In a blog post on the 18-month mark of Windows 7, Microsoft says that nearly 90% of businesses are currently in Windows 7 migrations and that it is saving enterprises $140 per PC per year, a $131 return on investment. The operating system has made it to desktops, laptops, netbooks and yes, tablets. The growth has been spurred by the cheeky advertising campaign - "Windows 7 was my idea!" - and the mass of money that Microsoft has spent marketing the product. Yet, Windows 8 rumors have begun to surface and it looks like it will make its debut in the fall of 2012, right on schedule with Microsoft's three-year product cycle. What can we expect?

We have written a lot about the features expected in Windows 8, and the general feeling is that the OS will be more cloud-based, more mobile, have Kinect support and will try to integrate a lot of Microsoft's unified communications initiatives.

With Windows 8, Microsoft will also, for the first time, support ARM-based Systems-On-A-Chip (SoC) along with its longtime use of x86 architecture. Given that Intel's Oak Trail processors for mobile are becoming smaller and more powerful, there is a good possibility of seeing variety of Windows 8 tablets coming in autumn 2012.

In terms of user interface, the idea would be that two sevens equal an eight - Windows 7 plus Windows Phone 7 equals Windows 8. Imagine a tablet that functions like an iPad but has Kinect motion controls. Likely? Perhaps not but seems like it could be a cool idea if Microsoft could pull it off.

The Register says that it got the official word from Microsoft and if Internet Explorer 9 is something you want, then Windows XP just isn't going to do.

For now, this means that more than half - around 55%% of computers, according to StatCounter - will be unable to run Microsoft's latest browser, but Windows 7 users are on the rise. Windows 7 debuted just over a year ago and has grabbed nearly a fifth of all computers on the Web in that time.

This isn't the first time that a browser has been released to exclude an old operating system and, in case you've forgotten, Windows XP (like its Internet Explorer 6 counterpart) is nearly a decade old. When Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 in 2006, Windows 2000 was left out of the equation.

While we're disappointed, the abandoning of Windows XP seems reasonable given the numerous features that wouldn't work outside of Windows 7. Much of the talk yesterday around IE 9 was about moving the browser out of the way of the website, with features like "jump lists" and the "pinning" of websites to the desktop. These features, along with hardware acceleration using DirectX 10, would be unavailable on Windows XP. As Microsoft showed during a reviewers workshop yesterday, much of Internet Explorer 9 has been rebuilt from the ground up. If this means that we don't have to deal with the clunky IE of the past from now on, so be it. Our only lament is that a better, standards-based version of IE will never happen on XP, and for now, XP isn't going anywhere fast.

IE9 will, however, be available for Windows Vista. Show of hands - anyone still running Vista?

The new tablet, to be possibly introduced in Q3, is code-named Hurricane and will run on Palm's mobile operating system. HP bought Palm for $1.2 billion last month.

Maybe the Hurricane will be as fast as its namesake. Or maybe it will just blow through and leave a mess behind.

While Windows 7 offers a built-in location API, Microsoft decided against integrating a default geolocation provider. Due to this, implementing location-aware features on Windows is a lot harder than integrating similar features on OSX or most mobile platforms and this API remains mostly unused. Mac and iPhone developers have long been able to use SkyHook's built-in, system-level services to triangulate a Mac's position based on local WiFi hotspots. Mozilla, too, offers built-in support for Google Location Services in the latest release of Firefox and a few sites are already making good use of this service.

How Geosense for Windows Works

Geosense for Windows was developed on top of the Windows Sensors and Location Platform and uses Google Location Services for WiFi and IP triangulation. Geosense for Windows does not support built-in or external GPS units, but the developers are looking into offering support for other location services like Skyhook and Navizon. The team is also looking at Google's Location Services for cell networks, which can use a computer's built-in wireless broadband hardware to triangulate location data based on the location of nearby cell towers.

Will this Kickstart the Development of Location-Aware Apps for Windows 7?

Only a very small number of programs currently supports location data on Windows 7. Rivera has developed a location-enabled Google Maps client for Windows 7 (you can download it from the Geosense homepage). The Sidebar Weather gadget and MahTweets can also access location data. Hopefully, we will soon see Windows twitter clients and other services (FourSquare for Windows?) that will hook into this service. Hopefully, Geosense for Windows will kickstart the development of native location-aware apps on the Windows platform in the near future.

