Joined Channel: [ 1: Blog - Joe Gough ]

Ok, nice feature - but the Win-E key press now brings up the "Libraries" instead of "Computer"... which I think is going to annoy people before they even look at it :( I can imagine a legion of posters are currently navigating to the MS forums demanding they change it back, so lets leave them to it and move forward to talk about the feature and see if we like the change...

Pressing Win-E now displays:

Did the sky just fall? No? Good, lets continue :) Libraries are Windows 7's approach to arranging your file system without actually having to physically move everything round. I must confess to not liking it much initially but it has definitely grown on me and I now find myself using it as my primary "go to" place. If you don't like it at first, I suggest giving it some time as it is rather useful.

It works by having a series of logical containers that things are mapped to, kind of like the search folders that were removed from the original Longhorn builds. Each folder has a base folder it is associated and more folders can be added from both your local disks and around the network.

As an example lets look at the "Downloads" library. I normally use a folder on my laptop's d:\ called "Applications" for dropping random downloads in so I don't end up with rubbish all over my disk. I also have a more structured fileshare on the servers used as a repository for the whole company where I put the more useful downloads. I can add these locations to the library giving me:

The view you get when clicking on the downloads library is a combination of everything in the included folders. If you want a more specific view of one particular folder you can navigate down to it:

When saving things from the Internet, the default save location is the Downloads library:

Notice that it displays the root of the library and shows everything contained in the included folders, but you can still save directly to this folder. How do you know which of the included locations it will save the file to? Easy, it saves it to the "Default Save Location" which is set in the same place as you add/remove locations:

So in this case saving to the root of the Downloads Library saves the file to the physical D:\Applications folder, but it doesn't matter really as it all shows up in the root library view anyway :)

Thats pretty much how they work so lets look at some of the others:

· The Music library is tied into WMP, so adding the my music folder D:\music adds the location straight into WMP.

· The Documents library means I can add my local work folder and my user space on the company network :)

· The Contacts/Communications have libraries included for Outlook to search email/contacts and I guess more will be added as time goes on to make this a one stop place to find things.

In case you are wondering, no - you are not just stuck with the default libraries as you can easily make your own to suit whatever need you have:

I like Libraries :)

Vista's new Network Center wasn't overly well received with the more experienced users due to the unnecessary amounts of mouse clicks to get to the more advanced areas they were used to. Its usability was also questionable as it was split into different views for all of the three most used actions of connect, disconnect and connection status. You could do everything direct from the Network Center, but it wasn't very efficient having to load that window every time and the functionality was duplicated in different places:

Vista Disconnect:

Vista Connect:

Vista Network Center:

The Network Center is still present in Windows 7, however it has been simplified and supplemented with a new more efficient UI to do all the added as part of the system tray icon. Simply click the icon to display it:

This UI quickly shows the Wireless and Dialup/VPN connections available and lets you connect/disconnect with ease. Simply click on a network to display the connect/disconnect option depending on the current status:

Right click the network connection and you get the expected options:

Clicking Status takes you directly to the network status page ready for configuration:

Its quick and simple :)

The main Network Center has been simplified, the functionality of the new UI is no longer duplicated here so it is easy to understand where you need to perform a specific action. I think the only time I use the Network Center now is to create my VPN connection on a clean install. Everything else can be configured quickly and easily using the system tray UI.

The one thing I don't understand about the new UI is *why on earth* the LAN connections are not included, on the occasion I need to change the properties of a LAN connection I must still go through the following procedure:

1. Open System Tray UI

2. Open Network Center

3. Click Change Adapter Settings

4. Right click adapter

5. Click Properties/Status

Just unnecessary, especially considering the work is already done and all that needs to be done is just to add them into the UI. Wireless connections can get to the same point with three mouse clicks now, why penalise LAN connections? With any luck the LAN connections will be included in the UI shortly.

Virtualisation will continue to play a large part in the Windows7/Server2008R2 releases. In Server2008 we got the Hypervisor (Hyper-V) which was great and I know many people moved from Vista to Server2008 to make use of it. The main reason for this move was the lack of a comparable in-house option for Vista. While VirtualPC2007 and Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 are available, they just don't cut it anymore compared to the 3rd party offerings out there such as VMWare Workstation 6.5. The obvious missing feature is the ability to manage snapshots, but that is not the only thing.

