Instead of posting it there I decided to post the information here at Ghacks. The day began with screenshot posts by Paul Thurrott and Tom Warren who both posted lots of screenshots that Microsoft supplied. They managed to create their own as well and their posts show both the official and custom screenshots of Windows 7 M3 builds.

The interface has changed quite a bit in comparison to Windows Vista. Windows 7 sports a bigger taskbar, improved system tray, date and time being displayed by default and gadgets that can now be placed freely on the computer desktop. Two features worth mentioning are preview windows and so called jump lists which appear when moving the mouse over an item in the Windows Taskbar.

Gizmodo was quick to post an article that had some interesting boot and shutdown time comparisons of Windows 7 and Windows Vista. It was not really scientific though and it seemed that two different laptops were used for the test. It is still believed that Windows 7 will boot considerably faster than Windows Vista.

Microsoft obviously does not like comparisons between Windows Vista and Windows 7. They do their best to keep the two operating systems separated. Windows 7 however looks very much like an optimized version of Windows Vista which got the improvements that users wanted to see in Windows Vista.

Ed Bott and Mary-Jo Foley have published their first impression of Windows 7 M3 on their blogs as well. Lots to read.

Changes to the user interface, usability and optimization seem to be the main focus points of the Windows 7 development team. Did you like what Microsoft has shown so far? Let me know.