I was doing some thinking over the past few weeks and I came to a realization.  Windows 7, with all of it’s improvements in performance, new features, and more streamlined development process, will actually save Microsoft and redeem them from the whole Vista crash.  So I decided to write up WHY Windows 7 will tromp every previous Windows version and why we should pay close attention to it.

In order to properly get everyone up to speed, first I must take you back to 2003, back to when Microsoft was all about the “Longhorn Vision” and what it will mean for the end user.  Microsoft was promising everyone an amazing world where you would be able to accomplish almost anything with this amazing new operating system.  The demos were absolutely breathtaking, but unfortunately, most of these demos were nothing more than smoke and mirrors.  In reality, the physical code that was Longhorn, was an absolute train wreck.  The builds were horribly unstable, and it looked as if the vision would come crashing down like a house of cards, and in August of 2004 it did just that.  Microsoft set off to reset the codebase and restart Longhorn from scratch.  Normally this wouldn’t have been so bad, except they decided to remove many of the promised features, and 2 years later they delivered Vista, a half baked release and something that didn’t even come close to the original Longhorn that we all wanted to see.  Vista was plagued by driver issues, performance issues, and stability issues.  It got off to a very bad start with the press literally throwing it under the bus, and to this day the mere mention of Vista in a crowd makes people cringe.  Granted, a lot of the issues were fixed in SP1, but not enough to make people want to switch, many bugs that were reported during the beta still remain in Vista to this day.

With Windows 7, Microsoft realized it needed to change things radically.  Jim Allchin had retired from his post as chief of the platforms division, and Microsoft brought in Steven Sinofsky under the new title “Vice President of Windows and Windows Live.”  Steven has a reputation of driving releases that are on target, meet deadlines, and most importantly, deliver results.  Steven’s first order of business was to re-organize the whole Windows division in order to streamline the development process and ensure a quality product at any point in the build process.  He instituted a series of code quality checks, wherein NOTHING is allowed to check into winmain unless it meets a stringent quality standard for stability and function, something that really did not exist during Longhorn/Vista development.  The purpose of this is to ensure that almost any Windows 7 build plucked out of the winmain lab will be stable enough for regular usage.

The second part of the policy change, and the one that I might not fully agree with, is his disclosure policy.  During Longhorn/Vista development, Microsoft was extremely open about the process.  The public literally had an open window to look in on Longhorn development and see how things were going.  The problem with this though, is that the public also had a bird’s eye view of the failures, the feature cuts, and the pushing out of the half-baked Vista.  I do think that Steven went a little too far with his non-disclosure policy, but looking back I really can’t fault the man.  He managed to keep Windows 7 development under wraps long enough to genuinely surprise all of the PDC attendees that saw the first public demonstration.  The fact that we were seeing real working code, and not some director demo was also extremely satisfying.

And finally, the third part of the policy change, and this one is actually rather profound.  Steven wants Microsoft to promise, and then deliver exactly what they promised, and so far they appear to be doing just that.  And dare I say it, Windows 7 is MUCH closer to the original Longhorn vision than Vista ever was.  If you honestly think about it, Longhorn had many conceptual features that appear in current builds of Windows 7:

• New, Animated boot screen:  During the Longhorn project, there were concepts for a new, high resolution, animated boot screen.  This feature was later pulled from Vista, although it could be enabled (minus animation) with a boot loader hack.
• New Taskbar: During Longhorn development, there were many UI concepts going around for a new taskbar that would rethink the way the user deals with tasks and launches applications.  In Windows 7, the new taskbar (codenamed superbar) delivers on that goal.  It unifies the quick launch and running applications, gives nice visuals of open tasks, and generally streamlines the task management experience.  I think this is a huge step forward for Windows, and a much needed change after 14 years of little change in this department.
• Federated Search: In Longhorn, Microsoft wanted to implement WinFS for easy file searching and data management, but they also wanted to enable this functionality over the network.  In Windows 7 this will become a reality with the new federated search feature.  This new feature allows users to search over the network or on websites with little to no code changes on the server side.  Pretty cool if you ask me.
• Castle: In Longhorn, a new networking feature (called castle at the time) was being worked on that would easily allow people to network their home PC’s and share and stream information over the network.  In Windows 7 this feature is back in a functional form under the name “Homegroups”.  Homegroups allow a user to create a network of Windows 7 with extreme ease.  Gone are the days of pulling out your hair trying to create a networked environment of XP or Vista machines in your home.
• New Explorer Views:  In Longhorn there were many new explorer view ideas, and while not all of them appear in 7, one major one does.  The stacking view.  This view allows you to stack files by date, author, and many other filters.  This view especially shines with pictures.  Want to sort your pictures by month taken and have them stacked?  Easy.
• Device Stage: One of the concept features in Longhorn included a new way to visualize the connected devices on your PC.  Windows 7 really delivers here with the new device stage feature.  It allows for a much more visual experience specifically tailored to your device that allows you to see information and perform tasks all in one easy to use location.

Windows 7 comes with even more on top of all of that.  It comes with new additions to Aero, such as Aero peek, Aero Shake, Aero Snap just to name a few.  These features really make the experience of using Windows a whole lot better.  Aero snap is really useful when viewing multiple documents and you want a side by side view.  Aero Peek is great when you want to get a quick look at the desktop or a specific window without minimizing everything, and Aero shake is nice in touch based applications as a quick way to un-clutter the screen.

The bottom line is Microsoft really set out to change perceptions and fix the problems that plagued Vista.  And so far they are doing a very good job of that with Windows 7.  Current builds of Windows 7 are amazingly fast, driver support is better than Vista, even at this early beta stage, and the stability is absolutely unbelievable.  I have been using Windows 7 as my primary operating system for a while now and I have absolutely no intentions of going back to Vista.  Actually, you couldn’t even pay me to go back to Vista at this point.  In my view, Windows 7 will be the operating system that breathes new life into Microsoft, and revitalizes the Windows and PC community as a whole.  Apple, get ready to meet your match, you’re not going to be able to poke fun at this release, it’s probably going to trump Snow Leopard too.

I posted this over at Geeksmack

So last week, winfuture posted about Windows 7 build 6954 having a new boot screen. Ever since then, people have been wanting to see exactly what this new boot screen looks like. I can tell you it looks pretty nifty. It is basically 4 animating balls that come together and form a glowing windows flag, making for a pretty cool effect.
I recently had a chance to film this boot screen in action, so without further ado, watch the video of the new Windows 7 boot screen below. Excuse the iffy quality, had to do this with my digital camera.

So, looks like Microsoft removed it from soapbox, so now a youtube video is available below.  Thanks to whoever uploaded this for me, I tried last night but it wasn’t processing.

So I decided to do some extensive research into the BLBDrive mystery in Windows 7 build 6801.  This driver shows up as an unknown device in the device manager that isn’t actually installed.  (well it is, half installed that is).

I have determined that this driver belongs to the component known as “File as Volume Driver”.  With a little coaxing I managed to get the component to install and I now have a clean device manager.  I will be posting a set of detailed instructions on how to get this to work tomorrow, so stay tuned!