So I installed Windows 7…

…in a virtual machine, unfortunately. I don’t have the know-how to tri-boot with Linux and Vista, nor do I have access to a spare PC. You can download the beta free (legally!) from Microsoft’s website here.

I’m still playing with it. It doesn’t expire until August 1st, so I have some time to play with it. IF it will cooperate and go faster in this got-danged Virtual PC (I hear it now..boo!)

I snagged the Japanese edition (it comes in..5 or 6 languages), and let it download overnight. I started up the install this morning, and it was… FAST! I installed it under a 10GB hard drive with only 512MB of RAM (since increased), and I swear it went from “insert disk” to “welcome” in 45 minutes or less.

The boot screen is really freakin’ cool. (fanboyish?) Four balls of light swirl around and coalesce into a glowing Windows logo.

I snatched a few screenshots of some things I found while poking around in it. Due to the images, please mind the fold.

First boot (ignore the Snipping Tool )

The default desktop (strange wallpaper to pick, methinks)

Calculator has finally been updated. There hasn’t been a major version of Calculator since Windows 95 (nor have any of these others really) It has more modes too.

Paint uses a Ribbon now. (and has more features…yay improved undo! Also shapes, gridlines and rulers, and different brush stroke styles)

So does WordPad… but Notpad is the same as always.

It looks like in order to bring some cohesion into their product line, they’re whoring the Ribbon and Office aesthetic. Yes it is pretty, but it really doesn’t seem to suit these apps well. That *could* just be because none of these have been updated since World War II, and I can’t see the greatness for all the cobwebs though. Office 2007 grew on me, maybe these will too.

Internet games have been re-added.

Windows Media Player is now more integrated into Explorer. Ish. It looks more like a folder browsing window than it did.

The “Now Playing” view resembles Media Center by quite a bit.

You have a choice of different themes, moreso than just Aero and Classic. There’s a download link to more, too. I doubt this will be anything like using WindowBlinds, but it’s a nice touch.

There were a few things I noticed..

• I had two instances where the wallpaper changed on me. I don’t remember clicking anything to change it but it could be due to the lag in the virtual machine. I doubt that rotating the backgrounds is a new feature. (Just checked and it IS)
• Help is rather terse. Of course being a beta that’s not important, but it’s interesting to note that the categories on the main page were lacking (only a few, stuff like “Windows Basics”, “Getting Started”). For the most part you either have to search or click “Table of Contents”
• There’s a new section in Control Panel called the “Action Center” and I have noooo idea what the point of it is. I think it’s like Security Center merged with a system event logger. Odd name though.
• IE8 is ever so slightly different from the Vista version. The only difference I noticed was an extra button.
• The toolbar at the top of Explorer has been refined a lot. It’s much smoother thanks to not having that green color.
• The new shield icon to indicate UAC is butt ugly (). It looks like a coat of arms.
• The SuperBar is way sexy even in non-Aero mode. It  even works in Classic themes, although without the fancy highlights.

I’ll dig more into it eventually.

As an aside, I had a couple issues installing. Networking was off, so I had to switch to Shared NAT in VPC. I didn’t have any sound either, so I had to follow the advice in a comment by David Musashi here (scroll down.. I don’t know how to do anchor links for comments) Be sure to install Virtual Machine Additions and VPC Service Pack 1 as well if you’re using Virtual PC.

But it works now, and even though it’s slow and I’m lacking Aero, I’m really impressed. This may be the first Windows version I want to go buy (rather than having a preinstall of course..no I’m not pirating it )

Final stupid note: I named the virtual machine “Windows 7 PB J 2″ for “Public Beta Japanese”. It wasn’t at first but I had to make another machine and got lazy. Yum.. sandwiches.