Windows 7 Beta 1 - Almost there... almost...

[silent-circuit]

Quicklaunch took up constant space on the toolbar; the new taskbar unifies the quicklaunch and the application status thumbnail into one. WIth the ability to pin programs, it gives one constant location from which to always access an application, whether it's the running copy or starting the program. And if you had ever used the dock, you would realize that other than minor superficial similarities, the taskbar works fundamentally different from it.

I've used it, thanks. Have a Powermac G4 and an Intel based MacBook Pro in the house; I've had my share of face time with the OS X dock.

I was fine with consistent space, because you know what? It never /moved/. I always knew where to find what I was looking for. I never had to pull the taskbar buttons around in to the order I wanted only to later discover, "oops, when the apps are closed those become the launch buttons, and Firefox is where Explorer used to be." It's a minor annoyance, sure, but it's compounded along with many others, and it's unnecessary. I have 6 icons in my Quicklaunch toolbar on this machine -- My Computer, recycle bin, show desktop, Firefox, Winamp, Pidgin. They take up, in total, about the same amount of space as a single open instance of Firefox -- one taskbar "button". With the new, larger taskbar in 7 and pinned programs that's maybe 4 programs, if that. By my estimation we've /lost/ space, not gained it. Perhaps you'd gain a bit if you're running everything you've pinned all the time, but only then. If that's the case, you might as well have the starting with the OS and have no launch buttons outside of the start menu.

That's a QFT. Language Bar was terrible too. I've ALWAYS disabled both.

Desktop is history, folks. When you can launch an app with a few keystrokes, or straight from the taskbar, there's little need for the desktop anymore other than to "look" pretty.

I haven't had desktop icons in years. At the kind of resolutions my displays run (1600x1200, 1880x1440, 1920x1200, 1680x1050) I've got enough room across the bottom of the screen to have 5 or 6 quicklaunch buttons without sacrificing space or usability, and I can always go in to the start menu for rarely used applications. I also don't run grouped windows, because I've often got a number of instances of Firefox open (yes, I hate tabs, it's more unnecessary mouse movement, going from the bottom of the screen to the top to change windows) and I shouldn't have to click twice to choose the one I want at any given time.

 

[GreNME]

I use the Dock in OS X (I have a G4 iBook and a 2.4 MacBook Pro), and from what I can tell looking at the the new UI for Win 7 [linky] it looks like some of the concepts will be similar to those in Leopard's dock (like the stacks), but overall in terms of how programs or windows are accessed will be different. The nice part is that the very basic functionality will be similar enough to an average end user that there won't be as much functional difference, even though the two operating systems are getting to the same place two different ways. I wouldn't be surprised if the convergence of basic end-user functionality isn't at least part of the goals in the development in both OS X and windows at this point.

As for the statements made in previous posts about liking Win 7 and Vista, though, I largely agree. I use Vista on my desktop and I love it. I have a few (five) Vista machines in my work's network, and they play nicely, work just as well as the XP machines on the whole (the three in our CAD dept. actually work better), and keeping them maintained and safe is actually easier for me than their XP counterparts where they've been put into active use in the departments. I pretty much expect the same when Windows 7 comes out, though my hope is that the 64-bit aspects will be much improved (three of the five Vista machines are 64-bit). For the systems at work, it doesn't look like Windows 7 is going to be appreciably different from the Vista machines we have there already, which is going to make the eventual migration easier for me as well as easier for those who are on Vista machines there already. That leap is going to be greater for people in the office still using XP, and the changes will be more stark.

What I'm getting at is that I find the interest in Windows 7 versus the animosity toward Vista in general to be dissonant at best, and contradictory at worst. They really are, on the surface and in many ways under the hood, basically going to be the same OS. It's going to be very similar to the difference between Win 2000 and XP, where the codebase is the same but some of the things on a basic UI level will be in slightly different locations. This sill likely change as the Win 7 codebase goes through some additions in service packs, but the same happened with XP as it continued to grow past Windows 2000, so it's no real surprise. At the time of launch and during the first year or so of operation, Windows 7 is going to be indistinguishable from Vista in many ways outside of the taskbar tweaks and some customization settings added to the new operating system. Vista will have been a greater leap away from XP than Windows 7 will be from Vista, as far as I can tell.

