Very Quick Preview of Windows 7

First off, I hope no one was really looking forward to an in-depth preview of the upcoming WIndows 7 operating system from me.  If you were, sorry.  I will point you to a couple, however – jump on over to Charlie Owen’s Preview, then check out ActiveWin’s multi-page introduction to it.  Here, you will only get a few screenshots and very general first impressions in my limited time with it.  I may go more into it later, but not with this build.  I will also not be doing another preview on a VM since I didn’t realize how limited I was going to be until I got it installed.

I will start off by saying that my limited time with it is for two reasons:

1. I ran Windows 7 within a virtual machine hosted by Microsoft Virtual PC 2007.  Due to this, some things did not work.  The video support was limited and no audio device was detected (although it was enabled).
2. It didn’t seem much different from Vista to me.  This is from a Media Center perspective only.  There are some new features that many will appreciate, but I did not like the changes to the interface and the most common components I use did not offer anything new.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get on with my generic preview.

Installation was a snap and it carries on with the Vista tradition.  Minimal user input from start to finish.  Even though I was installing to a VM with limited memory and shared host resources, it completed rather quickly.  One new pit-stop during the installation process was the configuration screen for the new HomeGroup enhancement.  I’ll let Ian Dixon’s short explanation of HomeGroups satisfy you, if you’re interested so that I can keep going.

I was working with Windows 7 Build 6801 as  I did not have the connections to get the newer 6933.

I was able to enable everything that was disabled by default in 6801, however, so it was not a total loss (notice the new taskbar in the above image).  W7 came bundled with Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 and I liked it well enough to go ahead and install it on my system at work.

I didn’t want to spend much time poking around in the core, but I did take a sneak peak at the Control Panel to see what new goodies were in there.  I think you’ll notice a few.

OK, my curiosity did not extend much further than that, so let’s get on with the Media Center portion of Windows 7.  Now, keep in mind that I’m on a virtual machine and so most of the virtualized hardware just doesn’t cut for Media Center.  I expected this so you won’t see any Blu-Ray playback, Live TV functionality, etc.  It just doesn’t work within a VM.  I also could not any channels detected after installing my HDHomeRun.  I knew I would not be able to playback any channels, but I didn’t expect no channels to be found during the scan.  That said, I’m going to just throw you a few bones to gnaw on as I went through the various screens within the Media Center interface.

I know this preview isn’t much, but I personally didn’t find the Media Center provided by this early beta of Windows 7 to be much either.  It’s largely unchanged, but the few cosmetic changes were not very desirable to me.  There will be some new features, but I feel they are way too late in coming for Windows 7.  I think I also may have a very short-sighted opinion considering my usage of Media Center is very heavy on video (movies and TV) and not much of anything else.  This causes me to rely more on 3rd-party plugins and less on the built-in functionality that is provided.  For those that lean more towards music and CableCard usage, things are looking up for you.  I just hope they have more promotions like the PowerTogether and Windows Feedback Program so that I can get this for free (I got 3 copies of Vista through those), as I don’t see myself paying for it.

Although it was not the focus of my preview, the Windows 7 OS does add a few cool features that are worth looking forward to.  If I get more time (and a newer beta release) I may go into more detail.

What do you think?

This poll is closed.