The Alpha for Drupal 7 has been out for a week now so I had to download and install it to see what this new version is going to be like. I installed it on my Mac running MAMP as that is the sytem I used for development and testing. The install went easily enough. Enter the Database name, username, and password and you are on your way. There were a couple more choices for options during the initial install but those are pretty self explanatory.
The first thing I noticed when I logged in was the Dashboard and admin menu. I am really liking that this is now part of Drupal Core since I always installed the admin menu module as one of the first things I did whenever I install Drupal. I love the new menu overlays. They make things much easier to find.
The other thing I noticed right away is that it seems faster. Granted I am running with a very Basic system with no extra modules enabled yet but it seems faster out of the box to me. I am going to take more time this weekend to setup a copy of my Website running on the new version to see how well it works and go through all of the options to see what else i can find.
Based on what I have seen so far, I can't wait for Drupal 7 to get to a Release version so I can convert my existing sites to it.
