It's here! After months of speculation, Windows 7 was finally unveiled last month at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC).
Note: For a look at some of PC World's Windows 7 coverage to date, see:
* "A Tour of Windows 7 Beta" (video)
* "Windows 7 First Look: A Big Fix for Vista"
* "OS X Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7"
* "Microsoft Redefines the OS: Azure and Windows 7 Explained"
* "Live Blog: Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference Keyote"
* "Microsoft Plans a Stripped-Down Windows 7"
Through a series of well-orchestrated keynote presentations and supporting breakout sessions, Microsoft walked conference attendees through the highlights of its new desktop OS: better performance, an improved user experience, and some nifty media-sharing features. Overall, Microsoft's pitch was quite compelling, and the PDC crowd was practically salivating at the chance to play with Microsoft's latest and greatest.
But after the stage props came down, and after the projectors finally went cold, attendees were left with a pre-beta copy of something that looked less like a new OS than the repackaging of an old one. At least that was my impression after I started exploring the Windows 7 M3 (Milestone 3) bits that came on my shiny new 160GB Western Digital USB hard disk (one of the better tchotchkes I've received at a conference). As I reported on my Enterprise Desktop blog, the more I dug into Windows 7, the more I saw an OS that looked and felt like a slightly tweaked version of Windows Vista.
(Will your PC run Windows 7? Find out with InfoWorld's Windows 7 compatibility calculator. If Windows 7 is a dead end, what's next? Several new personal computing paradigms are emerging. Are Windows 7 critics rushing to judgment? Enterprise Windows' J. Peter Bruzzese says, "Just hold on!" And what's so wrong about Vista, anyway? See "Death match: Windows Vista versus XP." )
More: http://www.pcworld.com/article/153624/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws
Note: For a look at some of PC World's Windows 7 coverage to date, see:
* "A Tour of Windows 7 Beta" (video)
* "Windows 7 First Look: A Big Fix for Vista"
* "OS X Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7"
* "Microsoft Redefines the OS: Azure and Windows 7 Explained"
* "Live Blog: Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference Keyote"
* "Microsoft Plans a Stripped-Down Windows 7"
Through a series of well-orchestrated keynote presentations and supporting breakout sessions, Microsoft walked conference attendees through the highlights of its new desktop OS: better performance, an improved user experience, and some nifty media-sharing features. Overall, Microsoft's pitch was quite compelling, and the PDC crowd was practically salivating at the chance to play with Microsoft's latest and greatest.
But after the stage props came down, and after the projectors finally went cold, attendees were left with a pre-beta copy of something that looked less like a new OS than the repackaging of an old one. At least that was my impression after I started exploring the Windows 7 M3 (Milestone 3) bits that came on my shiny new 160GB Western Digital USB hard disk (one of the better tchotchkes I've received at a conference). As I reported on my Enterprise Desktop blog, the more I dug into Windows 7, the more I saw an OS that looked and felt like a slightly tweaked version of Windows Vista.
(Will your PC run Windows 7? Find out with InfoWorld's Windows 7 compatibility calculator. If Windows 7 is a dead end, what's next? Several new personal computing paradigms are emerging. Are Windows 7 critics rushing to judgment? Enterprise Windows' J. Peter Bruzzese says, "Just hold on!" And what's so wrong about Vista, anyway? See "Death match: Windows Vista versus XP." )
More: http://www.pcworld.com/article/153624/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws