Author: Blue Horizon

With this build we reach the end of the Beta 1 stage. And as always there's many new changes to explore and see - Most notably is the visual appeal of the OS.

In setup you'll notice the "Windows NT Setup" text is gone from the background. This setup is also much well polished compared to previous builds and seems to be faster aswell.

I should also point out that this build doesn't complain about ACPI being turned on, so that's a huge win. Looks like they've finally added proper support for it into Windows NT.

The login window is given a nice visual upgrade. And this build also now identifies itself as an "Interim Developer's Release".

And with a new login screen comes a new watermark as well.

There's also a new wallpaper in this build, but isn't on the desktop by default.

Nothing really new on the desktop except the taskbar. This time on the bottom right corner, the desktop button is back since build 1515 - meaning we now have two desktop buttons. And the quick launch seperators seem to have changed.

Next to the supposed desktop button is an arrow linking to a list of stuff that could otherwise be done through other and more advanced ways.

The start menu is now shorter cause of it's removal of the "Favorites" list. It hasn't been this short since Windows 95/NT 4.0.

The explorer now has a new graphic on the left (viewable via folder options), and I'm just noticing that the icons on the top buttons aren't purple anymore.

There is this new error page with a "?" paper icon, and also a larger size too than the final where it was a smaller "i" paper icon instead.

The display properties is given a slight upgrade and is now more versatile.

Menus now fade in! And also when you click on a choice in the menu, the rest of the menu disappears and the choice you selected fades out. This is still used in Windows to this very day.

And I just happened to come across this, the task manager also fades in when opened. Kind of like DCE in Longhorn. Not sure why it applies to that specific window, but then again this is the first build to introduce fading menus.

This build comes with an OnScreen Keyboard, something that would be useful for tablet computers with no built-in keyboard. And it also appears to be a 3rd party program called "ScreenDoors Lite". It seems Microsoft didn't have a large enough budget to make a keyboard application themselves.

But with all that, that's the end of the beta 1 stage. Things can only get more interesting in beta 2, so stay tuned.