Welcoming Windows 7

October 28, 4:41 PMSF Technology ExaminerJason Brooks

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Today, at its Professional Developer's Conference in Los Angeles, Microsoft offered the world its first glimpse at Windows 7--the soon-to-come client OS charged with making up for widely-panned Vista, and giving Windows users everywhere a reason to declare, "I'm a PC," without irony.

While the latter part of 7's mission is probably too much for Microsoft to hope for, I can report that based on the few days I've spent testing a pre-beta version of the OS, there's a good chance that Windows 7 will prove more appealing to users than did its predecessors.

Windows 7 includes a bunch of feature enhancements and a handful of cool-looking new pieces, such as an overhauled task bar, start menu, and Explorer file manager, but what's impressed me most about 7 so far is its speed and overall stability.

Microsoft is saying that they'll ship Windows 7 within three years of Vista's general availability, which would mean a 7 ship date of January of 2010, but based on how solid this pre-beta feels, I'm betting we'll see Windows 7 on shelves within the year.

Beyond the apparent stabiliy gains in Windows 7, the feature that regular users of the operating system will probably appreciate most is 7's much-simplified home networking setup.

Windows has never been much fun to get working in a home network. It seems that Windows home networks must either be configured with no security at all--a bad idea, particularly if you use an open wireless network--or configured so that no file sharing is possible at all.

Windows 7 is supposed to improve matters significantly. The new OS will include a feature called HomeGroup, which enables multiple machines running Windows 7 on a home network to find each other, and make their music, photos and other data available to their Windows 7 brothers and sisters.

Even though 7 appears that it will be more solid than Vista, I don't think that it will be compelling enough to break me away from my current operating system of choice, Ubuntu Linux--which has it's own version update on the way.

What would you like to know about Windows 7? Let me know and I'll try to come up with an answer for you.