If you've tried Windows 7 and you like it, I urge you to give Vista a try if you aren't using it. With the exception of the new Taskbar the functionality and interface is going to be very much the same. Windows 7 will have some improvements on the Vista functionality, but I think a lot of people would be surprised at how much of what's in Vista already has a lot of it.

 

[rndmize]

I like 7, and it's going to be bad ass, I also think Vista is bad ass. But I just don't see how anyone can like 7, but not Vista, it's incredibly similar, and performs almost identical. It's slighly less aggressive with SuperFetch, but I can't see that as the 'end all, be all' as to why people like it more than Vista.

The driver support will be the same,
Application support will be the same,
Performance will be the same, except a minor improvement to boot times.
The UI is virtually identical except for a slightly larger task menu

^ whats different than Vista here? Nothing.

Um... no. From what I've heard, the UI will have a variety of differences beyond the changes to the taskbar; the whole thing with peaking, side-by-side windows, action center, etc. Computers have a wider range of screen sizes than ever, from netbooks to 30" ones, and the UI should take this into account. Performance should be improved quite a bit; it seems the dev team has some much better tools and telemetry info discussed here. Footprint should be smaller and installation control should be greater (more on that here). I would consider all of these to be pretty significant changes, and from what I hear much of it has yet to show up in the pre-beta builds; the taskbar wasn't even enabled for the build handed out at winHEC.

 

[bigdogchris]

Um... no. From what I've heard, the UI will have a variety of differences beyond the changes to the taskbar; the whole thing with peaking, side-by-side windows, action center, etc. Computers have a wider range of screen sizes than ever, from netbooks to 30" ones, and the UI should take this into account. Performance should be improved quite a bit; it seems the dev team has some much better tools and telemetry info discussed here. Footprint should be smaller and installation control should be greater (more on that here). I would consider all of these to be pretty significant changes, and from what I hear much of it has yet to show up in the pre-beta builds; the taskbar wasn't even enabled for the build handed out at winHEC.

See, from what you've ''heard'' and from what I've ''experienced first hand'' with 7, with the new task bar, say 2 different things.

On my machine, the performance was almost identical. Boot time was similar and game performance, testing both with 7 and Vista drivers, was almost identical to Vista. The GUI changes are minimal. There is nothing significant enough to justify why "7 is far superior to Vista", that it's now actually worth using. You also can't say that the new features being added to 7 GUI make it worth using now over Vista, because those features that they are adding were not in XP, so that doesn't justify it as the reason for not liking Vista. As for drivers effecting performance, the 7 Kernel has been set for a long time now, it's all fluff, service and GUI tweaks now. Drivers are not going to significantly bring better performance.

The point I'm making here is, the main complaints about Vista are not addressed with 7.

Application compatibility - Same
Performance - Same
Driver Support - Same
UI - Same

I'm not going to list boot time as "performance" because if you choose what OS you use based on boot time, I'm sorry for you, plus it was virtually the same on my machine anyways. On top of that, performance on older hardware is a null issue because by the time 7 launches, that's 1 more year worth of true Vista capable hardware to get on the market. PC's are shipping with 2-4GB of ram now. They are shipping with 7200 RPM, higher density HDD's now. Those 2 factors alone make Vista a new experience. And I don't see many post here talking about how 7 is so much faster on their machines than Vista is, except for one person but that's a whole new argument I don't feel like getting into again.

 

[rndmize]

See, from what you've ''heard'' and from what I've ''experienced first hand'' with 7, with the new task bar, say 2 different things.

You've experienced a pre-beta intended for devs that was deliberately chose for stability, not showing off UI elements; how does that "first hand experience" make you a better authority?

On my machine, the performance was almost identical. Boot time was similar and game performance, testing both with 7 and Vista drivers, was almost identical to Vista. The GUI changes are minimal.

As above.

There is nothing significant enough to justify why "7 is far superior to Vista", that it's now actually worth using. You also can't say that the new features being added to 7 GUI make it worth using now over Vista, because those features that they are adding were not in XP, so that doesn't justify it as the reason for not liking Vista. As for drivers effecting performance, the 7 Kernel has been set for a long time now, it's all fluff, service and GUI tweaks now. Drivers are not going to significantly bring better performance.

