^M00:00:01
[ Music ]
^M00:00:05
>> All right. Good afternoon everybody. Welcome to Editor's Office Hours I am Brian Tong, and here I'm joined with Ina Fried, Senior Staff Writer with cnetnews.com as well as the blog. How are you doing Ina?
>> Ina: Doing good.
>> Brian: Thanks for coming back out.
>> Ina: Absolutely. I had fun the last time.
>> Brian: Yeah and we've got a lot of people here in the chat room right off the bat which is great. A lot of your questions are coming in. Today we're talking all about Windows 7. Ina covers our Microsoft beat as well and everything you can think of under the sun with that; and so she has a lot of knowledge and a lot of information. We've got some great questions already in and just for you guys to be able to participate with our Editor's Office Hours, you see up here in the right hand box this is our question box. We need those questions to keep this show going so all you have to do is create an account or use your name in the password. We just ask for your e-mail and then you can actually ask us questions directly. Now below us, below our bodies is our chat room where you guys can interact with each other, talk Smack, but if you really want your questions answered you need to pop them up in the right hand box. So we do have a bunch of videos to show you as well but right off the bat what were your first impressions of Windows 7 Beta?
>> Ina: Well I mean right from the start and I've been testing this since the pre-beta version, the biggest difference with the beta is you have all the interface stuff so the task bar at the bottom of the screen, some of the stuff that really makes it pop; a little bit more Mac like if you will, some of that stuff is in the beta. Also again, the performance, you go to sleep, you turn it back on--it's really fast. I'm one of those when I boot up my Windows XP machine I boot it up, I go get a cup of coffee, I come back. With Windows 7 I don't need to go get the cup of coffee.
>> Brian: So the snappiness and the performance even though it is a Beta, is impressions across the web are all pretty happy about that right now.
>> Ina: Definitely. I mean if there's anything we don't know yet it's sort of the compatibility, what are the headaches; that comes from the sort of broader testing but right off the bat we can certainly tell it's much faster. The take that I've given a lot of people is I think it's what everyone expected and wanted out of Vista. So it's not that this breaks new huge ground and in a lot of ways all the key changes are things that were under the hood in Vista. Even the new user interface which is definitely new to Windows 7 is made possible by the graphics engine that came in with Vista.
>> Brian: Okay so what we're going to do here is we're going to showcase a video. Seth Rosenblatt with Download.com has a First Look so you guys can actually kind of see some of the new features that we're talking about so we're going to come back, start answering your questions and we'll show you some more stuff so we'll be back in a few minutes and take a look.
>> Hi I'm Seth Rosenblatt for Download.com and today we're taking a First Look at Windows 7 Beta. There's a lot of new exciting stuff that Microsoft has cramped into their latest operating system. Well it's true that Windows 7's interface will be familiar to fans of Vista's Aero, both XP and Vista users have a lot to look forward to. Before we jump in, keep in mind that this is a Beta. It hasn't crashed in the week I've been using it but that may not hold true for everybody. Under no circumstances would I recommend using 7 for mission critical tasks until the final version is released. I'll be addressing how to install 7 in another video. For now, let's assume you're ready to go. The first thing that should stand out is 7's new task bar. This is one of the best improvements Microsoft has made. Besides incorporating the translucent style of Aero, the new taskbar is a great leap forward. Pin [assumed spelling] programs use large easy to see icons, mouse over one and all Windows associated with that program appear in preview; mouse over one of those preview panes to reveal an X to close the window. Hover over the preview to show a full size preview of the program or click on the window to bring it to the front. Jump lists are a new feature that makes recently open documents easier to get too. Right click on any program that's appended to the task bar to see a list of files that you've recently used in that program. In Internet Explorer this will show recently visited websites, although it doesn't yet seem to work in Firefox. As you've noticed the missing show desktop icon, that's because it has been baked into the taskbar itself. Mouse over to the right corner, hovering over the show desktop box reveals the desktop