I’ve been meaning to do a Windows 7 Beta 1 review for some time now, and since it’s been officially out for 4 days, I feel the timing is as good as any, considering Microsoft is offering free downloads and serials up until January 25th, 2009.
So, on to the review itself.
First things first. I had Windows XP from 2001 up until the launch of Vista in late January 2007. Now, I was exited about Vista as I’d already tested the Release Candidate 2 some months prior, however, I quickly switched back to XP again, after the dissapointment was complete. I liked the interface, and some minor functions that were a bit smarter in Vista, compared to XP, and the obvious security issues.
However. Vista was unstable, tech-heavy, and slow. It featured DirectX 10, which would never be made official for XP. There are some mods and workaround, but they’re not approved by Microsoft in any way. I had to switch back to XP for several reasons, both game and work related.
But enough of that, you’re obviously here to read up about the infamous and heavily praised Windows 7, so here we go.
The install process is fairly simple, for once, and the only OS I can actually compare it to is Linux Ubuntu 7 and newer, as the installation process is quite similar, user-friendliness-wise, at least. You’re met with a graphic interface, with shiny “Aero” graphics from the very get-go, and the whole process is quite friendly to the eyes and newbies.
The first screen your eyes meet
It starts with choosing language to install, locale and keyboard language. Then you’re met with the “install now” button. After you read the license agreement, you can choose to either upgrade from your current OS, or make a clean install. My personal opinion is to make a clean install, as upgrades are seldom streamlined nor perfect. Well, that, and if your current OS is another language than the 7 you’re about to install, it probably won’t work. I’ve not tried, but I did try to upgrade from a norwegian copy of XP to an english version of Vista. Did not work.
Anyways, you get to choose (taking the advanced options, that is) whether you want to format the drive you’re installing to, or if you just want to dual-boot with the current one. The latter option makes an .ini file that enables the choice of OS’es during boot.
Language selection
Clean or Upgrade
Once the installation is in process, the computer will reboot to undergo some changes, and at this time, you’re greeted with the much improved boot screen. This one is animated, and glowing. It’s not something useful, but at least you’re not met with the boring windows logo, and progress bar of XP, nor the lonely Vista-progress bar that even lacks a windows logo too. (See image 1)
After the initial install is completed, Windows configures your computer for first use, prompting you to enter your name and password(there’s no choice whether to have a password or not), and finally, your product key. You can, as youn could with Vista, choose to not enter a key, and have free access to the OS for 30 days. After that, should you not have activated it, it will be locked. Windows then asks you to choose update settings, and your internet connection. It has no problem installing drivers for your hardware, so don’t be surprised if your WLAN is already activated at this point. If you have an internet connection in your location, windows can update itself to latest updates and security without a hassle.
Creating the main user
You can choose to enter a key, or not to.
Getting up to date has never been this easy.
If you feel so inclined, you can also enable a home network at this stage. Windows generates a password for it, and you should write this down, if you’re planning on having several computers connected to it, as they will also need to enter it.
Windows automatically creates a home network for you...
...and even secures it for you!
Now, this might all sound a bit too much, but believe me when I say the whole process is so friendly, even my grandmother would have no problems installing it. Granted that she knew how to operate a trackpad or mouse, that is.
After all this skidaddle is done, you’re met with the new and very much improved desktop. The standard one features a blue wallpaper, complete with a fish, and a transparent theme (similar to the one in Vista). What probably catches your eye first is the new taskbar, popularly called “SuperBar” prior to the release. The new taskbar is actually quite reminiscient of Mac OS X’s Dock, as the standard configuration has only icons on it. It also looks like the prior taskbar’s “Quick Launch”, where the “show desktop” and “Internet Explorer” icons would be, but it’s far from it. In fact, the whole taskbar is a hefty version of the quick launch. You can choose to make it have icons only or you could have the descriptive text as well, should you want to. Personally, I prefer to have the icons alone, with the application icons containing all the open windows grouped to the relevant icon. This enables a function called “Window Peek”. To utilize it, all you have to do, is hover the icons, and windows shows you a full-screen(yet 3x thumbnail sized) preview of the windows you have open in the application you’re highlighting. If you hover the window that appears, you get a real fullscreen preview of it, and if you click the “thumbnail”, you’re taken to the window. Should you move out of it, the desktop goes back to it’s prior state, or, better put, the window you had open. There’s also Aero Peeking. The good old “show desktop” icon has been reduced to a tiny bar on the far right side of the task bar, and has 2 functions. The first on is the same as window peeking. Hovering it will show you your desktop, whilst clicking it minimizes all windows.
The new and improved desktop
Peeking at the dekstop
Don't worry. There's plenty of presets bundled, and you can change them to your linkings.
Enough of the taskbar now, there’s still a lot of new things to notice and get used to. One of my personal favourites is the “Shake to mini/maximise” function. To do this, simply click and shake an application’s menu bar. Doing this will minimize all the other windows on your oh-so cluttered desktop, and doing it again will restore them. Also, moving a window to the top of the screen will maximise it, and when dragged to either side of the desktop will scale it to that half of the screen, meaning you can easily put 2 windows parallell to each other without doing it manually.
