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Little is known about most features on pre-beta Windows 7 version to be shown at PDC

Window's Vista hasn’t proven to be the wildly popular operating system that Microsoft had originally hoped. The early angst against the OS was so strong that Windows XP still hangs around and can be had on many new computer systems.

Microsoft is already getting Windows 7 ready to pick up where Vista floundered. DailyTech reported on October 14 that Microsoft had chosen to stick with Windows 7 as the official name for the coming operating system. Microsoft also said that it would show the OS to developers in pre-beta form at the Professional Developers Conference this week.

Ahead of the conference, some details are coming out that give an idea of some of the early features of Windows 7. According to ZDNet, the features being offered in the pre-beta version at the show include Action Center, StreamOn, a new animation framework, new task bar and shell, multi-touch and gesture recognition, ribbons, and improved Bluetooth support.

Many of the details of the features won’t be known until they are announced officially at the conference. Action Center is known to be a self-diagnosis tool to help repair problems with Windows 7. Hopefully, rather than Vista's tendency to simply tell users who have problems to get drivers from the hardware makers website or the error can’t be fixed, Action Center will actually offer a fix for errors.

The DeviceStage feature is one of the unknowns, though ZDNet speculates that it may be a sort of souped up Plug and Play since the feature will only work with Device Stage enabled peripherals. StreamOn is a way to control multimedia content on the PC, but how it works is unknown. The new animation framework is a question mark as well. Perhaps it's a built-in animation creator sort of like the built-in movie editing features.

Multi-touch and gesture recognition are features that have been associated and known for Windows 7 for a while. Improved Bluetooth support is self-explanatory, though the level of "improved support" is unknown.

The ribbon interface was seen in leaks from September of the M3 build of Windows 7. I haven’t personally seen the ribbons, but if they draw half the ire in Windows 7 as the ribbons did in Office 2007, I hope there is a way to go back to a more traditional Windows layout.

ZDNet reports that Microsoft is on track to deliver a public beta of Windows 7 by mid-December 2008 and the final version in 2009. That time frame would jibe with Asus CEO Jerry Chen's statement that Eee PC netbooks would ship with Windows 7 by mid-2009.

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Polished Vista
By segerstein on 10/27/2008 5:56:54 PM , Rating: 5
Win 7.0 is to be polished Vista akin to XP vs 2000. 2000 and Vista were the groundbreaking x.0 vestions, while XP and Win7.0 are the polished .1 versions of the kernel.

We all got really spoiled in the new millennium. Just compare it to the nineties, when we had transition from MS-DOS 5.0 to Windows 2000... The it was obvious that old machines cannot run new software well. This wisdom has been forgotten.

It's a mature industry now and the rules are changed. It's fine, I just hate ribbons...




RE: Polished Vista
By 9nails on 10/27/2008 10:30:28 PM , Rating: 2
True, and XP ran really well on a Pentium III. We got a boost out of the Pentium 4 when AMD vs. Intel was really heating up the battle. Microsoft skipped a beat. And the integrated GPU's lack of performance was really a shocker when they couldn't run Aero at full speed. Now that the hardware markets are slowing down with multi-processors the norm and the software has caught up, we're ready to make Seven the lucky number.


RE: Polished Vista
By Miggle on 10/27/08, Rating: -1
RE: Polished Vista
By Flunk on 10/27/2008 11:12:29 PM , Rating: 2
Windows 2008 Server and Vista share the same codebase. The server version just has more features and is configured with most of the desktop services disabled by default.


RE: Polished Vista
By quiksilvr on 10/28/2008 3:11:32 PM , Rating: 4
Why do people hate ribbons?
http://rcd.typepad.com/rcd/FluentUI.png

IT MAKES SENSE! What, just because it's different doesn't mean its bad. Instead of guessing what each toolbar icon says and clicking in the menu to find settings, everything is here. On Word, I want to insert something, CLICK THE INSERT TAB. On Excel, I need to do something with the data, CLICK THE DATA TAB. On Powerpoint, I want to put in an animation, CLICK...you get the idea.

Yeah it takes time getting used to but the more you use it the more you realize how much more it makes sense and how much easier it is to use.


RE: Polished Vista
By icanhascpu on 10/30/2008 4:32:57 PM , Rating: 2
"We all got really spoiled in the new millennium. Just compare it to the nineties, when we had transition from MS-DOS 5.0 to Windows 2000... The it was obvious that old machines cannot run new software well. This wisdom has been forgotten."

