What I've Been Doing
Since PDC happened I've been going through and watching all of the presentations. If you want a quick synopsis of what is coming out for 7:
General:
Desktop Windows use 50% less memory.
Their target machine is a 1ghz notebook with 1gb of ram. This is the machine they used to give the keynote presentation for Day 2 (Introduction to Windows Seven)
Seven uses only 500 MB of RAM for itself.
>60% of Vista's installation size is drivers. (Ex: 1.5 gb of printer drivers)
Every component of Seven has been optimized for performance and lower memory requirements.
Windows Seven will have only a single beta and a single RC.
Windows Seven will be out July-August 2009.
On Graphics:
DX10 includes fallback modes and these will be supported on Vista.
The fallback modes are: DirectXLevel9 for DX9 hardware and DirectX10 Warp (a software renderer)
DX10.1 is supported in Vista
DX11 will be supported in Vista.
DX10.1 and newer are supported in RDP (remote desktop protocol) for client-side rendering
DX11 supports Compute Shaders and many performance enhancements.
DX11 is a super-set of DX10.1. DX10.1 is a super-set of DX10.
On GUI: http://www.winsupersite.com/images/blog/awesomebar_smicons.jpg
Note on the picture: The weirdness you see beside IE is removed in the later versions (early beta)
The taskbar, system tray and quicklaunch features have all been upgraded and merged into a single new taskbar (or the Awesome Bar (tm) Paul T)
The Quicklaunch section is gone.
The Awesome Bar supports reordering by drag+drop
Applications now can be pinned to the Awesome Bar (this duplicates Quick Launch functionality)
Applications that are not running just show their icon.
Applications that are running get a glass-over look.
Applications are grouped by default.
Applications with multiple tabs (IE) or multiple documents (Word) will show all of their tabs/documents (small size) when moused over in the Awesome Bar.
Aero Peek:
When you mouse over one of these Application Previews all other applications will fade to glass with only the selected one shown.
Controls can be exposed below the Application Preview (pause/play, stop, forward, etc). These are specific to each window.
Desktop Windows use 50% less memory than Vista (less than XP as well).
Aero, as in Vista, is entirely GPU-accelerated, increasing performance over XP.
Aero Glass effects are now done via a shader (performance increase over Vista)
There's a -ton- of other stuff. If you have any questions just ask away in the comments.
General:
Desktop Windows use 50% less memory.
Their target machine is a 1ghz notebook with 1gb of ram. This is the machine they used to give the keynote presentation for Day 2 (Introduction to Windows Seven)
Seven uses only 500 MB of RAM for itself.
>60% of Vista's installation size is drivers. (Ex: 1.5 gb of printer drivers)
Every component of Seven has been optimized for performance and lower memory requirements.
Windows Seven will have only a single beta and a single RC.
Windows Seven will be out July-August 2009.
On Graphics:
DX10 includes fallback modes and these will be supported on Vista.
The fallback modes are: DirectXLevel9 for DX9 hardware and DirectX10 Warp (a software renderer)
DX10.1 is supported in Vista
DX11 will be supported in Vista.
DX10.1 and newer are supported in RDP (remote desktop protocol) for client-side rendering
DX11 supports Compute Shaders and many performance enhancements.
DX11 is a super-set of DX10.1. DX10.1 is a super-set of DX10.
On GUI: http://www.winsupersite.com/images/blog/awesomebar_smicons.jpg
Note on the picture: The weirdness you see beside IE is removed in the later versions (early beta)
The taskbar, system tray and quicklaunch features have all been upgraded and merged into a single new taskbar (or the Awesome Bar (tm) Paul T)
The Quicklaunch section is gone.
The Awesome Bar supports reordering by drag+drop
Applications now can be pinned to the Awesome Bar (this duplicates Quick Launch functionality)
Applications that are not running just show their icon.
Applications that are running get a glass-over look.
Applications are grouped by default.
Applications with multiple tabs (IE) or multiple documents (Word) will show all of their tabs/documents (small size) when moused over in the Awesome Bar.
Aero Peek:
When you mouse over one of these Application Previews all other applications will fade to glass with only the selected one shown.
Controls can be exposed below the Application Preview (pause/play, stop, forward, etc). These are specific to each window.
Desktop Windows use 50% less memory than Vista (less than XP as well).
Aero, as in Vista, is entirely GPU-accelerated, increasing performance over XP.
Aero Glass effects are now done via a shader (performance increase over Vista)
There's a -ton- of other stuff. If you have any questions just ask away in the comments.