First Impressions: Once you login, you realize that there have been quite a few changes. The first thing you notice is a new background wallpaper (you get to choose this during the setup process as well, but the one with the close up of the leaves just looks better at full screen.)

The second thing you will see is that the "Start" button has been replaced by a new circle with a Windows logo on it. We must say, it does look far more impressive than the now boring "Start" button, even though that one was more self-explanatory for beginners.

Also, we pointed out in our review of the previous build (5231) that Microsoft really needs to get rid of the Gothic and dark looking green theme. It seems they have heard us on that account, and in this version, the highlight on hover is an electric-ish blue, which again depicts improvement in overall aesthetics.

After this, another thing you will notice is a new icon for IE7. It looks like IE has been given a golden belt going all around it. The jarring contrast makes it look something we have seen on Lindows and not something we would’ve expected to see in Vista. Still, it's eye-catching even though we don’t particularly like this change.

The other thing you will notice is an icon made of two skeleton windows stacked on top of each other. This is the Windows Switcher, and in this build, it doesn’t work. If you press Alt+Tab, you get the familiar task switcher, but without the fancy tiling that we have seen before. Of course, if you click on the taskbar below, you can still tile and cascade the windows, but a single dedicated button would’ve been a nifty, helpful feature.

In the system tray, there are two new icons. The first one is the Sync icon which we just can’t figure out how to get rid off. It's just sitting there, and since we don’t really want to synchronize anything, there doesn't appear to be a way to disable it.