Business On Software

Image from SoulSense (Oscar Ordenes) via Flickr

It has only been a couple of days playing with the Windows 7 public beta, but I have tears in my eyes.  Tears of relief, that this debacle called Vista can finally be put down and out of its misery.  Microsoft has finally hit it out of the park with this one!

What is different?  Well, visually there is nothing really new to speak of, but I am finding the new taskbar style a lot better, and I like the thumbnail previews of open windows as you slide your mouse around the taskbar.  As someone who has worn out the [Windows Key-D] combination on his keyboard, I love the fact that when you move the mouse to the lower right corner of the screen, ALL your open windows are made transparent so you can see the desktop background and your little applets etc.

The biggest change I see is the speed.  Speed!  Things are finally positively snappy around here.  Click on anything and the windows blitz onto the screen.  No staring at an hourglass or an empty frame for 10 seconds or so as I do now with Vista.  Even opening My Network Places which used to take upwards of 20 seconds now happens near instantly.  This finally feels like a Formula 1 racer zipping around the track, instead of an overloaded WWII Bedford truck chugging around a mud track.

It used to be with Vista, I would get an idea or inspiration, but by the time I tried opening Notepad, or a new Outlook email or any other simple program, 30 seconds or more would go past, and I would rapidly lose my train of thought, as the operating system took up all my time and attention, instead of doing what operating systems should do, which is get the heck out of the way and let me get on with my job!

My biggest question is – Why could they not achieve this with Vista in the first place?  I mean, nothing has been taken out here.  It is still the same underlying OS, but it runs rings around ‘original’ Vista.  I tend to agree with Zoli Erdos that Microsoft should really be giving Windows7 to all current Vista owners and call it ‘Vista Final’.  The letter of apology to every user would also be a nice touch, but I think we have a snowflake’s chance in hell of either two scenarios happening!