Digital Home Thoughts: Tom's Guide Shows You How Windows 7 Became Windows 7

"At Microsoft’s Mix conference, the company showed off some of its early work on Windows 7, giving attendees a rare look into the birth of an operating system’s user interface. Try to imagine life with some of these aborted attempts at a new operating system: Would you have stood for these features?"

Windows 7 will be coming with a lot of new user interface features. As with any long project, features evolve over time as they're tested, tuned and trampled on and Tom's Guide has given us a chance to see how Windows 7 became what it is today. It's a good insight and leads me to believe that Microsoft does go through a fair bit of effort to try and make the Windows "experience" as productive and enjoyable as possible. I'm extremely glad that taskbar thumbnails and the bat signal did not make it into Windows 7. Maybe because reminds me about a particular flash ad that would constantly say a greeting whenever I moused over it, the idea of having lots of little thumbnails wiggling and doing all manner of things in the taskbar disturbs me.