Windows 7 … just an updated Vista ?

From what I understand there aren’t so many changes to Win 7 so basically it’s just a re-branded vista with some small upgrades, some removed features and  a freeware “Windows Live Essentials” hehe… Hopefully they won’t apply the same “street” marketing tactics that they applied on “Vista compatible” laptops where the only drivers available were for windows vista. Anyways Windows 7 RC (beta) <- you can download it from here ! is available with a 1 year free license (until June 1, 2010)… Note the beta version will automatically send data to Microsoft and might be unstable. One good thing as I heard is that you can “turn off” Internet Explorer and “turn on” Mozilla Firefox/Google Chrome instead (amen !). Even tho Google Chrome is not that great anything is better than “IE” (I’ll leave the rest for another article).Let’s get back on point… What are the upgrades ?

Upgrades to :

• ClearType text tuner
• Display color calibration wizard
• Gadgets
• Recovery
• Location and other sensors
• Biometric Devices
• System Icons
• Display
• Solid State Drives

Added features :

• Games from XP (Internet Spades,backgammon,checkers)
• Internet Explorer 8
• Media Player 12
• 13 new sound schemes
• Windows Virtual PC beta
• Windows XP Mode (wich will only run on Intel VT-x/AMD-V platforms through Windows Virtual PC)

Disablable Features :

• Internet Explorer 8
• Windows Media Player
• Windows Search
• Windows Gadget Platform

Removed Features :

• Windows Ultimate Extras
• Classic Start Menu
• InkBall
• Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Movie Maker and Windows Mail(available in the “Windows Live Essentials” Package).

So as you see this looks like nothing but a small update and not a new operating system… but who am I to judge ?

System Requirements :

1. Processor : 1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64)
2. Memory : 1 GB RAM (32-bit) / 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
3. Disk Space : 16 GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20 GB (64-bit)
4. Others : DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

---

Definitions :

AMD-V

• AMD Athlon 64/64 X2/64 FX (family F or T on socket AM2)
• Turion 64 X2
• Opteron 2nd/3rd generation
• Phenom I/II

Intel VT-x patform

• Pentium 4 662 and 672
• Pentium Extreme Edition 955 and 965 (not Pentium 4 Extreme Edition with HT)
• Pentium D 920-960 except 945, 935, 925, 915
• Some models of the Core processors family
• Some models of the Core 2 processors family
• Xeon 3000, 5000, 7000 series
• Some Atom chips
• All Intel Core i7 processors

---

Resources :

• Buy “Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition FULL VERSION with SP2″
• Buy “Microsoft Windows XP Professional Full Version with SP2″

---

(Note : “Article written by a Windows hater who prefers windows 3.1 more than Windows Vista”)