Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 03 November 2008 16:52
Opinion and Analysis
Page 3 of 3
Windows 7 is still in pre-beta,
with the official beta yet to come. There is meant to be one official
beta, then a release candidate, and if everything goes right, the
rumour is of a Windows 7 release in the middle of 2009.
Just as was heard exclaimed at the PDC, Windows 7 looks like
Vista done right. I still think, as I said in a previous article, that
an excellent “Ultimate Extra” for Windows Vista Ultimate users would be
a free copy of Windows 7.
There doesn’t appear to be any firm word on how many versions of Windows 7 there will be, but the pre-beta I’m using is called Windows 7 Ultimate.
We
can only hope that Microsoft decides to issue fewer versions of Windows
this time around – do we really need so many versions?
Microsoft
has annoyed a lot of people with Vista, and while I much preferred it
to Windows XP, plenty of people in the worlds of consumer and business
have stayed with XP.
Some have gone to various flavours of
Linux and others to Mac OS X, but many have stayed with XP in
preference to a Vista upgrade, whether on their existing or new
computers.
So, Windows 7 is “Vista done right” as has been
claimed by others, and the work Microsoft has done to “fix Vista” is
really paying off in this version, with several months of customer
feedback still to shape Windows 7 even further.
And on the topic of netbooks once more, given how impressive Windows 7 is so far on two separate netbooks I’ve tested, the future of Windows on the netbook platform looks to be very much assured, despite the threat of Linux.
Microsoft is said to be working on a netbook
specific version of Windows 7 as well, so the future is looking good,
but it clearly needs to be to convince people that spending a little
extra on Windows 7 is a better choice than a netbook with a free Linux distro – time will tell on that front, with the undeniable threat of Linux really pushing Microsoft hard to do better.
At this early stage, Windows 7 is very impressive, and just as I was a Vista user since RC1, it looks like I’m now a Windows 7 user from the pre-beta onwards – it’s really that good!
If
it continues getting even better, Microsoft will do a lot to redeem
itself from the "Vista years" and will have an OS that its users will
be as proud of en masse as Mac OS X and Linux users are of their
operating systems, and so far, they're definitely on the right track.