Microsoft Corp. confirmed today that it will unveil Windows 7, the next major version of Windows, at PDC and provide developers and attendees with a pre-beta build of the operating system. During the Professional Developers Conference 2008 (PDC), Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President, Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, will keynote some of the Windows 7 features -including the kernel, networking, hardware and devices, and user-interface. Also, at this year's PDC, keynote attendees will be among the first to receive a pre-beta build copy of Windows 7. Additionally, attendees will have the opportunity to attend 21 different sessions that drill down into the details of developing for Windows 7. "Keynote attendees will be among the first to receive the pre-beta build of Windows 7," the company said.

The latest beta of Microsoft's next web browser has been released today. This time it is a public beta, unlike Beta 1, which was aimed at developers, this version has many of its new features enabled. Some of these include, tab groups, accelerators and compatibility view, which enables Internet Explorer 8 to better display web pages designed for older browers.

You can find out more information and download the beta here.

NVIDIA Releases Beta PhysX Driver For Public

NVIDIA releases the beta driver 177.39 for PhysX support on some GeForce GPU's. They have also said that a new stable driver, the WHQL 177.44 sans PhysX support would be released later today.

Depending on your Windows setup, you can download the driver from these locations: (please note, it is a beta driver, refer to the "Products Supported" tab for a list of supported products)

32-bit Windows Vista | 64-bit Windows Vista
32-bit Windows XP | 64-bit Windows XP

Oh boy, more unstable drivers! If you enjoy playing with such things, ForceWare 174.13 supports the GeForce 8200, 9200, nForce 730a, 750a, 780a and GeForce 9800GX2. Here are linkies if you want to give it a whirl.

ForceWare 174.13 x86.

ForceWare 174.13 x64.

The lucky few who got to play the Call of Duty 4 beta, which promises to be the greatest thing to hit Xbox Live since Halo 2, will have to stop playing the game by September 30th. Fortunately for the true Call of Duty 4 aficionados, Infinity Ward is raising the level cap and unlocking additional content on September 28th. Thanks to the results of the Beta, Infinity Ward now has a full list of things they wish to add/remove from Call of Duty 4. The most serious changes include "adding a sensitivity slider, cracking down on map exploits, and improving matchmaking optimization to reduce lag". Infinity Ward gives a tantalizing hint as to when they will release the final version of the game: "Are We Gold Yet?"

The beta of the highly anticipated first person shooter Crysis is now available for download to paid FilePlanet members only. The first batch of CD keys have already been given out but 3 more batches will coming later this month. While this beta will be multiplayer only, the single player demo will be available soon on September 25.

World in Conflict is an RTS game that is set in 1988, where economic troubles, similar to the ones that occurred in real-life, cripple the Soviet Union to the extent where it must risk nuclear Armageddon to stay in power.
Massive Entertainment, Sierra and Intel invite you to join the open beta and find out what you are made of. Registration begins on 1 July and will be open until the end of the open beta phase. The open beta will begin on 11 July and will last until 31 July.

Signup here.

Apparently NVIDIA has pulled out new ForceWare BETA driver version 160.03 right after the major official drivers update last Thursday. The new 160.03 will work with Microsoft's Windows XP, 2000 and XP Media Center and supports the GeForce 6, 7 and 8 series. The driver's release date is 27/04/07. Download the new ForceWare 160.03 from here and remember that this is a BETA version. Use at your own risk.

You might know of Richard Garriott from his superb Ultima game series in the 1980s and 1990s and from the good old days of Origin Systems, his own publishing company. In 1992 he sold Origin Systems to Electronic Arts and coproduced some more Ultima's with them, but towards the end of the century it didn't went well with Lord British, he turned his back towards the game industry and left the company he once created. In the year 2000 he came back when founding Destination Games and later teamed up with the game publisher NCsoft to develop MMORPGs.
NCsoft today announced the start of the closed beta testing of Tabula Rasa, Garriot's actual PC game project. In Tabula Rasa you will take part in an epic, intergalactic science-fiction story on alien worlds with fast-paced action and role-playing aspects combined. The player enters the game as a rebel soldier faced with a huge war between his comrades and a xenophobic alien race.

Those of you who have waited for a video game to come out know how awesome a beta is. Unfortunately for Halo fans everywhere, the Halo 3 beta is only going to last three weeks. Obviously, most people with invites are wondering why it's going to be so short, especially after putting so much effort into getting a Beta invite. Bungie has this official answer to that question.

...obviously the number one reason is that the longer we're spending resources taking care of the Beta, the less time we're applying what we've learned from it to the final game. And statistically, three weeks is going to seem like a pretty long time when you look at the hours you log on the game.

In short? Enjoy it while it lasts.

