Windows 7 Presentation Recap
I guess everyone has already seen the touchscreen presentation from the All Things Digital conference a few days ago. While most eyes were glued to that main presentation it turned out that Microsoft was revealing more information than they wanted to reveal at that point. Long Zheng has already written a great article about the taskbar that was shown during the presentation of the multi-touch feature of Windows 7. He discovered the following information about the Windows 7 taskbar:
- The taskbar is higher than usual, probably 1.75x as high as the normal taskbar
- The Windows orb still sticks the upper part out of the taskbar
- The taskbar is divided into different colored sections
- The system tray is not touching the edge of the screen
- Two lines for the date and icons in the middle of the taskbar
- Larger Quick Launch icons
There was another interesting tidbit that could lead to some speculation. During the presentation Julie Larson Green’s opens a circle menu by pressing her finger on the screen for a short period of time.
That circle menu (or pie menu) could be an indication that Microsoft will introduce circle menus in Windows 7 on a broader scale, at least for the time when a user is using the touch interface. It’s not yet clear if the touch menu shown was purely related to the application or if it was a broader menu that works in full screen applications.
From the visible icons (plane, earth) I would say that it is a specific menu of the application which does not mean that other menus or even the Windows desktop will not have a pie menu as well.
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I always thought that the thing Windows was really missing was a fish. Now that they have realised this after ...
I feel that yes, the continued splitting of different versions of Windows will just replicate the entire Vista fiasco. 
Alright... good concept I guess... but The whole interface has got to go, it will remind everyone of vista 
I hope this makes it in windows 7, i don't like having too many media players and some plugins for ...
I cannot get any of these to work!?! Can someone provide a link, or explain, how i can install new ...
Comment by The SAN MAN on 20 June 2008:
I keep seeing references to open source solutions like Firefox, Thuderbird, and OpenOffice. People saying that paid software is dead. I like Firefox, and OpenOffice, but Thunderbird? Please, Thunderbird is so non-functional compared the ‘paid’ offerings out there I can’t believe I even see it on sites like this. At my company we put Thunderbird into testing on the production floor, and it failed big time. OpenOffice is great, and so is Firefox which says that yes the Open Source market is certainly opening up. However, be assured that these open source offerings are going to find a way to make money just like MS. We recently completed a huge project that was looking into the possibility of moving from MS to Open Source on Linux. All the pieces are not there yet, and neither is the support major companies are going to be looking for. The employment market for Linux people is VERY small, and expensive for that matter. Our projections on the costs of re-training MS staff, and hiring Linux/UNIX/POSIX qualified staff were astronomical. Plus its still pretty hard to find a sufficent number of people that truly are qualified in most places. I’m not a huge MS fan on the corporate end of things, they double and triple charge you for using their software and call it licensing, so I’m all for moving over to something else. However, like I said before not all the pieces are there yet. Even when they are, people are going to find out that MS just does some things better than other companies. I also suspect people are going to find out MS has a huge lead in the security and patching game. Afterall, they have been doing this since WIN 3.11 for workgroups.
Comment by SamX on 17 June 2008:
Face it people, you are missing the mark totally! Microsoft doesn’t give a damn about you or your computer needs. This is about creating Bill Gate’s vision of how he thinks you should live. This is about giving you what a monopoly thinks is best for you. I mean, who uses 90% of the crap that even XP offers in a OS. The only real purpose of an OS is to run your programs. I don’t need Microsoft to sell me a cd burner, a internet explorer, etc…. I need a stable , no frills OS that will run anything from Video editing programs to games. Hell, lets go back to DOS!!!
Comment by PPC on 17 June 2008:
Let’s face it gentlemen. The era of paid software is over, and open source is becoming more and more comparible to the paid offerings. Examples like Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice are the ones that spring to mind. Operating systems like Windows still hold a slight advantage, but after the Vista fiasco and with the open source offerings becoming more and more user friendly it is only a matter of time before Microsoft will need to seriously re-address their business model.