Server2008 R2 will include Hyper-V Version2 and have things like:

· Shared File System (Allow multiple nodes access the same LUN and not have to keep each VM on a separate LUN that fails to the new host - this is key to Live Migration)

· Live Migration

· Hot-add Hardware (I think this is limited to just hard disks and RAM at this release)

· Dynamic Memory

Looking at some of the options in Windows 7 it gives a definite impression the OS is moving towards a better solution. It hasn't been announced what this solution might be, but what I would like to see is a version of the Hypervisor included in the client. Given that both OS'es are contained in the same increasingly componentized code tree now, this might be possible. I really think shipping Windows 7 without the Hypervisor would be a big mistake....

Some of the virtualisation features already included in Windows 7 are:

Hyper-V Aware

Just like Server2008, Windows 7 is Hyper-V aware. Install it into a VM on the Hypervisor and it installs the guest components as part of the OS installation and is ready to use at first boot.

VHD Support

This is one of my favourite features of Windows 7. You can now create/mount .VHD files from your virtual machines directly onto the host using a simple UI option in Disk Management:

This will clearly be useful when updating a template .VHD, or if you need to get a set of files off one of your VM disks quickly and easily, etc. One thing I would definitely like to see here would be an option to make the .VHDs attached to persist after reboot, as present behaviour detaches them and I find myself having to re-attach them each time.

Server2008 R2 and Windows 7 is taking this one step further and allowing you to boot a .VHD onto your physical hardware! I'm not sure at this point if this will require the Hypervisor, it could use it to manipulate the .VHD, on the other hand Hyper-V relies on a parent partition so would the .VHD boot as the parent partition or will it just bypass the Hypervisor all together? Time will tell I guess...

Either way, booting from a .VHD is fantastic! If I'm honest I'm not sure how many times I could see myself wanting to boot a .VHD on a physical sever's hardware... on the other hand in Windows 7 I could see myself using it on a regular basis. Developers in particular are going to love this!

For test machines as well, the ability to just put a .vhd template on a PC and have it boot using the physical hardware, then discard all changes when shutdown will be amazing.

Setup

The majority of the setup procedure is directly inherited from Vista/Server2008 and continues to use the .WIM format - which is good as it works well and the existing tools to manage Vista/Server2008 installation images such as WAIK and ImageX should continue to be useful.

Just as Vista was easier to install compared to XP, 7 has been made even easier. XP forced you to constantly watch the installation progress for the dialogs (locale/networking/etc) which pause the install until answered. With Windows Vista you entered some information at the start, it installed and then you answered some more information at the end. While this was better, there were still two separate points to input significant amounts of information - which just seemed unnecessary. Anyway it seems someone has made this point to them as prior to installation the only thing Windows 7 asks is which partition to install onto. It then installs and asks all questions in one hit at the end. Much easier :)

First Boot

The first thing you will notice when installing is that the installation background has changed. While it seems fairly trivial at this stage to worry about such a thing, past experience tells me how much the boot screen and background excites people so here they are, enjoy :)

As soon as you log in you notice a distinct lack of clutter. Vista had too much enabled by default on the first login with the Welcome Centre, sidebar, gadgets, etc. Windows 7 has a much more simplistic (and welcomed!) approach of nothing. The following are two screens of first logins for Vista and 7:

Performance

As much as I like Vista and think it gets far more stick than it really deserves, I think we can all agree it isn't the fastest thing in the world. It often seems to just sit there with plenty of free memory and CPU taunting you while it nails the disk for what seems like an eternity after you asked it to do some random simple task. I have one colleague in particular that I swear is going to lose it the next time Vista does this, I'm going to have to put a webcam on him because its going to be good viewing :D

Anyway, Windows 7 performance is well...... fantastic! Back in October/November 2007 when Server2008 got to the final stages of its beta I started to use Server2008 on my primary workstation. One benefit of this was the Hypervisor, but the main reason was the fact it was so much faster than Vista. Whenever I go back to Vista from Server2008 now it is immediately obvious how much slower Vista is. The good news is that we now have the same effect with Windows 7 being faster than Server 2008 :)

If this is anything to go by, Windows 7 is going to be quick!

