Windows 7 Beta 1 Leaked
Originally slated to be released in January at the International Consumer Electronics Show, the beta of the newest version of Windows, Windows 7, has somehow found its way into BitTorrent trackers. Whether it was a disgruntled programmer or the one in charge of distributing the software itself, we’ll never know. Of course, none of us are complaining either.
For Windows 7, Microsoft has decided to build upon its previous operating system, Windows Vista. Instead of introducing a whole new slew of features, they’ve decided to make smaller, but yet necessary, improvements to Windows Vista. For example, they’ve completely revamped the taskbar, introducing features like consolidating Windows that belong to the same program in a single icon in the taskbar. They’ve also make changes to “traditional” Windows programs. For example, they’ve added real-world usage to the calculator like allowing you to calculate the number of days in between two dates, or even calculate your mortgage and lease payments.
However, they’ve also chosen to remove some of their old programs. For example, Windows Movie Maker is no longer bundled with Windows, and the previously built in photo gallery is gone as well. Furthermore, the long hated Windows sidebar is no longer present, instead Microsoft has chosen to implement gadgets in a very similar way to how Mac OSX does it (Dashboard). The difference being that Window’s gadgets reside on the desktop itself rather than on an extra “layer”, which is how Mac OSX does it.
All in all, improvements to Windows 7 are welcome definitely, but only time will tell if Microsoft can deliver a polished product on day one. It took both Windows XP as well as Windows Vista before they became the stable operating systems that they now are. However, even almost 2 years after Vista’s original release, there are still many (myself included) that prefer Vista over Windows XP. Maybe Windows 7 will finally be the OS that convinces such people to upgrade to the latest iteration of Windows.
I’ve never really seen the need to upgrade to Windows Vista. Thus far, Windows XP has usually done everything I need it to do for me. Even seven years after its initial release, Windows XP is still a pretty usable OS. With innumerable third-party applications available, everything that Windows XP can’t do, I just search for software that can. Not to mention Windows Vista is a real system hog, for most software and games, it requires twice the amount of RAM to run it smoothly on Vista as compared to XP.
Personally, I’m dying to try out the beta version of Windows 7. Unfortunately, the only spare computer with a partition I can spare is an iMac in Windows 7 supposedly doesn’t work very well in boot camp on Macs yet. I guess I’m going to have to wait for either better support, or a new computer.
