I was able to get my hands on beta final 2 copy of this, and I was not impressed. In fact, I hated it so much I decided to go back to System 7.5.5.
Here's what I've found out about 7.6.
The good:
It seems slightly faster than 7.5.5. The system just seems snappier.
The "Welcome to Macintosh" dialog box is completely gone. It just goes straight to the Mac OS screen.
Gamma correction on my screen works at startup. It will startup, then flash the screen to standard gamma and immediately it will go back to uncorrected gamma (the correct setting for my monitor). Mac OS 7.5.5 will flash to standard gamma, then set it to the correct setting after my Mac boots up.
The bad: It was still buggy in version final 2. Some of my programs crashed when I tried to launch them. I got a resource manager error. Mac OS 7.6 is suppose to have a new resource manager (maybe that's why things are faster).
It uses more memory. It used about one meg. more on my Mac. This combined with the bugs in 7.6 made me switch back.
The installer is a pain in the rear. It may be simpler for beginners, but this thing sucks. It basically launches other installer scripts when it installs software. It will launch the script for basic software, then launch a script for QuickDraw 3D, then a script for Text-to-Speech... etc.
Worst yet, the installer installed old versions of software on my computer. It installed Quicktime 3D 1.0x over Quicktime 3D 1.5.
Overall, I don't suggest upgrading to System 7.6, if you already have 7.5.5. There doesn't seem to be any new features, and it isn't fast enough to compensate for its bugginess.
