Windows Vista and Windows 7 beta users might already familiar with the boot animation on each operating system. Notice the differences?

To illustrate how Windows 7 boot works,  Windows 7 team has came out with a quite extensive post about it. Its comprising the comparison between Windows 7 and Windows Vista boot process, covering various aspect from sound, graphics, animation as well as performance.

The major different is obviously the boot animation – The glimpse of Windows Vista still can be seen, except that it is now without the Pearl Animation(see the screen shot below). There is also slight change on how Windows logo appears on the screen.  The new animation started with 4 different color dots, which then combined together to form shining Windows logo.

To get an idea what I’m talking about, press the play button to preview the animation.

Windows Vista

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&#038;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:76ad5217-d5f5-482a-85c1-2c84e14e178d&#038;showPlaylist=true" target="_new" title="Windows Vista boot animation">Video: Windows Vista boot animation</a>

Windows 7

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&#038;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:6b58ad0b-c45e-425e-b2f9-4bb2953f9420&#038;showPlaylist=true" target="_new" title="Windows 7 boot animation">Video: Windows 7 boot animation</a>

Vista Boot Sequence, with Pearl Animation

Windows 7 boot sequence, shorter now

Beside the new animation, there are few other physical differences between Windows 7 vs Windows Vista. It was mentioned on that post that, to achieve all these changes, significant code changes made on the code..

• Animation resolution = 1024 x 768 VS 640×480

• Boot screen color depth = 16 bits per pixel (bpp) VS 16bpp

• Startup sound – Play asynchronously, anytime after the logon screen loads VS synchronized with the pearl animation

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