I haven’t really used Windows Vista (they’re current operating system) much and find it very different from Windows XP (and not in a good way). Large companies such as Intel are refusing to upgrade their computers to Vista and along with a number of users want to hold out till the next OS update in the hope it will fix the many reported problems.

Windows 7 is still in Beta, which for the uninitiated means in the final stages of development but still containing bugs (try telling that to Google). Beta software isn’t meant for the end user and is normally restricted to members of a developers network who want to either use the beta to ensure their applications work in Windows 7 or to help find and fix bugs. Microsoft seems to be using this as a marketing offensive to prove that they have a capable new OS in the pipeline and allay peoples fears that this is going to be as bad as Vista. It certainly has to be the smoothest Beta experience I’ve ever had, with still no crashes or other glitches. Microsoft have a lot to prove and they seem to be doing an all right job at it so far.

Windows 7 is an evolution of Vista, it always was going to be. It took Microsoft 7 years to bring out Vista and they weren’t going to completely rewrite windows again. For better or for worse 7 is an incremental step from Vista attempting to fix its problems whilst adding features such as touch; so it can be used to power future devices.

Speed from what I can tell is very close to Vista and in appearance it’s almost the same too. The first thing you’ll probably notice about the OS is the redesigned task bar at the bottom of the screen. I immediately thought that it looks like it was designed for kids with its large and colourful icons. It’s not to my taste but then again nor is the frills of the Vista interface.

The OS comes with a beta of Internet Explorer 8 pre-installed amongst a selection of other applications, the beta being the top of the line Ultimate version with all the bells and whistles the play with. The old favourite; Paint also gets some much needed love (although the free Paint.NET is still in a whole different league).

A screenshot of Windows 7 beta

Overall I’m very impressed with Windows 7 beta. Microsoft is still to announce the bulk of the new features and with any pre-release software things are bound to change but they seem to have a very capable new OS waiting in the wings. We can only hope its good enough.

How to go about trying out Windows 7 Beta on a mac for free (providing you have a legal copy of Vista):

1.    You first need to get a copy of the Windows 7 Beta from the Microsoft website (at the time of writing this was still possible but they did say that only the first 2.5 million people could get a copy)
2.    I don’t have any virtualization software so I downloaded the free and very capable Sun VirtualBox only to discover that you can’t use the Mac OS version since they don’t allow 64 bit OS’s to run even on 64bit capable hardware. Thankfully Sun VirtualBox on Vista 32bit  and 64bit does work. You can download the 32bit beta to get around this problem. If you do this you can skip to step 5 below.
3.    You then have to use Boot Camp (instructions for this are here) to set up Vista on your computer (as a companion to Mac OS X). Remember to set up at least 30GB for Vista to live in. Windows XP may or may not work. It is possible to Upgrade and existing Vista install, in which case you can ignore the remaining steps
4.    Install VirtualBox
5.    Microsoft suggest you burn the disc image of Windows 7 to a DVD but VirtualBox is able to accept .iso files. If you do want to burn the disk image however you can do it using Disk Utility (in you macs Applications->Utilities folder).
6.    In VirtualBox select New
•    Give it a name (i.e. Win7b) and the OS Type: “Windows Vista”
•    Accept the memory size it suggests
•    Create a new virtual hard disk with the Image Type set as the default “Dynamically expanding image”
7.    Click on the blue title of “CD/DVD-ROM”
8.    Tick “Mount CD/DVD Drive” and either insert the DVD or find the ISO image file
9.    Finally click “Start” and you should be on your way to the Windows 7 beta install

Windows 7 beta running inside Sun VirtualBox

How to go about trying out Windows 7 Beta on a mac for free:

It is possible to install Windows 7 beta directly instead of Vista and forgetting steps 4 onwards above. This is in my view slight more risky and requires the user to either delete an existing Windows installation (Boot Camp can only handle one OS at a time by default) or another partitioning of the Windows area of your hard disk so Windows 7 can fit and not interfere with what you already have (possibly complicated in itself). If you go down this route of installing Windows 7 beta directly you should download the device drivers (set to Vista compatibility mode) to allow it to work with the hardware.

Remember this is beta software, you should expect it to go wrong and is definitely not for day to day use and especially with mission critical data. The beta will expire on August  1st 2009 but make sure you have automatic updates set up so you can get the latest fixes up to that point.