Playing with Windows 7 (Beta 1)
Disclaimer: This is not a comprehensive review, or even a review at that. This is my thoughts of a few things that standout, more visually than anything of beta software. It may or may not represent anything like the final product
As soon as Ballmer announced Windows 7 Beta 1 would be available over MSDN/Technet I began the download and preperation for installing the beta onto my system (Intel Core2Quad Q6600@2.4ghz, 4gb DDR2 800mhz, 512mb 9600GT).
Since I have the luxury of backing up my entire system to Windows Home Server, I decided to forgo the recommended clean install and decided to perform an upgrade of Vista Ultimate SP1 x64 to Windows 7 Beta 1 x64. The process was a little lengthier than I expected, around three hours, but apart from the initial configuration of where I was installing to I could just walk away, and it was still far quicker than installing all the programs all over again (Office 2007 + Visual Studio 2008 + VS2008 SP1 would easily take up that three hours).
I only encountered two problems when the upgrade process was complete, Hamachi needed to be reinstalled, and Daemon Tools is incompatible (Virtual CloneDrive still works fine).
Since then I’ve also discovered that my (new – it was a birthday present) Wacom Bamboo tablet doesn’t work entirely. I’m able to scribe ("no drivers installed/plug and play") but installing drivers doesn’t give me the levels of pressure sensitivity that I get if I use Vista (tested on wife’s desktop, mums laptop). There is no error given, it just… doesn’t seem to do anything.
Start Menu/Taskbar (Superbar)
Difference faces of the Superbar
Once you get Windows 7 up and running, the "Superbar" is without a doubt one of the first things you’ll notice. Why? One of the biggest differences in Windows 95 from Windows 3.x was the Start Menu/Taskbar, and while it has had visual changes in Windows 98, 2000, XP, and Vista, it’s essentially the same thing. The Superbar is a replacement for it, but in a more evolutionary than revolutionary way.
The Superbar has several modes, "Combine when taskbar is full" mode or "never combine" mode for the most part will look like this 
and like this is you have "Use small icons" enabled 
It’s fairly self explanatory. Applications pinned to the taskbar, but not yet running appear as just an icon, but anything running will appear with its title the tile. It is very easy to differentiate between running and closed programs. It also isn’t a huge departure from the "taskbar". However, this isn’t the default mode.
The default mode is "Always combine, hide labels"
And again, with "Use small icons" enabled 
This mode has attracted a bit of attention for looking much like Mac OS X’s dock. To be honest, I can see why – both use just icons to represent applications.
Just like the OS X dock, the main criticism I’ve seen of the Superbar is some users are unable to distinguish what applications are actually running. The visual clues for OS X’s dock is a little black arrow pointing to what is running, for the Superbar it is a glass border/background, neither are great.
Personally, I think "Combine when taskbar is full" or "never combine" mode should be made default. It will cause less transition problems, and (personally) is just plain better.
Start Menu
As I mentioned when I first looked at the prebeta/b6801 of Windows 7, the Start Menu itself has also undergone a few changes, seemingly all for the better.
Applications now show a frequent or recently opened documents (I guess it would depend on what the individual program exposes), so you can launch your app directly to that file/folder/etc quicker. Most applications that implement a "recently opened" list support this already, which is great.
Searching now expands the results the full width of the start menu, another nice touch for longer names of files or applications.
The final change I’ve noticed to the start menu is the return of text labels for the shutdown button, rather than requiring users to understand that red is shutdown, yellowy-orange is hibernate…or sleep… and restart is orange, or something like that.
Media
Back in November, Long Zheng reported on the new codec support making its way into Windows 7. WMP/WMC (and any other DirectShow – I think – application) supports DivX/XVid out of the box (inside AVI/MP4), and H.264 (inside MP4, 3GP, m2ts) out of the box. This means more files will play after a new install of Windows 7 without having to install any codecs.
