Just came across this on Neowin:
It would appear from the posting that Microsoft is currently readying site updates and download servers for the imminent release of the Windows 7 beta. Yesterday, German site Winfuture claimed that the beta would be released today and this could confirm the sites claims.
Yes, I’m excited if you can’t tell. A public beta so soon is hard to believe as the invited for private beta testing had just gone out. Could be a mistake, or we might be having a gift from Uncle Ballmer on Christmas!
Windows 7 is the latest in a long line of operating systems by Microsoft. Walking in the shadow of Windows Vista, 7 is an attempt to create an operating system which Vista couldn’t be – lighter, faster and better. Vista was planned for ages by Microsoft under the name of Longhorn but eventually it turned out to be a lot less featured than initially expected. Microsoft had widely over-promised a lot of features which never made it in Vista due to technical limitations and well, wild dreaming by the company. Features such as a revolutionary new UI, new file system called WinFS and so on were no where to be found. Even most of the UI features that geeks really loved in Longhorn were taken out in the Vista betas.
Windows 7 doesn’t aim to be a major operating system release. It is sort of a minor release which can be called as a better Vista. It improves performance, take up lesser space and works better with older hardware. It also works better with third party software and improves work flows in various use cases such as the UAC pop-ups and the likes.