REDMOND, Wash. - April 10, 2007 - Microsoft Game Studios and Bungie Studios today confirmed the multiplayer beta of "Halo 3" will debut to audiences worldwide via Xbox LIVE on May 16 at 5 a.m. PDT and run through June 6 at 11:59 p.m. PDT. Coming exclusively to the Xbox 360 console this fall, "Halo 3" is the highly anticipated third chapter in the groundbreaking "Halo" trilogy from legendary developers Bungie. "Halo 3" lets gamers experience Master Chief's greatest battle as he launches an epic mission to stop the Covenant, destroy the impending Flood threat and ultimately save mankind.

Piracy does have its good sides as well. Funcom, the makers of the two famous 'The Longest Journey' games, recently announced to stop producing traditional offline PC games because of too many illegal copies. Instead they are concentrating on their online game portfolio that will get another finished entry among Anarchy Online soon: Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures.
If you want to be one of the first in the World of Hyborian then I suggest you to apply for the soon to be started Beta Test of Age of Conan over here. The "the most brutal Massively Multiplayer Online game ever created" is scheduled for the end of October 2007 and will run on Windows XP/Vista PCs and the Xbox 360. If you want to get more information about the game and the world where it takes place I recommend to take a look at the corresponding Wikipedia entry found here.

The French Station Drivers let you download a leaked Beta of the upcoming Catalyst 7.3. Of course the driver is non-official and the improvements appear to be very minor. OCWorkbench ran it through their paces and differences to the Catalyst 7.2 aren't nearly there.

Anyone hoping to get a chance to experience the next chapter in the adventures of Master Chief can't get "invited" anymore. Bungie Studios have sent all 13,333 beta invitations that they wanted to. Serious Halo fans that want to play before Halo 3 is released sometime in November will have to buy the Xbox360 game Crackdown.

Crytek and Electronic Arts have been rumored to be biding their time until Vista gains serious momentum before unleashing the first major DX10 title. However, a recent chat with the developers of Crysis reveals that this is not the case. In fact, we should be hearing details about a public multi-player beta very soon. We'll keep you posted on how to register for the beta as the information becomes available. However, if there's one thing this beta will show, it is what hardware you really need to run Crysis. All those amazing movies we've seen have been on Crytek's hardware. It will certainly be interesting to see how Crysis runs on a slightly more normal computer.

Although many Xbox 360 gamers may have been worried that the Halo 3 online beta would be hard to find, IGN is reporting that all versions of Crackdown will come bundled with the beta. Previous reports had suggested that only a few limited copies of the game will have the beta, but a Microsoft representative has confirmed that all initial copies of Crackdown will include an invite to test it out. This will probably give a boost to crackdown sales and give Xbox 360 fans the chance to get an early look at one of the most anticipated games of next-generation consoles.

The Windows Server code-named "Longhorn" is the successor to Windows Server 2003. Numerous sources suggest that the Operating System will be name Windows Server 2007 or 2008, depending on its release date. The Longhorn server beta program will be launching within the next few weeks. Microsoft is allowing public preregistration for beta testing of the upcomming "longhorn" server operating system. Allegedly Microsoft will have it available for download within the next week or so.


You can register on this page.

Apparently, there was a Halo 3 beta key giveaway we missed. However, not to worry, as Microsoft is letting more people register for free entry into the Halo 3 beta program. All you have to do is play Halo 2 online. According to Microsoft's new "rule of three", you need to play Halo 2 for three hours between Thursday, Feb. 1, 2007, 12:01 a.m. EST and Feb. 3, 2007, 11:59 p.m. EST. If you do, then Microsoft will allow the first 13,333 who complete the three hours to get a free registration to the Halo 3 beta program. If you miss this opportunity, buying a copy of the Xbox360 game "Crackdown" will land you a free Halo 3 beta registration. When the Halo 3 beta is released, people who have Halo 3 beta registrations can download it through Xbox Live.

ATI Catalyst 7.1 Beta for Windows Vista Available

This is a beta version of the upcoming Catalyst 7.1 Radeon driver from ATI/AMD. We are sure a lot of people will be really pleased to see it. The revision build of this archive is 8.33 and should be an interesting driver for sure. I can not stress enough that this is a beta driver which is distributed by ASUS. You use it at your own risk.

Download: ATI Catalyst 7.1 Beta for Window Vista (91.6MB)

While NVIDIA still hasn't posted a G80 driver, ATI has upgraded it's suite of drivers for Windows Vista. Anyone with Windows Vista RC2 or RTM can download and install the latest version of Catalyst Beta Driver for Windows Vista, which fixes issues in several games such as Serious Sam 2. It also fixes issues in Windows Media Player, the general installation/uninstallation of the drivers, and Temporal Anti-Aliasing. You can read the full release notes here.

You can download the December 13th version of the drivers here.

AMD/ATI does not reccomend using these drivers on mission-critical systems, does not support them, and says they will only install on a computer with Windows Vista RC2 or later.