There are several new aesthetic features with Office 2010 but one of the biggest “under the hood” differences is “each Office application now sports a customized, window-spanning alternative view that combines information about the currently selected object (document, spreadsheet, e-mail message) with various actions and application-level configuration options.”

For the first time, Microsoft is offering a 64-bit Microsoft Office which will allow a lot more power for those Office power users.

Registry corruption can be the result of power or hardware failure, as well as file corruption. In the worst case scenario your computer does not start anymore as a result of registry corruption. You can receive errors like these:

“Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM”

“System error: Lsass.exe
When trying to update a password the return status indicates that the value provided as the current password is not correct.”

“Stop: c0000218 {Registry File Failure} The registry cannot load the hive (file): \SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE or its log or alternate”

All these error messages are registry related and can mean a corrupted registry.

In Windows XP you can restore a corrupted registry by using the Windows Recovery Console. First you copy and delete the corrupt registry files and then using the recovery console, you can restore the registry files that were created when Windows was first installed. From there you can reboot Windows and use the System Restore option to restore an earlier (not corrupt) version of the registry. Details instructions are present on the Microsoft help and Support website.

Always run a disk check afterwards to make sure the hard disk does not have further problems. Type chkdsk /f at a command prompt to run a disk check (you need administrator rights for this).

In Windows Vista you can use the System Recovery option to restore your configuration to the original state. If Vista still starts, you can access the Recovery Manager in the Control Panel under System and Maintenance. If Vista does not start anymore you can try accessing the Recovery Manager by pressing the F11 key at startup (similar to pressing F2 for the bios). The last option is to use a Recovery Disk to boot the system and access the Recovery Manager.

When everything is back to normal, make sure to regularly back up the Windows registry, so you always have a valid copy of the registry files! Store them on a CD/DVD or USB stick for safe keeping.

According to ARS Technica, “Microsoft today announced Windows 7 retail pricing, upgrade information, launch details, and a preorder deal. The software giant has reduced the price on its most popular retail Windows product, the Home Premium upgrade version, by approximately 10 percent (this varies based on the market). In the US, this means a drop from $130 to $120, a savings of $10. For the Home Premium full version, the price drops from $240 to $200.”

If you would like more information on Windows 7 please review past articles on PC Authorities, your #1 resource for all things PC related.

As a result there can be settings that do not belong in the registry anymore, taking up space and affecting PC performance. Especially if a system has been used over a longer period of time, with many programs be installed and removed, the registry can be a cause for deteriorating system performance.

To improve the situation, it is necessary to clean the registry. Again there are different ways to clean the registry. Of course you should always make a backup of the registry before cleaning the registry!

The most obvious one is to remove settings from the registry manually. This will involve searching for a program (or file) name in the Windows registry editor and then removing keys and values by hand. As you can imagine there are a few problems with this method: 1) you need to understand the layout of the registry, 2) the search and delete can be quite extensive and time consuming, 3) you never really know if you have removed everything or if you have removed too much.

Like with many computer maintenance tasks, it is better and quicker to use software to clean the registry. There are free programs and there are commercial programs for this task. The most known free program to clean the registry is called CCleaner. Apart from being a registry cleaner, it can also clean internet browsing history.

Examples of popular, commercial programs are: RegCure, Registry Easy, and Registry Mechanic.

When you clean the registry, do not forget to compress the registry. Like a disk defrag, compressing the registry helps to reduce the size, which results in performance benefits. Many of the commercial programs can compress the registry when they clean the registry.

There are also solutions that are especially meant for compressing the registry. Many actually create a copy of the registry (new files), resulting in non-fragmented and smaller registry files. Examples of this are Registry Compacter, Auslogic Registry Defrag and Microsoft PageDefrag.

Importing a .reg file that was made by exporting the registry from the Windows registry editor is one option. The big advantage with this method is that you do not need to backup and restore the complete registry, but you can select any folder within the registry that you want to export or import. Open the Windows registry editor, and in the File menu select Import. Next, select the .reg file you want to import and click the Open button.

If you are using system restore points to make registry backups, you follow the same steps as for the backup, but instead of the Create button, you now select the System Restore button. Select the restore point you want to restore and that’s it.

With a third party program, you need to follow the instructions that go with the program. In the backup example with ERUNT, it is simply a matter of executing the EXE file in the backup folder.

