While we haven't yet gotten our hands on a Windows 7 build with the new taskbar, we did talk to Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky about the various UI changes and what we can expect at release time.

It's not a surprise that the most disruptive Windows UI change in 15 years comes under the watch of the man largely responsible for the Office ribbon. The ribbon was a jarring change for many users, yet there was no option to turn it off, which made sense to most of us here at Ars. Many people vehemently disagreed with this decision, and we expect to be hearing from them again on the new taskbar. Sinofsky told us that there will be no ability to enable the old taskbar since, in Microsoft's opinion, the new taskbar's leap in usability negates the need for a "less-able" option. While there's not quite as much ingrained taskbar knowledge as there may have been for the various Office toolbars and menus, we expect that this change will be the source of lots of contention.

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