Microsoft launched its official Windows Live Messenger app for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch in the US, Canada, UK and France. A free download from the App store, Windows Live Messenger for iPhone is a slim downed version of its Windows desktop big brother.

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As soon as you launch the Windows Live Messenger iPhone App, you are able to update your status on Windows Live and see the “social updates” from your friends. You can easily send text, emoticons, nudges, URLs and even photos with your IM messages.

The Hotmail icon (to the right of the status update area) displays new unread email messages. A quick tap on the icon, takes you to the mobile web version of Hotmail within the app itself. The Social tab aggregates all of the activities from your friends. You can filter the content by clicking on “status messages” or “photos” just to see that content. Clicking on the Friends tab, displays the familiar view that Windows Live users will already be accustomed to.

Chatting with friends is easy, by selecting the Chats tab you can easily see the flow of conversation. Notice, the new emoticons.

One of the cool new features of the iPhone is app, is the ability to include photos in your status messages. Creating a photo status message from your iPhone is straightforward. Either, take a new picture with your phone, or select one from your local album. Alternatively, you can also pick a photo from your Windows SkyDrive, if you have photos stored there. You can add labels or add annotations to your photos and even “style” them with the included photo effects feature

The app also provides push notification alerts, even when the app is closed.

One of the other interesting features, is that the Live Messenger app supports Multiple Points of Presence (MPOP). This means, I can keep my desktop version of Windows Live open and the continue to chat with my friends on the phone app. Updates appear in real time on the desktop client app. As you can in the picture below, Windows Live Messenger also shows you all of the locations that you are signed into, and allows you to easily sign out of them.

Overall, Windows Live Messenger for iPhone is a strong release and has already replaced many of the 3^rd party services that I used previously to connect with friends on Windows Live.

Windows Live Messenger for the iPhone is available to download here

This was post was originally cross posted on liveside.net

There is a way to upgrade Windows 7 Enterprise to Ultimate

Go to, Start, Run: and type: regedit.exe
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion
Change the key : ProductName from "Windows 7 Enterprise” to “Windows Vista 7 Business”
Change the key: EditionID from "Enterprise" to “Business”
Do not restart
Now insert Windows 7 Ultimate CD and start upgrading (the option Upgrade will not be graded out anymore)

The same rule would also apply to Windows Vista too

All DVD versions of Windows 7 contain the possibility to install all and any version of Windows 7, from Windows 7 Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional to Ultimate edition. Actually, the ability to select the version or edition of Windows 7 during setup installation, lies with a small configuration file named ei.cfg on the Windows 7 DVD, disc media or ISO image.

The content of the ei.cfg file, inside the “sources” folder of the DVD looks like below:

[EditionID]
Ultimate
[Channel]
Retail
[VL]
0

When ei.cfg does not exist, Windows 7 setup process will display a screen during Install Windows wizard to ask user to select the operating system (edition) to install. The selection of OS includes Windows 7 Starter, Windows 7 Home Basic, Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate. Thus, in order to be able to install any editions or install another different edition of Windows 7 without having to download ISO image or order a new DVD of Windows 7 with all SKUs enabled (allSKU version), use the following hack to delete or modify ei.cfg file.

1. Download and install an disc image utility such as PowerISO or UltraISO to open the ISO image of Windows 7 DVD. If you own a physical DVD disc media, the similar tool allows you to rip the DVD to ISO or other image format too.Another alternative for user with Windows 7 DVD ISO image downloaded via torrent or from Internet is to extract all contents of the ISO image by using extraction tool such as WinRAR or 7-zip, or mount the ISO and copy contents to a folder.
2. Browse to /sources/ folder.
3. Locate ei.cfg file.
4. Depending on preference, it’s possible to modify/edit or simply delete ei.cfg file, as explained below.

   Choice 1: Delete ei.cfg

   When ei.cfg is deleted, Windows 7 setup wizard will give user an option to select and choose which version (SKU) of operating system user wants to install during installation.

   Choice 2: Edit and Modify ei.cfg

   By modifying the EditionID section of ei.cfg by replacing Ultimate (or other edition specified there) with another edition, user can preset another edition SKU of Windows 7 that user want setup to install automatically. The Edition ID available for installation are as follow:
   Ultimate
   Professional
   Home Premium
   Home Basic
   Starter

   Save the ei.cfg after editing.
   

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According to Microsoft, it is not possible to directly or in-place upgrade from Windows 7 Beta or RC build versions.  A few tweaks and enhancements have been introduced during the development process, which can enhance support of Windows Vista to Windows 7 build-to-build upgrade.

Download the Windows 7 ISO.

1. Burn the Windows 7 ISO image to a DVD, and then copy and whole image to a storage location that you wish to run the upgrade from (can be either any directory/folder on any partition/drive on the machine running the pre-release build, or a bootable USB/FireWire flash drive).Alternatively, it’s possible to directly extract the content of the ISO to a desired folder using file extraction tool such as WinRAR.
2. Browse to the sources directory.
3. Open the file cversion.ini in a text editor such as Notepad.
4. Modify the MinClient build number to a value lower than the down-level build. For example, change 7xxx to 7100.
5. Save the file in original place and original name.
6. Start the setup process of Windows 7 as per normal from the modified copy of the installation files, and the version check will be bypassed.

1. Open notepad.

2. Copy below string and paste it into notepad.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\WebBrowser\]
“ITBar7Position”=dword:00000001

3. Save the file as” ie8menu+.reg” with Save as type is All Files.

4. Double click the registry file, continue with UAC prompt and click OK to confirm you wish to perform the action.

Once you completed the above steps, launch the new instance of IE and you will notice that the menu bar is now appeared above the address bar.

If you would like to revert the above change, follow below steps:

1. Copy below string and paste it into notepad

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\WebBrowser\]
“ITBar7Position”=dword:00000000

2. Save the file as “iemenu-.reg” with Save as type is All Files

3. Double click the registry file, continue with UAC prompt and click OK to confirm that you wish to perform the action.

Hat tip to Paul Thurrott

Remember! Microsoft Office Service Packs are cumulative, you only need the latest service pack.

Here’s how you slipstream Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2).

1. Download the standalone installer (290 MB). The filename is office2007sp2-kb953195-fullfile-en-us.exe.

2. Create two folders in the root of your C: drive. (C:\Extract) and (C:\Updates).

3. Move the Office 2007 SP2 installer to the Extract folder.

4. Open a command line window (CMD with Administrative Privileges) and type the following:

CD C:\Extract

office2007sp2-kb953195-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:C:\Updates

5. Agree to the EULA and then close the Installer when completed.

6. Move the contents of the C:\Updates folder to the Updates folder in your Office 2007 install folder structure.

7. Optionally, burn to disc or, update/file share.

The steps for preparing the USB Disk. Launch Command Prompt with Administrator privileges. Next follow the steps below:

1. Run Diskpart
2. List Disk
3. Select Disk 1 (Replace 1 with number reflecting your USB Drive)
4. clean
5. create partition primary
6. active
7. format fs=fat32 quick
8. assign
Now, a drive letter reflecting the drive should appear.

Copy the bits from the DVD to the USB Stick.
If you get errors along the way, simply remove the drive and repeat the process.