An initial beta of the upcoming Windows 7 operating system has hit torrent trackers across the internet, and one reporter, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet has impressions on it.
He says the new OS is "solid and fast", but also adds: "The new revamped taskbar is visually very interesting (and certainly a lot easier to use at higher screen resolutions that the Vista or XP taskbar), but it tries to do too much and as such comes across as kludgey and counter-intuitive. One failure is that it's hard to tell the difference between apps that are running and shortcuts that have been pinned to the taskbar. "
The OS was demonstrated recently by Microsoft at the Professional Developers Conference, but many could honestly not find any differences between 7 and Vista.
An official first beta is expected to be sent to beta testers in January.
