intelliLinux A blog about Innovation and Information

Yesterday Ars Technica posted a story about their first look at Windows 7, the successor to Vista, and included some pretty interesting screenshots.

Windows 7 is supposed to be microsoft's next big release, and will be perfectly compatible with Vista - service pack type compatible, not the feigned compatibility Vista had with previous releases. It is mainly going to be a usability enhancement release - but it looks like it's usability "enhancement" like Microsoft Office saw between 2007 and 2003. Personally, I think that it is a big step in the right direction. Vista may be a power hungry, monstrous beast, but Microsoft has Moore's Law on their side so they can afford to use it as a basis for future products.

This new iteration of Windows sports a redesigned taskbar - no text, movable items, and some other changes that make it feel more like something from Apple - the article calls this a massive change to the desktop, the likes of which we haven't seen since windows 95 introduced the taskbar in the first place, but I'm not so sure its as new as all that - It reminds me of something from KDE version 3 that i used to use a lot - the KasBar. There are a lot of other aspects of those pictures that remind me of KDE 4 too.

That's not to say that Windows 7 isn't something I'm interested in - on the contrary, it may be the first one I really am genuinely interested in. It seems like they are really trying to innovate their brains out with this release to try and make up for Vista's performance problems. It looks like they have been borrowing the things i like about other operating systems, innovating some interesting things, and keeping the things that they have done well. I'm not one of those people that waits on Microsoft with bated breath, but innovation is good for the industry, and genuine competition is good for everyone.