Eh, not what I was arguing anyway.

The point I'm making here is, the main complaints about Vista are not addressed with 7.

Application compatibility - Same
Performance - Same
Driver Support - Same
UI - Same

That's my point - UI and performance will not be the same. I'm not arguing with you're overall point, just this specifically.

I'm not going to list boot time as "performance" because if you choose what OS you use based on boot time, I'm sorry for you, plus it was virtually the same on my machine anyways. On top of that, performance on older hardware is a null issue because by the time 7 launches, that's 1 more year worth of true Vista capable hardware to get on the market. PC's are shipping with 2-4GB of ram now. They are shipping with 7200 RPM, higher density HDD's now. Those 2 factors alone make Vista a new experience. And I don't see many post here talking about how 7 is so much faster on their machines than Vista is, except for one person but that's a whole new argument I don't feel like getting into again.

I never even mentioned boot time in my post. And older hardware is not a null issue; one of the key demonstrations at winHEC was running 7 in a netbook that didn't meet Vista hardware requirements. As for what people who have experienced it are saying, give me a break. Do you really thing people on a forum like this are going to have hardware that runs Vista/7 anything less than awesome? Never mind that its a pre-beta, and optimization tends to be left to the last releases...

 

[Jon55]

7 is a rehash of Vista with some fairly minor UI tweaks. Nothing a third party couldn't have done with Vista itself, from what I've seen. I've messed around with it, and yes, it's nice that it starts a little faster on my laptop than Vista did, but other than that? Nothing new here. Nothing awe-inspiring. Setting wallpaper to a slide-show? Oooo, wow. Some new "official" media folders? Where did I keep my videos before?! Oh thank you wise and powerful Microsoft. The "pin to start menu" thing is both neat and mildly annoying, and I hate Explorer (not IE, but the file manager) just as much as I have in Vista, if not moreso. Not sure what you love about this.

You XP fanboys can never be pleased.

 

[silent-circuit]

You XP fanboys can never be pleased.

Proof you didn't read my posts or pay any attention to the points I'm making, and instead jumped to unwarranted conclusions. Also proof you've not read much of anything I've posted on these forums (which is extensive) regarding the XP vs. Vista debate.

I use Vista every day and much prefer it over XP. I regularly tout its stability and performance in comparison with XP. I'm a huge DX10 adoption advocate. I don't like a couple of things about Vista, sure, mostly pertaining to changes to Explorer, but it's not enough to keep me from using the OS and I certainly don't go around bashing it like so many here.

Read, consider, and contribute.... or get out of the thread.

 

[Bigbacon]

I keep hoping to see it pop up as a download in my MSDN account or get some beta DVDs sent to me.

 

[tronmaster]

it'll be interesting to see how many people get this if it's open to the public. i've played around with the leaked "alpha" (if you can call it that) version a little and can't wait to get my hands on the beta. should be some interesting stuff to play around with... maybe they'll put something up on their connect site

I am planning to get it, tried Windows XP RC1 and RC2, Windows Vista Beta and RC1. I am eagerly waiting to try Windows 7 Beta. Some say Windows 7 will be released as early as April!

Some features I am looking for are the built-in Virtual system, can I install XP on it for older legacy games? If not, I probably dual boot between Windows 7 and Windows XP. Majority of videos working without downloading codecs through the magic of Windows Media Player 12. Taskbar being streamline and better memory usage with programs. Wallpaper changing itself, no need a 3rd party app yah!

I am hoping some fixes either by third party or Microsoft.

1. The Wireless Zero thing needs to be radically fix, I hate playing online and have disconnects or lag due to it. Ugh. Makes me want to go back to a wired connection. To bad I can't do that...
2. Sound, this is partially to Creative fix your damn drivers to work with Windows 7! Which I am basing on the previous nightmare which was Vista and Creative sound cards. To this day my sound is not as great through Vista as it is through XP.
3. When opening windows the OS remembers the size and location of how the window was set. Come on, XP had it and Vista required a registry hack to get this to work.

That's pretty much it for me.