Love it or hate it, it is very likely you will use a Windows based PC at some point during your working week.
Recently Microsoft officially named the new version of Windows as Windows 7. Apparently the decision to use the name Windows 7 is about simplicity and Microsoft VP, Mike Nash, was quoted saying:
The decision to use the name Windows 7 is about simplicity. Simply put, this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore Windows 7 just makes sense.
Coming up with an all-new 'aspirational' name does not do justice to what we are trying to achieve, which is to stay firmly rooted in our aspirations for Windows Vista, while evolving and refining the substantial investments in platform technology in Windows Vista into the next generation of Windows.
Windows 7 will ship in both client and server versions with the client versions available in both 32-bit and 64-bit editions.
It is generally regarded that Windows 7 will not be a brand new version of Windows, it is more of an improved version of Vista.
Yesterday Microsoft gave an extensive demo of the new version of Windows, Windows 7.
Apparently the new OS will run fine on a 1GHz netbook with 1GB of RAM, but I will believe that when I see it.
Some key points via Engadget from the keynote include:
- Obviously, the big news is the new taskbar, which forgoes text for icons and has new "jump lists" of app controls and options you can access with a right-click. You can select playlists in Media Player, for example. Super cool: when you scrub over the icons, all the other app windows go transparent so you can "peek" at the windows you're pointing at.
- Gadgets now appear on the desktop -- the sidebar has been killed. That makes more sense for all those laptop owners out there with limited screen space, and you can still see gadgets anytime by peeking at the desktop, rendering all other windows transparent.
- Window resizing and management now happens semi-automatically: dragging a window to the top of the screen maximizes it, pulling it down restores; dragging a window to the edges auto-resizes it to 50% for quick tiling. Nifty.
- The system tray now only displays what you explicitly say it should -- everything else is hidden, and the controls have been streamlined.
- User Account Control settings are now much more fine-grained -- you can set them by app and by level of access.
- They demoed multitouch features on an HP TouchSmart PC -- it was pretty cool, although the usual nagging "what is this good for / that'll get old fast" concerns weren't really addressed. The Start menu gets 25 percent bigger when using touch to make it easier to handle, and apps will all get scroll support automatically. There's also a giant on-screen predictive keyboard. Again -- could be amazing, but we won't know until it's out in the wild.
- We've always known Microsoft intends Windows 7 to run on netbooks, and we got a small taste during the PDC keynote: Windows SVP Steve Sinofsky held up his "personal" laptop running Windows 7, an unnamed 1GHz netbook with 1GB of RAM that looked a lot like an Eee PC, and said that it still had about half its memory free after boot. (We're guessing it was running a VIA Nano, given the announcement this morning and since most Atoms run at 1.6GHz.)
- At the other end of the scale, Windows 7 supports machines with up to 256 CPUs.
- Multiple-monitor management is much-improved, as is setting up projectors -- it's a hotkey away. Remote Desktop now works with multiple monitors as well.
- Media Center has been tweaked as well -- it looks a lot more like the Zune interface. There's also a new Mini Guide when watching video, and a new Music Wall album artwork screensaver that kicks in when you're playing music.
- Devs got a pre-beta today; a "pretty good" feature complete beta is due early next year. No word at all on when it'll be released to market apart from that "three years from Vista" date we've known forever.
Read more at Arstechnica, Mcrosoftpdc and Technologizer
