Hands on: pre-beta Windows 7 review

UPDATE: Read our newer Windows 7 Release Candidate review

Microsoft has never been so secretive about a new version of Windows for so long.

Windows 7 is finally being unveiled at the Professional Developers Conference, but we got to try out the Milestone 3 pre-beta version that attendees will take home, as well as getting a sneak peak at the next internal version and the new user interface.

Read on for our Windows 7 pre-beta build review.

The internals of Windows 7 don't have the big architectural changes of Vista – or the compatibility problems, claims Steve Sinofsky, Senior Vice President for Windows. Or as he puts it: "I don't believe you have to break things to have big changes."

It's not clear how big the changes are so far. If you put the beta-build of Windows 7 side-by-side with Windows Vista, you'd be hard-pressed to spot the differences. Yes, some of the icons look slightly different and there's no sidebar, but it's essentially still the Vista look and feel. But that changes when you start to use Windows 7.

For a start the OS won't nag you as much; many notifications are banished to a control panel, you get to approve icons before they show up in the system tray and Microsoft has reined in Vista's useful but annoying UAC prompts; you can choose which ones you want to see or turn them off altogether.

The Windows 7 interface

Run your mouse along the taskbar, and you get the option of full screen previews of any minimised windows – including all the tabs open in Internet Explorer, along with the ability to close applications directly from the preview. No, you can't already do that in Vista, it just feels so natural and intuitive that you assume it's always been there.

Jump Lists simplify working with applications, showing recent and frequently used documents, as well as common tasks for some applications. These are more efficient, they put what you're most likely to want to do at your fingertips – but they won't suit everyone.

In fact Jump Lists are literally at your fingertips; on a touchscreen you can swipe your finger over an icon to open the Jump List. You can also scroll through web pages, flick through photos, pinch and stretch your fingers to zoom and twiddle them around to rotate a photo – or you can literally finger-paint in Paint. These are the same kind of simple gestures Apple has pioneered and they're easy to use, as long as you have a touchscreen.

Networking in Windows 7

The HomeGroup is Microsoft's attempt at making home networking easy, rather like the Castle feature that was dropped from early betas of Vista. With a simple wizard-driven approach to network connections and to file and folder sharing, HomeGroups are the home user equivalent of Windows 3.11 workgroups. They've been a long time coming – and Microsoft seems to have come up with an idiot-proof network, thanks to password-controlled connections.

Eerily reminiscent of the doomed WinFS concept planned for Vista, Libraries bring folders with common content together – making it easier to track down images, music or documents. If you're using a HomeGroup home network, Library content can also include files stored on other networked PCs – and you can play music and videos on other PCs and devices remotely, as long as they support DLNA 1.5, like the Sonos Zone Player.

This Play To feature works well because of the improved codec support, including DIVX and XVID, HD ABC and Apple's AAC – letting you share iTunes libraries with Windows or Linux users, as long as they're not DRM-locked FairPlay songs.