Windows 7 Beta 1: First Impressions
Soo Windows 7 has been buzzing around the Internets for a few months now and finally beta 1 has recently hit the torrent sites. Additionally, Microsoft announced a public beta 1 release but happen to pull it due to “high demand“. There has been some squawking about Windows 7 Beta 1 benchmarks performing faster than Windows XP and Vista, but I’m sure all this nonsense will stop once the bells and whistles are included.
I personally think it’s humorous how Windows 7 was named. Microsoft claims that this new operating system is the 7th Windows version, at least according to their internal code versions. The internal versions they’re going by doesn’t make any sense to me. For example, Windows 95, 98, 98SE, NT, and ME, all counted as version 4.0. Windows 2000 internally was NT5.0 and XP was version 6.0. Now perhaps this shows how much of a thorn Vista is in Microsoft’s side, but taking into considerable the vast difference between 2000 to XP and XP to Vista, shouldn’t Vista be 7.0? Instead, Microsoft made Vista as version 6.1 which completely throws a monkey wrench in the entire version sanity. Vista has been a car wreck since day one, they even have to disguise it as another operating system in their commercials as a controlled experiment. I mean seriously, this is almost as bad as Hyundai not putting their emblem on the front of the new Genesis. Well okay maybe that’s a bad analogy, at least the Genesis is a decent car. In any case, Windows Vista should be 7 and “Windows 7″ should be “Windows 8″.
Finally, I think Windows 7 is what Vista SHOULD have been. It took Microsoft 5 years to progress(or lack thereof) from XP to Vista. So in reality, it took Microsoft 8 years to progress from XP(October 25th, 2001) to Windows 7(Holiday season 2009). This of course is assuming Microsoft stays on track with their release time frame. Well I think that’s enough griping, here’s some links to first impressions: