Several reviews of the Windows 7 beta popping up. El Reg concludes: “All told, this will likely be a strong release, as it needs to be after the Windows Vista experience, just do not expect miracles. This is Windows Vista with a new face, not a major new version of Windows.” Ars reviewed the beta as well, and concludes: “All in all, Windows 7 is shaping up well. It’s a far more modest release than Vista was, but it’s no worse for that. The new OS introduces a compelling combination of welcome innovations and much-needed polish, and that’s exactly what Microsoft needs right now. Vista’s foundation was solid, and Windows 7 just makes it better.”
I’m seeing a lot of positive stuff in the press about Windows 7 so far, which gives me hope, because pretty much the opposite was true in Vista before it was released. When the Vista RCs came out, there was a lot of bitching about how it wasn’t ready, but people seem much more optimistic about 7.
And maybe they’ll release IE8 as unstable as it is now, so more people will quit using it and switch to something that doesn’t suck. Cross your fingers
On the downside, I’m really not digging the new taskbar. I don’t like the OSX dock, and don’t want it in Windows. At the moment, I’ve got about 40-50 program icons in the quick launch toolbar. I DON’T want these in my taskbar! Plus, this is going to be a pain when you have two instances of the same app running. In XP, ‘group similar icons’ was an option that I quickly turned off soon after installing the OS.
I can only hope that Stardock (or one of its ilk) will build for us a taskbar replacement that works like the ‘classic’ version.
I find the way the new task bar handles multiple instances of an application to be fantastic. What I don’t like is how it handles
multiple instances of an application.
And seriously dude, you don’t need every app on your computer on the quicklaunch. The whole point of the quicklaunch is very quick access to the few things you use all the time. For the lesser used stuff hit the windows key and start typing.
So you have a set of icons in the quicklaunch and, additionally, tasks in the task band, together occupying a lot of space. In Win7, there’ll just be the icons – isn’t that a good thing?
I think the real question on everyone’s mind… How many threads is the kernel using?
After Vista, I’m just scared of Windows 7. Can it be significantly better or just slightly better? Time will show.
I am a Mac user personally, but I had to install the beta in a virtual machine to check it out. First look is pretty good, I must say. It will be interesting to see how it evolves untill release.
I made a post in my blog with a lot of screenshots if anyone is interested in a look: http://thisismyblog.com/2009/01/13/windows-7-beta-in-photos/
This article, Dual Boot Windows 7 And XP Easily: Windows 7 Installation Directly From XP Without A LiveDVD, shows you how to install Windows 7 directly from a previous version of Windows, without burn a DVD. The applications installed in the previous Windows version does not need to be reinstalled: they also work in Windows 7 , just create shortcuts. You will be able to dual boot both Windows versions and you will not loose any data.
http://www.downloadtube.com/blog/2009/01/13/dual-boot-windows-7-and…