The news is that Windows 7 will skip from Beta 1 to RC very soon. The beta testers have been sending in reports to the MS Beta team as the rate of one every fifteen seconds. So, is Windows 7 working well? It certainly should be by the time that the RC is released.

However, ‘working well’ does not always translate into ‘working for you’. The Windows 7 feature set was already cast in stone before the public beta was released. Calls by testers to bring back tried and tested features of older Windows versions have been met with ‘Sorry, no can do.. by design’

The first impression of Windows 7 is very good. It installs as fast as Vista and boots as fast as XP, and it will do it on a lesser machine than Vista required.

After logging on, the default scene is much like XP and Vista. With respect, how else could it look. If you don’t like it, the scope for changing the look is limited to being able to move stuff around.

Windows XP will still be the OS by which all others are judged. It was the first Microsoft operating system that was all things to all people, especially after the SP2 service pack. It had speed, grace, style and could be whatever you wanted from it.

Vista had grace and style, but speed was always a problem and small usability features of XP had been removed.

Windows 7 brings back the speed, but I think that too many old features have been removed, and I am not alone in thinking this way. ‘Jump lists’ and ‘libraries’ are going to leave many long time Windows users stone cold. Users are going to love it or hate it. I do not believe that there will be any middle ground because the basis for it has been removed.

The sad part is that there will be little recourse for those who do not get along with it. The options are not good.

1. Vista is slow to boot and computer users are fearful of it. There will be no effort to boost Vista slowness because MS developers have a new toy now.
2. XP stocks are finite and will eventually dry up completely. It will become ever more difficult to upgrade hardware while still running XP because drivers will not be available.

Even though the only viable operating system for the PC has been Windows, I never felt that I was being forced into a situation where I had no alternative.

Windows in the early days was a joy to use, albeit a little buggy and unstable at times. One could forgive it because, despite the problems, it was intuitive and so easy to use. XP retained all of the ease of use, delivering it on a much more stable base. It was the first OS where one did not wait for it to blue screen directly after installation. It was the first OS where you could boot it up, walk away from it, and not have a blue screen waiting for you when you gotten back.

I really do hope that Windows 7 does well for Microsoft because the company badly needs a success. However, regardless of how well it does, if the people who make the final decisions had listened to more users than they did, XP would have finally lost its crown and could be laid to rest in peace..