December 28th, 2008

Windows 7 beta 1 review

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ 6:10 am

Categories: Windows 7

Tags: Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Corp., Beta, Feature, Flip-side, Aero Peek, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Applications

Windows 7 has a far fewer applications to look at than XP and Vista. Gone are applications such as Windows Mail, Windows Messenger, Movie Maker and so on. Anyone wanting apps of this sort will need to download then via Windows Live Essentials.

Paint and Wordpad now incorporate the Ribbon UI found in Microsoft Office and seem to have received a little TLC by Microsoft programmers.

Internet Explorer 8 will be the browser that Microsoft wants you to use with Windows 7. It’s far better than earlier incarnations of IE but still falls short when compared to other browsers.

Windows Media Player is also vastly improved, but as with IE, you’ll either use it or have a third-party app that you use instead.

Media Center sees a few new tweaks, most noticeably a “Getting Started” feature aimed at new users.

Hardware and software compatibility

Microsoft does seem to have kept to its word when it claimed that what worked for Vista should work for Windows 7. I have run across some software issues (which I believe are related to UAC - User Account Control - changes in Windows 7) but since developers haven’t yet seen a beta these sorts of issues are to be expected and I’m sure most will be fixed within weeks of beta 1 being officially released.

I’ve had no noteworthy issues relating to hardware, although drivers that officially support Windows 7 are still a while off so I’ve been sticking with Microsoft drivers. I expect hardware vendors to start getting Windows 7 drivers out soon after the official release of Windows 7.

Microsoft demoed some cool stuff at PDC relating to Device Stage, but I’ve not yet come across anything that kicks it into life.

If you do run into problems with Windows 7 then you get access to the new Troubleshooter that attempts to diagnose and fix problems. It’s not perfect, but it’s a darn sight better than any troubleshooter previously shipped with Windows.

Closing thoughts

I like Windows 7, a lot. Microsoft seems to have put a lot of effort into developing a core operating system that is free from the pointless frills of the likes of XP and Vista. The OS is solid and fast and based on what I’ve seen so far I’d have no problems in rolling out beta 1 and using it daily.

I am concerned about the new taskbar. I hope that Microsoft is receiving constructive feedback on this feature and working to improve it for the release candidate version of Windows 7. The new taskbar isn’t a deal-breaker for me, but I do feel that it’s the least refined part of Windows 7.

I can’t wait until the official release of Windows 7 beta 1 so that you folks out there can tell me what you think of it.

[UPDATE: Paul Thurrott offers some adice to Microsoft on tweaking the taskbar by changing the default settings. I agree with him, the tweaked taskbar is a lot better.

Default:

 

Customized:

 

Much better.]

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