and then hides it when you mouse away. Click on the box to minimize all your programs. Dragging programs is now a simple way to resize them. Drag a program window up to the top of the monitor to make it full screen. If you want to work in two windows simultaneously, drag them to the left or the right edge of your screen. Drag a program away from the top or sides to return it to normal. Theme packages also make it much faster to change the look of Windows 7. From the control panel you can change the theme under appearance and personalization. Microsoft has created several theme packages to give users a taste for what the feature can do. Click on one to download it and it instantly changes the look of 7, no need to reboot. There are other less visual changes to 7 which make it far better than anything Microsoft has put out so far. It boots faster and programs launch faster all from the same hardware that runs Vista. You can probably get away with less fancy hardware for 7 because it utilizes what's available better, it runs fine on my Pentium 4 for example, and it doesn't require 25 gigs of ram. The new device stage makes managing peripherals significantly easier combining printers, phones, and portable media players into one window. You can also use it to set common tasks. When you try to use a file already in use, 7 goes beyond Vista and XP by telling you where it's being used. The bloated verse will appreciate that 7 doesn't come with a slew of Windows Live programs at least for now. So far, 7 looks like the operating system we've all been waiting for and shows a lot of promise for the future. For CNET Download.com I'm Seth Rosenblatt with a First Look at Windows 7 Beta.
^M00:05:54
[ Music ]
^M00:05:59
>> Brian: All right so that was kind of a First Look and a lot of people are wondering what does this really look like. We have this question from Benjamin Pragg [assumed spelling]. What's up Benjamin? The question is, "There is a lot of talk on how amazing it looks and how much it can give OS10 a run for its money. Can you elaborate on what exactly these statements are based on? "
>> Ina: Sure. When you think about a computer today for the most part, the vast majority of people basically use their computer to get from web page to web page, maybe open a Word document, so a lot of what makes you judge an OS is how quickly does it do those tasks; how easy it to move between multiple open windows; how easy is it to search. Those are really the key tasks at least from my way of thinking. For gamers and some other different groups there's other characteristics, but really that's the area that I think people are talking about when they like what they see in Windows 7. It's sort of the how quick is it and how much hassle is there? Obviously Vista wasn't that fast and then it was pretty high on the hassle factor, so the other thing people have said it's less annoying than Vista which was a big problem.
>> Brian: To me visually when I played with it, it does look cleaner. Even taskbar you don't see text associated with the applications down at the bottom; it's a nice kind of larger visual icons, the transparency of it kind of makes it feel like your desktop is bigger, and overall it just has kind of a cleaner polished look. How much it can give OS 10 a run for its money? Really when someone asks a question like that it's really dependent on preference. If you think that OS 10 is the best looking OS hands down, then you'll probably always think that; but I think it definitely cleans the lines up and a lot of the more transparencies and the underpinnings of the graphical power that is taking advantage is helping its look.
>> Ina: Yeah I don't think diehard Mac fans are going to throw away their Mac because Windows 7 comes up, but we have seen a lot of people switching from Windows to Mac and I think there is a question of will this be enough sort of to stem that tide of defections, and that we'll have to see certainly where Apple goes with its OOS, also where the hardware goes.
>> Brian: And another thing is for all you people that are Mac users that are curious about Windows Visio, in the Mac World, a lot of people are always skeptical about Windows stuff. The cool thing about this Beta program is that you can get it; so if you run VMware on your computer, we're talking about doing it on Boot camp, and we don't see why it wouldn't work on Boot camp but we haven't tried it. You can actually download the Windows 7 Beta and run it on your machine so you can actually play with it. That's an option for people that may be skeptical or just curious about the OS. Okay here's another question. This is from Jemanz [assumed spelling]. What's up Jemanz? "One of the big issues I had with issues is drivers; is Windows 7 as or less problematic than Vista?
