Windows Vista never was particularly speedy in most people's eyes. Whether it deserved the reputation or not, the word on the street was that Vista was both slow and bloated.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer put on his sales hat Tuesday and made a case for why businesses should upgrade to Windows 7, despite an economy in which many IT budgets have been frozen or are lower than in years past.

As far as the great majority of users are concerned, Windows Vista was the greatest flop in Microsoft history and few points of view dare to contradict this.

Microsoft has been pushing Windows 7 as greener than Vista or XP, designed with a variety of energy-saving options for both IT administrators and end users. At the same time, the software giant has been pursuing internal green IT initiatives such as ultraefficient server farms. But even with efficiency tools integrated into Windows 7, how much can an operating system lower IT's overall carbon footprint?

Green Spirit - one of the most complete Visual Styles for Windows 7 RTM. Designed for combined and taskbar.

If you find that your internet connection, in Windows 7 or Vista, has suddenly stopped working or that you are facing certain Network problems, here are a few trouble-shooting steps you may want to try:

CCleaner (formerly Crap Cleaner) is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused and temporary files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster, more efficiently and giving you more hard disk space. The best part is that it's fast! (normally taking less than a second to run) and Free.

In a complete reversal of roles for at least one of the principal advocates for equal access to Windows Web browsers, an attorney for the European Committee for Interoperable Systems told the European Commission in a statement published by The Wall Street Journal today that he now sees the possible inclusion by Microsoft of a Web browser selection ballot for European users of its upcoming Windows 7 operating system as a threat to those users.

AV-Comparatives is known for the thorough tests it does on security software. Following its May 2009 retrospective/proactive report, the company has released its August 2009 on-demand comparative. Sixteen products, last updated on August 10, were set on the same highest detection settings (except for Sophos and F-Secure) and put to the test.

Lenovo Group Ltd. is staking an early claim to potentially key turf in the Windows 7 gold rush: The PC vendor boasts it has the fastest boot-up and shutdown times.