Windows 7 “Ultimate” video
First glimpse – let’s fire up the rumor mill!
Windows 7 “appears” to look a lot like Windows Vista, judging from a video purporting to show the “Ultimate” version of Microsoft’s next operating system. The video popped up on the Internet and has drawn more than one and a half million hits on YouTube.
The three minute and 48 second video claims to show Windows 7 Ultimate at “Milestone 1.” For the record, Windows 7 isn’t slated for release until January 2010 at the earliest.
Not much happens in the video’s first 30 seconds, then a screen appears showing the words “Windows 7 Ultimate”, version 6.1, along with Microsoft’s usual licensing disclaimers. The video then runs through an assortment of screens.
The most interesting, and credible, portion shows a scrollable menu that’s subdivided into areas such as TV and Movies, Pictures and Videos, Music, Tasks and Online Media. It doesn’t feature the sort of touch screen interface that Microsoft demonstrated for Windows 7 “Surface” technology earlier this year at the All Things Digital Conference. You can view a YouTube video of Surface technology in action here – it’s pretty darn cool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqDQ0wUcSPQ
But beyond a few new bells and whistles, what’s most noticeable about Windows 7, at least as it’s shown on this video, is how similar it looks to Windows Vista. That’s probably bad news for Microsoft, if it turns out to really be the case.
Early word from Microsoft indicates that Windows 7 will include many of Vista’s useless CPU and memory munching “features” and then some. In other words, it will be time to upgrade your hardware again when the OS arrives in the next year or so.
The fact is, most users don’t want all these extras, especially if they require hundreds of dollars worth of additional hardware. Computer users — in business and at home – simply want a machine that can handle word processing, e-mail and the Internet, and that’s about it.
To experience all of Vista ‘s bloated features, PC users need a computer with at least a 1-GHz processor, 1 GB of memory, and a 40-GB hard drive. By contrast, Windows XP Professional requires only a 300-MHz processor, 128 Mbytes of RAM, and a 1.5 GB hard drive.
Here’s a YouTube video showing some screen shots.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-crFaYLW-xk
Microsoft has also launched a blog called Engineering Windows 7 to keep developers informed on progress on its forthcoming operating system. Take a look.
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/
Windows 7 News
http://windows7news.com/