>> Ina: So it should be less problematic. This is one of the ones that's always the proof is always in the pudding but Windows 7 basically uses the same new driver model that was introduced with Vista so all the work that the computer makers and the whole industry did to make their drivers work for Vista, should carry forward onto Windows 7; so it's not like they'll have to do a bunch of new work. That said, one of the headaches that I've had is getting a couple of those last little things to work with Windows 7. The USB, the Sprint modem that I use, I've had trouble getting it up and running, there's some hints on line but so far I haven't been able to make it work. That does seem to be a driver thing. The video driver for the graphics car that's in the Demo card that I'm using for Microsoft has some issues, so I do think drivers are an area that there's always challenges but they should be ahead of the game compared to where they were with Vista.
>> Brian: Okay excellent. This question is from Matt Burley [assumed spelling] 1993. What's up Matt? He's always here. He says, "What is up Scumstripe [assumed spelling] and Ina. I have an old media center PC running a piece of software called Media Portal on top of XP. I was wondering if Windows 7 would run on AMD Sempron with 512 Megs of RAM."
>> Ina: So 512 is a little bit below what their--it's recommended 1 gig right? Yeah and I really do think if you're going to use it, it pays to use it on a machine that makes sense. I had a machine that was at the bare end of what Vista could handle and it just was never a good Vista machine, but it was at the very bottom of the recommended specs. Certainly something that's kind of a good XP machine won't necessarily be a good 7 machine. That said, something that's even a so-so Vista machine should also be an OK 7 machine. They've actually made it so that Windows 7 can run in less of a footprint than Vista which is pretty impressive--usually it works the other way.
>> Brian: And that was one of the things when we had the conversations a lot earlier about Windows 7 and Vista, about how Vista required hardware that could actually run it but now with people that are using Windows Vista machines, those people in place have the hardware and the specs that are able to just basically hang with Windows 7.
>> Ina: Definitely and one of the questions that I know somebody asked was around Netbooks; and one of the reasons that Windows 7 can run on Netbooks whereas Vista couldn't is the hardware started to catch up where Vista and now 7's requirements are, plus they've done some things to make it work better. So you are seeing run 7 on much smaller machines and I think that's really critical for Microsoft because that's where most of the growth in the industry is; and I think there was a huge opportunity for Microsoft's competitors on the Linux side if all Microsoft could get running was XP because that's some pretty old technology. By bringing Windows 7 to Netbooks, I think we'll see some cool things, plus one of the big features that I haven't gotten to play around with much is Touch support. And I think Touch is really interesting on these smaller devices so you'll be able to use Windows 7 when it has a touch screen and kind of move your hands around to handle the interface--kind of like what you've got on the iPhone and I do think on smaller devices that that's potentially a big usage.
>> Brian: Yeah definitely. Okay we have a question from Mike Hill 33. Mike Hills asks, "I played with Windows 7 on a two year old rig with plenty of disk space, RAM, etc. and found it to be more than acceptable with the exception of power management. Are there any refinements planned?"
>> Ina: You know that is one of the areas that does get worked on right up until the end. It's also an area that historically, we've seen overpromises on in terms of oh this is going to be much better than its predecessors, and in the real world the battery life tends not to improve because even they get more efficient at some things, a lot more graphics and so forth. I am hearing that some people are finding power management to be better than comparable Vista machines; but I'm curious what folks have seen in terms of especially for folks that are taking a Vista machine and put Windows 7 on it. Are they seeing better battery life or not because that is really one of the key questions.
>> Brian: Yeah and for those of you that are here that have actually played with it long enough, maybe you can let us know. Just send us a question or a comment in the chat so our moderator can take a look at that. Now here's another question from Budweiser. What's up Bud? Spelled it a little differently. "Does Windows 7 come in 32 bit and 64 bit versions?"
>> Ina: It will. This may well--I'm not going to go out on a limb but it might be the last time we see that. Certainly most of the machines that are out there shipping with 64 bit processors, the question is it needs new drivers and so forth; so a lot of people who are upgrading older machines might stick with 32 bit if that's what they're used to if they have older devices. A lot of the new machines you buy at retail that are going to come with Windows 7, are going to come with the 64 bit version because anything that wants to use more than 3 or 4 gigs of memory which is becoming pretty standard, will need the 64 bit version.
