rocket science and I’m positive that thousands of people have already thought of this and are already doing it. It just didn’t occur to me until now.

The problem: I like mail applications better than web-based mail. I am especially not fond of the way Google’s threads work. I understand that this format works for some people… it just feels weird to me though. BUT… a Gmail account is great to have because of its free storage, spam filtering, separation from my own domain, and search capabilities. So very conveniently, Google enabled POP access to Gmail accounts several months ago. That’s great, except I don’t like POP either. It’s fine for people who only use one computer, but the second you begin using a multiple machines, it’s a synching nightmare.

Enter IMAP e-mail. With Dreamhost’s IMAP e-mail setup, I can maintain an unlimited number of e-mail accounts with over 20 gigs of storage space and keep it all automatically synched between as many computers as I want. Awesome.

The only problem is that while Gmail supports retrieving of e-mail via POP, they don’t via IMAP. So what can I do if I want to continue using my Gmail address for filling out forms on the web and benefit from its excellent spam/phishing filters? Easy! Set it to automatically forward to a special IMAP account! Since Gmail’s auto-forwarding feature leaves headers for the most part intact, I can now receive fully synched, fully intact copies of all my Gmail messages to any computer I happen to be on. Here’s how:

Set up a new IMAP mailbox with your mail provider. The address could be “abcdefg@yourdomain.com”… doesn’t matter. It’s not public-facing.
Set your incoming mail server to its normal settings.
Set your outgoing mail server to “smtp.gmail.com”, check “Use SSL”, and use port 465.
Go to Gmail’s POP/Forwarding settings panel.
Turn on forwarding and forward to the special address you’ve set up.
Set Gmail to archive your mail after forwarding.
That’s it. You’re done. Gmail over IMAP. That such an obvious solution has escaped me for this long is evidence of possible senility. Excuse me while I go stir my fiber drink.