The first benefit of WinFS can be found when you open the "My Computer" window (now known just as "Computer", by the way), in the form of the "Contacts" folder. Here, contacts are shown as files, with editable tags, much like .mp3 tags. Email addresses, phone numbers etc. can be entered here. Double-clicking opens an easy-to-use dialog that you can use to edit the tags. Take a look at the screenshot. Upon starting Windows/MSN messenger for the first time, contacts from that source are automatically imported.
Whether you find this useful or not is completely a matter of taste. Although I never used 'contacts' anyway (the mail addresses I need are all stored in my MSN list, and besides that, I have the good old (mobile) phone), for companies this might be very interesting. It surely eases the customization of your contacts list.
Another new feature is the "defaultstore" folder. This folder, using a network folder icon, does some interesting things. When a number of, let's say, pictures is copied into this directory, it can sort those files in a number of ways, to your liking. These include "name" (obviously), "date taken", "size", "dimensions", "date modified" and "lens aperture". These sorting methods have sub-options, which you can use to filter the pictures. You can, for example, select to only show pictures with a resolution of 1280x1024. Of course different sorting methods are available for different types of files.
Another, more interesting, sorting method is "stack by ...". This will produce stacks, showing, physically, how much is in each stack. When I used the "stack by name" option, for example, it produced two stacks: "A-H" and "I-P", with the latter having three pieces of paper, and the former only one, and thus telling me that the "I-P" contains more pictures than "A-H". These stacks are handled like directories. Nice features, and I hope to see more of this, soon.
Stability:
Speaking about stability is not very fair of course, in the pre-alpha stage. But, besides 4051 being very slow (loading the sidebar/startpanel alone takes about five to ten minutes), it is more stable than I had expected. I also must say that I did not use any tweaking guides and/or patches. I will include a paragraph describing the speed improvements gained from doing so. I have experienced two reboots in 4 days, for a pre-alpha that is not all that bad. How it will turn out in the end is of course impossible to say.
The Build After The Tweak
Using the tweak guide, you can seriously improve both speed and stability in this new build. The actions taken to achieve this, range from uninstalling certain Windows components (WinFS, for example, a real strain on your system's resources), to disabling all kinds of services (much as in the tweaking guides for older builds). The improvements are remarkable: loading the startpanel/sidebar is reduced from five to ten minutes to a matter of seconds, programs load much faster, and so on. When using Longhorn for a longer period of time, I seriously recommend performing the tweaks.
There are also some drawbacks of course; disabling WinFS for example has some serious consequences: Outlook 7 will not start, since the new contacts system relies on WinFS. There are probably some other setbacks as well that I have not encountered yet.
Conclusion
It is very difficult to draw any conclusions at this early stage. With the final release being years ahead of us, there is not really anything sane to say about where Microsoft is heading. All I can do is try to give an objective judgment of where this 'version' of Windows stands, compared to its predecessors.
If this version of Windows were more stable, it would be an excellent candidate for a (free) upgrade, in my opinion. The reworking of the GUI and the newer versions of IE and OE could be released as a sort of upgrade, maybe even through Windows Update. The new features are highly needed in modern-day computing; pop-up blockers, download managers, new GUI features are improvements people have been asking for. Of course, one could install Opera, of course, one could install WindowBlinds, but hey, what does the average Windows user know about that? You do not miss what you do not know.
It could also bridge the gap between now and Longhorn's release (a lot of complaining has been going on about that issue).
As for me, Longhorn is going to stay on my computer for a while, because I like messing around with software that has not been finished yet.
People might say that this release is just XP with a new coat. They are completely right, in my opinion. But darn, that new coat looks nice.
Test Machine:
- AMD Athlon XP 1600+
- MSI K-7T Turbo2
- ATI Radeon 9000 128 MB DDR-RAM
- CMI8738-based soundcard
- Compaq v75 17" monitor
- LG DVD-Drive
- Samsung CD-R(RW)
- Realtek 8139-based network card
- Microsoft Trackball Optical USB
- Standard PS/2 keyboard
- "Longhorn, Page 1"
- "Longhorn, Page 2"
