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http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2009/05/04/fortune.techmate.windows7.fortune

Sounds Intresting
And possibly this year too

I always like this... View the video over at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8026736.stm - this is what's is revolutionary about Vienna...

The phrases "clutching at straws" and "ive seen that somewhere before" come to mind.

Needless to say, I had Vista forced upon me, and won't be changing to another Microsoft mess anytime soon...

First Look
[youtube]CYnSGTUU4P0[/youtube]

Just looks like Windows Shitsta with a New cover.. I dunno but they seem to be adding more and more shit thats why it needs so much memory an hd space.. I still use Windows 2000 or XP which is on the laptop..

Vista for lazy peeps

Thing with Vista is, if you kick it about enough, you can return to most of it's NT5 roots. You just have to have the will and the time on your hands (aka me ).

And the other thing is, I can't actually say I use it any different to how I use XP on the media cantre... Aero is nice to look at and does some things that are visually appealing, but theres nothing practical in any of it.

One thing I will say though, is Vista is reliable/stable and fast to boot up - shame it takes 2 hours to close down!

Ive been testing windows 7 for the past six months, you can download a free twelve month trial of its flagship ultimate version from their website.
Things to remember, its only for twelve months, technically your a beta tester media center is brilliant I have a HD card hooked up and can record HD stuff too.

What happens when your trial runs out?
Do you get a cheaper copy

sure i read somewhere that microsoft aren't doing cheaper copies for the beta testers. they have to pay full price

There is suggestion that Vienna will be free for Vista users... its merely suggestion at present though, in the hope that Microsoft realise they need to rebuild consumer confidence after the Vista fiasco.

I can't really see it happening, but the reasoning behind it, certainly makes sense.

Microsoft very rarely offer cheaper licensing options for MSDN testers, so the likelyhood of them doing this for public BETA testers is about as remote as them giving everyone a free copy.

Id never suggest anyone run a BETA copy of any software in a production enviroment, so anyone thinking "yeah I can have Windows 7 to replace my XP/Vista to show off" should seriously re-consider it. There will inevitably be bugs (even now, they are finding bugs in NT5 nevermind Vista and Vienna).

Interestingly, I found an early Longhorn BETA about a year ago (may have posted about it on here even) probably from around 2002ish hidden away on my media centre whilst cleaning up the partitions. I ran it, it suffered from the Blaster virus lol, but once I eradicated that it was pretty smooth; early versions of Longhorn were very closely tied in with Blackcomb (the main difference being the lack of support for the then highly touted WinFS file system - havent heard much about WinFS for many years, I know they ported it for use with MS SQL on Windows 2008 but not sure if it will make it to Windows 7), which is what became Vienna after it hit massive delays, I may reload the BETA when 7 finally gets released, and see how much made it through!

It's about time they thought about the end-user. If the new one is free for the vista users, then I will change happily as this new one looks so much better

But, thats the whole problem mate; Microsoft have spent the last 5 years more concerned with how Windows "looks" as opposed to how it actually performs.

Case in point; a Mazda RX8 "looks" very nice, but when it comes to every day use for 99% of people, it is useless, practicality wise.

I personally feel that Microsoft are beginning to realise they have hit a brick wall, and are starting to see their revenue stream dwindle a bit; Windows has always been the core industry for Microsoft, their real profit maker, and since NT5/2000, they have struggled to offer anything particuarly innovative, that makes both consumers, but more importantly, corporates, think "I have got to change to that". As Lee Mills will recall, I always used to say that Microsoft would never release Windows 2000 Professional as a general public operating system, simply because they know if they do, they will struggle to better it. They made the conversion to 5.1 very buggy and lacklustre, and consumers complained, so with Vista, they have tried the same trick, but at the same time tried to answer the critics with regards security and stability, and by all accounts, they have finished Windows off.

The future for Microsoft is Red Dog, and they know it. Though 7 will be the true (and planned) replacement for XP (it was always supposed to be Blackcomb, Longhorn was never meant to replace it, its just they hit massive delays, especially with WinFS), itis quite simply 3 - 5 years too late, and we are now entering an age where isolated computing is just about reaching the end, and cloud computing will start to become big business over the next decade. Even within my industry, cloud computing is starting to become big business and I have been investigating the options available to me.

