If you’re willing to bet on the new Windows Phone mobile OS, then Windows is willing to bet on you by offering you a free Windows Phone handset.  Now, there is a bit of a catch, of course.

Windows users, in order to qualify for a new free handset, will have to spend $499 at the very least.  Waaa Waahhh.  And the phones you’re choosing from are the: HTC Surround, LG Quantum, HTC HD7 and the Dell Venue Pro, all of which are first generation Windows Phone handsets.

The upside to this deal, which is obviously not the phones, is that they’re being given away off-contract so no longer will you be required to sign on to a carrier for one to two years.   So, all in all, not a bad way to go, though we’d suggest just buying an iPhone off-contract and doing a pre-paid plan via Verizon.  But, you know, that’s just us.

According to the Windows Team Blog, the AT&T Windows 7 Phone update has been delayed, as you might have guessed, since it was supposed to be available early April.

The culprits appear to be the  Samsung Focus, LG Quantum and the HTC Surround which are all still under testing for the update, even though this was supposed to be completed way before today’s date of April 13.

If you’ve been waiting for the Windows Phone 7 update, have you braved to test the ChevronWP7 updater on your phone?  What did you think?  Do the trick?

While there have been many speculative dates circling around since Eve, it looks like we finally, finally, finally have an official release date for Windows Phone 7.  Whew.

On October 11 the new Windows Phone 7 will be released with an exclusive showing of T-Mobile-powered handsets at 3:30pm EST in New York City no less.

Sheesh, talk about a long wait and terrible rumored mis-dates.

Yep, this portrait slider looks pretty damn sweet and the specs are even sweeter.

1GHz QSD8250 Snapdragon processor, WVGA 4.1-inch OLED display, AT&T and T-Mobile 3G, five megapixel autofocus camera, 1GB of flash with 512MB RAM plus 8GB of storage on a MicroSD card (non-user-replaceable, we’re assuming), GPS, accelerometer, compass, FM radio, and full Flash support including video playback.

Greased Lightning!

The GM for Microsoft’s Asia-Pacific Mobile Communications Business recently confirmed that if you currently use a Windows Mobile cell phone, there will be no upgrade possible to Windows Phone 7.  Not even the HD2 will be able to reach the update, so get ready for a might storm to hit.

Soon students will be able to go ahead and pre-order their copy of Windows 7 Home Premium, with the only requirement being you have a college email address.  This offer is good until January 3, 2010.

In between waiting for the launch of Windows 7, you don’t have any more appealing options than grab the latest service pack for both Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista.

The packs support the new types of hardware standards and includes all of the updates you’ve needed since SP1.  The new SP2 will allow you to enjoy Vista a bit more easily, if that’s even possible.  (Mac now gags.)

Normal people pay close to $700 for a real version of Office Ultimate 2007, but what about the students? How much are they suppose to pay for this type of product?

Thanks to a Microsoft campaign called The Ultimate Steal, students will only have to pay $60 to have access to the whole lot of applications inside the Office Ultimate 2007. In case you are wondering, the software list is considerable big, and contains popular applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, and others.

For all the other people that aren’t students and can’t afford $700 for the Office Ultimate 2007, just use a good freebie – OpenOffice.

PS – This offer expires in 7 months, April 20, 2008.

Toshiba has upgraded one of their USB flash drive models by making it compatible with a specific feature on Windows Vista.

The new drives are called TransMemory U2K Series and will become available during October, a limited edition of 32GB will hit the shelves only in December, while the others will offer smaller capacities: 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB.

The Windows Vista operating system allows qualifying USB flash drives enhanced for Windows ReadyBoost to provide additional system memory, thus making PCs more responsive.

Prices go from $200 to $625.

Microsoft is trying to gain market share on the internet and search service world, and since their Windows Live system needs to be instantly available for users to have any kind of success, they decided to bet on Lenovo and made an agreement in which every Lenovo computer – ThinkPad notebooks and ThinkCentre desktops – will have default Microsoft software.

So what is the big change?

Instead of having Google software like it happened previously with the toolbar and desktop search applications, the Lenovo computers will start sporting: Windows Live Search Portal as the default web search service + Windows Live Toolbar on each browser which consequently works in coordination with the Live Search engine.

Ray Gorman, from Lenovo, comments:

Today’s agreement really supports our strategy to provide customers with a global platform to enhance and customize their online-computing experience.

Google’s search and toolbar (have) been removed as (defaults) for users to access on their Internet browser. However, Google search can still be selected and made a default.

[Source: CNet]