Windows 7
Posted by Simon Salvin on 24. Mar 2009 on PC, TechnologyI’m sure by now you’ll have heard that Vista is to be replaced towards the end of the year / early next year with what is currently known as Windows 7, by release there maybe a more catchy title brandished across the packaging.
I managed to get one of the beta (trial) versions of Windows 7 a few weeks back and have been meaning to tell you about it, but as usual I’m a bit late and you may have seen it already, if you haven’t then here’s a screenshot: 
Well it looks like Vista? And essentially it is, just much improved, with changes made in the places where the public using Vista have cried out for change.
This testing version is supplied as the Ultimate version with the complete set of features, although it has been said that Microsoft are holding back on a few surprises???
The first thing I noticed (which I shouldn’t have really) was the movable wallpaper option is missing, the Flip 3-D is missing and an Email client is also missing.
I’m running my Windows 7 in a virtual machine, so I haven’t had the pleasure of real everyday computing with it, but from what I have read elsewhere, this really isn’t a resource heavy OS like Vista, they’ve removed the gimmicks and left the good stuff, it’s been reported that Windows 7 runs extremely well on a variety of Netbooks, which you may have noticed that all but a select few are running Windows XP, purely because the Atom processors aren’t equipped well enough to handle anything more than Vista Home Basic and then are performing less than XP, maybe it’s a sign that the next generation of Netbooks will skip past Vista altogether and start shipping Windows 7?
I always believed that Vista improved on XP’s networking performance but once again this has been an area worked on: 
The homegroup option allows you to create a network to share music, photos, documents etc. which is password protected, then if you take your laptop to the office and join another network, access to those files couldn’t be shared without the password, its a way of sharing different groups of folders with different network groups.
You may have noticed the taskbar looking a little different on the first screen shot. Open programs are automatically grouped together, for example if you open Documents and Pictures together then the icon of a folder on the taskbar is displayed as being slightly overlaid, then when hovering over the icon it displays the open folders, just like XP and Vista group windows together now when the taskbar gets cluttered with open programs, except Windows 7 doesn’t wait for the clutter.
As always there is a variety of great photography for the desktop background and a new option to select a number of different backgrounds and have them rotate at a timed interval of your choice.
As I mentioned above there doesn’t appear to be an email client provided although Internet Explorer 8 is, a sore point for Microsoft with its legal battles with Netscape a few years back and now with Opera more recently, why anyone would want to use Opera when such better alternatives are available such as Firefox and Chrome, and Internet Explorer 8 seems to be making better ways with its new features. But I think the loss of the email client may be due to the Live Mail email client available as a download bundled with Microsoft’s other Live services programs such as Messenger, Photo Gallery and Writer, which I use to write this Blog!
Looking back at Windows 95 and 98, XP seems to be the odd one out taking the Rayne for 6 long years, so Vista only having 3 years isn’t new or unusual, we’ve just been so used to XP that we’ve forgotten how they used to do it.
Overall, Windows 7 for me is just the next step along the timeline and I’m certainly excited about it, maybe not blown away, but then again I’ve used Vista for the past 3 years and I like it!
Microsoft released 250000 licenses for Windows 7 so if you’re lucky you may still be able to grab one!
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