Another game released was Shadowrun, which launched simultaneously on Windows Vista and Xbox 360 on May 29, 2007^[3], and is the first game to offer cross-platform play on the Live service. Shadowrun is the first game to be played between Live on Windows Vista to LIVE on Xbox 360.

Sega, Eidos and THQ have signed on to include Games for Windows - LIVE in their upcoming games. Epic Games also included this service in their game engine Unreal Engine 3.^[4] Universe at War: Earth Assault from Sega includes cross platform play between Xbox 360 and Windows over LIVE.

Types Manages Default Applications Better than Windows

Tired of reaching for your volume knob every time your mp3 player changes to a new song?

MP3Gain analyzes and adjusts mp3 files so that they have the same volume.

MP3Gain does not just do
peak normalization,
as many normalizers do. Instead, it does some statistical
analysis to determine how loud the file actually sounds to the human ear.

Also, the changes MP3Gain makes are completely lossless.
There is no quality lost in the change because the program adjusts the mp3 file directly,
without decoding and re-encoding.

By default Windows XP keeps some built-in programs - like WordPad - out of the Add/Remove Programs box, but it's not hard to make them show their faces. The IntelliAdmin site reports that removing the word 'HIDE' from the application name in the %SystemRoot%\Inf\Sysoc.inf file does the trick. In order to access Sysoc.inf you must have Windows XP setup to display system files and display hidden files and folders.

Windows XP comes with a bunch of pre-loaded software. Lots of it you can't even find in Add/Remove programs...By simply opening up the file Sysoc.inf, and removing the word 'hide' you can force these programs to show up.

Although you will be able to get all the unhidden applications to show up in Add/Remove Programs, you will not be able to remove everything that shows up. You will however, be able to remove most applications. As IntelliAdmin warns: make backups of the Sysoc.inf file before you edit. Just in case.

One of the lesser-publicized features of our favorite Windows-on-Mac virtualization software, Parallels 3.0, is its Boot Camp support. Boot Camp is Apple's free software that can boot Windows on your Mac natively. Parallels lets you run Windows within OS X virtually. Now that the two packages can share a single Windows installation, you can choose EITHER to boot fully into Windows OR to to just hop into Windows while you're still logged into OS X.

Why would I want to do this? you ask. Well, the problem with dual-booting Windows is the inconvenience of having to restart your Mac entirely. The problem with virtualizing Windows is that it can be unreasonably slow for a prolonged session. Now that Boot Camp and Parallels work together, you can choose between virtualizing or booting into your Windows installation depending on what you have to do. Here's how to get it set up.

Launchy is a free windows utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager.

Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!