Windows 7 Mag

If you’ve installed the latest Window Live Essentials beta (available from http://download.live.com) and run it on Windows 7, you may have noticed that it will not minimize to the tray, or show an icon there at all.  Paul Thurrott of the Win SuperSiteBlog has found a fix for this however, which is quite simple.  Simply go to start>All Programs>Windows Live and right click Windows Live Messenger and select properties.  Then go to the compatibility tab and select Windows Vista, and then restart Windows Live Messenger.  Problem solved.

It seems that Windows 7 has leaked out onto the torrent sites a few weeks before the beta officially start, on Janurary 7.  I have yet to download it to see if it’s legit, and how much faster it is compaired to 6801 M3.  Judgeing from the screenshots at Paul Thurrot’s excellent Supersite for Windows, the UI is pretty similar to 6801 when you run the unlocks, so I’m guessing that the updates are mostly reliability and performance.  Overall, I think this shows that Microsoft is determined not to let Windows 7 get delayed as Vista did, and that Windows 7 will resolve most of the issues that Vista had (aside from the FUD that people like Randall Kenney spread).

Windows 7 PDC prebeta has been out for around a month or so, and during that time, I have been able to get a feel for how it is.  In short, it is a solid upgrade from Windows Vista.  Several UI updates, such as the new task bar just make Windows 7 easier to use, as well as better performance compaired to Vista, which is often not the case when releasing a new OS.

User Interface

Windows 7 adds some new UI changes to the Window Vista UI.  Some of these make Windows more functional.  For example, it adds a taller taskbar, which also merges the quick launch into the taskbar.  Or you can use AERO Snaps to snap a window to the top or side of the screen.  Some of these are also more “astetic”.  You can make the wallpaper a slide show, for instance.  Considering that this is a pre beta build without all the features, I would say that it has some good additions to the UI.  People have gotten used to a new OS having a complete visual overhaul, but really before Windows XP, the ui wasn’t changed that much.  Windows 95 an 98 had the same window look for instance.

Performance

The performance of Windows 7 seems to be even better that Vista’s.  For example, I can play Half Life 2 on 1GB of RAM without it stuttering when displaying an outdoor scene, where as on Vista it would, as it would have to cache stuff on the hard drive.  Boot times seems lower as well, but no quite the advertised “10 second boot”.

Reliability and Compatability

Reliability is excellecnt.  I’ve had my laptop go for 24 days straight without a reboot and didn’t find it to slow down or have any major issues.  Compatability is also pretty good, most applications work fine on Windows 7.  If they don’t I often can just use “compatabilaty mode” and it will work.

Overall,

I think Windows 7, even in it’s pre beta form is a solid upgrade over Vista.  If you are still using XP, depending on how old the machine is, I would recommend upgrding to Windows 7 when it comes out.  I run it on my laptop with is a 2005 HP NC6230 and it works fine on it.  Web browsing, some gaming, music an video works fine on it.  There are some problems with it.  IE8 is still not as fast as it should, but you can always use another browser such as Opera or Firefox.  They have debundeled some applications, and made the a optional download via Windows Live Essentials, which is good for the most part, except that the Windows Movie Maker part is horrible.  The mail, photos, and contacts part of Windows Live Essentials is good though.  So overall, I would rate Windows 7, 8 on a scale of 10.

According to Betanews.com, Mary Jo Folley’s article that the Beta of Windows 7 would be comming in december might be right.  It has been reported that MSDN suscribers got notices that at Special MSDN conferences in Orlando, Florida (Dec. 11); Atlanta (December 16); Chicago (Jan 13); Minneapolis (also Jan. 13); Washington, DC (Jan. 16); New York City (Jan. 20); Boston (Jan. 22); Detroit (Jan. 22); Dallas (Jan. 26); and San Francisco (February 19), they will be getting Windows 7 Beta disks.  If true, this mean that Randall C. Kennedy is 100% wrong, again, as you can see at Paul Thurrott’s article on Windows 7 being delayed.

Hit the link for more info:

More

Rafael Rivera, the Major Domo over at http://www.withinwindows.com has a excellent tool called the BlueBadge tool.  What does it do?  Well, it unlocks a bunch of features that are part of Windows 7 Pre-Beta 6801, but are not enabled, unless you work for Microsoft and have a blue badge (basically a employee of Microsoft, not a contractor for them).

The tool unlocks the Windows 7 taskbar, Wallpaper slideshow, and gesture panning, and is a free download available from http://www.withinwindows.com/2008/11/09/blue-badge-tool-now-available-unlocks-all-known-protected-features/. 

So you might be asking, why are these features disabled?  My theory is that because the are either not 100% complete, or they have bugs.  For example, the small box in the lower right corner of the taskbar doesn’t activate AERO Peek, it just works the same as show desktop.  So there are features that should be available by default in Jan 09 when the beta version of Win7 comes out.

PDC is the conference that Microsoft has every few years, before they release a new version of Windows.  PDC stands for Professional Developer’s Conference.  At PDC 08, they showed off Windows 7.  Following are some of the highlights of PDC 08’s demonstration of Windows 7:

• Snapping windows in Windows 7 by putting it on the side.  So you drag a Window to the left or right side, and it takes 50% of the screen, and is docked there.

• Documents isn’t a folder anymore.  So, you store your documents anywhere, but find them in one place

• Homegroup allows you to not remember what PC you stored the files on.  Also allows for easy file sharing, printer sharing, and more.

