Microsoft’s keynote didn’t throw up any surprises, but perhaps that’s no bad thing: it means we get Windows 7 Beta to download as expected, and Microsoft is releasing it to the unwashed masses today!
We’ve known about it for ages, seen it leaked onto torrent sites and tested on netbooks, but Microsoft has finally let the cat out of the bag by making Windows 7 Beta available for everyone. At the keynote in CES, CEO Steve Ballmer said the apology for Vista would be available to download for MSDN, TechBeta and TechNet customers as of today, with a universal release on Friday over at the Microsoft website.
There’s still no release date for the final version, but we’re pretty excited by the Beta prospect. Charlotte Jones, a Group Product Manager at Microsoft, showed off some of the new features at the keynote, including Jumplists, which display your popular actions for applications, and window pinning to desktop, and they look nifty, slick and intuitive.
Other than that, it was a pretty quiet affair: Windows Live got Facebook integration to improve your social network news feed, and Ballmer wore an old jumper. You can be sure we’ll be checking out the Microsoft stand at the show tomorrow though, so stay tuned to see if it’s got anything else up its multi national sleeves.
Have you tried out Windows 7? How does it handle? Let us know in the comments below!
Out Friday | £free | Microsoft
I’ve been using Windows 7 for several days now. It took less than half an hour to install and get online (pretty impressive). It’s very comparable to Vista, perhaps a little faster. I’m finding the UI tweaks intuitive and useful. So far, I’ve successfully installed iTunes, Office 2007, Firefox, Visual Studio, Photoshop, MATLAB, and various other programs. Unfortunately, the video drivers for my graphics card refuse to install, which is a pain.