Windows 7

It would be very easy to say that Windows 7 is what Windows Vista should have been, but not even Windows Vista was what it should have been.  Stripped of features such as WinFS and the ultra-tight security laxed before release, it was a very much neutered version of what Microsoft originally envisioned.

So it’s probably best to describe Windows 7 as being like Windows 98 Second Edition.  Take an OS that was less than popular, fix a load of its problems, give it a new coat of paint, tune it all up and send it on its way.  As I remarked on my Twitter feed after first few moments with 7, it’s Vista with a new hat.  But it’s a nice hat.

So yes, Windows 7 is a maintenance release but one that has been tweaked to be less demanding on its hardware than Vista.  Microsoft are very keen for it to be loaded onto Netbooks, which currently come loaded with Windows XP Home rather than the rather bloated Vista.  Think of Windows 7 as being the person at the end of one of those makeover TV shows, and at the start they were Vista.  They’re still the same person, just a bit leaner with more confidence and better clothes.

Vista is a bit of curious beast (and I will stop harping on about it in a moment), and garnered an expression I like to call the “Vista Sneer”(TM and (C) me) which is when someone tells me “I’ve bought a new machine….and it’s got Vista on it”, at which point they screw up their face.  Then after using it for a while they wonder what all the moaning was about.  Vista is not great, not by possibly the longest chalk, but I’d still take it over XP any day.

But to Windows 7 then, the one and only beta release has just been made available to the public after a somewhat rocky start that took Microsoft’s servers down for a day, before it reappeared and became available to everyone until the end of January (as opposed to the 2.5 million users that had been originally planned).

Microsoft promise that build 7000 that has been made available to all and sundry is feature complete, and will work until the 1st of August.  By then the Release Candidate will be out and the mooted September release will be just around the corner.

Microsoft has been rather aggressive with its product releases over the last couple of years, with new desktop and server operating systems.  Combine that with Exchange, SQL and a plethora of other products that being in the business I have to know about, it has been a very interesting but also at times mind blowing experience that can zap any form of enthusiasm that remained for yet another new product.

So going into testing Windows 7 I will admit I wasn’t exactly jumping for joy at the prospect, but am pleased to say that I rather like it.
Installation is pretty much identical to Vista, you answer a couple of questions regarding where to install it and in which language and that’s that.

When I first started using 7 it reminded me somewhat of how Mac OS X has evolved over the years. I bought my first Mac several years ago when OS X was first launched.  It was a dual boot system with OS 9 still installed, and many applications hadn’t been updated so the compatibility mode for 9 would fire up every time I ran an older application.  With subsequent revisions to OS X and two more pieces of Apple hardware later we currently have Leopard (and soon Snow Leopard) that have evolved the core OS to the rock solid version we now have, complete with numerous handy features.  Every time there is a new version of OS X I have several “oh that’s good” or “that’s really clever, and very handy” moments that remind me what a great operating system Apple has.

The first thing you notice about Windows 7 is the Vista desktop has been given a suitably Apple-esque makeover.  The old style taskbar and quick launch bar have been amalgamated to make it more like the OS X dock (see above).  You run an application and it appears as an icon rather than a rather dull slab tile that truncates its name.  Move your mouse over the applications icon when it is running and it will change colour (according to Microsoft it picks out the primary RGB colour from the apps icon).

If it is an application which has multiple instances (such as Internet Explorer having many tabs open), each of the instances will pop up as a preview, and moving the mouse pointer over the individual items will bring them into focus on the main desktop (as shown above).  Simple idea, genuine real world use.

These icons also bring new right-click functionality with what Microsoft call Jump Lists.  Run Windows Messenger and right-click on the icon and you can change your online status.  Media Player lets you stop, pause, skip, etc (this is shown above).  Simple, but handy.

I’m not going to drone on in-depth about each of the new features in Windows 7 (OMFG! NEW CALCULATOR!!!111, oh and WordPad and Paint have the Ribbon interface from Office 2007. Oh and also you can have wallpaper slideshows, I like that).  But those of you who are interested in everything that is new I have a couple of links for you.  The first is this Wikipedia page which gives a broad overview of what has changed.

The second one is a superb post entitled “The Bumper List of Windows 7 Secrets” from Tim Sneath.  This lists 30 features of 7 that you probably won’t know about.  My particular favourite is the Black Box Recorder which allows users to record themselves recreating their problem, which will then create a slideshow that the techie can look at.  How many times have you (if you are a techie, naturally) been to visit a users machine with a problem and can’t recreate it?  Then as soon as you walk away…you get the idea.

Wrapping this one up, I like Windows 7 an awful lot.  After three hours of using it at work on Tuesday I switched back to my Vista laptop.  It already felt old, and I wanted my new taskbar back.  Moving over to XP makes it seem even more archaic.
Performance wise it is far better with hardware than Vista.  The whole OS has been tightened up and I tested it on a 64-bit Pentium 4 dual core with 8Gb RAM (like the clappers), a brand new Core 2 box with 2Gb RAM (32-bit, also extremely fast), and finally on a 512mb VM which was also no slouch.

My next test is going to be installing it on a machine that I would never put Vista anywhere near, which is pretty much anything with less than 2Gb of RAM on board.

I spend around eight hours a day looking at a Microsoft operating system, whether it be using, fixing or installing.  When I’m at home I tend to spend as much time as I can in front of OS X primarily because it’s a great OS and also because it’s something different to look at.  Windows 7 has done something that I thought to be rather impossible at this stage, which is to make using a PC for my own entertainment genuinely fun.    From the last few days I can see that with Windows 7 Microsoft have done a decent job of taking away some of the frustrations of Vista and delivered a more home user friendly operating system.  If you have a spare machine or one fast enough to run a decent VM, it’s well worth checking out.  It hasn’t crashed on me either.  Yet.

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Category: Reviews, Tech Stuff