What's New in Windows 7? A Sneak Peek at the Pre-Beta Reveals Some Surprises

Officially, Microsoft pulls the drapes off the Windows 7 pre-beta tomorrow (October 28) at the Professional Developer's Conference. So, what's new and different? ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley's received the inside scoop on what's coming tomorrow. Look for:

• A new peripheral management interface called Device Stage (more info about this is coming in the Windows 7 Partner Showcase at November's WinHEC 2008 conference)
• A new self-diagnosis feature called Action Center
• A new A/V control method called StreamOn
• A new animation framework
• New task bar and shell integration features
• Multi-touch and gesture recognition
• Improved Bluetooth support
• Ribbon UI akin to Office 2007 for Windows 7's applets

The version PDC attendees will be seeing appears to be build 6801 M3 (Milestone 3), which was finalized on October 20. You can find screen shots of an earlier version of this build at the WinFuture.de website (the site's in German, but the screen shots are in English).

Stay tuned to Maximum PC for more Windows 7 coverage.

Figure adapted from illustration courtesy ArsTechnica.