>> Brian: And I do recall when I went to the website to sign up to download the Beta, I believe they asked if you were running a 32 bit machine or a 64 bit machine right off the bat so there you go. Okay what we're going to do is we've still got a flood of questions. We're going to actually show you a video Tom Merritt put together of how to actually obtain Windows 7 Beta, so take a look at this, it's a couple of minutes and keep your questions flowing. We will be right back.
^M00:13:43
[ Music ]
^M00:13:48
>> Tom Merritt: During CES 2009 Microsoft announced it will let you download a Beta version of Windows 7 for free until January 24th. I'm Tom Merritt from cnet.com, here's quick tip on how to get Windows 7 even maybe if it's after January 24th. Now the Beta is officially available from Microsoft at microsoft.com slash windows, slash windows-7. You'll have to sign in with a Windows Live ID then you'll get a key to use to activate the copy of Windows. Now apparently there are only a limited number of keys, I don't know how many exactly, maybe a half a dozen or so, so your key isn't going to be unique. Now if you're afraid of giving your info to Microsoft, or their servers are swamped or it's after January 24th there's something you should know. Since the Beta is free anyway, some feel it's better to download it elsewhere say a torrent search engine like the Pirate Bay. You still need to obtain a valid product key to activate it though. This is probably not legal but Microsoft is less likely to go after you; it's a free Beta after all and it's set to stop working altogether in August anyway. I wanted to run Windows 7 in a virtual machine. I downloaded the image from Microsoft but the file kept getting corrupted; so I downloaded a virtual machine image from tuxdistro.com thanks to a tip from a friend. Now once again you still need to get an activation key which I got when I downloaded the corrupted copies. Once you've obtained Windows 7 however you do it, you're going to want to install it so look for our video from Seth Rosenblatt; it's an Insider's Secret on setting Windows 7 up. That's it for this quick tip. I'm Tom Merritt, cnet.com.
>> Brian: All right now they've recently extended the deadline of how long you think you can get the Windows 7 Beta right? What is it up to?
>> Ina: Right so Microsoft often caps the number of people that can get the Beta. They have said they were going to keep it available even though they've had enough testers to get kind of that 7 million they were looking for; but you only have until February 10th to start downloading it and February 12th to finish downloading it. So if you have any interest in trying out the Windows 7 Beta, better to download the code now, get a license key and then install it whenever you want.
>> Brian: Okay excellent. This is question that we've had a few people ask--this one is from Planmormic [assumed spelling]. "Has there been discussion about different versions; for example, Ultimate Business, etc. I'm really impressed with the Beta of Ultimate."
>> Ina: There are some hints in the code that suggest we're going to see the same kinds of packages that we saw with Vista which depending on who you are, they've got a lot of criticism, Apple made fun of them for having a bunch of different versions. It makes some sense for them from a business perspective whether it's a good deal for consumers is another question. They haven't said for sure so we're waiting on the final packaging; but the idea that they'll be a home version, maybe a premium home version, a business version and an Ultimate, I think is certainly reasonable. I think that the fact that they've labeled the Beta as Ultimate suggests there is going to continue to be an Ultimate, and I wouldn't be surprised if we see roughly the same packages we saw with Vista.
>> Brian: Okay this question coming from Papa Deus or Papa Daiz [assumed spelling] I don't know. Okay the question is, "What is the biggest noticeable difference between Windows Vista and the Windows 7 Beta?"
>> Ina: I really think it is on the performance side. It's snappier, less annoying, those user account control those. Do you want to install this? They pop us less frequently and that's actually now a slider now that you can choose how often you want to be notified; which really is a good idea. It lets the people that don't want those pop ups turn it down, but it lets the average user still be warned when they should and so it's some of those things. Touch screen is one of those things you probably don't have one on your machine so you can't test it out, but for people walking into a computer store when Windows 7 ships, I think the multi-touch user interface is certainly the most visually striking.
