VirtualBox Update for Windows 7

Sun has updated its VirtualBox virtualization software, for fixing the bugs related to Windows 7 and Snow Leopard.

Virtual Box 3.0.10 released, includes a modification in the way the software works with Intel VT-x and AMD-V virtualization technologies. It fixes a problem related to the XP compatibility mode in the recently released Windows 7.

In addition, the company updated the Windows 7 installer for Windows hosts and fixed a problem in dual-screen setups on Mac OS X Snow Leopard hosts. Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard supports the VirtualBox 2.2, which released earlier. Its update also spots memory leaks, a guest multi-processing bug and USB 2.0 stability problems.

VirtualBox is designed to be a low-cost option to products such as VMware Workstation, and is used primarily for development and testing. A programmer can create an application on the desktop using VirtualBox, than deploy it to a production environment on a virtualized server. VirtualBox is available for free for personal use, with a $30 per year charge for enterprises and is available from the VirtualBox website.

In other development, Windows 7 enjoyed a warm reception this week. The fresh software has won many reviewers and users and seems to have successfully washed away the spot left on the company by Windows Vista.

Reports still say that Windows 7 provides better battery life for PCs. Speed tests have shown that it’s not actually faster than XP or Vista in most situation, but somehow Windows 7 seems speedier in many ways. And many users are pleased with the reduced fluff-ware, thanks to Microsoft which is reducing the amount of extra software that comes pre-installed with Windows.

A helpful but very un-scientific sampling of Monitor readers also analyzed mostly positive experiences with the new OS. It’s faster than XP, and lesser software or speed problems. Everything is fully customizable, and from the start, your user interface is clean, simple, and ready for the user.

The changes in Vista are relatively minor, but they serve to make the left-column of Explorer the quickest way to navigate to any folder on the hard drive, network, or even in the cloud. Furthermore, they can arrange the different categories in any way they want, quickly add special folders to the Favorites section, and even hide sections. The other main point to access the file browser is the shortcut bar on the right column of the Start Menu. In Windows 7, there are more folders that can be choosen to display, including Downloads and Recorded TV.

The other major new Explorer feature is Libraries, these are simply data buckets that can store content that’s common in nature, but located on many places on the same computer, across a network, or in the cloud. Libraries are handy for organizing and collecting files in one place, because they appear to be normal folders to most applications.

In a new Windows 7, with many new features, it’s impressive that Microsoft has removed some problems and speed up the code. Shutdown and Geekbench aside, most of the tests had showed about a 14 percent improvement, over Vista a pretty nice boost. Where there were contrast, they were generally in favor of new Windows 7. Now it can be said that most users will experience many performance enhancement if they will do Windows 7 upgrade.

Windows 7 is much different, not because of new user interface, convenience, and networking features added in it, but performance has actually been enhanced.