NTS News Center

Latest News in Engineering, Techology and Testing

Monthly Archives: May 2009

Windows 7: Are You Ready?

Windows 7I’ve you’re a hardware or software developer, you obviously know that Microsoft Windows 7 is on the way – and it’s coming quickly! According to the latest rumors (backed up by the stability of the test builds being made available), Windows 7 should be released by the end of the year, but the question is are you (and your products) ready? Have you tested your hardware and/or software products under Windows 7?

With the dismal release that was Windows Vista, many users and corporations have held off on upgrading their Windows XP or earlier platforms to the latest version of Windows. There is a huge amount of pent-up demand for a fast, stable, secure operating system, and as soon as Windows 7 hits, a large number of computers will be upgrading. Don’t get caught unprepared, as many manufacturers did with Windows Vista.

Windows 7 is much more than just fancy window dressings. Windows 7 has made significant performance improvements on the underlying technology which is based on Windows Vista, including much of the same driver technologies. If you’ve submitted products for Windows certification, you’ve probably already discovered that Microsoft is requiring that new submissions include testing under Windows 7. So, if you haven’t already, make sure to get testing NOW!

Bring Your Computer Back From The Dead

Dead ComputerEver have a computer just totally die on you in the middle of testing? Of course, if you’re testing a new product, it’s not that uncommon to have it crash, and sometimes even corrupt the system. The problem is if you’ve still got data on that computer that you need to get to – or even the debug logs to see what happened before every went to heck. Problem is, what do you use to get into your dead computer?

As long as you can still boot from a CD, you’ve got options. Check out this article from PCWorld: Six Downloadable Boot Discs That Could Save Your PC

And don’t forget to back up your system! Even if you can reproduce the data, you probably don’t want to spend the time (and your boss doesn’t want to spend the money on your salary) to get it back.

"XM Ready" Certification Testing

XM Ready Certification LogoThe “XM Ready” certification type approval testing program was implemented by XM to verify XM capable products conformance to the XM specification and to verify proper functionality of these devices.  Under this program, different vendors can submit their XM products for certification testing once they have ran their own self testing to insure that their products are ready for submission. Once vendors have established a certain level of confidence, they can then submit their products to the test house for the actual certification testing.

Upon completion of testing, reports are generated and submitted to the vendors as well as to the XM personnel. The actual XM TA “XM Ready” certification will be issued by XM if the certification testing was a success.  If the testing was a failure, vendors are expected to resolve the product’s issues and re-submit for testing (with a new firmware upgrade, for example) with fixes to the reported issues.

XM certification is yet another example of the “Trust, but Verify” mantra of certification programs.