>> Brian: Yeah and then also with those kind of annoying announcements or questions, don't they store it in the bottom right hand corner--there's kind of that box where you can I think when you get alerts or announcements it kind of stores them there so you don't have to keep on getting them all at once.
>> Ina: Yeah there's different ways--there's a thing called the Action center where some of the less urgent things kind of pop up over there. You know I think they've tried to do some things to make the computing experience less annoying.
>> Brian: Less intrusive. It feels like it's less bloated but for a least from the Beta from what I've seen it does feel like you're getting annoyed--you're just doing your thing.
>> Ina: Right which I say I think that's what most people want out of their computers. They're not looking for the OS to be this thing that takes up their time and energy. They're looking to get to a web browser. They're looking to play games, do work, hang on Face Book or whatever.
>> Brian: And Plammermick [assumed spelling] also says that he has it, he or she I'm sorry, has it running on Boot Camp the 64 bit version, so it does rock. Prize [assumed spelling] Stuff said they can't install it on their Mac but clearly you can. I don't know if the Mac doesn't have the minimal requirements for what's going on, but either try doing it off of Boot Camp or if you have an emulator like VMware or parallels, you should be able to give it a shot on that.
>> Ina: You might want to check though because I'm not sure that every Mac that's out there has drivers. Apple isn't officially supporting it; they're saying this is a Beta I think they'd rather you stick to one of the shipping versions but some people have tried it with some success. I'm going to try it on this Mac mini that we have hanging around here, but I'm not sure Boot Camp is the way to go--it's fairly technical.
>> Brian: Okay here we go. This question is from Dr. No. "Hey Brian and Ina how can Microsoft justify Windows 7 just two years after Vista? A lot of software businesses are still in the dark ages and won't upgrade from XP to Vista, never mind 7.
>> Ina: Yeah I don't think the business that's not looking to upgrade from XP to Vista is going to suddenly go from XP to 7. I do think what you'll see is the hardware that runs with Vista will run on 7 so you will see some of the business that have, but Vista machines move over to 7. You know it's interesting--how can you justify it two years? On the Mac side for a long time we got new OS's every year and so the same question could be asked in a negative way like, how come they still are waiting between almost three years between releases when they talked about making them faster? I do think there is a perception out there that Vista has some baggage that I think Microsoft if they could succeed in getting the message out there that Windows 7 is Vista without the baggage, I think they'd be happy; so I think there is an element of trying to put Vista behind them. There's also an element that they made a lot of changes with Vista, a lot of things under the hood and now with Windows 7 they can update their user interface and take advantage of some of those without having to go back and change a whole lot of things.
>> Brian: Now because bringing up a good point though, do you think that now because Windows 7 is kind of on the horizon, do you know exactly when they are kind of expecting to release it or this is just a peak right now? Or you know and you can't say?
>> Ina: They're being really cagy. I know what they're trying for. They do want it out by this year's holiday season. That's not set in stone. Officially they've said we want to have it on the market within three years from when Vista's mainstream launches so by January of next year. January wasn't the greatest time to launch a new OS. I think they would rather have this year's holiday season. It will depend on the testing; it will depend on the economy I think a little bit. Computer makers like to have something new for the holidays but only if they have it in time to really hit the fall holiday season. They don't want to have to change gears in the middle, so I think it will come down to the wire again whether it ships this year or early next year. Again, they're not officially saying but I think they're still hoping to get it out this year.
>> Brian: Do you think people will be holding out now if it could be coming this year? Like people that might have thought--do you think people who got Vista are the ones that were going to get Vista and the rest of them are now just going to wait for Windows 7?
