Windows 7 Beta

An article about pre-release versions of Windows 7 in general, including alpha, beta and release candidate builds.

Builds 6780 to 7022
While build 6730 and earlier features the same wallpapers as Windows Vista, most of them were updated by build 6780, with the exception of the Light Auras wallpapers and default wallpaper. The new wallpapers were mostly licensed from Getty Images and Corbis, albeit mostly using royalty free licenses as opposed to rights-managed, likely to save licensing costs. By build 6910, the default wallpaper was finally replaced with a new wallpaper depicting a CGI betta fish swimming.

Regional
A selection of regional wallpapers were introduced in build 6941. Most of these were taken by Microsoft employees, with a couple coming from Getty and Corbis. The United Kingdom and the United States themes consist of wallpapers representing their countries, while the Australia, Canada, and South Africa themes consist of six unrelated placeholder wallpapers, one of which is a duplicate. Some of these were later available in the wallpapers page on Microsoft site.

Builds 7048 to 7055
Eventually, more themes would be added. The wallpapers from the new themes primarily came from Microsoft employees. With the exception of img3 which was replaced with a different one, all of the other wallpapers from previous builds would stay until build 7057. The default wallpaper is slightly changed, where the blue aurora background has a softer, brighter appearance while the fish and bubbles have been slightly moved to the left. The regional wallpapers that appear in the final release were also added.

Build 7057 onwards
At this point, the wallpapers are identical to the final release, with the exception of the default wallpaper, which is eventually replaced with the final one by build 7232.

Sample Pictures
[todo: identify builds sample pictures were introduced/removed in]

While earlier builds featured the same selection of sample pictures as Vista, they were eventually removed. Eight new sample pictures were introduced in build xxxx. Details about them are unknown, although it is known that all of them were taken by Microsoft employees. Oddly a few of these are at non-4:3 aspect ratios, similar to XP Media Center Edition's new sample pictures. By build 70xx, these were replaced with the same sample pictures that appear in the final release, except Desert is at 1280x960 rather than 1024x768.

User Account Pictures
7 used the same user account pictures as Vista until build 7055, where it introduced all of the new user account pictures that appear in the final release.

Logon backgrounds
7 used the same logon background as Vista until build 6780, where it switched to using white strokes of light over a teal background. Like the Vista logon background, it is included at many different resolutions, including vertical ones. This was replaced by a completely different background from build 7055 onwards, designed by Chuck Anderson and Erik Attkisson.