So as some people may have heard, the first beta of Windows 7 (aka build 7000) has been leaked onto the internet. For those of you who haven’t heard, and have no idea what I’m talking about, Windows 7 is Microsoft’s next operating system (the replacement for Vista, just as Vista was the replacement for XP before it). Despite my dislike for Windows Vista, which is a bloated and unusable operating system on most machines, I decided that I ought to try out Windows 7 for myself, since Microsoft claims that it is much faster than Vista.
Well, after a bit of trouble burning it to a disk (fourth time’s the charm!), I finally got the OS up and running on my machine. Let me start of by saying that for the most part, Microsoft is completely right: 7 is amazingly fast. For the most part. Compared to Vista. The impressive thing is that the machine I’m running 7 on is somewhat old, a 2.93ghz Celeron cpu with 512mb of ram, and yet it manages to pull off full Aero effects at full speed (by which I mean it runs at the same speed as Windows XP on the same machine, give or take a bit). Admittedly, I do have a pretty good graphics card to go with the crappy processor and memory, but Vista didn’t even give me the option of enabling Aero, so this is definitely a step up. Overall my machine gets a 2.9 in the experience index (which, by the way, now goes up to 7.9 instead of 5.9) – limited by my memory.
Windows 7 is currently installed at the back of my computer, on the second partition of my secondary hard drive, which it seems to be dealing with just fine. It is completely comfortable being installed alongside Windows XP, and by default gives me the option to boot an older version of Windows or 7, which is really nice. Annoyingly, it doesn’t automatically mount the other hard drive (which is C:\\ for Windows XP), but I got it to mount as a C:\\Windows XP folder with no problems.
Even though this is only a beta, it is surprisingly stable. I don’t really think much of the stability of Windows in the first place, so the amount of instability present in 7 is practically acceptable. The most annoying thing is the Windows Explorer crash every time I log in, which is easily fixed by relaunching it. Apart from that, there have been a few minor crashes every now and then, and a few places where it’s obvious that a little polish is still needed (notably the help files).
Compatability-wise, 7 is surprisingly friendly with almost all of my hardware by default. During the system installation it managed to connect to my WiFi, and has been connected flawlessly ever since then. Seriously, two thumbs way up for Microsoft on getting the WiFi thing down. It never asks me which network to connect to, and never bugs me when it can’t connect (because it always manages to connect). Also, I love the fact that Windows 7 doesn’t bug me about empty ethernet ports like every other version of Windows does. All I have in my taskbar is the WiFi connection level and some system warnings (get a virus scanner, turn on updates, blah blah blah), both of which I could hide if I so chose. The one piece of hardware 7 seems to be having trouble with is my sound processor, which isn’t surprising as no version of Windows seems to be able to install this chip by default (the VIA Vinyl AC’97 or something).
On the software side, things in general seem to work (including Uru, which is actually faster, if anything), with the exception of the programs that rely on audio (all of which just complain about the lack of an audio device before quitting themselves – Myst, Riven, etc). I cannot get the installer for my audio chip drivers to work, which is very annoying. However, overall this seems like a very good OS in terms of compatibility.
I like the superbar a lot. It really has to be seen to fully appreciate it, but basically the superbar is the new taskbar. Applications appear now as tiles on the bar, and the quicklaunch is gone – replaced with ‘pinned’ applications, which are always present on the bar. Icons have menus that pop up when right-clicked, and if more than one window is open for an application, a small extra bar is added to the right side of the tile, one bar for each extra window. It’s a subtle way to show how many windows you have open, and much nicer than the grouping that old taskbars did.
Overall, I’m really enjoying Windows 7. Apart from the small assortment of glitches listed above, the environment is very stable and speedy, and a lot nicer looking than XP and Vista. Thanks to a patch I found online, I have Windows 7 until July, at which point there should be a newer build out anyway. I very much want to upgrade my XP installation rather than dual-boot, but the problems listed above force me not to (plus I don’t think the leaked beta even allows upgrading yet). As of this moment, I do plan on buying a copy (or at least trying to get a copy from a friend at Microsoft) of Windows 7 when it comes out. If I could, I would even install it on Eve, it’s just that good.