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Preston Gralla's picture
Preston Gralla

Seeing Through Windows

More posts | Read bio

February 19, 2008 - 9:37 A.M.

A preview peek at Windows 7 screenshots

13 comments

The Russian site What's Next? has posted what is says is a gallery of screenshots of Windows 7. I have no idea if this is real, but if it is, at the moment, the interface doesn't look a whole lot different than Windows Vista. But it does show a nifty new feature that every Windows user will welcome.

In the gallery, there's little to distinguish what you see from Windows Vista, as you can see from one sample screen, below.

Windows 7 screenshot

But if you look at the screenshot posted of a listing of all Control Panel items, below, you'll see something new I've pointed to that's very intriguing --- the Recovery Center.

Windows 7 Recovery Center

As far as I can tell, the Recover Center will allow you to restore a damaged Windows installation without having to reinstall the whole operating system from disk. Better yet, it will let you do that, without you having to lose any of your data.

Also notable is a new HomeGroup feature, which appears to be a home networking refinement that makes it easier to share media with others on your network. Another Windows 7 feature makes it easer to pin items to the Start menu.

Apart from that, the basic interface is the same, as are the icons, the gadgets, the Start button and pretty much everything else you can see. That should surprise no one, though --- not uncommonly at the early development stage, they're working on the plumbing rather than the interface. So even if the gallery of screenshots is real, that isn't to say that Windows 7 will look anything like what you see there.

What People Are Saying

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Rated -11
145 Votes

Fake or not fake, it doesn't matter

Submitted by Gus on July 1, 2008 - 8:13 P.M.

Fake or not fake, it doesn't matter, the author himself says he doesn't know whether it is real or not, too. What this article is all about, is the recovery center. That sounds good, and although it is necessary, it will be a bloated recovery tool for fixing a bloated operating system. In my personal point of view, before thinking of fixing tools, MS should think about the dirty design of the WINDOWS directory, where all kind of garbage fits. MS should enforce 3rd party software to be where it belongs: Into its own directory. The same for the registry, the common files and so on. Do you imagine a Chevy that has all kinds of 3rd party components behind the hood? ...adaptors (like drivers), subsystems (like frameworks), sub-engines and other components (like dlls), and even garbage into its engine? And will you still expect GM to have it fixed, even with customizations of *any* vendor into its engine? That's not impossible, but with the current 3rd party software installation practices the complexity is growing at a speed rate never seen in the past. You cannot take for granted that users will not install garbage. They don't have any way to know what's inside that setup.exe or setup.msi, even if they were technically able to handle it. Virus and malware writers are making fun of Windows, as long as there's no way of telling the OS "deinstall everything but Microsoft stuff". MS should protect its own ass clearly separating the Windows area of the rest of the software, thus, allowing themselves to take control of a Windows installation. I may be wrong, I may be inaccurate, I may be saying stupidities... But I'm sure my feelings about C:\WINDOWS are shared by some people.

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Rated +13
237 Votes

Currently "My Ducument" and

Submitted by Jeff on April 5, 2008 - 11:17 P.M.

Currently "My Ducument" and share folders are in the C drive. Why can't MS make all data folders default to another partition and also incorporate "Ghost" like back up in this partition so to make back up and restore of all program files easier.

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Rated 0
212 Votes

That feature can already be acomplished

Submitted by Anonymous on April 6, 2008 - 5:38 P.M.

That feature you are requesting can already be done by redirecting the My Docs folder to another drive (partition) and the ghost like back up be performed on it with out a new version of windows...sorry :)

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Rated +29
229 Votes

that's true but...

Submitted by Anonymous on April 7, 2008 - 12:25 P.M.

If the proposed feature could be packaged in a system "Layout and Backup Center" able to make recommendations, create a virtual drive if needed, and configure the backup. it would be a big help to a lot of people.

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Rated -1
263 Votes

Duped

Submitted by T Rabun on March 31, 2008 - 10:14 A.M.

Looks like Computerworld has been duped as the screenshots are clearly modified screenshots of a Windows Vista Ultimate install that has not been activated.

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Rated +29
207 Votes

Okay, Microsoft has used the

Submitted by Brandon on May 9, 2008 - 11:53 P.M.

Okay, Microsoft has used the classic theme on Windows for how long. Do you HONESTLY think they're going to completely re-design the already quite nice looking operating system, that Vista is, just for a new version of Windows that's going to fix up whatever people seem to be complaining about with Vista? No, I didn't think so.
People seriously need to stop acting like idiots, and accept that not everything you see is fake, and you're only making yourself look stupid by accusing it as such. Thank you.

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Rated -13
235 Votes

fake...

Submitted by bobafett_h on April 6, 2008 - 8:15 P.M.

I would agree that this is just a modded version of Vista Ultimate. (probably just used VLite or something to change some things).
At best, this could be a beta of Vista SP2 which is more likely at this early stage...

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Rated +8
194 Votes

Not Fake....

Submitted by Anonymous on April 22, 2008 - 6:46 P.M.

No. I don't think it's a fake. Since it's a Milestone build... it has to be run over Vista. Thus... it looks like Vista:D

Until the the final releases. It's still too early to judge what Windows 7 will look like.

I expect it will come out around in late 09 or even in 2010.

We'll just have to wait and see... :D

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Rated -23
251 Votes

Look at XP

Submitted by Anonymous on March 13, 2008 - 9:49 A.M.

Yah this is no new feature, it's called System Restore in Windows XP and does the exact same thing.....

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Rated +26
258 Votes

the idea of the recovery

Submitted by Anonymous on April 5, 2008 - 4:36 A.M.

the idea of the recovery center is nothing like xp's restore. xp's restore only repairs and replaces basic files, and undo's installs that damage system files, but fails to fix those files. in order to fix those files, you have to reinstall windows. and if you do that, you lose all data, personal files, installed programs and drivers. there was no reliable "dirty install" as they call it, on xp or vista. the new recovery center will reinstall windows and keep all your installed programs, drivers and files, and allow you to fix the problem yourself, instead of just stepping back a couple days. the files you keep are like restore points in real time. something only created by hard drive images before, and even then, your image is only as good as your last backup, and images were notorious for taking hours, even days to back up a small hard drive.

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