After a few delays by Microsoft, I finally got a hold of Windows 7 Beta this morning. I must say…I’m pleasantly surprised. It certainly does seem much much better than Vista was – even at the Beta stage!

Vista was one of those operating systems i never really got along with – it’s instability on my Desktop Machine and poor battery life on my laptop led me to switch back to XP. Time will only tell if the same goes for Windows 7, but so far so good. 

So what’s new?

…Well, on the face of it, not much. It looks like Vista. It sounds like Vista. It has the same glassy Aero like interface as Vista, but…something about it just feels different. It feels…responsive. To me, Vista always felt a little sluggish – maybe that was just my hardware, but if that’s so, then even more points to Windows 7.

 

I think the most striking new feature for Windows 7 is the redesigned Task Bar. Since XP, Microsoft have tried to introduce the concept of group taskbar items together – i always hated it. Something about it always seemed a bit off – it never looked or felt quite right. But this time, i think Microsoft may be on to something. Again, time will tell if i really do like it, but so far so good.

The nicest part of this, i think, is how just hovering your mouse over the taskbar item, brings up a ribbon of sub items. For instance, all your IE windows (and tabs!). You can then hover over each of this, and the actual window will appear in front of you. Of course as soon as you move you mouse away, you get back to where you were. If you want that window, just click the thumbnail preview in the Ribbon, and done. The best bit, is that it’s quick. No hanging about waiting for it to load or anything…it just does it.  It all seems so…smooth and seamless.

Another nice feature of the new Taskbar is that it has removed the Quick Launch part. It has instead replaced it with the ability to pin items to the Taskbar, much like you pin them to the start menu in Vista and XP (you can do that too in Windows 7). In these instances, when you click on one of the icons to launch the app, the icon becomes it’s Taskbar item. So now, if you have IE pinned to the Taskbar, it will always been in the same place. The Launch button and all the open windows.

 

The Start Menu is more or less the same as Vista – I’m still not a fan of the menu within the Start Menu though. Maybe it’ll grow on me.

Next up, the Gadgets. These were present in Vista and were limited to the Sidebar…which always got turned off for me. This time, Microsoft have got for a different approach. Now, the Gadgets are stuck directly on the desktop. Which is nice – much more flexible than the sidebar, but nothing more really.

 

Impressions and Conclusion

As I’ve said already – so far so good. When Vista was first about i thought was good, although the Vista Beta was far more buggy than this. Windows 7 certainly seems to me, like it’s the Vista Microsoft were hoping for.

There’s nothing really groundbreaking about Windows 7 in terms of how it looks and what it does. It just seems to do it better. Sure, there are a couple new features, but most of the development seems to have been under the hood, rather than on the paint job. So far my only concern, is that in August this Beta copy is going to expire and i might be forced to part with some cash for the actual release version.

All in all, i think Windows 7 is going to be to Vista, as Windows 98 was to Windows 95 – Nothing amazingly different to look at, but far superior inside.

 

…Of course, i have only been using it for 10 hours.