> rm -f_

Brandon Paddock, a Microsoft Employee, posted on his blog the list of new hotkeys for Windows 7 Beta. I decided to test out some of these hotkeys on my Windows 7 box at work.  Here are some of my findings.

The zoom command, Win++, is just clunky.  Why not implement a similar zoom interface as OS X? Why have it launch an App that takes upwards of five to ten seconds to launch?  Win+Space is just useless.  It provides you a peek of the desktop, but you can’t interact with the desktop at all.  Win+D already hides all open applications, why the need for a peek?

There are a few hotkeys worth mentioning though, starting with Win+P. This will be extremely useful for those with Notebooks. Instead of searching for the function key (which is different on each brand of notebooks), you can now decide how you want to display the desktop when connected to an external monitor with a standardized hotkey. Finally, Win+Shift+Left/Right allows you to switch between multiple displays. Previously with multiple displays, if you have your windows maximized, without any third party solutions, you would have to: resize the window, drag to desired monitor, and then maximize it again. Seems petty, but when you do it a lot, it gets annoying. Those are just a few of the new hotkeys, which ones do you like so far or look like you will use in the future?

Today I decided to download the beta of Windows 7, Microsoft’s next major Operating System.  The download process was quick and simple, I only waited about 30 minutes for the download to complete.   One side note, I did have to do the entire download process on my PC under Internet Explorer – it wouldn’t work any other way.   After the download completed, I began to contemplate which machine I wanted to install Windows 7 on.  I decided to go with my MacBook Pro and to install it under VMware Fusion.

I know that VMware doesn’t fully support Windows 7 yet, but I didn’t want to install it on my main PC at work or home.   Parallels just updated their software for Windows 7 (Experimental), however Fusion is still my choice for virtualization on the Mac.   After launching Fusion I chose Windows 2008 server as my Operating System and started the install.  The installation process could not have been easier.  The entire install took roughly around twenty minutes, though I didn’t really keep track of time when the install was running.

So I’m done with the install and Windows 7 is now running on my Mac via VMware Fusion.  Make sure to install the VMware Tools, otherwise the VM will act up.  It looks like all the necessary hardware devices were installed properly. I have to say even as a Virtual OS, 7 seems much faster than Vista does.  I’ll write more on my findings in a few days, after I spend more time with Windows 7.