First look at Windows 7

Thrax

Today marks the second day of the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference and the day when hundreds of attendees get their hands on the latest pre-beta build of Microsoft's next operating system. In departing from the Vista UI found in previous builds, the latest build of Windows 7 shows small changes that indicate a daring new direction for Microsoft.



Amongst the biggest chan... Continue reading

BuddyJ

The new taskbar looks like crap.

airbornflght

It's a first draft but I like the direction

MiracleManS

From a pure user standpoint, this looks like a win so far. I just hope they continue this path in the development cycle and eliminate some of the things that made Vista such a monster.

Thrax

I like the taskbar. I do not like the buttons.

BuddyJ

I'm mainly concerned about the size. It looks like it's 3x the height of a normal bar. Shrink it down to regular size, get rid of the silly white borders and gradients and then we might have something. They need to drop the blue gradient addiction.

Snarkasm

I am currently not a fan unless they explain how they deal with multiple windows of the same type. I turn off grouping on any system I install; it's like the third thing I do. If I have multiple windows open, it's because I want that many, and I don't want to have to work through layers to find the one I want.

I see that screenshot with 3 IE windows in it, and I am NOT a fan. Please allow me to use my text taskbar buttons and no grouping, thx.

MiracleManS

My assumption would be that the thumbnail view is how they're handling it.

edit: AKA they're forcing the grouping?

Leonardo

I like what I see so far. It appears to be an elegant, logical improvement. I'm not sure the Explorer "Library" views are much advantage to someone like me who is meticulous careful with files management and storage, but for the type who just drops files anywhere helter skelter, it could be very useful. I really like the taskbar-windows UI. I think that's very functional and aesthetically pleasing. There are so many times, especially with smaller screens, when I've wanted to look quickly at several pages/applications but retain focus on another. Looks like Win7 will handle that very well.

Looks like Windows 7 is off to a very good start. I hope Microsoft keeps the focus on functionality and minimizes gimmicks. If they do, they'll have die-hard XP fans like me willing to spend money on upgrades.

jared

Win7 will look about 5% like this when it goes gold.

Remember all those "revolutionary" pictures we saw during 'Longhorn' development. ZOMG MS IS THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX. Yeah, of course none of that actually made it into the release.

I'm going to try to stay positive here, but I'm not going to be holding my breath.

Snarkasm

How very positive of you.

Thrax

I would not be surprised to learn that Win7 is further along now than Vista was when it was released.

MiracleManS

Considering Windows 7 is based on most of Vista AND has, supposedly, been in development for several years now, I'd agree with Thrax.

Tim

Why do we need change in the user interface? Was XP so hard to use? Not for me it wasn't.

I never seemed to have the problems that I read others were having, so just take XP, call it 7, and put it on the store shelf. Then they'll have a good operating system (again).

Leonardo

It's not that XP has problems so much, it's that an OS can and should improve. I'm fairly happy with XP, but I'm game to upgrade if a successive OS is really an improvement. I actually had Win98 running very well - and secure - on several computers before XP. So, I could have said that I did not have 'problems' with Windows 98. I resisted XP for almost a year after introduction. When I did upgrade though, I never looked back. XP was far superior to 98, but 98 did not have problems, so to speak.

QCH

Leonardo wrote:

I resisted XP for almost a year after introduction. When I did upgrade though, I never looked back. XP was far superior to 98, but 98 did not have problems, so to speak.

I was the same way... funny thing is, after 18 months, I have no intentions of rolling out Vista.

kryyst

So far I like the eye candy they are showing about windows 7. At the very least it's got me considering upgrading from XP. I'm dubious about their easier speedier claims though. They said the same thing about Vista. Sure it's easier if you don't try and do anything beyond one initial menu level and sure it's faster when it's run on a faster machine - but that's not really fair now is it Microsoft?

But still what they are showing so far on 7 is at least a step in the right direction IMO.

Kwitko

Screw the UI, rewrite the damn kernel.

Snarkasm

Supposedly they have it running nicely on a netbook. Still, I do wonder where that microkernel project went. I remember hearing something about it, but I've forgotten.

Thrax

Minwin, that microkernel, was never supposed to be the core of Windows 7. It was simply an experiment to demonstrate Microsoft's ability to code an efficient product, and a demonstration that those engineers were now at work on Windows 7.

While rewriting the kernel seems like an awesome idea, it would break most Windows applications in existence. If people thought Vista was bad, a new kernel would be a disaster. Unfortunately Microsoft must now tow 12+ years of legacy apps, hardware, drivers and users along. That's the price for backwards compatibility.

Artemis

I like the look of the taskbar...it looks good thus far.

I'm still with XP and it suits me well...never upgraded to Vista (even though my computer came with Vista) and I don't plan to go to it. I wonder how much memory it will need to run it. It would do Microsoft good to make this able to run on all Vista computers and (perhaps) most high-end XP computers...upgrading to Vista for most was expensive and a pain, and in the end, it hurt Microsoft. I hope they don't make the same mistake.