• You choose the icons in the system tray, so if they are in the popup tray, the ballon messages are blocked, untill you want to see them.

• Non touch apps work with touch, for say, scrolling or resizing.  So you could just move your hand up or down the screen to scroll a webpage in firefox.

• Windows 7 can use Windows Vista drivers, so lower computability issues.  It also blocks drivers that are known to cause stability issues with Windows 7.

• DX does 2D now.  So goodbye GDI.

• Lower RAM usage, lower disk IO, faster  boot times, which makes your PC faster and use less energy.

• Supports 256 CPUs, more about this at WinHEC next week.

• Bitlocker on a memory stick.  So you just plug in your pen drive and it offers to encrypt it.

• Works on a 1GB RAM 1GHz netbook, and they are working to get the resource useage even lower.

• Zoom is changed, just press a key comination, and it will zoom the whole window, rather than having a magnifying box like before.

• And turn off notifications that UAC, firewall, or av is disabled.

• They also showed what the path to RTM is (dates are mine):

Path to RTM:

Pre Beta - Today

E3 - Within a week or so

Beta - December via MSDN,  Janurary on Microsoft.com/windows

RC Around May 2008

RTM - Windows 7 Gold - June/July 2009.

Windows 7 PDC screenshots: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31242879@N00/sets/72157608452379413/

Well, the wait for news about Windows 7 is almost over.  PDC will be here in around 2 weeks.

So, what do you expect will come out of PDC?  First off, I’m expecting a PDC build of Windows 7 preloaded on the 160GB HDs that they are giving away.  There has been talk about a Cloud OS from Microsoft, code name Midori or Strata.  Microsoft Strata appeared on the PDC 08 list, and was taken down, so it’s possible that there will be a copy of Strata on the HD as well.

However, there are 38 sessions about Cloud Services, and another 10 about Live Mesh.  I’m guessing that this means that there will be a lot of stuff about Windows Live, and how Live Mesh works with Live, say as a underlying platform.

This is quite interesting, as Windows 7 has only 22 keynotes, which makes me think that Microsoft is thinking of moving away from desktop computing and moving to cloud services.  So what do you think?

Windows 7.  Yes, Microsoft has just announced that Windows 7 is the final name for the next version of Windows.  Mike Nash over at Microsoft makes a blog post about it:

“Hi there, Mike Nash here.

For me, one of the most exciting times in the release of a new product is right before we show it to the world for the first time. And that time is right now.

In a few weeks we are going to be talking about the details of this release at the PDC and at WinHEC. We will be sharing a pre-beta “developer only release” with attendees of both shows and giving them the first broad in-depth look at what we’ve been up to. I can’t wait for them to see it.

And, as you probably know, since we began development of the next version of the Windows client operating system we have been referring to it by a codename, “Windows 7.”  But now is a good time to announce that we’ve decided to officially call the next version of Windows, “Windows 7.”

While I know there have been a few cases at Microsoft when the codename of a product was used for the final release, I am pretty sure that this is a first for Windows. You might wonder about the decision.

The decision to use the name Windows 7 is about simplicity. Over the years, we have taken different approaches to naming Windows.  We’ve used version numbers like Windows 3.11, or dates like Windows 98, or “aspirational” monikers like Windows XP or Windows Vista.  And since we do not ship new versions of Windows every year, using a date did not make sense.  Likewise, coming up with an all-new “aspirational” name does not do justice to what we are trying to achieve, which is to stay firmly rooted in our aspirations for Windows Vista, while evolving and refining the substantial investments in platform technology in Windows Vista into the next generation of Windows.

Simply put, this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore “Windows 7″ just makes sense.

We are very excited about the opportunity to tell you more about Windows 7 in the coming weeks, and show you how we have continued to build on investments begun in Windows Vista to deliver on the next release of the Windows operating system.

I look forward to sharing more with you in the coming weeks and months.”

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/10/13/introducing-windows-7.aspx

So, what do you think of the name?  I like it myself, but I do hope that they change the version in the PDC build from Windows 6.1 to Windows 7.0.

The first leaked build of Windows 7 was 6.1.6519, It was leaked a few months ago. And I have noticed that a lot of people complained about 6519 and saying its to close to Vista. Well, I disagree with that. Windows 7 6519 is not a enhanced as then it would still be called Windows Vista. 6519 has not too much new features but it still does have new features. As for an example, the boot screen. Its totally different to Vista and it uses a totally different boot system. That is why the boot can’t be ported into Windows Vista. It features a slightly smoother Aero theme to Vista. And the Orb is closer to the left side to the screen. It features a new Shell, but not a whole lot different. As in control panel when you open it in the Category view. There is no sidebar. Only the main category’s of the sidebar. It doesn’t include many new programs to Vista. But it does have the famous XPS Viewer. And some of the Accessories are named incorrectly or named to there file name. The Sidebar isn’t that different to Vista, but it does look better. It has full transparency. And a few new gadgets. Now my opinion of 6519. Well, its similar to Vista meaning when you first log into the desktop it looks like Vista. But the more you go deeper, the more different to Vista it is.

Now, next week im going to be doing a quick review of whats to come in Pre-Beta and the Beta. And I will also be talking about Windows 7 6780. The M3 Build.

Until then, enjoy your week.

From Engadget: Microsoft has confirmed that they will be giving out copies of Windows 7 Pre-Beta to people that go to PDC and WinHEC on those 160GB hard drives that they are giving out. They will also be telling us a lot more about Windows 7 then. So finaly, we shall see Windows 7, and learn about all the features in it.