My Experience With Windows 7
I originally wrote this as my sample article, but I decided to improve on it and post it here.
Last week, Microsoft officially released the first beta of Windows 7. If you would like to see it, it is available Here The final version is expected to be released later this year. I had a chance to use the beta, and here are my thoughts.
First off, I am primarily using Vista, and my only complaint is the speed. Although I rarely play PC games, I was dual booting XP so that i could get acceptable performance in Team Fortress 2, and Counter Strike: Source. In TF2 I was getting around 10-15 FPS in vista on low settings, but in XP I get around 20 FPS. ( It is also because i only have integrated graphics in my laptop, but its good enough for what i have to do)
Now to Windows 7. Some of the new features are a new taskbar, improved battery life for laptops, and new multi-touch functionality. The new taskbar is great, it is semi-transparent, and you can now "pin" shortcuts for programs on it. One of my complaints is that by default the taskbar is now too large, but it can be fixed if you right click the taskbar, click properties, then check Use Small Icons, and then hit apply. Also, many people are saying that the idea of Pinning icons to the taskbar is a copy from the dock in OS X. I think that it certainly seems too similar to the OS X dock to say that Microsoft completely designed it, but it is also very similar to the little used quick launch bar introduced in XP.
Overall I think this will be a big improvement over Vista. It is already faster, and for a beta, it feels really polished. When the final version is released, I think it will be a worthwhile upgrade.
Tippx