Ars Technica gets up close and personal with the current build of Windows 7.  It shares a lot in common with Vista, the hardware requirements are not any lower and the UI is very much the same as Vistas overall look.  Other components have undergone changes, such as UAC and the way Windows 7 will organize your media files.  UAC is now bright enough to determine whether a program was activated by the user or via software, reducing the annoyance of telling Vista that you do inded want to run the program you just tried to start.  If Microsoft can indeed stick to it’s schedule, we will see this new OS before the end of the year, and witness the fast release from Microsoft yet.

“The first public sightings of Windows 7 were at Microsoft’s PDC developer conference in October last year. The lead-up to PDC was unusually secretive, with Redmond giving little away about what Windows 7 would actually contain when it shipped, in contrast to the extremely public lead-up to Windows Vista’s release. The covers came off at PDC, with the star of the show being Windows 7’s new taskbar. Unfortunately, the build that was given out to PDC attendees lacked the new taskbar, so the one feature we all wanted to play with wasn’t actually available. The public beta, build number 7000, finally gives us the new shiny taskbar. If all goes well, this will be the only beta Windows 7 gets; a Release Candidate should land some time around April, going RTM in July, and hitting retail two to three months later.”

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk