Media: 7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso

Microsoft today hopefully enters the first public BETA phase for its upcoming Windows 7 operating system, a successor to the two+ year old Windows Vista. I myself have been using graphical operating systems since at least 1986's Amiga computers and almost all of Microsoft's Window's for PC's since Windows 3.1.

I've used the OS for two days so far and here are my impressions.

A couple reboots, then username and password prompts appeared.  Then the desktop appeared, looking uncluttered.  My monitor has a minor bug in the firmware and sends two available resolutions to the computer, and Windows 7 correctly chooses the first (1920x1080) which I was unable to force to 1920x1200 until after I installed ATI's newest Catalyst drivers version 8.12 for Vista.  This went smoothly.

Sound drivers from Vista worked (Sound Blaster Audigy 2) but sometimes audio cuts out completely for an unknown reason.

After surfing the web, trying a game (UT3), installing Folding@Home for ATI GPU, watching some YouTube videos, sending e-mails,  Avast antivirus, etc etc, it seems to me that Microsoft has a winner here.  Performance 'seems' at least as good as Vista.  Is this really a beta or a 'release candidate?'  Windows 7 seems to be more focused on the user experience from the start instead of Vista's approach of using a lot of resources earlier to make apps faster later.

Microsoft continues to evolve the user interface. The changes are modest refinements a little similar to what the KDE 4 project is doing with their project.  If you hang your mouse over the program on the taskbar, you'll get a preview.  You can also 'shake' windows with the drag bar to minimize the other windows.  Little things like that. There are also a few GUI annoyances that continue from Vista.  I don't like how the "All Programs" menu works for example.

I've so far been unable to disable the 'network' systray icon.   I'm sure it can be done somehow though. 

Also if you have a dual boot computer, you are probably familiar with how the Windows file system, NTFS, uses security associated with user accounts on files and folders.  It's very cumbersome and unintuitive to get the NTFS file permissions set so you can use files from your other boot (Vista/XP/etc).  Windows 2000 and NT were straightforward but now Microsoft tries to make things less confusing for novices by hiding things under 'advanced' buttons, popup windows, and alternate tabs when you really need an advanced dialog that gives you full NTFS security control in one place.  Maybe things like this are available in Microsoft's "Resource kit" but I think the default OS install needs an advanced user's interface available as an option.

One disagreement I have with Microsoft's continued tradition of hiding a file's extension from us (by default) so if we get a virus attachment in an e-mail that is named 'iloveyou.jpg.exe' it will look like 'iloveyou.jpg' in explorer.  We can unknowingly join a malicious botnet because we thought we were opening a photo but really it was a trojan or virus. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botnet)

The OS seems to be a nice evolution of Windows Vista.  I'm not sure if Microsoft is doing themselves a favor by not letting everyone upgrade to Windows 7 for free because I think it is cheaper to support one OS than to continue to support Vista.  I would prefer Windows 7 be considered more like a super 'service pack' or 'plus pack' for continued support.  Having yet another version of Windows adds a lot of complexities to the dizzingly complicated PC platform for not only users, but also developers and hardware manufacturers.  We need simplification of Windows from Microsoft.  Developers, there's yet another Windows platform to thoroughly test and debug when releasing your software.

In the case of free upgrades, take DirectX 11 as an example.  It is included with Windows 7 but Microsoft is planning on making it available for free to Windows Vista users.  Likewise I don't see a compelling reason to not making the whole OS a free upgrade.

One thing is for sure, if Windows 7 had broken as much hardware driver compatibility as Vista did, Windows 7 would have been greatly hindered.  Thankfully, Microsoft is allowing the Vista platform to evolve with Windows 7 and not trying to change as much.

You'll be paying and also you'll be presented with many choices of which version of Windows 7.  I'm giving a thumbs up to Windows 7 and a thumbs down to Microsoft's continuation Window's many choices  for consumers can confuse many people and also many minor incompatibilities between versions (of Windows).

Editors Note: jj is a contributing writer and reviewer for CodeCreations.com