The UI really does look sharp, and the video at the end of the article goes to show its not just a fancy new box joining things together, you have graphs that will really make performance monitoring on network copys much easier, and visually appealing even moreso than teracopy ever had.

It’s actually a little scary when i saw the screen to the left, why? Because its actually like Microsoft unlike some other companies has started to listen to it’s customers, and implement features that set it apart and actually make the computing experience, dare i say… Better, with filtering by location for conflicts, as well as highlighting differences between the conflicts so you can make smart choices on which one you really intend to keep.

The video below is of the demonstration and goes to show the above 2 scenarios as well as some other adjustments in the copy and paste process that really just are great improvements that have been coming for a long time. You see this is a proper OS update, New entire UI’s bringing features and improvements people have been wanting and asking for, unlike a certain Lion that turned out to be quite lackluster and sort of useless.

So far I haven’t had any rendering issues, and apparently its now very standards compliant gaining a 95 on the Acid3 test, the highest ever for a microsoft browser. Honestly I’m sitting here and can’t believe i’m actually considering starting to use IE again as my default browser, I’ve already installed it on my laptop/work pc and home pc today, and on all of them it flies.

One thing i really love, is that when it starts up it warns you if you have plugins that are taking long to start up and slowing the browser, i imidiately clicked it and killed a bunch of things, java taking 3 seconds to load WTF, the graph it shows you of plugin start times makes it easy, i mean 99.99999% of sites have 0 java ever and its taking up like 95% of startup time. turned that off and some others and wow now start performance is equally impressive less than a second.

This is NOT a sponsored message, this is my honest opinion and i’d definitly recommend everyone to take a shot and install IE9, you might be surprised, yes its a beta so be careful its probably still got some bugs, but then again doesn’t IE6/7/8, i doubt it could ever we worse than them.

Source: InHouse / IE9 Download Page

According to Janice Chaffin, president of Symantec’s Consumer Division, “Microsoft’s free product is basically a stripped down version of the OneCare product Microsoft pulled from the shelves. A full Internet security suite is what consumers require today to stay fully protected.” which I find to be COMPLETE AND UTTER BULL.

As a computer technician, and network engineer let me just break it down for you. Microsoft already has a “Suite”.

Firewalls have been built in to XP and Vista, in fact Vista supports bi-directional filtering. But even when it comes down to this it doesn’t really matter to the average consumer sitting behind their linksys router NAT’d and firewall’d already so why do we need additional firewalling? Oh ya so that Norton can randomly screw up and blog mail and messenger and other oddities that I’ve seen over the past 3 years.

AntiPhishing… last I checked this was built into IE8

AntiMalware… Windows Defender in Vista and Windows 7

AntiSpam… Windows Mail / Outlook already have spam filters and their constantly getting better.

and now Microsoft is moving Morro to be a free Antivirus to complete the security “Suite” as the Norton and Mcaffee schills continue to sound their “we’re better because you pay for us” Bulls*it. The fact of the matter is in the modern day and age if you do your windows updates, and run a basic free antivirus your pretty much as safe as you ever will be, What Norton and the big Antivirus manufaturers want is to scare consumers into thinking they need their bloated slow and useless software when the simple fact is.

Ok i’ve rambled for long enough, on to the goodies care of neowin for the leak. Remember Morro will apparently be releasing for free before the end of 2009 to work side by side with Windows Defender (hence the similar look).

Desktop and User Interface:

• Gadget view options
In the Windows 7 beta it was impossible to separate desktop icons from gadgets under the View setting available by right-clicking on the desktop. Now there is the option to hide just your gadgets or just your desktop icons.

Keyboard Shortcuts:

• Windows Flip (ALT + TAB) with Aero Peek
Aero Peek is now enabled for Windows Flip (or more commonly known as ALT + TAB).

• Improved Windows Logo + # keyboard shortcut
Pressing Windows Logo + # (where # corresponds to an item’s order in the taskbar) in the beta would only launch the program in Windows 7. In the release candidate, it can both launch and switch between Windows. For example, if IE wasn’t running and the second item on the taskbar, Windows Logo + 2 will launch the program. If IE is running with a single window, the same shortcut will now switch to the program. When IE is running with several windows or tabs, holding down the Windows Logo and tapping the 2 key repeatedly will actually cycle through the open IE items off the taskbar (with Aero Peek). Letting go simply switches to the corresponding window. It works really similarly to the ALT +TAB shortcut.

Multitouch:

• Aero Peek for touch
First, the taskbar’s thumbnails now support a gesture so you can drag your finger across the taskbar and it will trigger Aero Peek. The Show Desktop button is improved so a press-and-hold will allow the customer to peek at the desktop. A regular tap still allows you to switch over.

• Windows Explorer
Multi-touch zoom is now enabled for Windows Explorer.

Power Options:

• Faster access to High Performance power plan
Clicking on the battery icon in the taskbar notification area offers two different power plans: Balanced and Power saver. Windows 7 laptops are configured to use the Balanced by default. Now in the popout menu, you can see all three options.

Taskbar:

• Increased taskbar space
There is even more increased space on the taskbar now. The release candidate will feature 24-39% more icons before the taskbar scrolls (depending upon resolution, icon size and the default notification area).

• Increased flexibility and changes to Jump Lists
When there are too many things pinned to Jump Lists, it defeats the whole purpose of easy access. Jump Lists now only automatically suggest the first 10 items (there is still the option to customize the length of the list).

Now you can also pin files and folders to programs that are not handle that file type. Pinning the item in most cases will create a new registration so that launching it from the Jump List will always open the file with that specific program (ex. a pinned HTML file to Notepad will always open the file in Notepad).

The Control Panel jump list will now list your most recent items.

• Newly installed programs
When a program is installed, it automatically and temporarily surfaces at the bottom of the Start Menu. It lets the user see it, giving them the option to launch it or drag it to the taskbar.

User Account Control:

• Increased security
There will be two changes to the release candidate to UAC settings. The first change is that the UAC control panel will run in a “high integrity” process (thus requiring elevation). The second change will now prompt for a confirmation when you are changing the level of UAC.

Source: Gizmodo