Initial thoughts on Windows 7…

11 Jan 2009

I am going to warn you of a few things before I get started on spilling my thoughts and impressions. First, I work for Microsoft, no reason to hide that little gem. Second, I tested Windows 7 in the alpha stage for a short period, and 3rd I started running Windows 7 beta on my work laptop last week. This review, however, is on the public beta that was released Friday. Windows 7 Ultimate beta build 7000.

Installation went off without a hitch. It was pretty speedy, a few reboots, and the machine was back up with two missing devices. Ironically one was the Microsoft VX-3000 Life Cam, which seems to require the “Life Cam Software Package” to work, and the other was a D-Link Gigabit Ethernet adapter. Lucky for me the motherboard’s Ethernet adapter was correctly installed so I swapped the Ethernet cable and went to the MS site to download the VX-3000 Vista driver. Windows 7 is compatible with Vista drivers so don’t expect the same problems people mentioned when Vista was released. I think everyone has caught up now and Vista drivers are available for everything you would likely use.

An interesting thing happened while I was surfing for the VX-3000 driver. A notification popped up to tell me that the D-Link Gigabit Ethernet adapter had been installed and was working. Apparently once you get online, Windows 7 starts actively searching for drivers it doesn’t have yet.

What’s New?

The new taskbar is quite different and despite the rumors you might hear, it is not in any way a copy of the OS X dock. Gone is the quick launch area and by default the only icons you have are Internet Explorer 8, a link to your libraries and Windows Media Player. When you launch an application it’s icon is added to the taskbar but without the textual description that you might remember in previous versions of Windows. This new application can then be “pinned” to the taskbar so even when it’s closed the icon will remain to prelaunch it quickly as well as access the new quick jump menus.

In the above image, the Windows logo is your new start button, Internet Explorer is pinned but not running, the folder you see is a quick link to your library folders (Photos, Documents, etc), the Media Player is also pinned but not running, Outlook is glossy because it’s running as well as Windows Live Writer which I am using to write this.

The new start menu is cleaned significantly from Vista, you have your recent applications, program listing, search box and links to all of the important locations on your computer.

If you notice the right arrows, applications that have been used will have quick access to recent documents.

The groundwork for this was laid in Vista and I think it’s a considerable upgrade from the never ending fly outs in Windows XP and 98 that sometimes required the most incredible dexterity with the mouse to keep from closing before you could get the item you needed selected… can you tell that bugged me a bit?

Now it’s totally fixed and works fantastic.

The other great improvement to the start and taskbar area are the application previews. I have loaded several applications to make the next screenshots useful.

This is a peek across both desktops with 3 Word documents, this blog post, Outlook, MS Paint, Windows Media Player, two Windows Explorer windows and Internet Explorer with four tabs open. That’s a lot of applications and a lot of clutter. If I were to try and find the Amazon tab in IE in Windows Vista or earlier, I would have to browse what would at this point be 10 taskbar buttons at the bottom with tiny application icons to find IE, and then open it and switch to the Amazon tab. Now when I simply hover over the IE icon in the taskbar, I see this:

I can quickly click the Amazon tab and jump to the right tab in the right application with one click, NICE! But what if your eyes aren’t as good as mine and you can’t tell in those little tabs which one is Amazon? Simply hover over each tab and you’ll see this:

Windows makes every other window except the one you are hovering over transparent so you can see exactly what is on the one you are hovering over no matter what is on top of it. Pretty slick if you ask me. All of your applications will now have these little previews. With supersized icons and real thumbnails, finding open applications and switching between windows has never been easier. It’s also important to remember that this is running blazing fast on a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo with 3GB of Ram and 256MB video card computer I built for about $350 @ Newegg.com.

While we are finding things, the new button at the bottom right of the task bar has two uses, clicking it makes all windows disappear until you click it again, hovering over it makes them all go transparent like the above screenshot so you can see if that file you are looking for is in fact on your desktop.

Let’s finish with the right side of the taskbar.

I have it set to show all task tray icons so you are seeing Outlook checking email, my antivirus, devices, notifications, network and sound. Also the time/date and the desktop preview button I mentioned earlier.

So you notice I mentioned notification icon. In past versions you got all sorts of notification icons from Windows for all sorts of things, now they are bundled in this new icon. Clicking it reveals the Action Center displayed on the right. This shows any notification messages all in once place.

It’s very unobtrusive and still keeps you notified of everything that is going on in your system. The flag glows red when it’s got a message for you.

There are some more graphical tweaks to the user interface, like the ability to maximize windows to half the screen instead of full screen, as well as being able to push an application to the top of the screen to maximize it and pull it back down to un-maximize it again.

The Sidebar

The Windows sidebar is gone, gadgets still exist however and you can place them anywhere on the desktop you like. This functionality did exist in Vista, but it was not well advertised and it was not the default behavior.

Networking

The new Network and Sharing center is much cleaner than before. The left panel gives you access to your hardware and advanced settings, and the main window displays your connection status, the networks you are connected to and how, and gives you the options to set up a network, connect to a network and make changes.

Another welcome improvement is network performance for Wireless Networks. This PC is a desktop PC with no wireless card but I can tell you from using my laptop that finding and connecting to wireless networks is not only easier, but drastically faster.

Control Panel

The new Control Panel style that began in Windows XP and Vista is now the standard organization in 7. You can easily find the items instead of looking through a sea of icons. They also seem to have improved the performance of the add/remove programs. It no longer takes several minutes to find all the installed applications in order to list them for you.

What Else is New?

There are still many more features in Windows 7, besides the User Interface enhancements you have seen here, there is also new advances in Touch, speech and handwriting recognition.

Also new are support for virtual hard disks, improved performance on multi-core processors, and improved boot performance.

Of course do not forget or under estimate Windows Media Center, it should prove to be even better on Windows 7 and it’s already something I use daily with fantastic results.

If you are interested in Windows 7, I do not hesitate to suggest you download it and give it a try. If you want to try it, hurry because there are only 2.5 million keys available and they will go fast. Download Windows 7.

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