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Just like I did with windows vista, I downloaded the beta and gave it a try:

Downloading

This was more tricky then I thought. First I tried it in firefox, I could get to the point where I got a activation key and I could click “Download Now”. Clicking the button however did nothing. Then I tried Opera, same issue.

If it does not support non-IE browser, why don’t they warn about it? This did give me 3 valid keys though.

So I started my windows 2000 VM and try to download it in IE 6.0. Again I got to the Download now button, but clicking it gave me another page telling me to install an activeX component that never came.

So out of frustration I booted my laptop in windows XP, here the download works.

The download manager worked good and the speed was great. (1.2 mbyte/sec).

Installation

This morning before I had to go out I started the installation. The installation wizard is a great improvement over f.e. XP and it took me only a few minutes to get the install started.

Because I was away I have no idea how long it took.

One thing I noticed is that it used “Clear Type” during installation, but wrongly, so every character had a small red/blue “shadow” . Very uneasy on the eyes.

Running it first time.

The time it took to display the desktop is good, a huge improvement over both XP and Vista in my experience.

The desktop is clean and has a nice background image (not my type, but a  good background.). The second thing that stands out is the bar, it is almost double the height of windows 2000 (or xp in classic theme) and has large, full height buttons. It reminded me of KDE 2/3 desktop.

Updates

The first thing i saw when the desktop opened was a small popup telling me it was downloading and installing updates.

Using it

It feels a lot like vista, only faster. My VM is faster then a laptop I maintain, both have the same amount of memory (2048Mb). The cpu for the vm is faster, but only has access to one core (both core 2 duo’s).

The following remarks probably apply to Vista too, but I hardly use it.

Things I noticed:

• Why scale the performance indication between 1.0 and 7.9.  Why 7.9 as max?  Why not between 1.0 and 10.0 or 1 and 100. Why this strange range.
• A lot of preferences panes are improved in usability, f.e. changing fonsize (dpi) is easier, and seems to be more consistent (one of my big irritations of windowXP).
  But sometimes you get the same preferences pane you had in windows 98. For example mouse properties. (only the icons are updated).
• Chaning Fontsize require you to logout -login. But nothing changed, I had to reboot it anyway.
• Themes!. But somehow my window color does not change. even if it indicates it has another color.
• Changing the window color drops me in the old win95 setting menu. Where I see window 3.11 style buttons and window decoration. Why ? this does not reflect what I see in my programs.
• etc. I really can go on here. Mostly things that are there since ages.
• Scroll button did not work after installation. Did work after rebooting for the first time
• 10.1 GIG installation. why so huge.
• The spinner during shutdown looks ugly. you can see every huge pixel.
• Slow boot-time compared to Xp and 2k. But seems to improve on every boot.

Things I like:

• My start menu -> shutdown is back. In vista it put the computer in standby, to shutdown you had to open a small submenu.
• It is fast. It runs in a VM, withouth special drivers and it is still fast. Same speed as my windows XP with the Virtualbox drivers.
• Clicking shutdown, shuts the pc down. No more “Are you sure?” boxes.
• Shutdown is fast.
• From login to deskotop is fast.
• UAC (right term?) is faster.
• No problems running 32bit programs.
• No more whining that you are not allowed to see the content of c:\Program files\ or c:\windows\
• I can easily disable the notification area icons, like action center. FINALLY!

I know it is not a detailed description, just my thoughts after playing with it for 1 hour.

One thing i am curious about (but to lazy to check out) is all the network traffic.

Q

p.s. pc score:

• CPU: 4.8
• MEM: 5.5
• Graphics: 1.0
• Gaming Graphics: 1.0
• HDD: 5.9