Just scored a copy of the Windows 7 Beta 1 (don’t ask) and am from it just now.  More as I figure stuff out.

Update:

I can already tell you what the biggest controversy will be:  hands down its libraries.  We already have directories, what are libraries good for? Yeah I get that you can combine folders or pick and choose files out of certain folders.   Its a needless abstraction,  just something else to confuse people who don’t know what they are doing already and annoy those of us that do.  If you could possibly do something useful with this feature, you probably don’t need it.  Can we just turn them off?

Update # 2:

I am giving up testing for now.  I got a BSOD while downloading about 6.5gb of songs from my Linux server.  I guess that’s to be expected from Beta software.  But I installed Office 2007, Firefox (IE still stinks), Thunderbird and a bunch of utilities like Putty and WinScp all without a hitch.  I’m still not a fan of Libraries.  I understand what they are trying to do, but I’d like Windows Explorer to open c:UsersMe by default instead of Libraries. 

I think Home Group is going to be a security nightmare.  We don’t share computer to computer at home, that’s what the server is for.  All of our systems have passwords and we’re use to using at least some network security measures. We don’t watch video or share them with each other (ditto for music). 

I’m also not a fan of the new taskbar. I have never been a fan of the Apple dock which combines application launchers and running tasks, so needless to say I’m not really excited by Microsoft’s implementation.

In short, Windows 7’s most highly touted features (other than stability and speed which I surely want) are things which are ok in and of themselves, but I won’t be using them if I can figure out how to turn them off even though I’m sure I’ll be using Windows 7.