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WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

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MrCrispy:
Win7 beta 1 (build 7000) has leaked! Obviously I can't put a link here but its spreading around the usual torrent sites etc. Paul Thurrott of Winsupersite has posted the official beta 1 screenshots (I'm guessing after the leak an NDA apparently does not apply)

http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/win7_beta_screens_01.asp

I expect Microsoft will make it publicly available as soon as they are back from the holidays and the hangover's gone :)

zridling:
Adam Kingsley-Hughes reports that the first Win7 beta is awesome, and should be ready to go by summertime. Woohoo!!

That taskbar, however, looks like a dead-on copy of KDE 4. No argument from me since you can make the one in KDE look anyway you want, as thin as you want, and you can dock it on any side of the desktop.

nontroppo:
Jason Perlow is not so enthusiatic:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/perlow/?p=9360

I think he represents the "Don't mess" with my OS brigade[1]. Anything that is not really like XP is a regression. Ed Bott replied:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=630

Thugh I personally find Ed Bott a little too much apologetic sometimes, he raises valid points that most of Jason's issues a really just because he is refusing to adapt to universal search and other new paradigms that IMO are so clearly superior to the old hierarchical clicking. But if you were a grumpy old (wo)man with Vista, you'll still have plenty (or more?) to be tetchy at with Win 7...

----
[1] Grumpy old (wo)men syndrome! ;)

Carol Haynes:
It's even funnier when you read the follow-up discussions ...

Why are people such stick in the muds.

Personally I don't like Vista and still prefer/use WinXP but that is for a number of reasons that irritate many people - not least UAC, the burying and scattering of options and truly appalling networking options (especially with multiple adapters which breaks networking completely).

Having said that Vista isn't all bad and it is more usable than many people give credit for.

Windows 7 looks like it is the first potentially exciting release of Windows since Windows 2000 - at least the developers are tying to implement changes based on usability, and at least there seem to be some changes this time.

I know underlying technologies change but one of the things I have found somewhat frustrating is that until Vista the user interface has not appreciably changed since Windows 95. While to many there is comforting familiarity it has seemed to me that each time there was a lost opportunity to change the way things work for the better.

I haven't played with the W7 beta yet but the new task bar looks like very useful development, the tray icons (and user control over what appears there) looks like a huge step forward and actually the 'start' menu with its built in "Find and Run Robot" looks like a big improvement.

I'm sure many people will bellyache (probably me too) over incompatibilities with XP software, stupid hardware demands and poor support for legacy hardware products but I do think it makes a change for people to be looking at an OS that looks like it is at least an attempt to move things on from the 1980s approach to Windows.

I just hope MS have learned a few lessons from the Vista debacle (they seemed to after the WinME fiasco producing Win2k and XP which have proved very popular). The priorities should be for lightness of touch and speed of use (not a resource hog that requires hi spec graphics and large amounts of memory just to get it to run properly), a reduction of flavours to a sensible Server, Pro and Home versions and proper support for hardware - giving manufacturers some incentive to produce new drivers for legacy hardware for Windows 7 - something they have failed to do with the current prohibitively expensive certification scenario.

Darwin:
My favourite line(s) from Ed Bott's reply are these:

Yes, there’s a learning curve. And if you insist on using those techniques you learned back in the last millennium with software that was designed differently, you will be frustrated. But I believe that an open-minded XP user who actually takes a few minutes to learn how the new UI works will be more productive very quickly. The secret is breaking old habits and developing new ones.
--- End quote ---

This has certainly been my experience going from XP Pro (which I still run with the Classic theme) to Vista.

Windows 7 looks interesting, but hardly earth shattering. I still (grumpily) feel that it amounts to Sp-2 (or 3), rather than a major new OS. A lot of self-interest there, I suppose... having just upgraded to Vista Ultimate  ;D

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