We were quite literally up and running with other devices connected in five minutes. In fact, this post is being published right now on a Connectify.me-powered connection. Windows 7 users have got to try this app. You never know when you'll get to save the day by letting other users share your Internet connection.

Installation is simple. Go to the website, click the big, shiny button, run the .exe file, follow the prompt. You'll then see a Connectify logo in the notification tray. It's party time! Choose a name, set up a password, and click the big, shiny button. Congratulations. You're now a software-based wireless router. It took about five very obvious clicks and was truly so easy a caveman could do it.

This is almost as much fun as that MiFi we played with a while ago. The main difference is that the MiFi creates an Internet connection for 3-5 users using cellular networks, and Connectify allows multiple users to piggyback off a single connection. Oh, and the MiFi and similar devices cost a bit - or a lot - to buy and maintain, but Connectify is free to install and run.

Connectify runs on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 r2. Why no other Windows OSes, you ask? "Connectify depends on improvements made in Windows 7 to operate," reads the site's FAQ. "Frankly, Windows 7 is such a big improvement that we suggest you're better off upgrading than waiting for us to get all this working on an older version of Windows."

Three cheers for Windows for getting their act together on the OS front, and many thanks to Connectify for bringing us all n-for-the-price-of-1 WiFi!

In Windows 7, Microsoft has now made multi-touch a built-in feature of the operating system and BumpTop makes full use of these capabilities. What makes the new BumpTop version especially interesting, however, is that the company came up with a number of pretty interesting gestures (PDF) that we haven't seen in similar projects so far. You can, for example, push multiple objects on the screen around by pushing them with the side of your finger. Or you can crop an image by slicing across it with one finger while holding the image with another finger. You can now also easily drag and drop images and files from your BumpTop desktop to a USB key.

The following video shows the multi-touch gestures in action:

It's important to note that the standard, free version of BumpTop doesn't support multi-touch gestures - only the Pro version for $29 will. At the end of this post, however, you can find out how you can get a free Pro account.

Tablets Need Dedicated Interfaces

If the demise of Microsoft's first tablet-PC initiative showed us one thing, it was that these kind of devices need a special user interface. BumpTop offers exactly this, so it doesn't come as a surprise that the company is in talks with a number of hardware manufacturers to bundle BumpTop with their graphics cards, screens, and touch-enabled machines.

Of course, even if you don't have a multi-touch capable screen, or if you have a touchscreen that can only recognize two fingers at a time, BumpTop will still work just fine, though you will obviously miss out on being able to use some gestures.

Next Version: Built-In Browser, Google Gadgets

Just like the last version of BumpTop, the new multi-touch version will still take you out of the BumpTop environment when you start an application. When we talked to Bumptop's CEO Anand Agarawala yesterday, he pointed out that the team is aware of this and working on a solution to this problem. The next version, which should arrive within the next few months, will feature an integrated WebKit browser, for example, that will be integrated into the BumpTop experience. This new version will also offer support for Google Gadgets.

200 Free Pro Accounts

BumpTop graciously gave us 200 free Pro accounts to give to our readers. Just head over to this site and you will be able to try BumpTop in all its multi-touch glory (assuming you have access to a PC with a touchscreen).

This appears to be a major step by the company in addressing the long standing anti-trust complaints of bundling their applications with Windows, and may account in part for the recent scaling back by the European Union in its monitoring of the software giant.

In a post on the Engineering Windows 7 blog Friday, Mayo explained: "In addition to the features that were already available to turn on or off in Windows Vista, we've added the following features to the list in Windows 7:"

• Windows Media Player
• Windows Media Center
• Windows DVD Maker
• Internet Explorer 8
• Windows Search
• Handwriting Recognition (through the Tablet PC Components option)
• Windows Gadget Platform
• Fax and Scan
• XPS Viewer and Services (including the Virtual Print Driver)

Important to recognize is that while these applications can be turned off, meaning they are not loaded by the operating system or available for use, the files remain present on the hard disk in a staging area so that they can be easily turned back on again without the need to use installation media. This ability to turn applications on and off is available at both setup and post setup.

