Windows 7: Inside the beta

Here we go!!!! I would bore you and tell you exactly what has been enhanced by the beta of Windows 7, but lets cut right to the chase.

There are pluses and minuses to the new Windows 7 interface. I will list them and detail each.

Pluses

1)Repair Console without the need of a disc. When Vista has boot problems or whatever alot of times you will have to go find the Vista disc to run Startup Repair, System recovery, or a memory diagnostic. Not now. The whole recovery console is available through a small wim(image) on the hdd. Good if you don't have the disc. The only problem I see is that enough people were having trouble bootingVista that they decided to put this feature in Windows 7. Lets hope it does not get used, but making it easier to access does not get my hopes up for that.

2)Ease of customization. I do like the themes and the slideshow feature. It enables the desktop to be dynamic. Good for end users as it makes it easier for them to make the desktop act the way they want it to.

3)Home Groups. You can make file sharing easier and have a password to enable rights to files and folders. It actually makes home networking less complicated as you do not have to dive into file permissions.

4)Libraries. I personally do not like the idea, but it does make end users able to locate their documents and multimedia files more easily. Ex you can have music files in multiple folders, but all show up under 1 library.

5)UAC has been toned down....ALOT! Enough said. It is not nearly as intrusive and allows customization of what you want to be notified of.

6)Boot time. Increased by about a 4th.

Some disadvantages

1)It is still Vista.....Nomatter how you sugarcoat it with new looks and hype. It is what it is. Vista has made some good strides with sp1 and sp2, but if you are expecting better than Vista as far as functionality of tools, it's not there.

2)Media Player 12. It is very buggy. Not only did they have to release a patch to keep it from killing your mp3 files, when adding libraries it freezes, when closing the process stays running, and it kills cpu threads. I am sure this will be fixed, but as for now....yuck.

3)Explorer freezes. Again, a beta problem and should be fixed, but transfering and deleting files is a hit or miss.

Overall, this is a good beta. Not a great beta, but not a bad one either. I am hoping for more functionality changes as far as the release candidates, but that is just a hope. I think that when all is said and done the simple matter of fact will be, it should had been Vista and 7 should have actually taken us a step further, not recovering from a misstep. Until I can trust Windows as a reliable fiscal and stable software, I will stick to my Ubuntu linux. The alpha of 9.04 is more stable than Vista is now.