Last Friday Microsoft held its Taiwan Windows 7 launch at the grand Formosa Regency hotel in Taipei City and we just had to go along and check it out and see if there were any surprises in store for us on the hardware side.

Microsoft invited its vast amount of software and hardware partners to showcase their newest products running Redmond's new super doper operating system. There were all-in-one systems, small notebooks (netbooks) and normal notebooks on display for all to see, touch and use.

There was nothing terribly new or exciting on display, but one product that did catch our attention and one that has actually been on the market for some time already, is the Dialogue FlyBook V5 notebook running Windows 7 Ultimate, of course. We haven't seen it before and haven't seen it covered much online before, so we thought we'd tape it.

So the Zune HD launched over a month ago along with a new and improved version of the Zune Desktop and Marketplace. Just before the launch we heard the gang from Redmond telling us how they would stock their version of the App Store with incredible applications and games for the Tegra inside the Zune HD.

However one month later and we have not see even a single new game or App in the Zune Marketplace. This is highly disappointing and a sure way for Microsoft to lose the fight with Apple and their iPod Touch and iPhone. When we reviewed the Zune HD here we found the hardware and performance to be outstanding and more than a match for the Apple offerings (in many cases much better). The problem as we saw it then (and now) is that MS does a terrible job at follow on and marketing.

This is a perfect example; their decision (surely a marketing one) to keep their Marketplace closed has probably driven many developers away from it. Yet MS has not done anything to add to this area either. We do not see any of the graphically impressive 3D games we were promised before launch. We do not see anything.

Coinciding with the launch of Windows 7, ATI has chosen to release its latest Catalyst driver suite, the 9.10s. These are the first Catalyst drivers to bring full official support for AMD/ATI's latest range of Radeon 5800 series GPUs.

Apart from that, there's just the usual run of bug fixes mentioned; nothing in particular regarding performance improvements.

Highlights of resolved issues

(Video at the bottom) Today we were invited to the GIGABYTE headquarters here in Taipei. We were given an exclusive hands-on look at its upcoming and refreshed Intel P55 Express based motherboards for Core i5 and Core i7 Lynnfield based Socket 1156 processors. Namely, we are looking at the P55A-UD6 and the P55A-UD4P.

GIGABYTE had actually planned to implement SATA3 support in its first revision P55 motherboards that were launched back in June around Computex time, but due to some controller issues, a delay was an unfortunate result.

Marvel has since fixed and improved its single disk and RAID 0 supporting SATA3 controller and now we see one of the first motherboards on the market to support the next generation storage system. At the moment, there is no RAID 1 support, but a GIGABYTE product manager mentioned in our meeting that Marvell may come out with a new firmware a little later adding that ability. Also, GIGABYTE told us that they saw up to a 30% increase in performance when going from a SATA2 to SATA 3 hard drive under HD Tach, measuring both burst and read speeds. Not bad.

Codemasters all excited by the demonstration of its upcoming car racing game DiRT 2 during the recently finished Windows 7 launch event in NYC, sent us over a tech video off the game for us all to see.

The video shows firstly the difference in image quality between DirectX 9 and DirectX 11 and goes on to show some of the extra graphics processing ability of DX11 and Windows 7.

Also announced is that you'll be able to buy this game all around the world by around December 4th, depending on where you are located. Of course, right now, you'll need a DX11 video card from AMD to enable the fancy DX11 features.

The adoption of any new peripheral technology requires a few things to happen. The first is the need to form a viable idea, the next is to establish some form of standard and the third is partner support in the form of supporting hardware, and follow on products. It is usually this third item that causes products to fail.

In the case of USB 3.0 we find that products are coming but there does not seem to be any built-in support for them yet. The reason, according to the ranting of a senior technology manager at what is being called a "top tier PC Manufacturer" , is that Intel is not planning to include support this new technology in its chipsets until 2011. This bit of news has yet to be confirmed or denied by Intel, which is nothing new as they rarely comment on rumors like this or on future products.

AMD and NVIDIA have commented on this and say that Intel is purposely dragging its feet over this and delaying the release of this new standard. Now I can see NVIDIA getting annoyed with this as they are stopping chipset design and manufacture for now, but AMD can implement it on their own time frame.

The Windows 7 Blog page has just made mention of two new tools available pertaining to Windows 7 migration. These tools comprise the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor and Compatibility Center which together will give you enough information for you to feel comfortable making the transition without any issues.

The Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor scans your PC to see if it's ready for Windows 7. It checks to see if your PC meets the system requirements, lets you know if your processor is capable of running 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and gives guidance on your upgrade options. It also tells you about any known compatibility issues with the most commonly installed software programs and devices connected to your PC. If an issue can be resolved, it suggests next steps for you to take before installing Windows 7.

The Windows 7 Compatibility Center helps you easily check the compatibility of thousands of devices and software programs for 32-bit or 64-bit versions of Windows 7. Usually, you won't need to do anything to ensure compatibility. If you do, the site goes beyond just telling you what will or will not work. It also provides links to drivers and software updates to help get your PC running with the latest software.

If you had any doubts that Windows 7 is going to be a good thing for Microsoft you only have t look at the news from Amazon this morning. Apparently the new OS from the team in Redmond, Washington has pre-orders that exceed those made for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Right now the only item that has sold more copies in the same time frame is the Dan Brown Book The Lost Symbol.

This is an impressive feat for an operating system and shows that many early naysayers about Windows 7 might be proven seriously wrong in the end. As for how Windows 7 is doing Vs Vista... Well according to Amazon they have more preorders right now than total Windows 7 orders.

However, this is a consumer based number and as yet does not show how businesses are adopting Windows 7. So while the case seems to be rapidly closing for Windows 7 in the consumer market in the US, the jury is still firmly out for business adoption. Then again, those numbers will be slow to show up anyway as they usually take a year to 18 months for adoption of a new OS in any medium to large company.

Intel has added another model into its lineup of Core i7 LGA-1366 based processors this week; the Core i7 960. This variant comes clocked in at 3.2GHz (24 x 133) with a max Turbo Boost speed of 3.43GHz.

The Core i7 960 is touted to displace the Core i7 950 from its existing price-point of around US $562 (in 1000 unit tray quantities). As evidence of that, popular American retailer Newegg.com has listed the OEM part (chip-only) at $589.99, a mere $10 higher than the retail box of the Core i7 950 listed on the same store.

We just got back from the Viewsonic press conference in Taipei city that concluded only a couple of hours ago.

At the event, Viewsonic launched a slew of new notebooks, but notably missing were any new netbooks or nettops. There was talk of an NVIDIA ION based netbook being launched today, but that wasn't to be either.

We managed to go hands-on with the brand new ViewBook Pro notebook. It is Viewsonic's CULV notebook that comes with an Intel Core 2 SU7300 processor and 2GB of RAM, with the option to upgrade to 4GB of DDR3 memory. Viewsonic claims 8 hours battery life, but that can be extended to a maximum of 12 hours by adding in a secondary battery in the optical drive bay area.