Windows 7 Beta

As most of you already know, the Windows 7 Beta has been around for about a week now (beta download). If you’re already a Microsoft Windows user there is some interesting stuff here and you might find it worth a look.

However, make sure you think it through before you go and wipe your main machine to give it a shot. For instance, it seems like a lot of folks I’ve talked to didn’t notice that this beta version will expire on August 1 of 2009. Boy, they might be surprised!

Now, I tend to reload my machines several times a year due to all the experimenting and abuse I do. I don’t mind doing a clean install — in fact I enjoy it. But if that’s not something you’re comfortable with, perhaps you might want to look into a dual boot option – or first try the beta in a VM (VMware Player or VirtualBox are free…). Or wait for a later round of betas.

Read the beta download page carefully! Lots of details and cautionary “need to know” stuff there for you to ponder before taking the plunge.

OK, that’s enough of the cautionary stuff. Moving on…

If you haven’t started yet (or heck, even if you have!) check out “Bumper List of Windows 7 Secrets” for some great information and pointers on what’s new that might not notice. It might even help you decide if you want to take the plunge. Oh, and Vista guys should also have a look at that same article as it points out a few that are already in Vista but many folks (like me!) didn’t know! For instance:

One of the most popular power toys in Windows XP was “Open Command Prompt Here”, which enabled you to use the graphical shell to browse around the file system and then use the context menu to open a command prompt at the current working directory. In Windows 7 (and in Windows Vista, incidentally – although not many folk knew about it), you can simply hold the Shift key down while selecting the context menu to get exactly the same effect. If the current working directory is a network location, it will automatically map a drive letter for you.

That’s awesome! Did you know there’s now (finally!) a built-in ISO burner too? The Bumper List is long yet worth the look.

So far I’ve installed Windows 7 in a VM and spent some time testing most of the applications I use. That doesn’t give me a true feeling for performance however – my VMware server does a good job, but it’s a bit of an older server…

My work laptop had some major stability issues this week. It might become a Windows 7 machine this weekend. Stay tuned on that one!

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