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PDC: Windows 7 Client: What Do You Think?

Now that Microsoft has given a first look at the next version of Windows at this week's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, the 8,500 attendees on Tuesday were able to get first dibs on the pre-beta release.

In yesterday's keynote address, Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president of the Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, and key members of his team demonstrated a slew of new system and user interface features to Windows.

Dan Thornton, a business analyst at Teradyne Inc. in North Reading, Mass., was impressed with what he saw -- particularly the improvements to the UI. Rather than have multiple places to launch and toggle between apps, Microsoft has brought together the Start menu, Quick Launch and the taskbar into a common view. "It's a lot easier to use," Thornton said after a session highlighting the new UI.

For Thornton, that's critical: In his role, he's responsible for the user experience of employees at the semiconductor test equipment manufacturer. "I am pretty excited about the possibilities of using Windows features instead of inventing our own. There's some pretty good stuff there," he said.

But Windows 7 and its integration with the forthcoming Windows Server 2008 R2, and ultimately Microsoft's Live Services Framework including Live Mesh, will mean different things to various developers.

We'd like to hear from developers what they think about the new Windows 7 pre-beta client. If you're one of those who has started to poke around it, please drop me a line at [email protected]. If you weren't one of the lucky developers to get a copy, Microsoft yesterday released the Windows 7 Developer Guide -- share your thoughts on it with us.

Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on October 29, 2008


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