The other day I installed Windows 7 beta on my laptop. It’s a good evolution from Vista – it’s pretty, it’s smart, and it has a lot of little features that makes getting things done a bit easier.

I was particularly interested to see Microsoft’s implementation of Windows Mobile device support. So, as a casual experiment, I plugged in an HTC Touch Pro. A few moments later, I got an error message that the device wasn’t recognized. Hmm, I thought, better try something else. Next I plugged in an old AT&T Tilt, and got the same error message.

A bit frustrated, I went into the Start menu and started typing things like “mobile” and “windows mobile” in hopes of coming across something like Windows Mobile Device Center (which is on Vista), and found nothing. I emailed Senior Editor Adam Lein, since he’s been toying with 7 for several days, and he told me to download WMDC from Microsoft.

Hopefully Microsoft didn’t forget Windows Mobile in Windows 7, and that in future betas, we’ll see some sort of evolution of WMDC. But, given what Jason Dunn thought after having heard from Microsoft execs on Windows 7 at the winter Mobius event, perhaps we shouldn’t be so optimistic: My biggest disappointment with Windows 7 is that there seemed to be very little good news for Windows Mobile users – with the Device Stage concept I mentioned above, they weren’t even testing it with a Windows Mobile device. That’s not a very good sign!

As mentioned, there is Device Stage, but this technology will only work if the manufacturer supports it, and as of right now, the list is painfully short. This omission of a new syncing solution for Windows Mobile in Windows 7 could be because Microsoft sees the future of sync in the cloud, and that the importance of desktop synchronization isn’t as high as it used to be.