At last, Microsoft has been giving teaser about their new operating system that reside in the cloud for quite sometime already. Steve Ballmer has announced in a conference that the operating system shall initially be called Windows Cloud.

During the WinHEC PDC 2008 conference, Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie has announced Microsoft Windows Azure which is their answer to the growing business of Cloud Computing. Microsoft Windows Azure would be supported by a massive data center structure built by Microsoft. This architecture is going to compete directly with Amazon’s web services and Google’s services as well.

Azure Services Platform of Windows Azure is going to reside in the cloud and would initially be open for Visual Studio and .NET development for developing cloud applications. Later on, Microsoft has promised it is going to add open source tools and development platforms such as Ruby on Rails, and Eclipse Development Platform.

Microsoft SharePoint and CRM would find it’s way in the cloud of Windows Azure but by early January 2009, Microsoft would be deploying a limited version of Microsoft Windows Office. Aside from these two successful enterprise applications, Microsoft also promised to include SQL Services and Windows Live which currently has 400 million registered users. It is clear that their priority is going to be Windows Live since it’s user base could be the starting market point of Microsoft for Windows Azure.

The industry is hoping that the lates cloud software of Microsoft would be made readily available by 2009 and in full circle by 2010.

Microsoft describes Windows Azure as follows:

Windows Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host and manage web applications on the internet through Microsoft data centers.

It is exciting that Microsoft has finally built an operating system built for the clouds as a number of companies has already started doing this a long time ago.

Perhaps you have been stumped by your Windows computer starting up very slowly? Over time, you may have downloaded numerous applications that attempt to load themselves when your PC starts up.Anti-virus or firewall programs are necessary for PC protection, but free software or trial versions may come with other software you may not know about or are not informed of.When these known and unknown programs try to fill the memory at the same time, the problem occurs.

So here we will deal with how to remove unnecessary programs from your computer registry to free space in your harddrive and improve computer start-up performance.If you bought your computer ‘fully loaded’ from a computer store like Circuit City, Best Buy, Office Depot, or Staples, chances are you would have experienced slow start-up right from the beginning. This is because these stores include tons of extra bundled software, including system management tools, photo editing programs, CD-burning utilities, games, and lots of other programs you may not be interested in using.

The simplest way to begin pruning your start up programs is by visiting your Control Panel.The Control Panel is located inside your Start button at the lower left corner of the screen. When you click on the Control Panel icon, the Add/Remove Programs submenu will appear.The list of programs may be suprisingly long for you. There may even be programs here that you don’t recognize.But before deleting any program, make sure it is one you may wish to use in the future.

Trimming youtr Start-up folder is usually safe, but tampering with your Registry can be potentially harmful and must only be done as a last resort. Using a Registry clean up program like Registry Easy is the best method of trimming your computer Registry safely.Registry Easy can be used with all Windows versions, up to the Vista series.Registry Easy cleans up the computer by scanning it and eliminating unnecessary entries that may be the causes of start up delays, freezes and slow performance.This review of Registry Easy will explain in greater detail the program’s usable features.

Scanning can be set to either manual or automatic mode, so you control Registry Easy’s actions.The program can also revert Internet Explorer to its original default status, removing the additional toolbars and additionals you might have included over time. If you change your mind, or inadvertently removed a program, Registry Easy has the back-up feature that can restore it.

We all know we have to backup our computers, but those backups files can get huge. Add that to your existing files and your computers disk will seem to have shrunk overnight. No matter what size hard drive you have, space is a premium. Besides, it’s not exactly a good idea to store your backups on the same disk since you can’t retrieve it when the disk fails.  So what are your options?

The quickest and easiest to understand option is to buy an external hard disk. You can often get a removable drive that is large enough to do the job.If you use, edit, or create data “on the road” you need to backup and have it available.  And where is it when your notebook get’s stolen?You guessed it… In the case with your stolen laptop.  And, they are still hard disks and at some point they will fail. You may find the backup fails before your notebook does.

Online backup is actually a good idea because dedicated hardware is in the same place as your computer.  Have a fire?  flood?  theft?Suprise, it’s gone AWOL. And when that happens, a Cloud Backup online will always have a copy in a place for you. This is why businesses usually have one backup in the premises and one (or more) off premises. The best thing about online backup is the cloud is available with any internet connection. This gives you the convenience of having a backup available both locally (via Cloud Backup’s “mounted volume” option), and is stored remotely.  So when bad things happen to your computers, you can still get your data. Cloud Backup is a fully featured way to backup and restore data cheaply, effectively, and securely.

Network attached storage can make sense if you have several computers. They allow you to not only backup several computers’ data into one location but also ability to share or retrieve files from that central area. But acquiring dedicated hardware is an expensive and maintenance laden expense.  And if you have a fire, theft, flood… It’s all been wasted effort.Besides, OPENRSM’s CloudBackup can backup your, your kids, your office, and more computers on a single account.

CD’s and DVD’s can be an inexpensive (if clunky) solution.But swapping media every day and securely storing it is a waste of time when it could be automatic. It becomes even more hard work when you have a lot of files and your backup spans several disks. The other problem with this method is, backup utilities that come with your computer usually cannot backup to a CD or DVD drive. So you’ll have to fork out extra money to buy a third party backup software that will. And then you have to worry about where to keep piles of these CD/DVD’s where they won’t be scratched, exposed to high temperatures, or suffer the risk of fire, flood, and theft. 

No backup solution is one hundred percent and what you choose of course will depend on how you work. If your data is really important to you, use an online backup like OPENRSM CloudBackup.  That way your data is always available, secure, and you don’t have to worry.  CloudBackup has you covered.