After nearly two years, Microsoft’s long nightmare of poor reviews, user downgrades, Apple ads, and general unhappiness with Windows Vista may be coming to an end as it unveiled details of Vista’s successor, Windows 7 at the 2008 Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles to a positive reaction.
Attendees at the event received a copy of a pre-beta version (about six weeks older than that demoed) of Windows 7 and a number of media outlets received loaner laptops with it installed.
Ars Technica, Gizmodo, Engadget, Neowin, SuperSite for Windows, and many others have walkthroughs of the pre-beta’s UI.
In addition to posting the keynotes and technical sessions from the PDC, Microsoft’s normal developer sites have related content. One interesting video/podcast is with Windows Kernel guru Mark Russinovich who explained a number of internal enhancements in the Windows 7 kernel over Vista, promised compatibility with Vista device drivers, and gave a good description of what MinWin actually is.
Overall just as Windows 3.1 fixed issues in Windows 3.0, Windows 98 fixed those in Windows 95, Windows XP SP2 fixed up Windows XP, Windows 7 is looking like Windows Vista done right. Call it the "Make it Right" version of Windows Vista.