I haven't used Windows in years, but this looks like a significant step forward. Its always easier to criticize, but to me this looks like Microsoft is 'getting it' and going to a lighter, simpler, less fussy UI. Good for everyone.

Based on the trend so far, I propose the following, which I believe to be very optimistic:

Limit (t, now to infinity) Windows --> KDE

well the networkmanager clone could be copying either gnome or kde. But the dock is more an acorn / os x thing

This is pretty good for Microsoft. There's finally a feature in the Windows UI that I would like to steal for my Ubuntu machine:

"Dragging a window to the top of the screen maximizes it automatically; dragging it off the top of the screen restores it. Dragging a window to the left or right edge of the screen resizes the window so that it takes 50% of the screen. With this, a pair of windows can be quickly docked to each screen edge to facilitate interaction between them. "

Haha, that's pretty funny: I use Windows all day, and "Dragging a window to the top of the screen maximizes it automatically" will be the absolute first thing I disable. How is that useful on 24/30" screens?

Yeah, I already have periodic problems with metacity's "dragging a maximize window unmaximizes it; dragging to the top of another screen maximizes it there" feature, when I over/undershoot a panel or window buttons.

I'll be curious to see how that works for us dual screeners.

I have to say, once again I'm unimpressed. Most of these changes can be summed up as copies of Expose, smart folders, and file previews from Mac OS, and toolbar thumbnail previews straight out of Ubuntu. Oh, and moving some desktop apps online, so instead of just communicating with an online service, now the whole app has gone Java Webstart on us. Nice...

And if there's nothing else that's really new under the hood since Vista, as he said, what exactly is so new and bold about Windows 7? Seems like a "me too" grab, and a rather weak one at that.

I totally agree that these "new" features seem like a rip from other OSs.

I think the new and bold thing about Windows 7 is that it doesn't suck...as much. You gotta look at it from the perspective of a typical non-techie users. My mom had Vista and whens she needed help it took me quite a while to figure out all the crazy control panels and cryptic hidden settings. She once even deleted her network connection and couldn't get it back. Windows 7 will hopefully reduce the clutter and make it easier to use than Vista.

Hopefully. I'd love to see "Cleaned up Control Panel that finally makes sense" in that feature list... ;) Vista wireless setup is ridiculous.

Vista's new network and sharing center is probably the worst thing about it. Otherwise I like the OS better than XP, but that is a disaster. I don't notice it so much on my desktop, since I set it and then forget it, but on my laptop it's a constant pain.

Well, the under-the-hood tweaks were exactly what made Vista a disaster! So I'm glad they're leaving most of that alone and polishing the UI.

I guess we'll see if Apple can get that right with their next OS being almost purely under-the-hood changes to improve speed.

I personally think it is too early to appreciate or criticize it. All we have seen is early screenshots, we can't judge a book by its cover nor we can judge an OS by its early screenshots.

Looks like they managed to copy some simplicity from OS X. Good for them and good for the users.

I'll shortcut this thread quickly with the following:

GeOS MacOS Classic TOS Amiga Workbench Xerox PARC

/thread.

They also copied the dock and expose.

And Apple copied the dock from RISC OS...

<mother> Imitation is the fondest form of flattery. </mother>

yeah because Apple invented simplicity? and who cares? as long Apple doesn't sell its OS for PCs I don't care.

Actually it looks like they imitated some features and solutions from OS X, not just simplicity per se. For instance the dock, how the user can control the menubar (taskbar in Windows) and how you select a wireless network. By Redmond running their photocopiers ;) Windows inherits some simplicity. I'm drawing those conclusions just from looking at the pictures. I wonder if they are starting to "get it" now.

I think it's great. When I am going to run Windows once in a while in the future, it will feel more like OS X.

nobody's saying it's a bad thing.

The review hasn't addressed the most important question: will it run smoothly on 512MB of RAM, the maximum I'm willing to give it under VirtualBox.

Currently I often run two instances of XP with about 300MB RAM each and they're quite fast. Vista was built with an assumption that everybody has at least 2GB with half of that going to Vista itself and another half - to Internet Explorer. I hope they learned that some users have a lot less RAM and they like running other software too.

At PDC today during the keynote, they said they were running the current builds (which are not completely optimized yet) on netbooks with 1GB of RAM without issues. It's not exactly what you want, but its a step in that direction and it may get there.

I'd like to see Apple address that too in Snow Leopard - Leopard runs like a dog under VMWare which makes cross-platform development a pain.

I also want to know this. Is there a magical hacked os x that runs under virtualization?

The license for OS X Server lets you run it virtualized. I don't remember if they have actually released the products yet, and I'm too lazy to look, but both Parallels and Vmware have been working on it.

How do you manage to run Leopard in VMware?

I visited piratebay and used a pre cooked image

I doubt they care that much. Even the real low end computers from Dell (~$300) ship with 2GB of RAM now.

Well... the cheapest notebook from Dell is actually much closer to $400. It has exactly 512MB of RAM. And it does not run Windows, it runs Ubuntu. They better care about that.

Yeah, they have the mini notebooks that are pretty underpowered for that price. However, the regular 15" notebooks are about $500 and ship with 2GB of RAM. Its also worth noting none of the mini notebooks even ship with Vista (Ubuntu or XP are your options).

As long as Windows 7 runs well on 2GB most people won't care. One of the reasons vista reception was so poor was that 1GB RAM simply didn't cut it, but that's what every low end PC shipped with.

Everyone copies everyone else, if no one copied anyone else we would have 1 operating system, 1 car to drive, and 1 type of dessert cake to eat.

Anyway, I'm interested to see where Microsoft takes this product. I hope Ozzie (SP?) is helping move Microsoft in a new, better direction. Science knows since after the 2003 suites they've been making worse crap than usual.

> By default, new tray icons are hidden and invisible; the icons are only displayed if explicitly enabled.

So now it's even easier for crapware to sneak onto your system and steal all your resources if you don't remain vigilant and constantly check the control panel for what tray apps are running?! Where do I sign?

Crapware can always just not show a tray icon and keep on running in the background. Preventing the installation of crapware is a very, very different problem to solve than putting the user in control of the user experience.

Sorry. I was meaning more along the lines of things like Quicktime, Real Player, and other such programs the user has installed as a means to an end, but now can't easily figure out that it's always running and starts to wonder why their brand new PC is running slow...

"Windows 7 will not contain anything like the kind of far-reaching architectural modifications that Microsoft made with Windows Vista."

Vista already looks great. It's what's under the hood that matters; I'm not excited.

They're saying Windows 7 isn't going to bring wide-sweeping architectural changes that break backwards compatibility, but it IS a stated goal to make "under the hood" changes such as improving boot times, general performance, etc.

Looks a lot like Kubuntu. I like it.