Windows 7: designed for a world in the cloud

Better performing

Then there's the issue of performance: "That has been a focus for us in the Windows 7 development. If I'm an average person, I'm probably trying to decide whether to go out and buy a new PC in the January sales, or whether to hold on because Windows 7 is coming.

The exciting thing about Windows 7 is that it's built on the Vista foundation, so it will be able to take advantage of all the reliability and security of Vista. But what it also means is that if you were buying a new PC today and it was running Windows Vista, you can have confidence that same PC will run Windows 7 as well or better." surely the latter?

And, of course, he confirms that: "Windows 7 will be scaleable from a Netbook all the way up to a high-end PC." Which effectively spells the death knell for Windows XP, which has surely hung around longer than Microsoft ever anticipated, which Curran tacitly confirms: "Windows XP was built for a very different world. It launched in 2001. The first mainstream digital SLR came out in 2001. It was a Nikon, was over £3,000 and had 2 megapixel resolution."

"It wasn't an operating system designed to support all the thousands of files and all the entertainment options. It wasn't an always-on world, and broadband penetration was low. So naturally, people want a lot more from their operating system."

Curran won't, of course, come out and say Windows 7 is the operating system that Vista should have been. But by portraying it as just as secure as Vista, yet much leaner, meaner and faster, and more specifically designed for a Web-centric, social networking-obsessed world, he's effectively adding Vista, as well as the anachronism which is XP, to the scrap-heap. Let's hope that Windows 7's beta phase is short.

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Now read TechRadar's Hands on: Windows 7 Beta 1 review

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