Windows 7 Beta Observations and Screenshots

[alsiladka]

I have been using the beta for the past 1 week now, and these are a few of my observations and some screenshots showcasing the unique changes or new stuff i found interesting. I had started this thread on a different forum, but thought of sharing the effort here too. Hope nobody minds.

The observations and screenshots are all random, no sequence or order.

Observations-

* The Notes gadget is missing. But the Sticky Notes app is supposed to take over the Notes gadget. It is better than Notes gadget, but stays in the taskbar all the time!

* The install size is really really small. When i last checked, after using it for a day, installing Windows Live Essentials, Nokia apps, Anti Virus, Messengers, The space used by the system was just 10GB.

* The Internet games which were present in XP have made a comeback.

* Wordpad supports DocX documents, but does not support Doc Documents. I think this is a very smart movie, and will probably make the biggest push in the new format being used by the users.

* iTunes works fine on Windows 7. Only issue i had was that while adding tracks to my library, the RAM usage went 100MB+! I uninstalled it soon after as i do not use iTunes.

* Norton AV 09 needs to be installed in Vista compatibility mode otherwise it does not start after the first restart.

* There 3 new regional themes hidden inside the "Globalization folder" which you can use just by opening them once! Now why not provide them for all the users! They are just a different colored Aero theme with a different set of Wallpapers slideshow.

* The uPnP works out of the box i.e you can control the Windows Media Player using your N-series phones without the need for a media server application. I could not get this to work on Vista! I played tracks on my N85 via Windows Media Player.

* DivX support has been added out of the box. Though some of the movies still need proper DivX codec, most probably cause of different encoders used.

* Bluetooth dongles now work out of the box by default, without the need for IVT Bluesoleil drivers or software! Though the IVT suite will offer enhaced functionality, but atleast now you will be able to use your bluetooth even if you do not want to install the whole suite!

* Task Manager now shows the amount of Free & Cached memory. This might not make a difference to of us who know what superfetching is, but i have many friends who grumbled about vista using up whatever memory is offered to it when it was just launched! This is a better approach even otherwise.

* The taskbar buttons light up in a shade matching to the color of the icon when the mouse hovers on the buttons, which looks nice and makes it easier to differentiate between them. So the uTorrent buttons lights up in a green shade, Firefox button lights up in orange, Opera in Red, IE in blue and similar. A very nice touch

* A whitish background illumination follows your mouse on the taskbar buttons.

Added January 8th-

* WMP also plays MP4 and 3gp videos be default,Without the need for quicktime. This, combined with DivX support, shall go a long way in making the devices work easily and withouth much effort on Windows 7. Since most of the Digital Cams and Handy Cams record videos in these formats only, supporting these formats out of the box would mean immediate playback of these videos as soon as the devices are plugged in!

Added Janurary 10

* Fastest speeds while copying to external drive. I am getting 33.5kbps while copying files from my computer to my external. This is 10% than Vista, and i dont remember XPs speed, but i dont think it was this fast.

* The progress bar indicator background in the taskbar buttons is another example of productivy tweaks incorporated in Windos 7. To those complaining that XP is lighter in RAM usage and in raw bechmarks, it is such tweaks which need to be taken into consideration. The RAM usage and the raw benchmarks would take a hit due to cosmetic changes like these, but in real world use, in XP, this would mean a 2 3 second each time you want to check the progress, but over here, you are not wasting your 3 seconds having to deviate from your current task at hand and checking the progress!

* "Safely Remove Hardware" functionality has also received the much needed easy of use upgrade. I am attaching screenshots to make it clear.

* "New Folder" button is back in the Explorer task pane, after it had been removed in Vista. I missed this small button a lot in Vista!

* Some new control panel applets like Location Sensor, Credentials hint at some interesting possibilities once they are made use of! Screenshots attached.

* Even after nearly 2 weeks of use, i have to add that the menus still open as quickly as they did the first day! Really really responsive!

* The Ribbon interface in the Paint application is really a huge improvement for the application, i just hope they would have added more functionality to Paint. Check the screenshots.

Screenshots

Support for burning disc images has been added.

Wordpad supports opening DocX documents

4 themes have been provided out of the box. The themes even include Slideshows using Wallpapers based on a particular theme.

The Disk Defragmenting tool shows how much the disk is fragmented.

An example of how the jumplists will provide enhanced functionality

Drivers installed for my Bluesoleil Bluetooth dongle.

Bluetooth dongle in the Devices.

Free, Available & Cached memory now properly displayed.

A better source viewer, though it is still flawed and does not dissect the html code properly as you will see. I am not sure if this is a IE8 addon, or a Windows 7 addon.

The New Menu in Paint makes thing visually clear for the user.

Easy to understand visual representation of the different kinds of brushes!

The new safely remove hardware popup makes it clear which devices are attached. No more removals by mistake!

A proper safely remove hardware applet!

Explorer now tells you which program is using a file instead of just saying that the file cannot be denied because it is open in another program!

List of formats supported by Windows Media Player out of the box!

Sensors which can detect the Location and Orientation! A smarter AI is not a distant future now ;)

A few of my credentials were already recorded in this manager like my Windows Live ID. Lets see how much of a difference does this make to out computing.

