More of “what’s new” in Windows 7: MinWin, Aero Shake and .ISO burning
First things first: Windows 7 is definitely running faster on my MSI Wind netbook than Vista did. And that’s after removing the extra Gigabyte of RAM I had in there prior to installing Vista. As I said last week, this test build is "leaner and meaner", but I don’t want to read into that too much as this is just that: a test build.
Earlier this morning, I used Raphael Rivera, Jr.’s method to "unlock" the new Windows 7 taskbar and this is more refined than the taskbar of old. I’ve also noticed the "Aero shake" feature that Long Zheng shows in a video: you simply grab a window, then briefly shake it left and right to have all other windows minimized. Shake again and all of the windows are restored… I could see this useful on a slate device with an accelerometer. Download Squad also notes that Windows 7 supports native buring of .ISO disc images, which is nice. No need to download ISO Recorder or your image burning software of choice if this stays in the OS.
What’s the most interesting bit all of the various Windows 7 news that I’ve followed the past days? That has to be Mary Jo Foley’s report on MinWin. Remember that pared-down, bare-bones kernel and shell we saw this time a year ago? Turns out it actually is the guts of Windows as Microsoft has decided to take the OS in a direction that’s very positive for devices with lighter hardware specifications. Mary Jo says "If you could “cut” Windows and shuffle around some application programming interfaces (APIs) so that it would be a standalone, bootable, testable mini OS, MinWin is what it would look like. It’s the heart of Windows, organized in a way so that none of the included parts has any dependencies on anything outside of MinWin." Sounds like a modular approach that’s just the right size for netbooks and other portable devices, no?
Update: I didn’t notice until just now that if you have multipe tabs open in IE8 and then hover over the IE icon in the taskbar, Windows 7 shows a preview of each tab, not just the active one. From there you can tap the preview of the tab you want to use. See below where I have two active tabs… very handy!
*crosses fingers for Windows 7 genius-phones*
Kevin – how has your battery life been with Win7 versus Vista on the Wind??
I was watching some videos of Win 7 from PDC08, and when they showed the IE tab preview my first thought was, “Holy cow. That would be a disaster if you had more than a few tabs open at once.” As someone who normally has dozens of tabs open at once, I’m curious to know how Win 7 would handle that.
FYI, you can see videos of all of the keynotes and sessions at PDC08 here:
https://sessions.microsoftpdc.com/public/timeline.aspx
What about indexing? Does your hard drive run for several minutes after booting?
Interesing stuff, Kevin. Some interesting productivity improvements in Win7 without too much penalty (hardware, learning curve, chattiness, etc.).
Tab preview in IE8 is a useful catch-up to Opera v9.0 preview (from Feb. 2006). Follow the leader (though, much unfairly abused).
how about hard drive space? how much space does Win 7 take up?
I’m very impressed with what I’m seeing in the Windows 7 screenshots and videos. I certainly can’t wait to get my hands on it myself!
I think they made the right decision by bringing so many Office 2007 project managers, designers, and developers over to the Windows 7 team. They demonstrated with Office that they can make the end-user experience their top priority, and it’s nice to see them giving the same influence to the Windows team.
hmm, iso. now all thats needed is a formaat converter. not bad.
i cant shake the worry of another longhorn tho. but im tempted to get hold of a build and give it a good spin in a vm.
I’m not sure I take so much comfort from the fact the Office 2007 staff are involved with this. My frustration with Word 2007 has driven me back to Office 2000 on one computer. On another I’ve bought a small add-on that gives me back the menus.
Kevin,
It’s great that Win7 is faster than and has a smaller footprint than Vista.
How does it compare to XP?
Thanks,
Barry