Windows 7 beta gets thorough going over in readiness for RC

Stan Beer
Saturday, 28 February 2009 13:32

Opinion and Analysis

After the disappointment of Vista, Microsoft is going to great pains to make sure that Windows 7 is going to be, as Steve Ballmer candidly said on stage, the operating system that Vista should have been.

A good start has been the generally positive response to the beta release, which unlike Vista is able to run with acceptable performance on low powered sub-notebooks like the Eee PC and Acer Aspire One.

"As is evident from this sample of changes, we’ve been very busy improving Windows 7 based upon what our customers are telling us in many forums," says the blog author, Microsoft Engineer Chaitanya Sareen.

As far as user responses to the blog is concerned, mixed among the generally positive comments were a few grumbles, though nothing too serious.

One poster commented that the start menu of XP is better and easier to use. Although this was quickly refuted by a later poster, it is a comment that has been aired more than once and highlights an issue that Microsoft has faced since the release of Vista.

After 8 years, there is still incredible user loyalty to Windows XP, which is undoubtedly the most successful operating system Microsoft has released.

Following the dismal failure of Vista, Microsoft is going to have to do a hell of sell job to convince ordinary users that in Windows 7, it has finally come up with something better to justify the higher price that consumers and businesses will inevitably have to pay.