As we pointed out earlier this year, IE8 is definitely an important milestone, and this new policy of allowing their bundled applications to be turned off seems to be the right step by Microsoft in creating a more level playing field for third parties on the Windows platform.

Plastic Logic's Reader

The first product on our list is Plastic Logic's upcoming e-book reader. A demonstration of this device at the past DEMO08 conference left many people amazed at how incredibly thin this potential "Kindle-killer" is. The company says they've perfected a way of printing polymer transistors onto flexible plastic displays. This particular revolution won't be just a transition to lighter and "bendier" touchscreens, it will also lead to lower power consumption and longer battery life.

But perhaps what's best about Plastic Logic's technology is the cost. The polymer-based circuitry will be able to bring new products into market where silicon microchips were simply too expensive. Since the displays are flexible enough to be rolled up like paper, the potential for this new type of computing is nearly limitless. Is this the future of the newspaper? Perhaps, but it could also be used in smart electronic tags that track merchandise and large flat-panel displays.

Plastic Logic will begin their entry into the market in the second half of 2009 with pilots and trials with key partners and will prepare for further sales by 2010.

Pressure-Sensitive Computing: Impress

For an inventive, "out-there" product that could make the cold, stiff computer a thing of the past, look no further than this touch screen flexible display called "Impress" (PDF). Made of foam and force sensors, Impress works with both touch and the intensity of pressure. This computing technology lets the user squeeze out information or put objects in motion by deforming the surface of the computer.

The end result is pretty amazing, though it may not end up being as practical as the flexible polymer displays. However, it's easy to imagine how it could be put to use in entertainment-based computing at the very least. (Or maybe huggable, touch-enabled teddy bears? We can only hope!)

The Touch OS: Windows 7

While its easy to see the usefulness of touchable handheld devices, others have questioned how exactly touchscreen computers - such as the upcoming Windows 7 OS - would be useful to consumers. Suggestions have included everything from control panels for the smart home to kitchen PCs for touch-based recipe look up to touchscreen Media Centers. However, the answer as to what could really impact touchscreen PC adoption may be as simple as this: games.

At this year's CES, a demo of a Windows 7 air hockey game demonstrated the potential for a new type of human-computer interaction...like an iPhone but much, much bigger.

In addition, Microsoft also introduced two new Surface applications for Windows 7 at CES as well. One that allowed for photo manipulation and another for interacting with maps.

Yet there still is a question as to whether the iPhone-like multi-touch capabilities of a touchscreen OS will become as big of a hit in traditional computing as they were on the smartphone.

These above examples of touchscreen-based computing demonstrate the new ways we may interact with technology - and therefore the web - in coming years. It's a glimpse into the future of a world where our interactions with technology come more easily and more naturally than ever before. This trend will continue to move computing away from being an activity for technophiles alone and will make it an activity that everyone - even mainstream users - will enjoy.

Disclosure: Sarah Perez also blogs for Microsoft's Channel 10.

Update: You can find direct download links here, but without a registration key, your beta version will expire in 30 days. Microsoft's registration servers are still down.

Update 2: Looks like Microsoft is going to delay the release of the product keys for a little longer. They must have seriously underestimated the demand. No ETA for when the servers will be back up.

Update 3: As of Sunday morning PST, product keys and downloads are finally available on the Windows 7 page.

TechNet and MSDN subscribers can already download the beta, but the general public will have to wait until noon. However, if the current state of Microsoft's servers is any indication, you will have to be very lucky to get your copy anytime soon.

Demand for the public beta is clearly high. All day long, neither the Windows Team blog, the Microsoft Partner homepage, nor the TechNet download have been working properly. Even the official Windows 7 site was unavailable for a good part of the morning.

By limiting the download to the first 2.5 million users, Microsoft has created an artificial scarcity that is driving users to the site early. While this is clearly a sign that users are eager to get their hands on the (legal) beta and that Microsoft's marketing did a great job, Microsoft's infrastructure clearly wasn't prepared for the current demand.

If you manage to get a hold of the download, let us know in the comments.