Windows 7 – what to expect

Posted on: September 22nd, 2009

Windows 7 is to be release to the retailer in 1 month. As usual there are a lot of speculations on it. I was curious so I tried it first hand. I’d like to share with you what I found.

The one thing got me interested in Windows 7 is that it runs faster than Vista. Vista got quite a beating and bad reputation for its very ineffective utilization of hardware. If you ran XP and Vista on two machines with the same hardware setup then you’d see that the Vista one would be slower in most cases. The reason for this mainly lies in all the added extra features, and fancy graphics and visual effects.

My test confirmed this rumor about Windows 7. I’ve installed it on a several years old hardware and it ran quite well. Had a very good response time and hardly any delays.

As far as looks go, Windows 7 is very close to Vista. However the interface is cleaner and simpler, with large icons. Microsoft “borrowed” some features from Apple. The taskbar on the bottom works very much like Mac OS X’s Dock. Up to Vista the taskbar showed only the currently running programs. You also optionally had a quick launch bar where you could place the most frequently used programs’ icons. In Windows 7 these two things are combined. You can “pin” programs to the taskbar. This means they will show up there all the time (similar to the quicklaunch bar). The difference comes in when you click on a pinned icon. If the program is not yet running then a new instance of that program will be launched. If the program has already started – which you can see from the icon’s look – then you’ll be switched over to the running instance of the program, not starting a new instance as was the case with the quicklaunch icons.

Another neat thing which caught my attention is the ability to control the notifications. By notifications I mean those little bubble messages popping up on the bottom right corner. In earlier versions of Windows there wasn’t really any way to control what notification you want to see, except for a few. Now these are easily configurable. And the notifications themselves are not so obtrusive as before.

As always there are changes with this new version. One interesting improvement is called the “Libraries“. In XP and Vista you had those “my documents”, “my pictures”, “my music”, etc folders. In Windows 7 you have so called libraries for these. However these are not simply folders but special storage concepts, you can integrate several folder into one library. For example you have your music collection in two separate folders on your hard drive, one is in the usual My Music folder and another one under the Downloads folder. In Windows 7 you can have your music library show you the combined content of these two. This will also make backups more reliable because if you set up your libraries right then all the important user data can be simply backed up. And you can also create your own libraries so that you won’t have to lump so many things into the My Documents folder.

Another positive thing I can tell about Windows 7 is the improvement of the User Account Control. This is the component which creates those infamous (and ridiculed by Apple) popups that ask your permission to continue when you do something that changes system wide settings. In Windows 7 this comes up at fewer places and in my experience it pops up quicker than in Vista.

There’s also some additional file sharing in the more expensive versions of Windows 7, called Home Groups. But I haven’t quite had the time to study up on that. I predict actually that this feature won’t get much widespread usage. Mainly because it doesn’t work with older systems, or other, such as Apple, systems.

As an interesting move Microsoft eliminated some previously built in software from Windows 7. The programs that are gone now: Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Mail, and Windows Movie Maker. Instead of bundling these with the operating system they can be downloaded from the Microsoft. These are called: Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Movie Maker. I have no reliable information as to why these were removed but I kind of agree with it. It eliminates unnecessary files during installation and gives users a chance to look around and use alternative (possibly better) software for these tasks.

As far as bundled software goes, Windows 7 comes with Internet Explorer 8 and unfortunately it still has Windows Defender built-in – which can only be disabled, not uninstalled.

There are probably some hundred smaller or greater features and changes which I just don’t have time for. If you are interested here’s a link to a WikiPedia page on the new features: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7

Compatibility

This was a huge issue when the XP-to-Vista transition happened. Vista had some major changes under the hood compared to XP. Naturally that caused immense number of incompatibilty issues with software and hardware.

Vista-to-Windows 7 will be a much smoother ride. Windows 7 is much more similar to Vista then Vista was to XP. Its core is not much changed and almost every single software that runs on Vista will work on Windows 7. It seems to be the case with device drivers as well.

Should I upgrade to Windows 7?

If you ask Microsoft or a salesman they’ll tell you: Yes!

I’d say most likely not. There are undoubtedly improvements in Windows 7 over Vista but none of these can be categorized as “can’t live without it”. If you have a working system don’t change it!

If your computer running XP and it’s running well with that then it will be able to support Windows 7 too. However you’d need to do a clean install of Windows 7. The two systems are quite different and the upgrade is not as simple as before. So again, unless you have a burning need then just stay with what you have.

The new computers will come with Windows 7. Which I think is fine and see no reason to try to find ones with Vista, or try to downgrade a Windows 7 computer to Vista. I predict much less issues with Windows 7 than Vista had when it came out – simply because it’s based on an improved and not on totally rewritten code (like Vista did).

Summary

I’d say I like Windows 7. Microsoft addressed many of the issues that plagued Vista and it definitely development definitely went in the right direction.

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