Windows Media Player (WMP)
WMP 12 has been a bit of a hit and miss with me. It has been a little less stable (I’ve submitted the bug reports via Connect), and the baby blue theme (which I guess extends all over Win7) is a bit much.
WMP 12 compared to WMP 11
The Vista/WMP11 "taskbar" mode also allowed you to stop, change the volume/mute, the progress of the song and showed data about the song playing a bit better (three line display compared to the one line).
One of the new features is the ability to preview a song, hover over it in the library view will let you play a 15 second clip of the song. To be honest, I don’t think I’ll ever use this. The tracks in my library are in my library because I know what they are, and it isn’t that much work to open a song to preview it anyway. I guess the value is if you aren’t sure of a songs title, and are building a playlist you wouldn’t be interrupting that process.
Another new feature is the ability to play music "to a device". Unfortunately, that requires either another Windows 7 machine (which would be great in a HTPC situation) or a device supporting "Digital Living Network Alliance v1.5" device, of which I have none. Hopefully the Xbox 360 will be updated to support this. WMP12 will apparently transcode-on-the-fly any formats the device can’t handle automatically.
Windows Media Center
Since I didn’t install Windows 7 on to my HTPC, I haven’t really tested out the new or changed functionality in Windows Media Center, so I’ll withhold my opinions on the few changes I did notice and didn’t immediately like.
One feature I did like was the “Album art wall”, which shows all of your album art in a slowly moving wall behind the visuals when playing music.
The new album art wall
It even fades to behind the main menu while music is playing, looking good! (I’ve heard all media will fade like this, rather than the half-menu that used to appear)
The wall is still present at the main menu!
Aero
Aero, the graphical theme/system of Vista/7, has been updated to include a few new things. Aero Shake lets you…err…shake windows. Quickly shake a window side to side, and it will make everything else minimise, repeat it, and everything is restored.
I found Aero Peek a bit more useful than Shake. Peek allows you to "look through" running applications to your target. WinKey + Space "peeks to the desktop" (but lets you see your gadgets), and if you hover over the Live Preview window in the Superbar, you get the X-Ray view to that program. I found it useful for checking IM or twitter apps, without having to switch them to the main focus.
Explorer & Libraries
As I said in my earlier look at Windows 7, Libraries are interesting. Being able to aggregate multiple sources of a single type of file I found incredibly useful, and is probably the second most missed feature (after the Superbar) after going back to Vista.
To recap, a "Library" is one or more folders containing (primarily) the type of file that matches the name of the Library. Libraries are very easy to share over a Homegroup. That combination for less computer literate people (such as my mum and sister) would be great – they just have to put all their pictures into their libraries, then the Homegroup functionality takes care of the sharing. If my mum was browsing my sisters computer, she wouldn’t have to navigate through multiple folders to find all the pictures – they’d be shown in the Pictures Library.
For example, the screenshot below shows my "Videos" library, which points to "My Videos", "Public Videos" and two folders on my Home Server.
An alternate library view, which shows the aggregation of folders well
From these screenshots you can see the revamped navigation pane.
- Favourites has been expanded to include an unlimited (not confirmed, but way more than Vista) amount of links.
- Network discovery happens in the background to populate the networked machines available, it doesn’t require "expanding the network" to initialise!
Compatibility
Apart from Daemon Tools, I didn’t find any programs or games that refused to run on Windows 7, so from that point of view it starts becoming less a question of "will I upgrade" and more a "when will I upgrade". The answer for most gamers who like Windows 7 will be "when Punkbuster* officially supports it".
Like Vista, I expect some teething problems as manufactures slowly roll out drivers for Windows 7, but since it is built upon Vista’s foundations the transition time will be much, much less painful. In the end it was a hardware incompatibility that "forced" me back to Vista – my Wacom Bamboo tablet didn’t work (and why use a beta OS when I could be playing with my birthday present?)
* Punkbuster is an anti-cheating service which runs in a lot of games, such as Call of Duty 4. Currently many servers will kick Win7 gamers out because the Punkbuster service has permissions errors and doesn’t run properly