>> Ina: Yeah I think there's this myth that the OS sort of drives the purchase, and I think when you talk to most people they buy a new computer because their old one's gotten slow, it doesn't do something they want it to do. There are some enthusiasts that definitely go out and buy a new PC because it has a new OS but I don't think there will be a huge number of people that will hold off waiting for 7, you probably don't need to. Any machine that runs Vista well should run 7 well. That said, I do think it's going to be a tough PC market; economy--I think there's a lot of reasons not to buy a PC right now. Some people might way oh I'll wait until Windows 7. They also may do some guarantee that if you buy it after a certain point this year, then you get a free upgrade to 7.
>> Brian: Or like only $30 more or something like that right? They've done stuff like that with previous OS's. Okay this question is from C Studios. "I'm not sure if you might know this off the top of your head, but one of Vista's problems is that audio has a tendency to skip or to fuzz out for a second. I'm not familiar with that. Apparently this is due to Vista's under the hood audio architecture. Have they fixed this?"
>> Ina: Boy I really don't know if they've made any changes to try and improve things. Certainly 7's going to use the same underlying audio architecture that was introduced with Vista. Whether they've made improvements to that I'm actually not sure--I haven't heard about major changes but certainly fixing things that weren't working so well in Vista is one of the goals.
>> Brian: Okay excellent. We touched upon this earlier but there are a lot of people that came in later. This is from Julian 007. "How does Windows start up and shut down? Is it quicker than Windows Vista?"
>> Ina: It is. It is definitely. If there's one thing you can point to it's on a machine. It goes to sleep like that and it wakes up just as fast so I think that is a real selling point for people that take their laptops on the move.
>> Brian: Okay we're going to just take a quick minute break. Tom Merritt's going to show us another quick tip using Windows 7 and getting quick task bar back into it. So take a look at that and we will be back.
>> Tom Merritt: A lot of Windows users rely on the quick launch bar to access programs they frequently use. In Windows 7 a new task bar does away with quick launch in favor of persistent icons living with the currently running programs. What if you don't like that? I'm Tom Merritt from cnet.com with a quick tip for turning on the quick launch bar in Windows 7. Click on start and search for edit group policy. Launch edit group policy and you'll get the local policy group editor. Catchey eh? Click on user configuration then administrative templates and start menu and task bar. Scroll down until you find show quick launch on task bar and double click on it. Select enabled and press ok. Right click on the task bar, choose toolbars and new toolbar, right click on the address bar and choose edit address. Then you're going to type in c:backslash users slash your user name slash app data slash roaming slash Microsoft slash internet explorer. Select the quick launch folder and press select folder. Now you can use the quick launch the way you're used to. That's it for this quick tip. I'm Tom Merritt cnet.com.
>> Brian: All right we are back so we're going to just pound up a few more questions. Thanks so much for sending them in guys. We've done a ton of great stuff. This question is from Matt Burley 1993. Matt asks, "Is it best to do a clean install or just upgrade when installing the Beta; it's just an old laptop so I don't really care about losing data?"
>> Ina: Then you're definitely better off doing your clean install--that's definitely what Microsoft recommends. When I first moved from the pre Beta to the Beta I did an upgrade and I was having some problems and the first thing Microsoft said is all right do a clean install. So if you can, you shouldn't be using your primary data anyway when you're trying out a Beta of an OS, so if you've got that spare machine do a clean install then you get that since of what the experience will be like.
>> Brian: Yeah we definitely here at CNET and anyone at Microsoft itself would recommend do not use this as your primary OS. Just because it's in Beta, a lot of people--I remember when I was back in the day running like an OS 10 Beta, I did most of my stuff on it but I always made sure all of my data was running on the other OS because if you lose it that would suck. Okay here we go. This question is from Pando 85. "When 7 actually expires sometime in August, will it be on lock mode? What if we have files we need to move after 7 gets locked?"
>> Ina: You know that's a good question and I don't know off the top of my head but I am going to check into that; so if you check back on Beyond Binary I'm going to get an answer to that and I will post it to my blog. I wouldn't expect that that data would get locked. I would expect there will be something you can upgrade to from this version before August, so either there will be a release candidate or something. I don't think they're going to make you go Windows 7less so from that perspective I think you should be covered, but we'll check into what happens to the data and I'll post something on my blog.
