Okay, I’ll admit it, I am definitely an early adopter. And like most nerds I tend to go after flashy stuff. So it should come as no great surprise to the esteemed reader that I am running the recently released beta of Windows 7.
This isn’t a new phenomenon for me, I started running Windows Vista when it was at Beta 2, and Office 2007 when it was in Beta. Inevitably when a beta of a major OS is announced, I fire up my MSDN account ad start downloading it, “just to try it out” I tell myself. I usually like it.
Enough to never go back. I ran vista all the way through it’s Beta and Release Candidate stages on my personal laptop while I was in school, and put it on my work computer here as soon as I got my MSDN subscription. The only reason my home computer isn’t running Vista is that the hardware kind of chokes on it (it’s an 8 year old machine).
Anyway, some first thoughts on Windows 7:
- Everything looks very familiar. I had heard that Windows 7 would be very much a Windows Vista redux, and that’s the way it seems. Aero looks the same, icons are the same, programs look the same, nothing like the jump from XP to Vista, or 95/98 to XP for that matter.
- The new taskbar is AWESOME. So full of win. I like that the icon backgrounds become statusbars when an operation is completing (like downloading a file in IE). And the new Aero Peek is nice, although it takes a little getting used to.
- Flip3D is still there. Meh.
- No Sidebar! Sidebar Gadgets function like desktop widgets now. That’s usually what I would do in Vista, anyway.
- User themes! No more using VistaGlazz etc. to patch uxtheme.dll and whatnot. Just download the theme and it gets applied.
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