Vista QuickLaunch Hidden Feature

A useful time-saving feature is hidden in the Vista taskbar. Use your keyboard to launch a shortcut on your Vista QuickLaunch Toolbar: press the Windows key plus that item’s number.  For example, when I press Windows key + 3: Firefox launches

Windows 7, Coming Soon?

For those looking for what’s next after Vista, Windows 7 may arrive sooner than you think.

Bill Gates recently spoke at Inter-American Development Bank, which is the main source of multilateral financing for economic, social and institutional development in Latin America and the Caribbean (source: IDB).

During his talk, Bill had lots of good things to say about health and education in Latin America. He discussed how important education is in combating disease and necessary for sustainable health care. Since leaving Microsoft’s CEO post in 2000, I think Bill is doing some very important work in the world and should be commended for it.

For an overview of Bill’s talk on Latin America healthcare and education please see this.

Bill also touched on something I never fully appreciated until Google really took off: The U.S. Model where universities retain licensing rights to new technologies developed on-campus, and even through government funds.

Side Note regarding Standford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page.  Not too long ago, Sergey and Larry were grad students at Stanford where they developed the logic, algorithm and patents to Google. Compared to where I attended university, Stanford really thrives on encouraging students and facality to develop and market new technologies. The school also connects developers of new technology with financing sources, which encourages new partnerships, patents and licensing.  In short, Stanford transparently creates new technologies, where the students, facility, school and world come out ahead.

Back to Windows 7 speculation. Much to Microsoft’s chagrin, Windows Vista is not achieving large scale penetration in the business market.  Although consumer adoption appears pretty strong, most of this is on new consumer PCs, where the user typically chooses between Vista and Vista (hmm… not much choice there).  In any event, Microsoft releases a new version of Windows every 3 to 5 years.  Vista took 5 years to ship, and Microsoft is vowing to ship the next version in only three years.   Adding three to Vista debut of January 2007, slates a Windows 7 ETA of January 2010.  But after hearing Bill’s words at IDB, Windows may arrive sooner.  We’ll see.

For Bills’ comments on Windows 7, please click here.