Testing Windows 7 RC1 - Part Two

Sat 8:00am June 13, 2009
Testing is complete as far as I am concerned and I am returning to Windows XP Pro for now. Results will be posted when I can get my system back on XP and stable.

Sat 9:00 am July 3, 2009
RESULTS: This is not a comprehensive evaluation of Win7 as that would take several pages, but a brief overview of some of the things that stuck out while testing.

AESTHETICS: Win7 in appearance is nearly identical to Vista. About the only way to tell the difference is the fact that Win7 actually works. The Aero feature can best be described as COOL. The “Clear Pane” feature is pretty handy if like me you tend to have several windows open at once, and need to find something on your desktop. To use the feature, press the “Windows” key and the spacebar at the same time; all open windows become transparent. You can now see everything on the desktop as though looking through a pane of glass.

AVAILABILITY: Win7 is scheduled to release on October 22, 2009 in time for Christmas. Some stores such as Sam's Club and http://www.newegg.com/ are already offering to reserve copies at a discount for those that want it.

COST: According to a June 25th article in Information Week, Microsoft has announced that Win7 will be priced about 10% less than Vista, with prices starting at $119 for an upgrade version and going as high as $319 for the full "Ultimate" version.

LEGACY: One of the biggest complaints about Vista was the need to upgrade hardware and most of your software, in order to use it. Apparently uncle Bill’s kids in Redmond did not understand that most of us do not have unlimited resources and keep older version of software, because 1) they work and 2) we cannot afford to drop a few thousand hard earned dollars to update every year as Microsoft seems to think we need to do. This has been mostly fixed in Win7. The fix was accomplished partially simply by the passage of time. Most hardware available today meets the requirements of Vista and therefore Win7. Most software now available is Vista compatible and again by default Win7 compatible. The good news is that a lot of the software that works with XP also works fine on Win7. Yes there may still be some upgrade costs, but nowhere near as severe as was required by Vista.

NEW AND NOT ALWAYS IMPROVED: A new feature is the ability to arrange the items on the taskbar. No more starting programs in a specific order to get them to line up the way you want. Also new is the system of “Libraries,” basically an extension of the “My Documents” folder. It is supposed to make file organization easier. It does not. In fact it adds yet another layer of complexity when trying to find files the old fashioned way of looking at the folder structure. Save yourself some headaches and take a little time to familiarize yourself with this “feature”. Another new “feature” is the directory tree in the Windows Explorer file browser. For some reason, Microsoft changed the tree, which has worked perfectly all the way back to Win 3.1. I am not real impressed. It is a minor change, but annoying to me. The classic “[+]” option to dig to the next directory level has been replaced with a kind of triangle system that works sometimes and sometimes it fails.

The last new “feature” I will discuss today is the copy/replace function. Apparently Microsoft is trying to protect us from ourselves again. In win7 when copying a new file over an existing file, the usual “File exists, Replace?” option comes up, but now even though you tell the program “Yes to All” rather than replace the file it creates a new file with “Copy of” added to the file name. So now you must go back to the folder, manually remove all of the old files and then rename the new files before they may be used.

Sorry Microsoft, you blew it on that one, this new “feature” is terrible.

PERFORMANCE: Win7 is far superior to Vista in almost every way. That being said, here are the caveats. If your CPU is a single core processor, DO NOT switch from XP, until you can upgrade your system. Win7 is very processor intensive and while a huge improvement over XP, it is still slow to respond on a single core CPU. If you have a low end "bargain" video card upgrade it. Win7 will work on a lesser video card, but it will be SLOW to respond unless you turn off the aero features. Turning off Aero from a visual standpoint almost defeats the purpose of the upgrade (yes I said upgrade) to Win7.

PERMISSION: Win7 does still ask for permission to do what you told it to like Vista does. However, unlike Vista’s irritating “you’re so stupid I must verify everything you ask” attitude (one of my biggest reasons for NOT using Vista), Win7 gives you the option to reduce the intrusiveness of this “feature” by levels or turn it off entirely. Warning though if turned off entirely the feature for some reason disables the aero display features. But at least now you CAN turn it off.

OVERALL: I like Win7 and will most likely install it AFTER I upgrade my present motherboard and video card.