cmoullas.net

Today I took a look at the Windows 7 RC1 release that Microsoft released. This is build 7100 64 bit edition and it works great. The hardware of the system I installed it on is as follows:

• Intel P35 motherboard w/ICH9r southbridge 
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.4GHz, 8M cache)
• ATI Radeon HD3870 Primary graphics card
• 8GB DDR2 800MHz
• 80GB 5400 RPM 2.5" laptop HDD

The quick rundown of things I noticed were as follows:

1. Drivers and codecs were all installed on their own, I didn't have to do anything
2. The total installation size for Ultimate excluding paging file and hibernation file is just over 8GB
3. The system boots quicker and feels snappier
4. The taskbar was changed a lot; while many like it, I don't
5. A few cool features were added
6. The interface was cleaned up, paint, calc and wordpad are all new with the ribbon interface
7. A few old features were enabled by default to improve user experience
8. The hard drive finally doesn't scratch away like it does under Vista

For the full hands-on preview, check out my videos exploring all the features mentioned and more:

 Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Quite uncharacteristically, Microsoft has actually been responding to Apple’s often humorous “Mac vs. PC” ads. If you look at Microsoft’s history in advertising, it’s always been incredibly horrible. In fact, there aren’t really any words to describe how bad it's been. If anything, it scares me that I use Windows machines daily when I see some of the stuff they’ve put out - I mean just take a look at Steve Ballmer’s idea of advertising: