Seventh time lucky?

Only a matter of days before Windows 7 is released. Oh, the anticipation.

I happened to take a look at one of the beta versions and was kinda underwhelmed. Sure, the ability to ‘snap’ windows to either side of the screen is handy; Sure, being able to see the contents of the windows is useful even if it was there in Vista; HomeGroup I actually think is something quite cool and if I was a Windows user might get me excited—but enough to make me spend 150 quid; The icons on the taskbar are a good idea even if NeXT came up with that idea quite a while ago; And the ability to ‘Search on your PC the same way you search on the Internet’ was in Vista right, and OS X and Google Desktop before that.

They are the 5 top features according to Microsoft, some are little things that could have come out in a patch that no-one would have noticed, some are big (if dated) interface changes and some are things that were in their last OS. Now I know, a lot has gone on under-the-hood. There haven’t been many changes to Apple’s OS with Snow Leopard, but they only charge 30 quid for it.

I will be interested to see what kind of response it gets. All I can say about it is this: at least it looks better than Vista.

About Hagablog

Alex Clarke studies geology at the University of Leicester, coaches people how to kayak, designs websites and is obsessive about typography.

You can also find me at

Recommended reading

Leave a comment

Leave a comment

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.

Guidelines: Please be polite to others when posting your comment.