First Impressions (click image to enlarge)

Much more aesthetically pleasing than previous versions of the program. Rather than looking its usual dated and cluttered self, IE9 has taken a huge leap into the 21st century having previously drastically needing an injection of botox and a tummy tuck. This has lead to a cool, calm, simplistic finish which appears to be much more user friendly. The overall speed of the web browser also seems considerably improved.

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There are a lot of graphic and layout changes; albeit often small they are still there.

The only problems I have encountered so far is that IE8 crashes from time to time (no change there) and also when viewing the Games folder one the start menu it tends to hesitate before loading the logos for the games.  Nothing huge and I am sure in the final release this will be fixed.  For a beta version I think it is very nearly complete!  Maybe that is why Microsoft has said that they won’t be releasing a beta 2!  So bring on the RC1 version.

For noobs this is a review of what you are likely to use and notice, for power users you will want to go a bit further…but then you will have probably downloaded Windows 7 yourselves.

If they don’t do anything stupid in the RC1 and/or final release then I will be putting this on a few machines in the office when it is released for sure!

See Also:
Windows 7 Beta – First Glance
Nice and Simple – Windows 7 Features

Wireless Networks – In Vista I always found the connect to a network icon down by the clock a bit annoying, sometimes it would bring things straight up, other times it wouldn’t.  In Windows 7 you click it and immediately get a list of available networks along with the one you may be connected to.  From here you can easily connect to another one.  Nothing revolutionary, just something that worked made to work better!

Icons – Again this nice and simple touch is related to the task bar, the little icons that appear you install so many applications these days are now grouped in one area.  All you have to do to view them is click the arrow and a box appears with them in, see the image on the right to see what I mean.

Tile Windows – If you’re anything like me then you will often want to have two windows open at one time and be able to see some or all of them.  Commonly I use this for transferring files from one folder to another.  Arranging the windows like shown in the picture below can take time and if you are not used to using the mouse to do this it could be a fiddly process.  Now all you do is drag the windows to the left and then the right respectively and they align themselves as shown in that picture..nice and easy!

And on a similar note, if you drag a window that is not fully maximised to the top of the screen and let go…it maximises it!

Windows 7 really has been designed to make mundane tasks so much easier, it’s great!

See Also:

Windows 7 Beta – First Glance

First impressions are that it is very Vista-like!  But we are fans of Vista here so that is a good thing.  The install went very quickly and smoothly on a fairly basic Dell Optiplex 360 Intel Core 2 Duo machine.

So here is the desktop….

As you can see, it has the Vista Sidebar with the clock at the top, and the big Vista style icons.  The most noticeable change here is the taskbar at the bottom.  The quick launch icons have got bigger!  And the open applications are just the program icon which is nice.

One note about the Sidebar, this is actually no longer just a Sidebar because the gadgets that you can choose to have there can actually be positioned anywhere on the screen.

If you hover over one of the icons on the taskbar that is representing an open application you get a preview of what is open, see image below….

And then you just click on the one you want to work with.  Easy.

Also, if you right click on one of the icons on the quick launch/taskbar you get a menu specific to that application, rather then the good old standard right click menu.  So for example you might get recent documents if you right click on the word icon that is down there or shortcuts to desktop, pictures, music, videos etc if you right click on the documents folder.

The main aim here I believe is to make things more accessible for users, ways to quickly get where we want rather than having to wait for windows to load before we can get to pictures etc.

Another nice, yet simple feature I would like to bring to your attention is a change to the start menu,

You will notice that in the top picture that programs such as Word and Paint have arrows next to them, if you were to hover over the program for long enough or click the arrow and you get….yes you’ve guessed it, a list of recent documents (see  bottom image of the two above).  Now that is a feature we really like!

That’s it for the first glance, coming up soon will be some nice simple features of Windows 7 Beta!  Keep an eye out for that one.

See Also:
Windows 7 Beta

So far we haven’t done much with it other than

• Install it on a Dell Optiplex 360 with no problems, it was very quick to install and installed all the drivers automatically so that was a nice surprise!
• Downloaded and installed AVG Trial which again works so it is good to know there will be Anti-Virus protection out there as soon as Windows 7 is released!
• Connected the machine to a Windows Home Server…again a breeze!

So there have been no problems as yet. As it is a beta I do expect them but let’s see what happens.

First Impressions are that Windows 7 is very quick. It is obviously a build on Vista but there are some nice touches that make working on a computer faster and easier   We’ll keep you posted but if you have had the chance to play with it share you findings

Cheers. Graham.

If you think you are one of those users then take a look at the IE8 Beta download, otherwise it is best to wait for it to be properly released, but if you want to read about what is different then take a look at the office IE8 site.

We have been playing with the beta and like it very much, which means a lot considering we are BIG Firefox fans! Some pages which don’t work too well in IE7 now work properly in IE8 which is brilliant! In our eyes they have fixed the CSS layout issues, we also think it is quicker than IE7 which can’t be bad, there are a number of nice new features which we could talk about but read properly about them all here, a couple that stand out to us are the InPrivate browsing and also the SmartScreen Filter.

This is just a short post highlighting this new release of Internet Explorer so we won’t be reviewing it properly until it has been released, but well worth keeping an eye on we think!

The BBC have recently released their Beta website for all to see and it is good, very good. They have injected some life into it, the centrally aligned site with a colourful header is far more welcoming than the previous grey and light blue. The BBC logo is bigger and more obvious with I think is important gives the site a significant identity and the analogue clock on the right hand side is a nice touch.

The highly customisable homepage allows you to select whatever you want to see. Starting with the general subjects News, Sport, Entertainment, TV, etc down to specifically what sport and which entertainment news. Then these “blocks” of information can then be moved virtually anywhere on the main page.

It is still in development and there is much work to be done, but it has the potential to replace my iGoogle page..will it? Probably not, even though there is much of the same content on my igoogle page the BBC site doesn’t and most probably won’t have a module to link to my gmail account. Which igoogle does so I can see a snapshot of my emails. But who knows .. I might be tempted.

Have a look and let us know what you think, or get in touch with the BBC and tell them what they need to add