Win7 M3

Screenshots of basic programs in W7M3:
http://www.thinknext.net/archives/2268



First things first, I personally know several people who would scream in shock and horror at the sight of the ribbon on basic programs such as "WordPad" and "Paint". ("OMG, DAMN WIBBON [sic] </3") I think that personally, I don't mind it. It's a new perspective to organizing tools. True, I didn't memorize Office 2000 keys just for fun (my only **** complaint about Office 08 for messing with hotkeys), but it's nice if you're dealing with an new app and want to see most available tools and options quickly, though could be a waste of screen real-estate for vim freaks like me, in my opinion.

Some other interesting tidbits:

The planned Longhorn "Castle" feature is now available as Windows7 "HomeGroup"s. HomeGroup is, in essence, WorkGroup for (Point, Click and Destroy) Dummies. It allows a user to have, and I quote word-for-word, "a consistent user identity throughout the network", without having "to setup a dedicated machine, such as a domain controller". Watering things down for noobs just means you'll have to spend more on Technical Support Staff, Microsoft! (Not to mention some sysadmins may not be too happy.)

But, to tell you the truth, Windows7 doesn't aesthetically look much different from Vista. In fact, end-users wouldn't really notice a difference in the looks of the shell. But, boy, am I going to bet that those people who look and stare at the nuts and bolts of the system internals surely are going to tell the difference. With the possible removal of the Win32 subsystem (those who know what's going on will give a nice round of "WTF!!!" - those who don't will get a hazy idea when they realize that legacy apps no longer run), introduction of the PowerShell instead of COMMAND.COM.

Not only is Microsoft going to give some of the bundled apps a makeover, but they are also going to remove some intergrated features of Vista as well, such as the photo-management options and MovieMaker, replacing them with separate Windows Live services. Windows might also go all fragmented on us around Win7 as well, with most features needing to be downloaded or bought as add-ons or packages (the irony of a package-manager in Windows...).