Windows 7 Interface

I have been seeing a lot of tech blogs reporting about the leak of Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system over the past weekend.

It seems that beta versions of Windows 7 are now available for download at various torrent sites and P2P file sharing networks.

Microsoft has said that it plans to release the beta version during the MSDN developers’ conference this month. The company has slated its final version to be released later this year, or early next year.
Where did the leak come from?

Who knows for sure? Microsoft released the beta version’s build 7000 to a lot of partner companies like Intel and driver makers early in December 2008. This was to ensure that other companies could come up with new drivers that would work well with Windows 7 well before it becomes commercially available. It seems that Microsoft have learned a lot since it was badly burned by Vista’s compatibility issues that cropped up when it was released two years ago. Now they are making sure that third party companies have compatible drivers, or risk another round of bad press, boos and low adoption and conversion, just as what happened to Vista. (Vista, by the way, is one of Microsoft’s biggest disappointments in recent years.)

Others are saying that the leak came from Microsoft itself, hoping for an early (and hopefully widespread) take up of the new operating system.

So how does Windows 7 beta look like? I personally have downloaded the torrent, but have not installed it on any of my machines. Memories of Microsoft Vista’s debut on my machines still haunt me until now. I am not too keen on launching a beta version of a Microsoft OS just yet.
I could imagine though that Windows 7 would be very similar to Vista without the hitches. Still, Microsoft’s OS has been plagued by memory management issues and has been generally underperforming over the years.

Confession time: I am happy with XP. With Vista’s disastrous freezes and hangs, as well as its incompatibility with a lot of drivers, I am more inclined to stick with XP.

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