You can't really judge from a pre-beta release. Even what they showed at PDC was different than what attendees received. And everything shown was already in the product, not things that "we are thinking about". The beta will be feature complete, but not optimized.
>We'll see. PC World certainly was not impressed with its first look, with potential computability issues being one of the concerns:
>
>
Bottom line: So far, Windows 7 looks, behaves, and performs almost exactly like Windows Vista. And it breaks all sorts of things that used to work just fine under Vista. In other words, Microsoft's follow-up to its most unpopular OS release since Windows Me threatens to deliver zero measurable performance benefits while introducing new and potentially crippling compatibility issues.>
>
http://www.pcworld.com/article/153624/under_the_hood_windows_7_is_vistas_twin.html
Craig Berntson
MCSD, Microsoft .Net MVP, Grape City Community Influencer