Explorer

Not going to go into the changes too much as they are not too significant and I'm not convinced it will look much like this in later releases, suffice to say its easier to use and a bit more polished:

Vista:

Windows 7:

Notice the more "explorer" view in the left navigation pane compared to Vista and the inclusion of Libraries (more on that later). Personally I never liked Vista's way of just displaying the favourite links and the folder tree requiring an optional click to expand it up from the bottom, it was often the first thing I went for and it was never laid out quite how I wanted. Its a relatively minor change but makes a big difference, to me anyway :)

Another similar change is the change of default state for "Save As" and such dialogs. In Vista they were minimised, something that did nothing but frustrate me as if you wanted to see where to save it other than a default location you needed to expand it. 7 thankfully no-longer has this behaviour and also defaults the save location to the new download library. I sense lots of saved mouse clicks every day :)

Vista:

Windows 7:

The nasty black effect when maximising windows with the Aero Glass theme enabled is gone and you keep the glass effect. As it should always have been:

Window Docking

One of my favourite features of Windows 7 is the window docking feature. If I try and explain how much I like it I'm going to sound stupid, so just take my word for it ;) Its so simple its brilliant and whenever I'm not using 7 now I still find myself flicking windows around expecting them to dock... it was like second nature within the first 20mins of using it and I find it painful going back to Vista/2008 where it doesn't exist. There is a little animation to let you know it is going to dock, but it only displays if you hold the window there long enough for it to display. This is nice because if you are not sure then you can hold it there and see the animation, but if you just want to dock and forget it is instant. To use it just:

· Drag a window to the top border of the screen to maximise across the whole screen

· Drag a window to the left border of the screen to maximise across the left half of the screen

· Drag a window to the right border of the screen to maximise across the right half of the screen

The stages of docking are:

1. Dragging the window to a screen border, this shows the "Ping" animation showing that you are about to dock a window:

2. Animation displays the screen area that window will dock to. The box starts from the point of the "ping" and expands to the screen space the window will dock to. I have docked it to the top border which uses the full screen, you can see the border around the edge of the desktop:

3. It docks the window when you let go of the mouse button. It just looks like a normal maximised window so I wont provide a screen of that as I think we know what that looks like :) Once it is docked you have all the same normal options (minimise, etc) but you can also continue to dock in different ways, hold the mouse button down on the title bar again and just drag it to a new position, for example the right hand border which docks to the right side of the screen:

You get the idea :) I find it really useful as I often have multiple applications that I want to see at the same time and not keep alt-tabbing between. Sure I could just resize the windows manually, but that requires effort and I'm lazy - which is why I like this so much. Flick a RSAT tool to the right, flick a Powershell window to the left and you're off!

The big win with something like this would be the ability to configure instead of it just being locked as it is right now. The thing I would really like to see here is a docking configuration screen where you can assign different areas of the screen border to dock to different screen space. A good example of the configuration would be to allow two windows to dock on the left border instead of one. I have a 1920x1200 screen so I have the real estate and I want to make the best use of it. I would like to be able to assign the left border's top half to dock to the top half only, leaving the bottom half free to dock something else. Something like:

Maybe the configuration screen could be accessed from a key press similar to Win-D for the desktop or Win-G for the gadgets? Perhaps the screen could fade like it does for UAC/Flip3D and get a simple drag drop where you want things to dock like:

Windows 7? Are you sure?

With the recent announcement that "Windows 7" will be the final name, some people have applauded the simplicity while others have picked holes at whether it really is version "7" or not. Technically the build numbers are still in the 6.1x range as it is a direct evolution of NT6's Vista/Server2008, but personally I don't think there is a justifiable need to artificially roll the build numbers up to NT7 and would be surprised to see it happen. The only possible issue might be if MS continue the new naming scheme with Windows "8" as it could really be NT7 and that could get slightly confusing to people that regularly check the actual build version numbers for some reason :) Does anyone plan to lose sleep over this? I certainly don't.

Personally I like the name and applaud what they are trying to do - less fluff, less "WoW" and more focus on delivering a solid product.

There also appears to be some confusion on whether 7 is just Vista SP2, the answer is a resounding no. Vista SP2 is currently running in a separate beta program and will update both Vista and Server2008 using the same service pack. Windows 7 is a different entity.

