Recently, I visited Microsoft R&D Center and Global Technical Service Center, Bangalore, Ocassion was industry visit organized by ION (check www.ionbangalore.org) during the discussion, Mr.Inderjeet Singh demonstrated Windows 7 BETA build 7000, on his laptop. I found it really impressive. as I am one of the leading critic of Windows Vista, I was really curious to know about what Microsoft learnt from the mistakes, and it does.
Install size is impressively small, almost half of that of Vista, with double sized taskbar (termed SuperBar as said by Inderjeet Singh) which allows pining up the links, creates the WoW impression at first sight. Smart clean interface, absence of sidebar and backgound lights for click are few prominant features in this The Ultimate Windows, as said by MS team.
Aero is improved and more useful. Some of the features included are, outline button at right most end of taskbar sorry SuperBar, single click cascading, drag to maximize and as usual winflip. Live thumbnails of minimized applications and common controls in the thumbnails also makes it more than just eyecandy. "Whats the RAM requirement???" the question went like a bullet and MS team wobbled for a second, "Yeah we worked on that as well," said Gurpreet. "Now it needs 512 MB minimum." Then its cool. (but note the fact that Aero is supported only on specific configuration only, same as Vista)
On the multimedia front, Microsoft worked a lot... Really A LOT... Inbuilt support for almost all popular formats including .FLV, 3GP and MP4 as well as WMP is now looking smarter, supported with live video streaming in Aero Thumbnail view, this is more usable too. User Privileges are a bit easy, network control is fairly improved and more of plug'nplay support makes this thing really simple for a normal user. Internet Explorer 8 BETA 2, is still the weakness for Win7, IE8 needs much more improvment from core itself. I had a small discussion with techie's there regarding the IE engine. Result was "Core Engine needs to be worked a lot..."
Multi-Touch gastures, Advanced Handwriting Recognition (AHR) support (for Win7 Tablet) and Voice regonition is still under developement, as said by developer team, who are also giving the voices for VR. Overall, This build is fairly stable but still you can't pinup My Computer Shortcut to SuperBar.
Microsoft team is saying about no compitability issues with this version, still antivirus solutions like, bitdefender and Nortan are not comfortable with Windows7.
As it is in BETA stage, we can't claim that it will remain like this only. It has a long way to go (mid 2010 we can expect official launch) but you can enjoy with BETA of that, can be downloaded here.)
I want to thank, Lalitha Madam, Viplab Sir, Inderjeet and techie's there for the opportunity. Also thanks to team ION, you guys rock....
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