Windows 7, Moving Fast

According to Steven Sinfosky, senior vice president for Windows and Windows Live Engineering and his blog, there might not be a Windows 7 Beta 2 after all. They are considering that the next revision of Windows 7 goes to the release candidate phase.

Windows 7 beta 1 does look and feel much better than any beta OS from Microsoft in the last several years, in fact it is surprising how good it works, and since Windows 7 is really only Windows Vista service pack 3, Vista done right, this doesn’t come as a big surprise. I have moved on to the 64 bit version and it's as good as the 32 bit version was.

Still some rough edges with IE and third party programs, but it's a big step forward for MS. I still have some issues, but no show stoppers found, yet. Firefox 3 and Thunderbird works fine.

My main test hog is a Q6700 with 3 GB of single channel memory, built in video, but I have a lesser 2.8 GHz P4 with a single GB of memory that it runs nicely on. So I am seriously considering skipping Vista altogether. We currently run XP, and mostly Ubuntu.

This very much means that after Beta one comes Release Candidate 1, and if they feel happy about it, RC1 might be followed with final version but you never know this.

You can check Stevens' comments here.

Windows 7 SKU lineup -- These are the key features by SKU:

Windows 7 Starter: up to 3 concurrent applications, ability to join a Home Group, improved taskbar and JumpLists;

Windows 7 Home Basic: unlimited applications, live thumbnail previews & enhanced visual experience, advanced networking support (ad-hoc wireless networks and internet connection sharing), and Mobility Center;

Windows 7 Home Premium: Aero Glass & advanced windows navigation, improved media format support, enhancements to Windows Media Center and media streaming, including Play To, and multi-touch and improved handwriting recognition;

Windows 7 Professional: ability to join a managed network with Domain Join, data protection with advanced network backup and Encrypting File System, and print to the right printer at home or work with Location Aware Printing;

Windows 7 Enterprise and Windows 7 Ultimate: bitLocker data protection on internal and external drives, DirectAccess for seamless connectivity to corporate networks based on Windows Server 2008 R2, BranchCache support when on networks based on Windows Server 2008 R2, and lock unauthorized software from running with AppLocker.