The first screenshots of Windows 7 are starting to emerge from all places around the internet, and even betas of the operating itself are being found on torrent sites, bringing the idea of Microsoft’s new version of Windows ever closer.

From a purely cosmetic point of view, from the early beta screenshots Windows 7 sucks. Badly. Again, Microsoft have found that the dock in Mac OS is quite a useful tool, and have pathetically tried to copy it resulting in a large piece of crap at the bottom of the screen.

Bias or not, I hate the UI. The Windows Vista user interface is much cleaner, and the layout of the taskbar and everything on it is one of the reasons I use Windows - the way you can easily see which programs you have open at any one time.

Using the new taskbar, it seems that you just have icons. Granted, to see what’s open in the programs you can hover over them to get a preview - but you can’t instantly know by glancing down what’s open in each program.

The start menu itself also looks rubbish in my opinion - we haven’t needed an expandable explorer option at the top of the menu, so why do we need one now?

In my opinion, Microsoft have just jumped in and changed lots of UI elements for the sake of making Windows 7 look different to Vista in order to get rid of the bad attention consumers wrongly associate with Vista. The start menu and task bar has been a fundamental part of Windows since Windows 95, and I don’t see a need to change that.

If anything it will put people off more, as the inexperienced user would think that the operating system is totally different, and it seems like Microsoft have made it even harder to find what you need.

To see the UI for yourself in the current Windows 7 release, head over to Ars Technica for a detailed analysis: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081028-first-look-at-windows-7.html