Sounds like Windows 7 is what Vista should have been:

Microsoft announced Wednesday that a beta version of Windows 7 will be available for the general public to download and try out on Friday. At the same time, it provided a list of the minimum system requirements it recommends for people who run the beta.

They call for a 1GHz processor (32- or 64-bit), 1GB of main memory, 16GB of available disk space, support for DX9 graphics with 128MB of memory (for the Aero interface), and a DVD-R/W drive.

Those system requirements are similiar to the Vista ones - but seeing as how Windows 7 will be out three years or so after Vista, it means that they are effectively lower. Early reports are that Vista runs pretty well, and that the driver issues that Vista suffered from are gone (since Windows 7 can use Vista device drivers).

The big question for me is this: Will MS continue to cede the PR space to Apple? A lot of Vista's reputation issues linger due to MS allowing Apple to define the OS, well after the early problems had been solved. The Windows 7 launch won't work for them if they let the same thing happen.

Technorati Tags: microsoft, apple, pr