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Applications designed specifically for touch will work best. It is hard to see how Windows can be designed equally well for mouse, touch and stylus control, since each approach has different requirements.
Older versions of Windows throw up an autoplay dialog when you connect a device such as a camera, phone or external drive.
Device Stage is tailored for specific devices
In Windows 7 device vendors can customize what happens on connection, through the new Device Stage, a control center tailored for a specific device. Some Device Stage links can be advertising for add-ons and supplies, so there is a commercial aspect that may not always be welcome. The Device Stage is populated via a Windows metadata service, which means it can be updated at any time.
The ancient Windows applets Paint and WordPad have been refreshed with a ribbon UI in the style of Office 2007, and Calculator is more sophisticated though ribbon-free. There is no sign of Windows becoming deeply ribbon-driven in this preview.
The Ribbon UI comes to Paint
Windows Media Player has the most significant changes, with support for new codecs including AAC, H.264, DivX and Xvid, and support for the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) 1.5 media streaming standard, including transcoding where necessary. Under the covers lie more multimedia features, including a new animation framework and DirectX 11.
New features for business users include BitLocker to Go, which encrypts data written to removable drives such as USB keys, and Direct Access, a feature that requires Server 2008 R2, which enables users to access internal network shares over the Internet without using a VPN, secured with IPSec.
As for overall security, Microsoft has said little about it: it takes an approach similar to Vista, with UAC along with an Action Center that alerts the user to problems like expired anti-virus.
Windows 7 will be the first version overseen by Windows and Windows Live engineering group senior vice president Steven Sinofsky, who described the development process in some detail for us. He has a methodical and disciplined approach and I doubt we will see a repeat of the Vista debacle, in terms of slippage, bugs and massive code rewrites. Further, time has solved many of the problems with drivers and application compatibility that afflicted Vista.
This is shaping up to be a more robust and desirable release, though its conservative approach makes it seem uninteresting compared to Microsoft's new cloud efforts. ®
COMMENTS
Why Buy?
Why buy things that are inferior in quality to those you can download for free, such as Fedora?
Vista test, the new gold standard for crapware?
If Vista is the standard, the bar must be fairly low to pass...
Runs for more than 5 minutes without nagging
Takes less than 131 years to copy some files - "48167 Days and 23 hours remaining," as quoted by El Reg
Crashes less than once a day
Tries to impersonate a Mac, note 'tries'
Oh dear,
My wife has Vista installed on her new Dell machine, and she hates it with a passion normally reserved only for people who abuse cats. (Yes, I know, it is sad).
As I don't have to use Vista, I think that it looks quite pretty. However, I must admit I cannot see any advantage in zapping my XP installation and replacing it with Vista.
My wife's experience with Vista has only served to consolidate that opinion.
It has however made me decide to buy one of those silly netbook thingies that "do" web, words, and spreadsheets with a Linux opsys. If I am going to let something alienate me, it might as well be a cheap alienation! :))
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