Windows 7 Beta

So yeah, I'm running it in a VM. I'm not sure how much of the new stuff is new since VistAIDS and how much of it was added in VistAIDS (I've never used it), but I know what wasn't in XPoop. And since it's a public beta, there aren't any NDAs or any of that faggotry involved, so I get to tell you about stuff.

I'm not sure if some of my complaints are caused by the fact that it's a beta, or the fact that I'm running it in a VM, or the fact that I gave it half of the 1 GB of RAM that Microsoft recommends. I just didn't feel right giving a VM half of my computer's total RAM. It's a bit sluggish with only 512MB of RAM, but still usable. Keep those three facts in mind when reading the rest of this.

Tsuruya watching me install the Windows 7 Beta.

The install is actually fairly quick. I was surprised, given how XP's takes bloody forfuckingever. Boot off the DVD, it copies and extracts files for about 15 minutes, then you remove the DVD and reboot and it's maybe another 15-20 minutes (with some interaction such as entering account name, computer name, password, and product key) and you're good to go.

VirtualBox setup for Windows 7.

If you want to run it in VirtualBox like I am, you'll need to set the network card to the Intel PRO/1000 Desktop card, as it doesn't have AMD PCNet drivers. Once you have the network card set properly, you won't have sound (even if you've set that up properly), but it'll solve that itself with a feature I find partly really neat and partly scary: It just goes out onto the internet, finds the device driver, and installs it all by itself with no prompting or interaction required.

Annoyingly, they turn on ClearType by default, and have it set to do subpixel rendering by default instead of just anti-aliasing. They also claim to have invented ClearType, which just makes me laugh. Subpixel rendering and antialiasing were around and even implemented in other OSes long before Microsoft caught wind of either of them. In addition, subpixel rendering only works on LCDs. Being that I have a CRT, I could see the green and red borders on either side of things. Once I got through the install I went straight to the control panel, found the ClearType tuner, adjusted it to just antialias things, and text looks pretty good.

The login screen.	Select Pin to Taskbar...
...and it gets pinned to the taskbar. Yay.	The taskbar with Firefox and Windows Explorer pinned to it and running.
Taskbar properties.

What I noticed almost right away: The taskbar. It works more like the dock in OS X and has a feature that can greatly help reduce taskbar clutter. Instead of having the Quick Launch bar, you can instead pin any program in the start menu to it from the right click menu. When you run a program that's pinned to the taskbar, it doesn't create a separate taskbar entry for it, instead it just highlights the pre-existing icon. If you have more than one window of that application open it shows a small bar next to it (like it's layered, like a stack of playing cards or something) and you just hover it to get a menu showing all the windows. From that menu you can restore/focus each individual window, or even close it without having to give it focus. Also, by default, taskbar icons are grouped so that multiple windows from one application make the aforementioned menu, and the taskbar entries are also just the application's icon by default (i.e. the text is hidden, but you can un-hide it in the options if you want). I tweaked the taskbar a bit (small icons, and auto-hide), but generally the defaults are good.

System tray config.

The next thing I noticed: It actually fucking obeys your preferences for hiding system tray icons, though annoyingly enough you'll still have to tell it to hide each and every one. XP would just be like "lol wut you don't want to see this icon? I'll show it for you! I r being helpful!"

My custom theme file, open in the Windows version of gedit.

I've been unable to change the Aero window color from the default blue. Even though it comes with themes that set it to yellow and pink and I found the color value in the theme file and set up a black one. It also supports alpha blending on windows, but even though I've specified that it doesn't do it. By the way, the only way to set the Aero window color or the alpha blending is to locate the theme file itself (which is a chore), open it in a text editor (it's just a text file), and then figure out that the 32 bit color value is organized as such: 0x(AA)(RR)(GG)(BB) where 0x designates that it's hexadecimal, A=alpha, R=red, G=green, and B=blue, and the parentheses aren't actually there. In case you're wondering, the color value visible in my screenshot (and that should be applied to the window, but isn't) is pure black with about 80% opacity. Explaining hexadecimal is beyond the scope of this post.

Built-in wallpaper rotator!

While we're in the Personalization control panel (that's what it's called), I noticed there's a built-in wallpaper rotator, which is nice. It will resample while respecting aspect ratio if you set it to "Fit", but annoyingly converts everything to a jpeg (including any animated gif wallpapers you may have, which strips the animation).

UAC only seems to ever happen when I go to install something or when a program needs to change system settings (like when I was associating Media Player Classic with various file formats). So it's not that annoying. I dunno what UAC was like in VistAIDS, but generally everyone complained about it. UAC is strangely absent on control panel applets, I thought that all system changes made by all programs would have to go through it instead of just anything that isn't Windows itself.

Also, a side effect of UAC being required for file association changes means that if your browser isn't aware of this and tries to set itself as the default it won't work. This happened with Iron. I had to run Iron as an administrator (which is weird because of the next paragraph) to set it. Firefox prompted to set as default during its install, after I'd already given UAC the okay, so it set itself as default without a hitch.

The user created during install is an administrator by default. I'm not sure about the default for new accounts beyond that. Even then, I get told "Access Denied" when trying to browse some system folders with my supposedly administrator-level account.

I think this may have been a VistAIDS feature, but the start menu is actually fucking sorted by name all the fucking time. As opposed to XP's behavior of "lol wut always sort by name why would you want that?"

Multiple time zones!	Larger display with calendar.

The system clock has an interesting addition that I've been informed was also in VistAIDS: you can set it to show up to two extra time zones besides your system default. So if you want to know what time it is in some other time zone, this is built into windows and accessible by getting it to show the taskbar clock's tooltip. In addition, if you click the clock, it brings up a larger display with a calendar.

Next to the taskbar clock there's a button that when clicked instantly minimizes everything and if clicked again restores what you had up. So if you need quick access to the desktop (i.e. you actually have desktop icons or something) then there you go.

Fucking excess.

I've been mentioning the control panel for a while now, but not actually talking specifically about the control panel. There are a shitton of control panel applets. Seriously, there's 57 of them. 57. FIFTY FUCKING SEVEN CONTROL PANEL APPLETS. Maybe it's just because the beta is Windows 7 Ultimate, but still, couldn't they consolidate some of that? This is a default install!

This screen is cluttered!	Fixed. With weird graphical glitches for good measure.
Here's what you do.

A feature that might be useful is the way you can easily maximize or tile windows. To maximize a window, nope, you don't even need to click the maximize button. Just drag the window to the top of the screen. If you drag a maximized window away from the top of the screen, it restores it to its previous size. If you drag a window to either side of the screen, it makes it fill that half of the screen. In addition, if you right click the taskbar, it will allow you to tile everything you have open. This only operates on windows that aren't minimized, so it's fairly intuitive.

The Snipping Tool.	MSPaint!

It's also got a tool that I've been using all along but haven't mentioned yet: the Snipping Tool. It allows you to select an area of the screen with your mouse to save as an image file. It made making most of these screenshots pretty simple. It has the ability to do a freeform selection and a rectangular selection in addition to grabbing the full screen or just a single window. Though you can do the full screen snips and window snips with PrintScrn and Alt + PrintScrn, respectively; the Snipping Tool streamlines the process by allowing you to save the image to your hard drive without having to go to your favorite image editor, make a new image, and hit Paste first. Also, since I did a few of the shots the old-fashioned way with PrintScrn and MSPaint (the one with the Snipping Tool I had to do that way, the Snipping Tool won't let you take a picture of the Snipping Tool), I noticed that MSPaint had been enhanced somewhat, so I screencapped that too.

The verdict: I have a fairly mixed opinion of Windows 7 thus far. I like some of its stuff but think other parts need improvement.