Google, as ever, has the answer. A new GMail Labs feature called Back to Beta that “soothes the soul by putting the familiar beta sticker back on the Google Mail logo”.

Nice work.

(Thanks to PC Pro forum member MattLevy for the tip off)

Microsoft’s installation instructions tell a little white lie. “If you’ve installed Windows 7 Beta on your PC, you’ll need to back up your data, and do a clean installation of the RC,” they claim. Not true. That might be what Microsoft wants you to do, but it is perfectly possible to upgrade your beta by following the instructions provided on Microsoft’s own Engineering Windows 7 blog.

Microsoft doesn’t want you to do this, of course, and for perfectly valid reasons. In the real world, when Windows 7 is finally released, few people are going to be upgrading from one version of Windows 7 to another. It wants as many people as possible testing the upgrade process from Vista, not discovering and reporting bugs from one build to another.  

However, if like me and our editor Tim Danton, you simply can’t be bothered to reinstall all your apps, you can upgrade in place by hacking the version number of the RC before attempting an installation (click on the Engineering Windows 7 link above for full step-by-step instructions).

Originally I thought upgrading in place would be a time-saver. No need to dig out the Office discs, re-download Firefox, configure UAC to my liking etc. However, the upgrade took over an hour-and-a-half compared to the 20 minutes or so it took my colleagues to do a clean install, wiping out the smug notion of efficiency I was harbouring. 

What’s more (and this is only anecdotal evidence so far), Windows 7 seems to run a smidgin slower on the upgraded machines. Start-up and shut-downs seem a few seconds more sluggish, it doesn’t spring into life the instant you enter the admin password, and there’s the odd graphical slowdown with the Aero interface. It’s nothing to scare the chickens, but just enough for us upgraders to come in this morning and ask “does it feel a bit slower to you?”. 

So does upgrading in place work? Yes. Would we recommend it? Probably not. On this occasion, it might just be better to do as Microsoft tells you. 

But what I find particularly encouraging is not just the code itself, but what it reveals about how Microsoft’s mood and methods have changed since the Vista launch.

For a start, Windows 7 shows every sign of arriving on time, or even early. That alone bespeaks a major improvement in Microsoft’s internal processes. Remember that Vista was originally intended for release in 2003, with a number of headline features that never, in the end, saw the light of day. Its successor, by contrast, is already so complete, and so stable, that many of us here at PC Pro are happily using it as our primary work OS.

What’s more, I think this is the most generous Microsoft beta programme I’ve seen. Anyone at all who wants to try Windows 7 can use the Ultimate edition – in either 32-bit or 64-bit flavour – absolutely free for almost eight months. I’ve had entire computers that didn’t last that long. And, since this beta installed smoothly as an upgrade from the pre-beta distributed at PDC, I’m hopeful that you’ll be able to transition just as cleanly from the beta to the final version when it arrives.

Waking up smarter

When you remember the “Mojave Experiment” of a mere six months ago, Windows 7 seems to represent a remarkable change of heart. The empty swagger of the run-up to Vista is nowhere to be seen. Microsoft seems finally to have recognised that its current woes stem directly from its own past arrogance, and that it can no longer take the patience and loyalty of its user-base for granted. It seems that the company really has, in Steve Ballmer’s deathless phrase, “woken up smarter.”

For it’s surely no coincidence that where Vista was criticised as sluggish and over-complicated, its successor is praised precisely for its responsiveness and simplicity. While Microsoft has been publicly brushing off criticism of Vista its developers have evidently got the message loud and clear – and have acted on it. Now, as our esteemed editor so neatly puts it, the product of their labours is “what Vista should have been.” No wonder they wanted to show it off as widely, and as early, as possible.

Stand and be counted

But though the beta is already here, we’re many months away from the final release. And that gives us all, as Windows users, a rare opportunity. Because if you’ve tried the beta, you’ll have noticed a little link at the top-right of most windows inviting you to “Send Feedback”. Click on it and you can beam your comments on any part of the OS directly to Redmond.

Generally I ignore links like that, and I’m sure you do too. But in this case I think it really is worth using it. I suggest you press it every time you have something to say about Windows 7 – be it praise, a complaint or a suggestion. Let the Windows team know exactly what they’ve got right and what they haven’t.

Because, for once, it looks like Microsoft really is listening. At this stage there may not be time for major code revisions, but there’s a lot they can still do to make Windows 7 the OS we actually want. Let’s help them get there, and not leave them to produce another Vista.

Fast-forward four and half years and guess what? Google Mail, as it’s now known, still has that little BETA label under it, and it shows no sign of buggering off.

Over at the Royal Pingdom they’ve gone through the whole Google catalog and counted the applications that are in beta today. While 22 out of 49 may sound reasonable – Google is always coming up with innovations, after all – when you realise that these include Google Mail, Docs, and Product Search, you have to wonder if Google interprets the word beta in the same way as the rest of us.

The chaps over at Network World thought exactly the same thing, so they put it to Google: what exactly does beta mean to your product development cycle? The answer says a lot about how online computing is changing the way we go about things.

“We believe beta has a different meaning when applied to applications on the Web, where people expect continual improvements in a product.  On the Web, you don’t have to wait for the next version to be on the shelf or an update to become available.  Improvements are rolled out as they’re developed.  Rather than the packaged, stagnant software of decades past, we’re moving to a world of regular updates and constant feature refinement where applications live in the cloud.”

So Google’s online products are constantly evolving things, that much is obvious to anyone who’s used them – but by this logic those beta labels won’t ever be removed. In ten years time Google Mail (BETA) will be the most complete in-progress software available, and Chrome (BETA) will still be the new kid on the block next to the arthritic Internet Explorer 18 and Firefox XIII.

Maybe it’s a perception thing, with Google afraid of looking like one of the boring mainstream. Or perhaps it just likes the cushion those beta labels afford it should anything go wrong. Either way, Google’s own NeverEnding Story is beginning to get a little bit silly.