Probably will search for Windows 7 computers in the network and provide easy assitance setup.

I have never used Media Center, but updated guides is always welcome :)

Edited January 10, 2009 by alsiladka

[dcoaster]

I absolutely HATE the new Sticky Notes App.... I LOVED the notes gadget. having the sticky notes program on the taskbar all the time is VERY annoying. and there are very few customizations for it...

Sorry, just a rant. ;)

[DSLJay]

I absolutely HATE the new Sticky Notes App.... I LOVED the notes gadget. having the sticky notes program on the taskbar all the time is VERY annoying. and there are very few customizations for it...

Sorry, just a rant. ;)

I have tried the new sticky note app. For some people, I think it will be handy. Personally, I kinda like it.

[Thirtythree]

Sticky Notes copy the NoteZilla app...

http://www.conceptworld.com/NoteZilla/

[Ci7]

i prefer the old note Gadget

way more flexible .

i hope we can have it back somewho !

[alsiladka]

i prefer the old note Gadget

way more flexible .

i hope we can have it back somewho !

I Guess simply copying it from any vista installation would work. Dont have Vista installed right now, anybody care to help :)

[thealexweb]

Nice to see Docx supported out of the box.

[Cool Hand Luke]

Nice to see Docx supported out of the box.

Don't give the old doc good credit just you yet! Us ATI Fanboys is a having sooooome issues with Divx and our Radeon cards where

playing with Divx Web Player results in instant crash of both Firefox and IE.

I have found a work around for anybody else having the same problem. I installed Divx Web Player 1.4.0 Beta 2 and all is well for now.

[ToneKnee]

Don't give the old doc good credit just you yet! Us ATI Fanboys is a having sooooome issues with Divx and our Radeon cards where

playing with Divx Web Player results in instant crash of both Firefox and IE.

I have found a work around for anybody else having the same problem. I installed Divx Web Player 1.4.0 Beta 2 and all is well for now.

Sounds like a codec problem?

[Ryan437]

I Guess simply copying it from any vista installation would work. Dont have Vista installed right now, anybody care to help :)

yes i can confirm that works just tried it simple copy of the folder from the vista gadget folder to win 7 and it worked

[Mathachew Veteran]

A better source viewer, though it is still flawed and does not dissect the html code properly as you will see. I am not sure if this is a IE8 addon, or a Windows 7 addon.

What exactly do you mean by dissecting the html code? About 95% what you're viewing in the source is JavaScript that lacks any formatting.

[neufuse Veteran]

What exactly do you mean by dissecting the html code? About 95% what you're viewing in the source is JavaScript that lacks any formatting.

That's pretty much what I was wondering also, because IE8 Beta shows the source like that too and it shows HTML formatted as it is in the document... java script like that can be any old way like its shown there...

[alsiladka]

Added another observation -

* WMP also plays MP4 and 3gp videos be default,Without the need for quicktime. This, combined with DivX support, shall go a long way in making the devices work easily and withouth much effort on Windows 7. Since most of the Digital Cams and Handy Cams record videos in these formats only, supporting these formats out of the box would mean immediate playback of these videos as soon as the devices are plugged in!

More screenshots and observations coming tommorow.

[Thirtythree]

Added another observation -

* WMP also plays MP4 and 3gp videos be default,Without the need for quicktime. This, combined with DivX support, shall go a long way in making the devices work easily and withouth much effort on Windows 7. Since most of the Digital Cams and Handy Cams record videos in these formats only, supporting these formats out of the box would mean immediate playback of these videos as soon as the devices are plugged in!

More screenshots and observations coming tommorow.

DivX 7 introduces support for H.264/x264 encoded MKV video as well.

http://www.divx.com/en/products/software/windows/divx

[alsiladka]

Updated the first post with various new screenshots and observations. Do check it again.

Added Janurary 10

* Fastest speeds while copying to external drive. I am getting 33.5kbps while copying files from my computer to my external. This is 10% than Vista, and i dont remember XPs speed, but i dont think it was this fast.

* The progress bar indicator background in the taskbar buttons is another example of productivy tweaks incorporated in Windos 7. To those complaining that XP is lighter in RAM usage and in raw bechmarks, it is such tweaks which need to be taken into consideration. The RAM usage and the raw benchmarks would take a hit due to cosmetic changes like these, but in real world use, in XP, this would mean a 2 3 second each time you want to check the progress, but over here, you are not wasting your 3 seconds having to deviate from your current task at hand and checking the progress!

* "Safely Remove Hardware" functionality has also received the much needed easy of use upgrade. I am attaching screenshots to make it clear.

* "New Folder" button is back in the Explorer task pane, after it had been removed in Vista. I missed this small button a lot in Vista!

* Some new control panel applets like Location Sensor, Credentials hint at some interesting possibilities once they are made use of! Screenshots attached.

* Even after nearly 2 weeks of use, i have to add that the menus still open as quickly as they did the first day! Really really responsive!

* The Ribbon interface in the Paint application is really a huge improvement for the application, i just hope they would have added more functionality to Paint. Check the screenshots.

[tomwarren Veteran]

Excellent over view :) Thanks for posting