What I found lacking however was the ‘semantic’ aspect of the search technology… the ability to know what it was someone, particularly a non power-user, was looking for. Take for example something as simple as wanting to uninstall a program from your computer.

In Windows Vista if you type ‘uninstall’ you will not get a link to the ‘Uninstall Programs’ section of the control panel, instead you will get links to various uninstall links which some programs provide directly, you can see what I mean in the screenshot below:

You can get ‘Uninstall programs and features’ function, however you’ll need to type ‘programs and features’, or just ‘features’ to get there.

That’s just one example but you can see the kind of barrier this would be to someone not as competent with computers taking full advantage of the search technology.

The other major issue I found was that searching for applications in the start menu just took too long. I know Windows Search was heavily optimized for this as it’s the most used part of search, however the fact remains – all too often the Start Menu just sits on ‘searching’ for far too long.

I’ve now been using Windows 7 Build 6801 for over a week and I have to say most of my complaints have been resolved, in fact I’m really impressed with Windows Search now.

Besides the fact some aspects of don’t seem to be working correctly in the build which is to be expected (The indexing options don’t work and it doesn’t report on the index size etc) it’s working a whole lot faster and searching for programs in the start menu is near-instant which is fantastic.

Additionally it’s now far more intuitive and searching for ‘Uninstall’ will now bring up the results you can see in screenshot to the left.

Making the results fill the whole space was a great idea as well and makes locating documents through the start menu a whole lot easier.

Also as you can see there is considerably more advanced filtering of results and the results themselves are more accurate.

Also the semantic aspect of the search has gone from non-existent in Vista to identifying that people looking to ‘remove a printer’ may still type uninstall, likewise with the browser add-ons and gadgets etc.

Considering the state Windows 7 is currently in and the fact the team has 6 or so more months to be working on the product perhaps we’ll see even greater search improvements. There are many more enhancements to Search in Windows 7, particularly in Windows Explorer but I’ll go into further detail on those another day.

If you liked this post then subscribe to the feed or check back often for more in depth discussions on the latest Microsoft operating system, Windows 7.

The latest post, Action Center, is the first real post since PDC which is understandable. This post is by Sean Gilmour, senior program manager of Windows 7 and covers the new notifications and computer maintenance center present in Windows 7.

What’s interesting about Windows 7 is that with the architectural changes taken care of with Windows Vista Microsoft is able to really spend time focusing  in on improving the whole experience of using Windows and fine tuning various aspects in ways we haven’t really seen before.

Read the full post for more details.

There are actually a number of ways to get around the activation however perhaps the easiest is to simply download the tool from here and run it. You’ll then need to enter a serial code to activate Windows, use one of the provided codes and reboot. It’s really that simple.

My main question was whether or not this pre-beta was good enough to be used as a main OS and even replace Vista. The answer is both yes and no. Yes because it’s already fast, stable and full of new features, no because for me my Bluetooth is incompatible.

There are bugs, most of them are hard to pinpoint because none or show-stopping however the more you use it the more it will become apparent exactly why this is still a pre-beta product. The main cause of them seems to be from the new explorer libraries feature which incidentally is fantastic, easily the best new feature in Windows 7.

Now for most people performance is going to be what interests them the most. I have found that booting up time has been improved, but not hugely so, I’m referring to the time from turning the computer on to getting the login screen. From the login screen to a usable desktop however is a huge difference, in fact I would say what previously took as long as a minute or more (fully responsive desktop) now takes less then 10 seconds! Shutdown times have also been dramatically improved, perhaps by as much as two thirds and no weird flashing as it shuts down.

Battery performance is also hugely improved, I’m actually getting nearly double the battery power out of Windows 7! That’s quite amazing and I’m really impressed, from barely 1.5 hours to nearly 3 is the kind of thing which will really make Windows 7 worth upgrading for.

Productivity-wise the new explorer features are so handy I wouldn’t want to be without them now, especially the enhancements to Windows search.

That said, if you dislike Windows Vista from a UI point of view, don’t expect Windows 7 to be any different, it simply improves upon all the productivity features and changes introduced in Windows Vista, in fact going from XP to Windows 7 is going to a much bigger jump for users than Windows XP to Windows Vista was.

Anyway, hope this gets you interested in the upcoming public beta, it’s a great product and will continue to improve.

Just for your interest here is an article on the rapidly rising adoption of Windows 64 bit in the enterprise, the Seattle Times posted an article today. This diagram is from the article – you can see the adoption of 64 bit increasingly rapidly over the last year, however as with all products with an initially low market share, doubling and even tripling their share is fairly easy early on as has been seen with Apple in the consumer computer market in the US.

The files seem to be valid, although one point to note is that the build given to the PDC attendees (Build 6801) was not the same build as demonstrated at the conference, however many of the features are actually available within the build but are locked down, Rafael of Within Windows has been very active in discovering and unlocking these features.

Hopefully this will mean one less crap-ware application bundled by Computer sellers, although in the past I have been glad of Toshiba providing a utility with my laptop for burning ISO images.

It’s conceivable that physical discs will soon become irrelevant and instead all software will be installed via ISO images and virtual drives and distributed via the internet.

This was spotted on Download Squad, as was the image.

The main question was whether or not the developers where actually taking notice of these sites and apparently, according to Zheng himself:

If you have doubts on whether or not your feedback is heard, the Microsoft developers I met at PDC have all told me a resounding “yes”. On that note, I encourage everyone who has a copy of Windows 7 to head over to the Windows 7 Taskforce. Of course I’d also encourage everyone to use the built-in feedback tool as well.

Now that Windows 7 is officially revealed, over the next couple of days I’m going to try to get Microsoft developers more involved in this project - getting them to mark things as “going to fix”, “not going to fix” or “fixed”. Hopefully that will mean more immediate responses on your feedback.

And here is one example where a simple suggestion of a member on Aero Taskforce was taken on board by the team:

Long Zheng has now created the Windows 7 Taskforce website which as he says above, he hopes will eventually become a place where the Windows 7 developers can get involved and provide some direct feedback on some of the suggestions.

Time for a link post, here are a couple articles from around the blogosphere:

Gregg Keizer, Computerworld: Windows 7: The Story So Far

Just a summary of everything we know so far about Windows 7. Nothing new here, but worth a read if you wanna catch up on all the Windows 7 news that didn’t make it onto Techmeme.

50 times. During one day.

Long Zheng, istartedsomething: Evolution of the taskbar in Windows 7 - “Superbar”

As usual Long Zheng manages to pick up on some tiny detail the rest of us miss. I very much agree with his point here too:

“Now you would probably be wondering why I just spent so much effort writing about a taskbar, and the answer is because this is what Windows 7 is about. They’re going to take existing interface elements like the taskbar and give them a new coat of paint with some sparkles. Different enough so you notice them, like Walt Mossberg did.”

I began talking about this topic over the last couple weeks and will have another article coming up soon. Check back for it or subscribe to our feed.

High resolution shots from Windows Super Site