So, here’s the rundown of the new Windows 7 Beta (build 7000):

- New task bar:

- Great, even has color change!
- Color/transparency change based on theme settings
- Drag and drop applications
- Pin applications to the task bar

- New apps:

- Snipping tool – An advanced screen capture tool:

- Rectangular, Full Screen, Freeform, and Window capture modes
- Save as PNG, GIF, JPG, or MHT (Single HTML file)
- Pen and highlight tools (and an eraser tool to remove said tools)

- Stickies – little notes:

- Several color choices (Green, Blue, Red, etc.)
- Resizeable
- Simple UI
- Start Menu contextual menu as well

- Updates:

- Paint, the forgotten app:

- 21 resizable shapes
- Ribbon UI
- Advanced colors display, brush sizes

- Wordpad:

- Ribbon UI
- ‘Mini’ MS Word
- Updated and polished UI: added view size slider like Word

- Calculator:

- New UI
- Calculation Templates (gas mileage, lease and mortgage estimation)

- Gadgets:

- No longer a sidebar: gadgets can be placed anywhere on the desktop
- ‘Default Gadget Gallery’ contains all gadgets
- Search all gadgets on the system (by most recent or all)

- Ships with IE 8 Beta (build 8.0.7000.0):

- New UI
- Dual render modes (Pre-IE 8 and ‘Standards-based’)

- Libraries are still cool. Libraries contain all content of a specific type (eg: Music, Pictures, Videos)
- Help is now in the top right hand corner of Ribbon-based windows
- Certain apps have contextual menus in the Start Menu when opened, including Stickies
- Contextual menus for some applications when right clicked in task bar
- ‘Pin’ to task bar (like a Dock, sort of)
- Easily manage system tray icons, act like mini-apps
- Dynamic window preview (size changes)
- Power options have been shrunk to one item on the main Start menu (Shut Down), other options located inside a pop up menu
- Overall, a much ‘lighter’ look and feel

Hopes and Wishes:

- System wide spell check!
- Ability to change default power option (to an item such as Lock or Standby)
- Smaller task bar size (seems very large right now, even at smallest setting)
- Refine the ruler in Wordpad: it looks very out of place right now