Windows 7 demo over Starbucks

Yeah. Even if I knew, from the back of my mind that Windows 7 will NOT install under CrossOver (CrossOver installs apps, not OS’s!), it was still worth a try.

I guess I must do this the hard way.

This afternoon, a rediscovered friend by the name of Johnny Benitez gave me a short run through of Windows 7’s beta release. Johnny works for Microsoft (argh! I envy his super cool title there!) and he gave me a short demo using his kick ass tablet PC. No screen shots here, but oh well here goes:

First. In the same way that Mac OS X can quick view into documents by pressing the spacebar, Windows 7 has its own little innovation by being able to “peep” within minimized windows on the taskbar. For instance, if you have 5 open tabs on Internet Explorer 8 (!!!) and they are all minimized, you can peek into the contents of each by mousing over each individual tab on the sidebar. Way cool. As a Mac user, I’m glad they didn’t rip off what OS X does for previewing documents. The peek function is definitely useful.

Second. Windows can lock on to certain parts of the desktop. Drag a window onto the left and it resizes to occupy 50% of the left of the screen. Same goes for right. This allows you to work on 2 windows with an easy resize. Dragging the window to the top of the screen maximizes a window. Dragging and “shaking” the window to and fro minimizes all other windows except the one being dragged.

Third. Windows 7 is noticeably faster than Vista. I guess you can say that Windows Vista = Windows 7 Beta. We were all fooled! HEHEHE. TEEHEEHEE. HOHOHOHO!

There are many other features inherent to Windows 7. Apart from the ones I just wrote about, Internet Explorer 8 is bundled with the web developer tool built in, and there are new power saving features (dim screen instead of sleep) that comes in the system settings.

So are you in the beta program yet? In the meantime, here’s a cool link to 150 of the best FREEWARE applications for Windows XP, Vista and Microsoft Office.

P.S. Thanks Johnny for the demo! I’m going to install this baby onto a sexy computer and see what happens.