So now that I have had the Beta for a couple of days and even got it installed on its own partition I have noticed a few things…
+ The taskbar is amazing. I guess I never realized how little I actually needed the old task bar until now. I am still on the fence about grouping but am trying to force myself to radical change by adopting the “move it to the side” campaign. Essentially this includes running the taskbar in its default 7 state and moving it to either side of the monitor. While I find myself going to click at the bottom of the screen sometimes, my efficiency has not dropped. I can still find applications easily and quickly. However this is not a usual circumstance yet as I have not bloated up the drive with all my software.
+ The explorer got some major improvements since Vista. When I go into work I actually dread using XP. The explorer in XP is horrendous compared to that of Vista and the latter is like a retarded stepchild of Se7en’s beautiful explorer. My favorite part of the new bits? Favorites! Finally Microsoft has removed the useless built-in sidebar and allowed us to add our own important folders. My only hope now is that every application (HINT HINT Adobe!) will use this format! [b]Update:[/b] Bjoern says you can add your favorites in Vista by adding links to the “C:\Users\
+ Libraries. They may be a basic implementation but boy are they powerful and useful. Imagine all of your stuff (that’s right I said stuff) located in one virtual spot despite being located physically throughout the drive. My first step with libraries was to create a Logs library for quickly viewing logs of my favorite applications. It removes the need to step through hundreds of directories when I need access to them.
+ The small stuff. People are saying this is Vista SP2 and “what Vista should have been” and they are right. For me it is the attention to detail that makes Windows 7 so great. Being able to see the desktop without losing window locations (Aero Peek) or the sliding animation of the thumbnail viewer. The biggest attention to detail I have seen? Standardization. Microsoft is a large company with hundreds (if not thousands) of pieces of software and naturally these were not very standardized. It is killing the company very quietly because of what Apple did, and I don’t agree with that either. Windows 7 takes a good step in a good direction with the inclusion of the Ribbon in more places and the semi-standard toolbar theme (found originally in Vista’s explorer). There are thousands of more things for me to discover and cover, so I will just leave them to you to find.
+ The bug fixing. I am going to touch on this not because of 7 directly but rather because of what Vista did. After using Vista for so long having to go back to XP is just flat out an annoying experience. To the point above, the little things matter and the bugs in XP are some of the most annoying bugs. Thankfully they have been addressed in Vista, and expanded upon in Se7en. What bugs am I talking about? Multi-monitor support in XP was pretty horrid; at work when I switch to an application via the taskbar it will randomly pop up a window on the other monitor. Let’s say I have IE open on one and Visual Studio on the other. When I click to goto VS, IE gets covered by another application! Hopefully you can see how annoying this can be. The other major bug that irritates me every day? The natural ability of XP to steal focus away from you just when you start typing. Today I am typing in IE as Visual Studio opens when all of a sudden my typing stops making words. What happened? Well of course XP switched focus to Visual Studio! Thankfully neither of these have been a problem since Vista.
- The instability. Yes, I know, it is a beta. The problem is that it is the ONLY beta we are seeing. After this it is supposedly RC0 and then RTM. Hopefully they can sort out the instability problems in that timeframe. For the record I got a BSOD this morning. “PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGED_AREA” or something to that effect. In fact I get this sometimes in Vista and think it is due to my system rather than the OS. I ran memory tests and they all passed so I am thoroughly confused. Oh well.
- IE8. The reason I like Chrome is because it is basic, lightweight, fast, simple. How many other adjectives do you want Microsoft? You need to either focus on a lightweight version of IE or fix it. IE8 crashes more times than I hit the A key today. It is likely to crash while writing this. And I know, beta software. The problem is Beta 1 on Vista wasn’t nearly this bad! The worst part is that a single tab crash still brings down every single tab. I thought a major reason for going the modular route was to prevent that Microsoft?
- The backwards compatibility. It is 2009 Microsoft and I suggest that for your next OS you drop 32bit all together. I also suggest you drop the “Program Files” directory for “Programs” or better yet, virtualize them and make them fast. Stop supporting these legacy systems, increase the phase out program. Make Windows leaner, meaner and ready to fight toe to toe with tomorrow’s OS, not an OS designed and developed 11 years ago.
- Integration will be the key to success for any OS in the future. Google and Apple know this and have built their platforms around it. Microsoft is, as usual, late to the game. While Live Services has been picking up the pace in taking on this attitude, the OS is a far ways away from full integration with the Microsoft “platform.” Think of all the hardware you support from Zune to WiMo to the 360. These things should all be tightly wound into your services and more importantly your OS. They should feel and look connected rather than this Games-For-Windows-Live-is-really-Windows-Live-is-really-Xbox-Live-kind-of-I-think-sort-of-complicated-web-bullcrap.