Microsoft has released Windows 7 as a Release Candidate. In other words this is pretty much what we can expect to hit shelves in October of this year, bar a few bug fixes and maybe a small interface fix here and there. Microsoft also released their new search engine, Bing, aimed at competing head on with the giant Google. But, however, it seems Bing doesn't like Windows 7.
I have Windows 7 installed on my home machine and have been giving the RC a spin over the last few months (before that the Beta as well). And when I attempted to use Bing on Firefox in Windows 7, I noticed that most of its flash (literally) and pizaz were missing. I didn't get the little mouse-over effects on the Bing homepage nor did I get a link to search for Video in the options. Thinking that this was probably a quirk of Firefox on the Windows 7 RC, I opened Internet Explorer 8. Low and behold, I had the same problem.
My next port of call was the Adobe Flash plugin, as Bing seems to use that for its homepage effects as well as for the video search pages. I checked and the plugin was actually installed both on Firefox and IE 8. To make sure that I hadn't missed something obvious I uninstalled the plugins for both browsers and reinstalled. Still no joy. It seems that Bing is unable to detect that IE 8 or Firefox on Windows 7 actually have Flash installed. Either that, or it checks for a supported operating system and Bing just hasn't got Windows 7 on the list yet.
Microsoft's newest baby Bing, seems to not play well with its other baby, Windows 7. So they cannot even make sure their own products work well together.
One consolation. I have been using Bing on Kubuntu 9.04 with Firefox 3.0 with absolutely no problem. At least they are supporting the rival OS......
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