What a bunch of bs. The people that rated you up fell for a half truth that anyone that pays attention can see. It is true that newer software will not run as well on older machines. What you forget to mention in your self-proclaimed wisdom, is that software bloat is outpacing hardware advances. That is one of the few big reasons why Vista was not accepted as well as XP. It was about 18 months too soon hardware-wise, where Core and X2 were just starting to spread out in numbers akin to systems that ran XP well back in the day.


Multi-Touch without a laptop?
By 9nails on 10/27/2008 10:00:42 PM , Rating: 2
I do hope that they plan to release a keyboard with a haptics touch surface replacing the 10-key pad for desktop computers.




RE: Multi-Touch without a laptop?
By Clauzii on 10/28/2008 1:59:46 AM , Rating: 2
Seems You are looking for something like this:

http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus-tactu...

Allthough still a concept, I'm pretty confident they are working to get it in production.


RE: Multi-Touch without a laptop?
By KeithTalent on 10/28/2008 2:32:46 PM , Rating: 2
Wow, that is fantastic! What a beautiful looking piece of hardware!

KT


RE: Multi-Touch without a laptop?
By Clauzii on 10/30/2008 5:31:23 AM , Rating: 2
Yes indeed! They got the 'normal' keyboard out, so I'll guess they get this too. Only drawback is going to be the price, I think.


By SavagePotato on 10/30/2008 11:13:38 AM , Rating: 2
And it even shows videos of kissing lesbians by default in video mode. How quaint.


Animation Framework
By zaxxon on 10/27/2008 5:52:07 PM , Rating: 2
> The new animation framework is a question mark as well.

I bet you, this means Microsoft will implement Animation at the Core of their new OS....




RE: Animation Framework
By v1001 on 10/27/2008 6:10:01 PM , Rating: 5
Maybe it will be like this cool looking paperclip that jumps out and offers to help you....oh wait.


REAL new features ? I hope...
By Oralen on 10/27/2008 6:11:38 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
I haven’t personally seen the ribbons, but if they draw half the ire in Windows 7 as the ribbons did in Office 2007, I hope there is a way to go back to a more traditional Windows layout.


I have already commented about Office 2007's ribbons, and how much I despise them.

I really hope Windows 7 will be more than just a facelift.

And I hope that it will not remove from Windows the possibility to be in control. The user, good or bad, must be obeyed by his computer, and not the other way around.

(UAC mark II is my worst fear.

By the way, did any of you saw that when you search for some files in Vista with UAC activated, even with an admin account, sometimes the search will NOT give you any results?

Even when you know for a fact the file is there, and even when you are actually staring at the system folder containing that file?

What a great Instant Search feature. Telling me what I can and cannot see. For my own good, of course. Yuk.)

Whenever we can test Windows 7, we will see if there are real changes, and not just the marketing division shouting: "Quick, they are not buying Vista! Slap a new name on it, change the look of the damn thing, and release it!"

Besides, when you compare the miserable battery life of Vista versus Mac Os X on the same laptop, like many sites did when the new MacBook where released*, you realise Windows still has a lot to improve under the hood.

(* See: http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3435&p... )




RE: REAL new features ? I hope...
By Dean364 on 10/27/2008 6:38:55 PM , Rating: 2
Heh, and I thought the sucky battery performance in Vista vs. Mac OS on my Macbook Pro was just me. Good to know my battery is still going strong after a couple of years.


RE: REAL new features ? I hope...
By Flunk on 10/27/2008 11:15:01 PM , Rating: 2
There is no way Microsoft will risk upgrading the underlying system again. Look at all the problems they had with broken old applications with Vista.

Supporting all of those legacy applications is a huge problem.


Windows7 - Laugh Uncomfortably
By Maruta731 on 10/27/2008 6:53:48 PM , Rating: 2
did you say SHELL?
By alpensiedler on 10/27/2008 7:58:01 PM , Rating: 2
please god give me a native linux style shell without using cygwin. also please give me linux style workspaces. seriously, i'm cool with blatantly stealing ideas from other operating systems (as long as they are good ideas).




Another bloated operating system
By ajvitaly on 10/27/08, Rating: -1
RE: Another bloated operating system
By PLAYSTATION THREE on 10/27/08, Rating: -1
RE: Another bloated operating system
By Pirks on 10/27/08, Rating: 0
RE: Another bloated operating system
By lotharamious on 10/27/2008 6:11:25 PM , Rating: 5
Let me guess... you've never used Vista either.

Try getting a new rig first.

Remember when people were trying to run XP on 1GHz processors with 64MB of RAM? They all cried foul because 2000 ran faster.

Welcome to 2008 people.

You guys don't think they're learning from their issues with vista? Go here. http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/

Some people at MS actually do care about the product they make.

Windows 7 is not going to be revolutionary, but it will be what Vista should have been.