Another 15 minutes

Today the public beta of Windows 7 was released and I decided to download a copy and try it out on a virtual machine. So I configured a machine (Other, 32-bit) with 512 Mb RAM and 16 Gb disk (Windows 7 requires 8.3 Gb). Booting up on the DVD starts the very straight forward setup of the operating system, when it asks for serial number/cd key just continue with a blank one. After a while of copying, unpacking of files and a couple of automatic reboots you’re at the desktop and can begin to look around.

The setup proceedure and OS interface reminds me alot of how Linux is installed with Ubuntu and Fedora, looks and feels very simular. There are probably alot of things to explore, the first thing I noticed was the screen resolution slider that showed available settings and the file structure of “libraries” and also possibility to “stack” files by type for example, which could come in handy if you have alot of files in the same folder.

Windows 7 includes Internet Explorer 8 (beta) and Media Center. There is a serious bug in Media Center with mp3 corruption that Microsoft now have released a hotfix for.

I haven’t really used Windows Vista alot myself but my impression is that Windows 7 is more lean, clean and probably more stable and optimized. While Windows Vista is more like what Windows Millenium was before Windows XP came. I think that it reminds me alot of when I last installed Linux though (Fedora). I will continue to try some stuff on my virtual Windows 7 machine and see if my first impression last.

Today I decided to try out Internet Explorer 8 (beta 2) on a virtual machine running Windows XP. At first glance it looks just like IE7, but with a few more buttons and menues. The main new feature is probably that IE8 can suggest sites with relevant content to the ones you have recently visited by a click of a button.

You can also re-open tabs you have closed, sort of a new version of website history, which I think is very nice, as seen in the picture.

There is also a feature to use “InPrivate Browsing” which is browsing websites but not let IE save any data from the sites and share them with other sites, such as cookies, and the history will be deleted when you close the tab.

You can also select compatibility view to pages designed for older browser still will look OK, and there’s also a “smartscreen filter” that scans the websites for malicious content, and ofcourse all the old features of IE7 is all there what I could see. There are also these little helpful new things that sometimes really comes in handy, for example the “duplicate tab” option to open a new tab with the same URL as the current one.

I think that IE8 will be a very good browser, but the biggest leap forward was from version 6 to 7 with the introduction of tabs for IE, even though version 8 will improve it yet again. I like it.