In this article we look at what is assumed to be the final Beta 1 version of Windows 7 and try to figure out together what it means for users, Microsoft and the tech industry.

PR and the supposed ‘leak’

It should be clear to all of us that these versions floating around various torrent sites – and especially the beta 1 – are carefully planned by public relations. And it’s brilliant. Why?

• Because they reach their target audience, people with tech skills who are still enthusiastic about Windows and are taking time to download, install and test the operating system. Most of them have blogs and will surely post something about it and creating hype for the next release.
• Zero distribution costs via peer-to-peer networks; no responsibility for download speed or failures.
• Press coverage on all the major blogs with little adverse consequences; even if the review is negative – the release is not official.
• A large, no-consequences, zero logistics, no expense beta test; Judging by ThePirateBay seeder/leecher ratio and the time of upload, more than 30 000 tech savvy people are running Windows 7 beta 1 right now and probably submitting bugs, crash reports and hardware information.
• Frameworks inside Windows 7 allow remote deactivation or ‘crippling’ via de WGA scheme. Your copy of Windows 7 works because Microsoft lets you. And they know a new machine is online the minute Windows connects to the internet.

And there are probably even more reasons why Microsoft with its PR firm decided to test-run the beta code.

‘Think alike’ or ‘Think different’

People are fast to say ‘Windows Hater’ or  ‘Apple Fanboy’. That’s because we like to judge and not be judged. And another thing, somebody should call Obama and tell him that Windows needs Change and Innovation, not merely a copy machine. Really.

I’m been a long time Windows user and still use Windows XP for publishing and testing applications; the rest of the time I use various linux flavours (Linux Mint right now). The reasons behind my choice are  simple and straightforward: security, stability, performance and low-cost(99% of software for linux is free and has enough features to be usable on a day to day basis). Spending at least a couple hundred dollars every year or so on new licenses and upgrades isn’t appealing, especially in these times).

Watching the development for the past few years, I’ve noticed myself a trend within the UI team. Frankly, they’re trying to hard to emulate as much of the Mac OS interface as possible. As I see it now, the only thing left for them to do is the Finder.

I’m not saying it’s necessarily a bad thing; the Windows version of the Dock is in some aspects better than its Mac counterpart – the Live Preview feature allows you to quickly see what window you want to open.

The ‘fire up your copiers’ mantra has brought a slew of small improvements, but mostly we’re enjoying features Mac OS X has had for years; which brings up the question: Why wouldn’t you want to get these feature directly from the innovator? Most will say price, and Apple products are notorious for being expensive. Leo Laporte, the host of the TWIT podcast network, said in a ‘This Week in Tech’ show:

[The Mac] is like the BMW of computers.

In previous versions of Windows we had to jump through hoops in order to connect to a wireless network. In a beta version of Microsoft’s latest operating system we have a feature implemented by Apple back in 2005 – with it’s Mac OS X Tiger release. The list continues with Sharing, Control Panel UI breadcrumb navigation and many other small things like instant search from the desktop(or Spotlight).

And I’m not the only one fighting this battle; this issue has been brought to attention by many other respected journalists such as David Pogue and Paul Thurrott.

Under the Hood

Leaving the UI ‘bling’ aside, Microsoft has done some work under the hood – it feels snappier than Vista and is in the ballpark with Windows XP. The boot-up time is also slightly reduced – 8 seconds faster than XP on average.

Like any ‘old-timer’ will tell you, Windows machines slow down over time as cruft accumulates, even if you pay attention to applications and disk cleanup/defragmentation. Therefore, comparing it after just 3 days of use isn’t exactly fair to the 6 month old XP SP3.

Aside from subjective ‘feeling’ I can’t relate in an article exact code improvements – and it wouldn’t be much fun either. The bottom line is that you’re not going to see a revolution – and instead just a slight evolution over Vista. It seems to me that they made just the necessary changes to accommodate the advent of netbooks and future touchscreen devices.

• Improvements to the user interface; notably the transformed taskbar and various small changes throughout the system.
• Slightly reduced installation footprint; even the installation disc is smaller 2.75Gb to 2.44Gb for the x86 version; the same hardware requirements as Vista, 40Gb hard drive and 1Ghz CPU.
• An improved bootloader which handles out of the box multiple windows operating systems on the same machine.
• Smart folders feature, which gathers photos, music and other kinds of data without needing to manually move them. No new filesystem, however. WinFS is now a separate project and there no indication that it will be integrated in Windows soon.

Conclusion

While this article certainly started as a review of Microsoft’s work for the past couple years, it ended as a rant towards their attitude. While copying features from competitors is the way industry works in general, a big company like Microsoft with its huge Research and Development budgets should be expected to innovate not merely copy from  a smaller competitor.

Look how many things we’re using from the last PDC!*

*Paul Thurrott on This Week in Tech podcast; Profesional Developers Conference – microsoftpdc.com;

For me, Windows 7 is an even bigger disappointment than Windows Vista; admittedly had its faults but was a little more focused on implementing new security procedures and creating various frameworks for later development.

Windows 7 is sadly just a marketing ploy, with little added value from Vista and which certainly won’t urge people to fork 200$ per computer.

I’d really appreciate hearing from our readers how they feel about Windows development, their hopes and if they plant to jump ship to linux or Mac when they buy their next computer.