Santa came a few days earlier this year and he brought us the first official beta of the Upcoming Windows 7.
I grabbed my ISO and installed on by base system. If you have installed the previous leaked build 6956 then you won’t notice anything different, if you came from Build 6801 then there is a few changes for you.
Visually, since the build 6801, had changed the boot screen, the new taskbar and the way it behaves, the start menu orb animation and some other various elements like the wireless network control or the advanced monitor settings (now called Change Resolution) in the right click menu.
But lets take things from the beginning, lets see how this first official Beta stands next to the last Microsoft OS, no other then Windows Vista SP1.
Lets begin with the installation process.
First thing you notice is the slightly changed installation environment, after you select the hard disk you want to install Windows 7 you will notice that it doesn’t prompt for activation, well this part moved at the end of installation/first boot.
You will also notice that the installation process is way too fast compared to Vista’s.
In the first boot you will see the new Boot Screen as well as the new Logon Screen, they both look nice. You will prompt to activate windows(you can skip that), then you must enter User Name and Password, pick up your timezone and some localized settings next, choose your Windows Update settings and that’s it! Ready to log into your brand new Operating System.
It wasn’t so hard right?Neither the changes from its predecessor were too much huh?
Now lets see what has changed, right click on the desktop, two new additions and one change:
- Change Resolution
- Gadgets
- Personalize
the last one is common from windows vista but if you click on it you will find that is much changed. In fact Windows 7 officially supports themes.
- Window Color
- Sounds
- Sreensaver are the same with Vista’s
- Change Background has changed a bit and a new feature has been added, Desktop SlideShow. As you have already guessed it periodically changes you desktop background. You can choose the pics you want and the time between the background changes from 10 secs to 12 hours!
You cant see the windows sidebar so you probably wonder what those gadgets are. Well, after the disappointment with this long awaited vista’s feature Microsoft redesigned it and this time is actually a useful feature! For those familiar with Mac OS X the new Desktop Gadget looks like the Dashboard. You can load of these fancy or useful Vista sidebar gadgets and can place them anywhere in your desktop. You could do that in Windows Vista as well but with Windows Sidebar loaded.
- Screen Resolution manages your monitor(s), your resolutions, refresh rates etc. its the good old advanced settings.
Lets see a list with the most *Hot* New or changed features in this Windows 7 Beta Build:
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