Microsoft probably arnt too fussed about Vienna, because they know it will have a relatively short-term life cycle (though they will be hoping it will live longer than Vista has). They will already be ploughing most of their efforts into Red Dog.

They just have to hope they can get it right, and someone doesnt beat them to it, because its one area where Microsoft will have establish themselves, as opposed to being able to take for granted the automatic monopolist position they have experienced for the past 20 years. And love him, or hate him, they will sorely miss the input that Uncle Billy has had in defining the future of operating systems and computing in general, and Steve Balmer is simply an inadequate pretender, he always has been and always will be.

windows 7 is totally new and many users comment that its got the flow of windows xp and the functionality of nT. you can remove components such as internet explorer indeed theres a whole host of things you can remove.

here go download a free twelve month trial either in x86 or x64
but remember it must be a clean install, not an upgrade, that after twelve months you will be given the option to buy the product. if you have a spare hard drive why not give it a go
you will be supprised.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

I gave it a whirl about 6 or 7 months ago and then thought to myself, I have far better things to do with my time than sit here and find bugs for Microsoft.

Blackcomb has been in development since 2001ish iirc, so hardly new; it is basically a finished (and some may say fixed) version of Longhorn/Vista. Of course it is going to have the flow of XP and functionality of NT, Windows XP is NT5.1 ... NT7 is still NT at the core, it may have been severely updated, but they are all building upon the successful core of NT5 and furthermore NT5.1, no matter how much MS like to spin it.

As for the removal of IE etc, I think you will actually find this is one of the consequences of the Antitrust battle Microsoft have been fighting for sometime, in particular, there has been a hell of a lot of pressure applied by the European Union and Microsoft don't fancy paying $2.4m per day fines again for being in breach of the EU ruling. So not through choice, rather through force, have Microsoft implemented this change.

Don't get me wrong, I am a "big" fan of Microsoft and Uncle Billy, and thank them for what they have done to the industry and indeed the world, but they have spent the last 5 years totally missing the point and ignoring what their own MSDN members and the general public as a whole have been screaming at them, and as a result, they have a lost a LOT of ground. It's not that the competition has suddenly got better, its more that Microsoft have suddenly stumbled big time, and not thought it particuarly interesting to rectify their mistakes.

The next OS I will change to will most likely be Azure, or whatever Red Dog derivative comes along. I won't be paying to upgrade my Vista laptop to 7 and even if it was a free "apology" upgrade, id think about it carefully. I certainly wont be putting my media centre or other XP system anywhere near any new Microsoft OS.

Windows 7 however, will have one thing to say about it, and that is it will be the last operating system Microsoft will produce, as we know and love them. Cloud computing is just around the corner and I think it will have a big impact upon how we use our computers over the next decade. And Microsoft themselves have hinted as early as 2006 that Vienna would be the final OS as we know it.

As for Windows 7 being touchscreen rich, total waste of money and time imho, it will be a novelty, but in 10 years time, we will still be using a keyboard and mouse, for the simple reason, they work and are the best tools for the job. No touchscreen will ever replace a keyboard. I have a stylus board, finger board and keyboard (widely regarded as the best mobile phone keyboard) on my HTC Universal and out of choice I would never use the fingerboard for typing. Aother feature to "define" the difference between Windows 7 and all previous OS's, another area where Microsoft are simply clutching at straws.

I have been running the Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 for the past few days now.

I have included a couple of screenshots,

Nothing major to report. Imagine Vista but a lot faster and that pretty much sums up Windows 7.


Please Note: The desktop background shown here is my own image. It is not included in Windows 7


Main Screen, showing the new tabbed interface and MS Paint:



My Computer, couple of new features here along the left:



User Folders:



Control Panel:



The RC1 is available for download on the Microsoft Website:

CLICK HERE This links to the pre-download page, not the file itself

Also recently, Microsoft has released thier shipping date for the full version as 22nd October 2008 (estimated)