There's a link in the above article to a more in-depth review. Quoting from the review:

It’s unusual not to be faced with heaps of new features with each build - it’s almost as though Microsoft had a plan for Windows 7 right from the start, baked these features into the early M3 build and have since been working on refining these features. This is an interesting approach that seems to have resulted in the best beta build of an OS from Microsoft that I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a LOT of beta builds!). Wow!
In other words, Windows 7 isn't adding any new features as it goes along... in fact, most of what will be new features to a Vista user are probably things that were originally planned to be in Vista.

Aero Snap is a simple little feature that I find myself using all the time. This is a gestures driven method of organizing Windows. Drag a window to the top of the screen and the app is maximized.
Step 1: Teach people to use the mouse instead of the keyboard. Step 2: Invent weird and wonderful ways to accelerate people's use of the mouse. Why can't I just press Alt-F10 to maximize a window? That's the CUA standard keystroke. On Windows, that's not available, so the most efficient way to keyboard a maximize is Alt-Space, X. Aero Snap may be a good feature, but with a miniscule fraction of the work, they could have given us standard keyboard shortcuts. Probably less disruption from false positives, too - I can't think of any Windows application that uses Alt-F10 for its own purposes (not to say there aren't any, of course), but there are many times when I want to put a window at the top of the screen and not have it maximize itself.

If you like to customize your Windows experience then you’ll appreciate some of these changes. Not only does Windows 7 come with several ready-made themes that include specific background images, colors, sounds and screensavers, there are also themes that make use of a desktop slideshow to continually change the desktop image.
This is what Microsoft is good at. Eye candy.

Internet Explorer 8 will be the browser that Microsoft wants you to use with Windows 7. It’s far better than earlier incarnations of IE but still falls short when compared to other browsers.
What a surprise. What a surprise.

I have run across some software issues (which I believe are related to UAC - User Account Control - changes in Windows 7) but since developers haven’t yet seen a beta these sorts of issues are to be expected and I’m sure most will be fixed within weeks of beta 1 being officially released.
Is it just me, or is there something fundamentally wrong here? Apart from MAJOR MAJOR changes (like from Windows 95 to Windows NT, where one's built on DOS and one's built on OS/2, or from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X, where one's built on Mac OS and one's built on Unix, or perhaps moving to a 64-bit version of the OS), moving from one version to another of the same operating system should not ever break applications. With MS-DOS, they had the right idea. DOS 5 would run any app written for DOS 3.3, DOS 6 would run anything written for DOS 5, and all of them would still handle an ancient DOS 1 program that used FCBs and had no concept of directories. (Yes, there were odd differences between MS-DOS and PC-DOS and DR-DOS, but that's like the differences between MS Windows and Wine. That's not different versions of the same thing.) Moving from 2000 to XP to Vista to 7 should be a simple progression. If a program says "Requires Windows 2000 or XP", it should run without trouble on Vista or 7. Why isn't it?

It's all very well to say that software developers will get the beta and solve the problems. What happens to people who've bought one version of a program and don't want to buy an upgrade? My brother, for instance, has Adobe InDesign 2.0, or CS2, or something, I'm not sure what, but since he can't get any support for it, he's looking at pirating himself a more recent copy. He owns a copy of the old version. It should work.

I’ve had no noteworthy issues relating to hardware, although drivers that officially support Windows 7 are still a while off so I’ve been sticking with Microsoft drivers. I expect hardware vendors to start getting Windows 7 drivers out soon after the official release of Windows 7.
This is slightly different, though. Drivers are so closely tied to both hardware and OS that I can well accept that there should be drivers dedicated to the precise OS that you're using. Also, the monetary issue doesn't usually come into it; hardware manufacturers sell you a physical object, and then let you download the drivers for free, so if I get a bluetooth adapter that comes with XP drivers, I can probably download Vista or 7 drivers.


People have been talking about Vista as the version to skip, due to the close proximity of 7 and the repeated extensions of XP's EOL. My personal guess is that Windows 7 will be enough of an improvement over Vista to be worth upgrading; whether or not it's worth moving from XP to 7, we'll all have to wait and see, probably. The trend I see as most worrying is the progressive lockdown under Microsoft's control of everything you do. At the moment, driver signing is an optional thing; an end user can install a piece of hardware, load a driver that hasn't been signed, and simply answer "Yes" to a little warning dialog. Suppose MS made it so that ordinary users simply CANNOT use unsigned drivers? They could sell some kind of special Windows licence for developers that would allow unsigned driver use (perhaps a monthly subscription to their Device Driver Development Forum or something), and then everyone else in the world is caught in the trap. Also, if Windows Update is made mandatory (same as activation is - you get beyond 30 days without updating, your access is curtailed), then they could apply these changes post-release and guarantee that everyone would use them.

So if you're thinking about chucking XP in favour of Vista, don't. Wait for 7, then make your decision. If, like Ari, you already _have_ installed Vista, it's probably not worth ripping it out, but you may well want to switch at some point. However, unless you're particularly eager to reformat (malware-filled hard drive, etc), the usual principle of waiting a while after the first release is probably still valid, in spite of the above reviewer's comments that the beta was looking release-worthy.

Ultimately, it's all going to boil down to applications. If the apps you want won't run on XP, then upgrade, and if they want more memory than 32-bit Windows will do, then upgrade. Unless you're particularly eager for DirectX 10 or something, then skip Vista.