Hope everyone had a great break over the holidays.  Its nice to come back to some great news such as the availability of Windows 7 Beta!  The Beta was announced by Steve Ballmer at CES last week.  It was initially available to TechNet Plus and MSDN Subscribers but it is now available to download for everyone.  Performance, reliability, security, and compatibility are core tenets of this release as we collect your feedback to meet our engineering goals of making Windows 7 the best-performing and most stable Windows operating system to date.  You can also learn about What’s New about Windows 7 at the official site.


The new Desktop - amazing

I have installed Windows 7 on 3 different machines and have to say I am really impressed with it.  You will definitely notice the speed improvements.  Startup and Shutdown times have been drastically improved.  One of the first things you should do is install the new Windows Live Essentials software which include things like Messenger, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Mail and other Windows Live services.


Windows Taskbar Previews – easier way to see what’s open, this has really grown on me

Here are some videos that give a good run down of the new OS
Windows 7 – The Experience
Windows 7 – Touch
Windows 7 – HomeGroup
Windows 7 – Device Stage


Jump Lists – Handy way to get to files you have already been working on

The TechNet Springboard site has some excellent resources for IT Professionals
Windows 7 – A First Look for IT Pros
Windows 7 – Feature Walkthroughs includes videos on Deployment Image Servicing and Management, AppLocker, Enterprise Application Compatibility, Problem Steps Recorder, BitLocker and BitLocker to Go and Windows PowerShell 2.0
Windows 7 TechNet Forums


Libraries – New way to see your media in Explorer view

Something which was a nice surprise is the new Media Center experience in Windows 7.  Check out Ben Reed from Microsoft doing the demo.  You will also notice the new multi-touch capabilities in Windows 7 in this video.
 

Stay tuned for more info about Windows 7!

Tim Sneath has a comprehensive list of 30 Windows 7 Secrets. If you have downloaded the Beta you should definitely check them out.

Out of the 30 secrets, some of my favourites are:

1. Windows Management. By now, you’ve probably seen that Windows 7 does a lot to make window management easier: you can “dock” a window to the left or right half of the screen by simply dragging it to the edge; similarly, you can drag the window to the top of the screen to maximize it, and double-click the window top / bottom border to maximize it vertically with the same horizontal width. What you might not know is that all these actions are also available with keyboard shortcuts:

• Win+Left Arrow and Win+Right Arrow dock;
• Win+Up Arrow and Win+Down Arrow maximizes and restores / minimizes;
• Win+Shift+Up Arrow and Win+Shift+Down Arrow maximizes and restores the vertical size.

This side-by-side docking feature is particularly invaluable on widescreen monitors – it makes the old Windows way of shift-clicking on two items in the taskbar and then using the context menu to arrange them feel really painful.

2. Display Projection. Had enough of messing around with weird and wonderful OEM display driver utilities to get your notebook display onto an external projector? In that case, you’ll be pleased to know that projection is really quick and simple with Windows 7. Just hit Win+P, and you’ll be rewarded by the following pop-up window:

Use the arrow keys (or keep hitting Win+P) to switch to “clone”, “extend” or “external only” display settings. You can also access the application as displayswitch.exe.

7. The Black Box Recorder. Every developer wishes there was a way that an end-users could quickly and simply record a repro for the problem that they’re running into that is unique to their machine. Windows 7 comes to the rescue! Part of the in-built diagnostic tools that we use internally to send feedback on the product, the Problem Steps Recorder provides a simple screen capture tool that enables you to record a series of actions. Once you hit “record”, it tracks your mouse and keyboard and captures screenshots with any comments you choose to associate alongside them. Once you stop recording, it saves the whole thing to a ZIP file, containing an HTML-based “slide show” of the steps. It’s a really neat little tool and I can’t wait for it to become ubiquitous on every desktop! The program is called psr.exe; you can also search for it from Control Panel under “Record steps to reproduce a problem”.

15. Standards Support. Every review of Windows 7 that I’ve seen has noted the revamped WordPad and Paint applets that add an Office-like ribbon to expose their functionality. Few, however, have noticed one small but hopefully appreciated feature: WordPad can now read and write both the Word 2007-compatible Office Open XML file format but also the OpenDocument specification that IBM and Sun have been advocating:

26. ISO Burning. Easy to miss if you’re not looking for it: you can double-click on any DVD or CD .ISO image and you’ll see a helpful little applet that will enable you to burn the image to a blank disc. No more grappling for shareware utilities of questionable parentage!

IE8 Release Candidate is now ready for download. What has changed between Beta 2 and RC?