New Toys, More Entertainment?
Previously we took a quick glance at the new Windows 7 environment, its speed and handful upgrades. This time I will take you for a ride through new Windows 7 entertainment toys and powerful upgrades to the systems main tools.

When Microsoft introduced Windows XP our way of operating the computer was supposed to change. All the necessary tools and task have been grouped into one panel with quick access, powerful core for maximum performance and cool new look. But that was about it. It was a revolutionary system at its time, but we expected more. In 2007 giant from Redmond released Windows Vista with plenty of upgrades, lots of new tools, and tons of fun. But the system was slow, had its own mind and finally was rejected by the business sector. Apart from new look this was just an updated and patched XP. Even new toys were left on the shelves because they were not as useful as we could expect (for example SideBar). How is the new Windows 7 doing then?

Apart from completely new taskbar and its functionality and an upgraded Start Menu, probably the first part you will check after that is the Personalization panel. It has been revamped form the top to the bottom, now it has new possibilities like for example Desktop Slide Show hidden in Background properties. When we choose the wallpaper we can pick not only one but many and set the background to change after specified period of time. The system will automatically change wallpaper on the desktop, it can even shuffle it. It's a major breakthrough because before we had to use special software, frequently on shareware basis which only added to our budget. Now Windows does it all in a simple and efficient way, we have more control over its look and feel. Also the Sidebar was discontinued and now we can put all our gadgets directly on the desktop. It doesn't change much, but at least now we have more space on the desktop. Read the rest of this entry »

New look, new feel, new possibilities?
With the beginning of January Microsoft has given us a great post-holiday gift: a beta version of new OS - Windows 7. After over two weeks of testing we bring you the results of the long awaiting product since the release of Windows XP with Service Pack 2. Give it up for Windows 7.

First thing you will notice after putting the DVD into the drive is the new installer system. Whole installation process takes place in completely new environment, we can forget about the keyboard-only input. After booting the system from the DVD the only thing we have to do is set up our location and default locale for our system (including keyboard) and the rest is up to the installer. The new installer is even willing to let us through the setup process without putting Windows License Key; we can do that later, after signing in to our account. The installation is stress-free, no questions asked, and is even faster than on Vista. Whole process takes about 40-60 minutes depending on the speed of your hard drive and CPU's performance.

In my case the test platform was Intel Centrino 2 Duo T7300 ~ 2.00 GHz, 2 GB DDR-667 RAM, GeForce-M 8600GT 256MB and 160 GB Seagate HDD. Microsoft says that the new system should consume fewer resources, be faster and more efficient than Vista. You can feel that just after the installation process when Windows 7 is starting for the first time. Preparation for the first start takes less time than normal boot on Vista; this is partially because my laptop has integrated Flash Cache Logic Chip from Intel (1GB) that serves as a Ready Boost component. The performance gain in the new system from Microsoft is really visible, not only because of the booting times, but also just after signing in to our account. Vista is well-known for its lack of performance during the whole shell-loading process. If we have several applications being open on autostart basis, to start working we have to wait about 2-5 minutes until every single service and program will be fully loaded.

In Windows 7, developers from Microsoft analyzed the problem and implemented very good algorithms to prevent the system from loading absolutely everything into the memory at once during system start. Now before you type your password the most important core components will be already loaded so it gives plenty of time to load the first tier of software (services and system files like Taskbar or Explorer), just after that system stabilizes and loads second tier of software (programs, components, etc). It is surprising because total system boot takes about 25 seconds and loading the Desktop takes another 30 seconds. It’s much faster than in Vista, but optimizations went even further. Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft has released the first public beta of their upcoming operating system Windows 7 on January 9. Only a few users were able to download the public beta of the operating system on that day as Microsoft was not expecting the high demand. This could have been caused by the announcement that Microsoft would only provide 2.5 million beta keys. That limit could have caused the high traffic to the Windows 7 Beta site that effectively brought it to a standstill.

Two days later Microsoft made the announcement that they would lift the 2.5 million Windows 7 Beta key limit so that every user would have the opportunity to download and test the upcoming operating system. Downloads of the Windows 7 Beta would be available thru January 24th giving all users enough time to download the beta.

Before we start explaining how to download the beta we would like to point out that it is not intended for use in a productive environment. Microsoft explicitly states that the Windows 7 Beta should only be installed on test systems to avoid data loss or other complications.

The Beta will expire on August 1st. This should not be a problem though as it is expected that Microsoft will release a Windows 7 release candidate before that date which could be used to upgrade the beta. Some even suspect that the final release of Windows 7 will be available in July 2009.

Downloading the Beta
Users have to make sure that their computer system is meeting the recommended specs before downloading and installing Windows 7 Beta:

*1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor
*1 GB of system memory
*16 GB of available disk space
*Support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128 MB memory (to enable the Aero theme)
*DVD-R/W Drive
*Internet access (to download the Beta and get updates)

It should also be noted that Windows 7 will be downloaded as an ISO image which has to be burned to make an install DVD before the operating system can be installed.

The best way to download the Windows 7 Beta is to open the website in Microsoft Internet Explorer as this will ensure that the official Microsoft download manager can be used to download the Windows 7 Beta image.

The beta is available as a 32-bit and 64-bit version and five respective four languages. The 32-bit version is available in English, German, Arabic, Hindi and Japanese while the 64-bit version comes in the same languages except Hindi.

Just scroll down to the bottom of the page that is opening and select the version of Windows 7 from the pulldown menu.

A click on the Go button will display the login page for Windows Live. It is required to have a Windows Live account to download the beta. Read the rest of this entry »

The Windows 7 Beta which was distributed by Microsoft to selected testers only in the last days was leaked by one MSDN tester to various P2P networks. The beta 1 of Windows 7 with the build number 7000 is now a highly traded item on various platforms including the Bittorrent network. Various popular Bittorrent sites provide access to the torrent of the Windows 7 Beta release, the biggest with thousands of seeders and leechers.

The version that has been leaked is the official Windows 7 Beta that Microsoft intended to release to selected testers in December and to the general public in January 2009. The leak confirms that build 7000 of Windows 7 is indeed the beta 1 release.

The full build name is 7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD. The Windows 7 Beta 1 build that is circulating around is a 32-bit edition of Windows 7 Ultimate. The release has a size of 2.44 Gigabytes and is not supplied with a beta key as this would obviously blow the cover of the leaker of the build.

Users who have already downloaded and tested previous builds of Windows 7 will find that there are not many noticeable changes in the beta build in comparison to those builds that leaked at WinHec Beijing last month.

The good news for those users is that an upgrade from Windows 7 build 6956 to build 7000 should work flawlessly unlike previous updates who did not seem to work that well.

It has to be noted that the new build of Windows 7 is an evaluation copy just like the other builds were. This means that the version will expire on 2009/7/2 if a product key has been used to activate the version. Not supplying a product key will enable a test version that can be evaluated for 30 days before it will stop working.