This week Jon leads a discussion about our first impressions of Windows 7 Beta 1.

• Previously bundled features are now distribued via Windows Live - good or bad?
• Is the Windows Live suite just a standardized crapware?
• Where’s our Photo Gallery?
• Windows Marketplace???
• Missing an ISO Mounter
• The out of box experience
• Window docking
• Windows Explorer - side by side
• Discoverability - shortcuts, etc.
• “New features” that were already in Vista
• New Wordpad and Paint with ribbons
• Same old Notepad
• Kevin’s underwhelmed with the updates to Paint
• Could Windows Live Essentials include some friends, like Paint.NET?
• Hey, a new calculator!
• Problem Steps Recorder
• Send Feedback
• Nothing new for Remote Desktop?
• Virtual Hard Drive support, but we want application virtualization
• Multitouch
• Distribution - why not via BitTorrent?
• IE8 is still the same old IE8 that we know and meh
• Windows Scenic Animation API
• Looks like the API’s still all C++ and COM
• The Vista Bridge project
• The Ribbon control has graduated from an Office control to Windows
• No WPF?
• Jumplists