No one knows whether the world economy will implode this year or not, whether those four horsemen of the apocalypse are readying their mounts, or if that big-ass asteroid will hit. What I can say with a modicum of certainty is that you’ll most likely see Windows 7 this fall. It probably won’t save the world.
The Windows 7 beta is out. No, I don’t have a copy. I don’t want one. First, I don’t have a computer to risk for it. I have an older Windows XP system, but I doubt if it would handle Windows 7. Second, I have no reason to run the beta until I get a book that requires me to write about Windows 7. And finally, I just don’t like betas.
The overall reaction to Windows 7 appears to be “meh,” which is the word that the kids use now because they don’t teach them how to spell unfazed in school. From the looks of things, Windows 7 appears to be Windows Vista+.
As usual, there are cosmetic changes to Windows. Some things look really cool, such as the taskbar and other new features. Then again, I don’t think Windows Vista+ — I mean Windows 7 will do well because Windows Vista had the same type of improvements and they didn’t light up anyone’s candle. Bottom line: there is no reason to update if you don’t have to.
ArsTechnia has a good review here. Plus you can see what the Windows 7 Blue Screen of Death looks like here.
I’ll write more about Windows 7 later, when I reluctanly succumb to the beta.
The ArsTechnia review was quite good: I can see myself using Windows 7 at some point in time. But I have one question… your fall\autumn is different to the one here in Aussieland, so, what months does it cover? (Sorry for the stupidity of the question!)
Comment by Douglas — January 14, 2009 @ 12:43 am
You Aussies just need to succumb to northern hemisphere domination!
Just kidding. Windows 7 is expected to debut after September, 2009. In fact — and I’m surprised to admit this so quickly — I just downloaded the beta yesterday and will be spending this morning (which is your afternoon the next Tuesday) installing the thing on a second hard drive in my Vista test system.
Comment by admin — January 14, 2009 @ 8:59 am
Although I doubt it will be great I am still excited to see it. In order to download the Beta you need 16GB of HD. I was hoping they would of changed the footprint to something smaller.
Comment by matthewdk — January 14, 2009 @ 1:56 pm
I was able to squeeze some GB out of my primary hard drive to install the beta. I’ll be blogging about it next week. 16GB isn’t that much when you consider that most hard drives sold today are well over 100GB. It is, after all, a beta. Of course, I agree with you that anything with a smaller footprint is good, but that doesn’t seem to be the direction that the software industry is heading in.
Comment by admin — January 14, 2009 @ 2:49 pm