With the first beta of Windows 7 available to the general public to download, I will take you through an overview of Windows 7. While this beta build has only been available for testers for a few weeks, it had already leaked onto the Internet at the end of December when Microsoft (mistakenly?) put this build (build 7000) on MSDN and TechNet for a few hours. Some lucky ones got to download it, and (one or more people) decided to share it via file-shares.

Now that the beta has been officially released by Microsoft, let's take a look at it. The first thing you'll notice is that this build hasn't changed much in comparison to the M3 (build 6801) build released last October. That is, if you (like almost anybody else) enabled all the hidden M3 features using Rafael Rivera's "Blue Badge" tool.

This Windows 7 Beta is anything like a previous windows beta. It's feature complete, and looks and feels more like a Release Candidate (RC) build than a beta. We'll see over the next few weeks how the public will receive this build, when it will be put through its paces on thousands of different hardware/software configurations.

Setup

Windows 7 setup routine looks a lot like Vista's routine, and although Vista's routine was a huge improvement over Windows XP's setup routine, Windows 7 managed to further improve upon it, with fewer steps before the install begins.

The post-setup phase (configuration phase) includes one or two extra screens, depending on the presence of a wireless network. If a wireless network is detected, Windows 7 will prompt you for a wireless network to join; if not you will get the new Homegroup setup.

Windows 7 installed in around 30 minutes on my test machines.

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