The best function I’ve discovered so far, however, is the libraries. A genious function that all operating systems should include, end of story. On paper(or in this case, on the screen), it might not sound all-that, but once you start using it, you start to wonder how you ever lived without it. What libraries do, is index folders. It’s that easy. Not impressed yet? Well, let me explain it a bit more thourough then. Remember when XP came along, Microsoft chose to really vamp your “My documents” folder? It now had videos and music folders neatly organized in there. Well, the libraries do this at a much more thought through scale. Once windows is installed, it already has some libraries in there. Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos. These libraries are basically just indexes of your “My *insert name here* folders”. However, you can add folders to the libraries, and even make your own. I made a library called “Downloads”, since my internet browsers have a tendency of downloading to different folders, if not configured. With Windows 7, this isn’t even an issue anymore, as you make a library, and right click the folders you want to add to it. Once added, the library can show all the folders in the library, or simply show you all the files, making it similar to a folder. It’s neat, since you don’t have to keep track of which file was downloaded to which folder anymore, you simply use the library instead.
But enough of all the neat functions, I want to tell you how Windows 7 feels and performs compared to Vista. After all, Microsoft has stated that 7 will be all that Vista should’ve been. It’s quite a bold statement, after Vista was so damn dissapointing(I know this matter can be discussed, when looking at personal opinions, or even sales numbers. Looking at the latter thought, it’s just because you can’t buy a computer without Vista these days, so it makes sense).
Microsoft promised 3rd party developers(the people making programs and applications) that they could begin developing right away, as 7 would be identical to make programs for as Vista, and that all Vista apps would work with 7 without any issues. In reality, this is 99% true. The only apps I’ve installed that complain, are Adobe CS4 apps. They nag during installation that you need either XP or Vista, but you can still install them, so there’s really no problems at all. All the other applications I’ve installed and tested (among them; IrfanView, Spotify, Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, iTunes, QuickTime, VLC, 3ds Max 2009, Softimage|XSI 7, PowerISO, AVG Anti-Virus, WinAmp and more), there’s not been a single complaint, and all is working as expected; perfect. This is very nice indeed. So, to be honest, Microsoft did (for once) keep their promise. And let’s not forget, this is a BETA, not a complete product.
So, how does Windows 7 Beta 1 perform? Well, I never thought I’d say this, but it’s GOOD. I’ve yet to have a single bug or error, or even a BSOD(BlueScreen of death) appear, and it’s not yet shown any problems for me. Keeping in mind still, that this is a BETA product, it’s quite impressive to say the least. When it comes down to the hardware requirements, it’s identical to Vista, however, it performs much faster than Vista’s ever done for me, and since the source code is trimmed, it’s also easier to run on low-level systems, such as cheap laptops that aren’t REALLY fit for Vista, even though they ship with it.
The system I’m running 7 on, is a Packard Bell low-level laptop, with a celeron single-core CPU, 1GB of ram, and an integrated graphics solution. Vista ran quite slow on this system, and I had to disable aero to get a good user experience out of it, and even then, it ran too slow for my tastes. Since Packard Bell didn’t support XP downgrading(or upgrading, depending on how you look at it), the only real choices I had at this time was installing a Linux OS, or wiping the drive and installing 7. Choosing the latter option was a real upside for me, as 7 is running way faster than my Vista install ever did, and this is with all graphical eye-candy options enabled. No kidding. I can run transparency without problems, and all effects are smoother than a baby’s behind. Not that this is something I NEED, but it’s good to know that 7 is smooth enough to pull it off, even with older hardware, something that Vista struggled severly with.
As another note, 7 also installs without all the crap you never needed, and throws in some new stuff to boot. Windows Movie Maker, Mail, Messenger and all those other LIVE features are now completely optional, and should you need them, all you have to do is download them. Instead, you get new stuff like “Snipping Tool”. An application that lets you grab portions of the screen to make partial screenshots way easier than capturing the whole damn screen, going into irfanview/paint/photoshop to crop it, and then save it. Snipping Tool even saves it for you, so you don’t even have to think about it. The games that were bundled with Vista are still around, and another new nice feat is the Device Central. Although flawed, the initial idea is to have mac-like connections to most USB devices, such as printer, cameras, camcorders, webcams, mice, keyboards etc. At the current time, it’s not really supporting that much devices, so I’ll leave it out of this review.
I almost forgot mentioning the Sidebar. Wait, what sidebar? That’s right. The stupid Vista sidebar that took too much space and wound up being removed all together is gone. However, should you miss the gadgets, they’re still available, but instead of having a sidebar as their home, they can be dragged and dropped wherever you like them to be, on the desktop. Granted, this was possible in Vista as well, but you had to have the sidebar enabled to have them around, so it really wasn’t all that great anyways.
The review is running long, and I feel I must recap now.
All in all, windows 7 is, even at BETA stage, a damn good upgrade for Microsoft, and I think everybody will embrace it with open arms, and close them tightly around it as they say goodbye to Windows Vista. The OS is faster, much lighter, even shinier, more secure and tight as a goddamn tiger, or should we say leopard(no pun intended, right?)
Yep, Microsoft has done an excellent job with 7, and it’s not even done yet. The worst part of it all, is that I’m a mac user. You heard(read) me. I’m a graphics designer for a living, so mac is the natural choice, and I would never leave OS X and switch back to windows. However, it’s nice to know that if my preffered OS should fail on my, or the next iteration of it shouldn’t be pleasing at all, I have a VERY nice fallback to …well, fall back to.
Good job, Microsoft. Keep it up this time.
