Windows 7 - The sleeping giant is half awake!

So, here we are barely two years since Windows Vista went live. After what seemed for many to be a giant leap backwards, around a year of waiting is finally over. Windows 7 beta can be in your hands and on your hard drive, right now!

Without wanting to dwell too much on Vista's shortcomings, and there are many, I think it is fair to say that Microsoft lost major ground to it's competitors. Be it Mac OS X, the countless Linux flavors and so on, all have seen a remarkable rise in popularity since Vista was launched. This can be seen in part due to the perception that Vista was slow, unstable and unfinished. And many of those points hold firm, even today.

I installed Windows 7 on a fresh partition wich required a clean install from boot. The moment I popped in my newly burned install disk and rebooted my PC, I was in very familiar territory. The same install wizard that graced the Vista dvd, is ever present with Windows 7, albeit a touch more refined and stripped down. Unfortunately this install process still experiences the same initial hangs and delays as it always has done. Once the initial snags were over, the installation itself was very quick indeed. I estimated barely over 10 minutes, and certainly no more than 15 until I was staring at a fresh new desktop.

At first you would be forgiven for thinking this was just a skinned copy of Windows Vista, as the window styles remain unchanged. The Aero theme is still there and the window control buttons still carry the same look. The only real graphical change, and certainly the most striking at any rate is the task bar. The entire task bar has evolved into an Aero-laden hybrid of the task bar we all know, and a kind of dock. The task bar's styling and even the color palette the entire OS uses seems a little softer, and almost Linux-like. But this is no bad thing

There is no side-bar either, removing the awful shadow this created in Windows Vista. Instead, gadgets can be dragged anywhere around the edge of the screen, where they snap to the nearest points on an invisible 'frame'. This is just another example of where the entire OS seems like a more polished, uncluttered progression from the lumbering goliath of it's predecessor.

Driver support is decent already. Nvidia already have beta-friendly drivers for my nForce chipset, and my 8800GT graphics card. Similarly, Creative have drivers for my audigy sound card. All of these were available through windows update. I can not comment on my peripherals, as I have not had the chance to test them yet, although I am positive that support will be there for most devices in time.

One area where Windows 7 really shines is performance. This is really the compelling reason why this OS is 'the one' if one were to choose a next-gen OS from Microsoft. Whilst the size of the install is barely smaller than a bare Vista install, there are slightly fewer processes running, and certainly smaller ones at that. Before I installed Kaspersky anti virus (itself in beta for Win 7), the OS was using less than 500Mb of the 2000 available. Kaspersky and a few gadgets did tip the memory usage over 800Mb but this didnt feel like an issue at all. The major gripe I had with Vista was that at times the system seemed reluctant to relinquish that precious memory, where quit apps left residual processes like little misfiring cylinders on a rough running engine. Here with WIn 7 I have experienced none of this, with applications feeling snappy, and responding to launch and quit requests like eager puppies waiting for a cookie. Windows similarly feel light, and seem to zip around the screen smoothly in a way most Linux user will appreciate. Gaming performance remains untested, however I will return to this no doubt at a later date.

My initial experience so far with Windows 7 is overwhelmingly positive, and certainly backs up the claims by many (myself included) that this is the OS that Microsoft were wanting to release all along. This is still beta, and I will doubtlessly encounter problems along the way, but already this beta is looking more finished than Vista, which has been on sale for two years.

Tags: 2009, 7, aero, beta, better, crash, dvd, gb, gigabyte, glass

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Comment by Phill on January 17, 2009 at 9:24pm: Great post, great observations, many reasons why I am extremely impressed with Win7!

Comment by Chris Dobson on January 17, 2009 at 1:53pm: I found that certain hardware such as DVD drives are a little picky. Whilst the Lite On drive in my PC produced hangs in the install process, My MacBook Pro experienced no such probems. It is interesting to note too that Boot Camping Windows 7 is totally viable even at this early stage. The Boot Camp setup windows-side was flawless.

Comment by Ron Knights on January 17, 2009 at 11:27am: Understood.

Comment by Chris Dobson on January 17, 2009 at 10:10am: I think the major point is that I have yet to come across any real problem with regards to my hardware, however this is quite by chance than anything else. I agree that the major vendors will ship beta drivers for the most popular products - however there are workarounds. In many situations, the xp/vista drivers function just fine.

Comment by Ron Knights on January 17, 2009 at 9:42am: AOL has always been a problem program. I avoid AOL like the plague.

CD/DVD burner programs will usually need to be upgraded when you upgrade your OS.

Windows 7 is a beta, so that process will have to wait.

You're better off not installing CD/DVD programs and many utilities such as Norton Systemworks, etc.

Windows 7 doesn't like my nVidia 6150LE with a DVI connection. I get a huge BSOD on bootup.

When I remove the DVI connect, and use the VGA, Windows 7 boots up just fine.

Comment by JT on January 16, 2009 at 10:07pm: Maybe it's me but I have tried more than once to move my Recycle Bin to the lower right corner and then every time that I Reboot the Icon moves back to the left side of the screen.

I installed the Registry Hack so that I could run Dreamscene and now the names under the Icons are barely legible.

I do like the response and I did install it onto a P4 Dell XPS machine (which I would never even have considered to install Vista). The machine has 3 GB of RAM so it is running comfortably.

I installed AOL 9.1 and that took a while because it kept failing mid download but every time that I restarted the download it picked up where it left off rather than from the beginning again.

I installed Roxio Creator 2009 and it failed after the initial install but then I installed the Roxio Creator SP2 and it works fine now.

Comment by Johny C on January 16, 2009 at 9:46pm: Yeah! windows 7 looks promising. So far I've not read any negative reviews.

Comment by Thomas Chacko on January 16, 2009 at 9:09pm: interesting

Comment by Chris Dobson on January 16, 2009 at 9:00pm: Well gaming performance and compatibility dictate to me that I run windows on my main PC. I think it is too early for me to say, but Windows 7 could well be a solid gaming platform.

As for individual preference, well who am I to argue? You like what you like after all.