>> Brian: Okay excellent. This question is 49er's fan 123. "Do you think that the interface of Windows 7 will appear on Windows mobile? That's an interesting question.
>> Ina: You know it's interesting. I think we are going to see some blurring of really big phones and really small Netbooks and there's going to be some crossover. We are going to see Windows Mobile do some new and different things. I'm not sure that exactly that Windows 7 interface is the right way to go. I know they've been working for a while now. I wouldn't be surprised to see icons that look similar. We see a lot of themes and so forth that people do to make one look like the other but I'm not sure that Windows Mobile is going to be based on Windows 7 or anything like that.
>> Brian: All right. Als 84 just wrote, "That the consumer's group of ads makes us unbearable to watch." We're sorry about that; we're going to look into that because really you shouldn't be getting ads all the time. So for those of you that are stuck with us, we definitely apologize about that but we'll try to really get that taken care of for the next Editor's Office Hours. Sorry about that but thanks for hanging at least up to almost to the end of the show. He said it was unbearable to watch. Okay here's a question. This is from Van Me 55, "Van Me 55 asks, "What's up guys? How are you doing? I hope you're doing great. As far as iCandy [assumed spelling] he goes, how does Windows 7 and Leper compare?" And then he says, "Go Apple bite." So clearly he must watch that show. The thing is right now because Leopard and OS 10 has been fine-tuned; they have all those visual cool-like swoopy effect and things like expose [assumed spelling] and what not. I wouldn't be surprised if we might see a few scuttle things like that maybe in the final version; I don't now for sure but at least from iCandy if you really care about that in your OS, I would say OS 10 has that right now but this is a Beta so.
>> Ina: Yeah I wouldn't think we're going to get a lot more that's not in the Beta. Microsoft tends not to hold things for less minute--that's more of an Apple trick. You mentioned expose, there is a feature that's really useful where in the bottom right hand corner of Windows 7 if you click in the bottom right hand corner, it makes all your windows disappear which is really nice for Windows users, Mac users have had that option for a while. I don't think you're going to see Windows out iCandy to Mac with the possible exception of Touch; I think that's something they're doing that Apple's not doing.
>> Brian: Implementing into the OS already right?
>> Ina: You know Apple is doing more touch in the track pad of a laptop but no on the screen itself. You know I think in terms of overall iCandy Apple's probably their lead is safe. I do think for Windows users this is going to be the most polished looking OS that they've had, especially when compared to XP.
>> Brian: iCandy's great but it needs to at least have a function. One of the cool things that I love in the Windows 7 is the fact that you can drag a page like a web page and pull it to the side and it immediately sizes it to basically set it as a split screen. You can put a page on the right, drag another window over the left, and then it immediately separates it so you can look at two pages instantly, and that's a really slick feature just to have it built right in. I do dig that a lot. Someone wrote in response to Van Me's question, "What? Okay never mind--I can't even read it. This question is from Zca 1, "I would like to try Windows 7 via Microsoft virtual PC. Has anyone tried to do so?"
>> Ina: Typically you can. I would imagine; I haven't looked into this but I would imagine especially on a Vista machine if you want to run it. Virtual PC is virtually like VMware for a PC, so you're running a virtual PC on a PC and I would think that you'd be able to run Windows 7 from within a Vista machine. Again I not positive so don't sue me if it's not true but I believe you should be able to do that.
>> Brian: Okay excellent. Well you know what that's going to do it for this week's Editor's Office Hours. Ina thanks so much for coming out. A lot of people came out to see you.
>> Ina: Great.
>> Brian: Next week, we're actually going to be coming out of the NYC. Dan Ackerman's going to be with Lori Grunin to talk about digital cameras. So remember to come back. It will be 11:30 a.m. West Coast time; 2:30 p.m. East Coast time. Thanks for watching Editor's Office Hours and we'll see you next time. Peace.