So it will come as no surprise that there is another online search engine available now, which offers real-time search. Crowdeye is a search engine created by a former Microsoft search engine developer. Ken Moss was a head at Microsoft for 5 years and has now developed Crowdeye into beta. Since it is in beta, functionality and quality of search results will be limited, but both are expected to grow. The historic trend on the search topic is a nice option, but only goes back 3 days at the moment.

As with most real-time search engines, Twitter will be the main source for Crowdeye, although links from other social media and news sites are also included.

The Windows Registry Editor can be started by executing regedit with the Start -> Run command.

In Windows 2000 you can also make a backup of the Windows registry by creating an Emergency Repair Disk.

In Windows XP the easiest way to make a full backup of the Windows Registry is to execute C:\Windows\system32\restore\rstrui.exe (change the drive according to your configuration).

This will start the System Restore module, which allows you to create a restore point manually.

Simply select the Create a restore point radio button and click the Next button. Then type a Restore point description, and click the Create button. Wait for the restore point to be created and finally click the Close button.

In Windows Vista, the system restore feature is accessible from the control panel. First select System and Maintenance in the Control Panel. Next, select System. In the Tasks panel on the left-hand side, select System protection. Click the Continue button in case the UAC message pops up. In the System Properties dialog box, the System Protection tab will now be shown as the active tab.

To create a registry backup, click the Create button to create a new restore point. Enter a description for the restore point and click the Create button.

A third option is to use special registry programs that can be used to perform maintenance on the registry, including a backup. An example of a 3rd party program that can be used for registry backups only is Emergency Recovery Utility NT (ERUNT). This program can be used on NT, W2K, and XP, and is very simple to use. When you execute the program, it automatically asks you for a location to store the registry backup.

After you select the backup folder, and click OK, the program makes a backup of the registry. The backup folder will also contain a program file called ERUNT.EXE, which is all you need to restore the backup at any point in time.

ERUNT should not be used on Windows Vista as it was not designed for Vista, and the Vista registry is not exactly the same as the registry on earlier Windows versions.

Of course there are many other free and commercial registry programs that can be used to backup (and restore) the Windows registry.

Anything from the hardware configuration, security to user level preferences is stored in the Windows registry.Of course the amount of configuration data that is stored in the Windows registry is enormous. To deal with the size and complexity of all this data, the registry has been split up in folders. The top level of folders (or hives, or keys in Microsoft terminology) are:

Physically you can find the files related to the registry in %SystemRoot%\System32\Config, which in most cases will be C:\Windows\System32\Config. The files in this location have either no extension, or .log, .sav (and in older Windows versions .dat).

Starting with the main keys or folders, the registry is further divided into subkeys or subfolders, which can contain values. Each value has a name, a type and an actual value. These values are the settings that are used by different programs as well as Windows itself. Values can be numeric (DWORD), textual (SZ) and some other types.

The result is a hierarchical structure of folders and values, most of which is loaded in physical memory (RAM) during runtime to speed up overall performance. The Windows registry is managed by the Windows Configuration Manager. The Configuration Manager is a kernel level system that controls all access to the registry and registry files. This is to ensure the registry’s integrity and prevent abuse by malicious software.

For a more technical view on the Windows registry, you can read an article from Windows NT Magazine.

After an initial 30 minutes to install (network was slow, it wipes your phone, installs 3.0, reinstalls apps, verifies AT&T, etc), I found that my 3.0 iPhone was good to go. You only notice a few changes at first, but as PC World so eloquently demonstrates, there’s a ton of new features “under the hood.”

For one, copy and paste has finally arrived. Second, MMS is available (although AT&T won’t allow us to use it until ‘later this summer’). Third, there’s a ton of new features including one I found to be truly great if you’re a MobileMe user, you can locate your iPhone via the MobileMe.com website and even send a command to wipe its entire contents if it were to be stolen. Now that’s pretty fancy.

If you’d like to know more about the iPhone 3.0 OS update and everything that’s included, click here to read PC World’s excellent review.

Lifehacker’s Kevin Purdy tried Hunch and explains what it does quite well. “Heading to the site for the first time, you’re asked a series of questions, some light-hearted, others somewhat serious, ranging from cultural preferences to basic statistics like age, career wishes, and other considerations. The questions can go on seemingly forever, but after answering a good chunk of them, you can click away to get to Hunch’s topical questions. A browser cookie will save your answers, or you can sign up for a long-term preference profile.”

You can ask questions on which HD TV you should purchase or what PC is best for you. Hunch then determines the answer by the answers to your personality questions and according to several users, it’s a great new “decision” engine. It’s free to try.