Windows 7 has been moving along nicely with build after build progressing quickly. It has currently broken through the 7000 barrier, with build 7004.

The other big news is the beta release. We can probably expect a beta release of Windows 7 sometime in January 2009. Yes, this is only a few weeks away. If you haven’t already seen one of the existing builds, then the beta release will be worth downloading.

We have been doing a bit of testing with an earlier build of Windows 7 and overall it looks pretty good. The performance should be noticeably better than Vista, with plenty of extra features. Some of the official benchmark tests are showing the same results too. If you are currently a Vista user, don’t worry, everything will (should) be compatible). If you are still on XP and looking to upgrade, then Windows 7 will be a good move.