Microsoft outlines Windows 7 RC changes

The latest post on Microsoft's Engineering Windows 7 blog highlights some of the changes that have been made to the Windows 7 OS between beta 1 and RC.

In all thirty six changes are outlined in all. Let's take a look at some of the more important changes.

• Aero Peek can be triggered via Windows Flip (ALT+TAB) This one makes a lot of sense. Sure, Peek (which lets you see the desktop) is interesting, but it felt kinda pointless. Now it feels vaguely practical.

  

• Windows Logo + <#> keyboard shortcut In Windows 7 the taskbar and quick launch bar have been combined, and now this new keyboard shortcut gives you access to both shortcuts and programs that are running.
• Taskbar scaling More space for taskbar buttons at various screen resolutions. 800x600   Large icons - 10   Small icons - 15 1024x768   Large icons - 15   Small icons - 22 1280x1024   Large icons - 20   Small icons - 29 1600x1200   Large icons - 26   Small icons - 39
• Variety of touch-related tweaks Touch technology isn't all that big a deal right now, but is betting that over the lifespan of Windows 7 it's going to become increasingly important. Tweaks include a multi-touch keyboard, multi-touch right-click and drag/drop support.
• Auto-locking without screen saver I don't know how many years I've waited for this ability!
• Native .MOV support No need for QuickTime to play back .MOV files. Nice!
• Various performance tweaks Not much details on these ... I'm guessing these are minor tweaks and general tightening up of the code.

As I expected though, no new features. This seems to indicate that all those who thought that Windows 7 was feature frozen before we even saw the first beta were right.