Inbox Applications

While some of the inbox applications have received significant updates to their UI to fall inline with the new Ribbon design, others have been removed completely. There are also a couple of welcome newcomers.

The following shots show the new Ribbon UI for Paint, Calc and Wordpad applications:

·

·

Microsoft have *at last* included the ability to burn an ISO from a default installation! Its simple and functional, nothing fancy - but it does exactly what it says on the tin :)

·

PowerShell V2 is now included by default in Windows 7 and it comes with a simple editor:

·

Another useful addition is the inclusion of a set of basic codecs to play DivX and Xvid so you can watch your favourite shows without installing any 3rd party codecs. Media Player has also been updated to look more in line with the OS

·

Worth noting quickly is that the sidebar in its current form has been removed from 7, so has the Welcome Centre. Gadgets are still present, but they now just reside on the desktop and can be moved anywhere. They will stick to any edge of the screen should you want them to.

Viewing the gadgets is now easier as the "Win-G" key combination now shows the gadgets instead of the sidebar. In Vista, if the gadgets were not docked in the sidebar they did now show and you had to tab through to display them.

Lastly, some of the bundled applications have been removed:

· Windows Mail

· Windows Photo Gallery

· Windows Movie Maker

This was done for three main reasons:

1. People were getting confused having both inbox packaged applications and the downloadable "Live" brand applications which seem to do the same role. A good example of this is the inbox "Windows Mail" and the "Windows Live Mail" - both are mail clients, look almost identical and both have a very similar feature set.

2. Anything that goes into Windows needs to go through a huge amount of testing and updating them is not a simple task. By removing them from the windows build users should get a better experience as they can be updated more frequently and Windows development is

3. Less applications installed by default for users that have no intention of ever using them.

Installing the "Live" applications is simple, just run a shortcut in the start menu and it starts a download to install the latest versions of the applications you choose from the web.

System Tray

The number of icons taking up space in the system tray has been reduced and only the core system ones are shown all the time by default:

When you install programs that have system tray icons they are not shown, to see them click the little up arrow:

If you are not happy with this default behaviour and want to permanently see some of them click "Customise" and a menu will appear:

Just choose the appropriate option for the icon you want. The options are:

· Show icon and notifications

· Hide icon and notifications

· Show only notifications

I like this new behaviour and find I can hide about 6/7 icons on an install with normal applications installed. Things like WLM/Skype/PowerISO are generally the only ones I show all the time as those are the ones I use most, but its down to personal preference at the end of the day.

Windows Update

In Vista you have to RightClick->ViewDetails an update to see the description, which makes finding what each update does unnecessarily difficult. In 7 the description field has been given a higher priority and its own screen space. Also the type field has been removed in favour of a clearer categorisation view on the left that shows Important/Recommended/Optional updates:

Microsoft has today given participants of the 2008 PDC in LA access to the very first publicly available build of Windows 7, the successor to Windows Vista.

I intend to shed some light on how Windows 7 stands at this point and some of the new features/changes included in it:

• Setup
• First Boot
• Explorer
• Naming Scheme
• Inbox applications
• SystemTray icons
• Windows Update

Once the basics are out the way we can start to get stuck into some of the good stuff in a little more detail:

• Virtualisation
• Networking
• Libraries
• UAC Scaling
• Backup
• Search
• Printing
• Multi-touch

Before we start I just want to say it is important to remember that Windows 7 is not even at the beta stage yet (although the beta is due to start shortly). If you should decide to try the build for yourself just remember that this is still technically an Alpha/Milestone build and unless you are a dedicated tester or IT enthusiast you are probably best staying with Vista SP1 for the time being.

With that said, I'm genuinely excited. This appears to be the most stable build of any Windows "Beta" I have ever seen and we are not even at the beta stage yet! I still remember the Vista beta where I found myself forced to re-install an average of once a week, Windows 7... erm.... appears to just works. That alone speaks volumes on what I really hope will be a fantastic release!

Microsoft is due to release the first publicly available build of Windows 7, the successor to Windows Vista at next week's PDC in LA.

I will be running a series of blogs on Windows 7 next week, watch this space.

I'm iMeta's Senior Systems/Network Administrator. I enjoy testing things for Microsoft, playing far too much World of Warcraft and destroying people on the squash court :)

More from me later - watch this space.....