The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group First Look: Windows 7 Anthony Caruana © |
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Anthony Caruana spent a day downloading the latest version of Windows, albeit still in beta format. Here's what he found. |
It would be something of an understatement to say the world's response to Windows Vista has been a little underwhelming. There are many independent tests that prove that Vista is significantly slower, on the same hardware, than Windows XP and User Account Control, touted as a security feature, caused no end of user aggravation and frustration. However, Microsoft has acknowledged many of the issues that Vista adopters faced and has embarked on a mission to regain its lost credibility and the respect of its customers and the market.
Windows 7 was released into public beta in early January and we've been putting it to the test on a variety of different systems. We chose four test environments and decided not to use the latest and greatest hardware. Given that a new version of Windows will find its way to old systems as well as new, we figured that a shakedown on older systems would tell us plenty about Windows 7's ability to run on new systems.
Our four test environments were:
- Dell OptiPlex GX270 running a Pentium 4 processor clocked at 2.8 GHz with 2GB
of RAM
- Asus Eee PC 900 with a total of 16GB
of storage and 1GB of memory
- Toshiba Portege R500 notebook running an Intel Core
2 processor clocked at 1.2 GHz with 1GB of RAM
- A virtual machine running in VMWare on an iMac
Installation
Our installation DVDs of Windows 7 were created from downloaded ISO images
sourced from Microsoft. While there are versions of Windows 7 available from
other sources we've stuck with the sanctioned release.
Installing Windows has come a long way over the years and Windows 7 was the
easiest installation we've encountered. Once we booted from the DVD the only
decisions we needed to make were setting the localisation to Australia from the
default United States and to accept the End User License Agreement.
The installation process was fastest on
our Mac running in a virtual machine using
VMWare. That took about 20 minutes. Set up
of the 64-bit version to our Toshiba Portege
R500 notebook took a few minutes longer.
Our lowest spec system was the Asus Eee PC
900. We thought that we were going to run into some hurdles as the installation
requires about 9GB of disk space. Interestingly, the installation actually
failed
but then restarted and succeeded. We'd seen this on previous versions of
Windows where there was an installation issue. It seems that the installer is
smart enough to start over but skip the problematic files.
The installation process for both the 32 and 64-bit versions required us to
enter some networking settings and there were a couple of reboots required but
these don't require any user intervention. By the time we got the third and
fourth installations we were in the habit of entering the initial information
required and then moving on to some other work as the process was so smooth.
Post installation issues
We fully expected to encounter all sorts of issues with our different systems
but really only hit one glitch. With the Dell and Eee PC, Windows 7 lacked the
correct video drivers meaning that we were initially stuck with standard VGA.
While this was adequate for getting started it was a little annoying as some
Windows 7 dialog boxes, such as the one for determining whether you're
connected tc a Home or Work network, were too large for the display.
The only hardware that didn't work with the Eee PC was the integrated webcam.
However, to be fair, our main problem was that Asus made the appropriate
Windows XP driver hard to find.
Networking drivers for all our systems were fully operational so we were able
to go to the manufacturers websites and download their latest drivers. In all
cases drivers tagged as being for Windows XP installed without any problems and
worked correctly. We'd expect that the range of drivers will expand through
subsequent beta releases of Windows 7. Whether systems as old as the OpitPlex
GX270, at four
years, will be fully supported remains to be seen.
The installation to our Mac's virtual machine worked
perfectly. The registered version of VMWare comes with
McAfee SecurityCenter. The installation complained that it wasn't designed for
this version of Windows but completed and the software worked as designed.
First impressions
It's clear that Microsoft has listened to the criticisms levelled against
Vista. Even on our somewhat older hardware we found that Windows 7 ran quite
well. We figured that if Windows 7 could run on the Eee PC with a 900MHz
processor, 1GB of memory and limited disk space that it could probably run on
just about any computer made in the last four or five years.
We needed to make a few tweaks in order to get Windows 7 running nicely. Even
though Windows 7, by default, offers to manage the best balance between
performance and appearance options, we found the Eee PC a little sluggish at
first. However, by turning
off many of Windows 7's interface animations we saw a significant boost in
performance. On other, more highly powered systems, we didn't need to do this.
At last
One significant change that we were very thankful for was the improvement made
to User Account Control. UAC is the Vista security feature that prompts you
every time you try to do anything that can be even remotely dangerous to your
system. In Windows 7, application installers raised a UAC alert but simple acts
such as launching Control Panel applets didn't.
By being a little more selective about when UAC intervenes in your computer use
Microsoft has stopped inundating users with so many messages that they
start to simply accept them as they're overwhelmed.
The Windows user interface has evolved significantly through each generation
and iteration. Windows
7 seems a lot cleaner than its predecessors. Our initial reaction was that it
looked a lot like the Linux distribution Ubuntu. The Task Bar retains the
familiar Start button but programs that are running are represented by a simple
icon rather that a button with an icon and text. In general, we found that
icons were larger under Windows 7 than previous versions, making them easier
targets for the mouse pointer.
The System Tray, the area that contains smaller icons and the clock, has been
given a significant makeover as well. The date is now shown under the time and
the other icons have been given a new, more subtle look. At the right-hand end
of the Task Bar is a Show Desktop button that minimises all open windows and
exposes the desktop.
Taking windows 7 for a spin.
Delving into some of the different menus and options reveals significant
improvements from Vista. We found that related items that were previously
scattered are now consolidated and better organised. For example,
changing screen resolution is a single right click away on the desktop. User
Account Control is easily configured with a slider for adjusting it sensitivity
so that you can decide whether you want more or fewer warnings. In
the past, UAC was an all-or-nothing proposition.
Standard Windows apps such as Wordpad and Paint have been given a facelift and
now sport the same "ribbon" interface as Microsoft Office 2007. It seems that
Wordpad has lost the ability, at least in this beta release, to work with doc
files. That's probably not a deal-breaker for anyone but it's a curious
omission. The Command Prompt has also been given a once over and is now called
PowerShell. All the old DOS commands we learned back in another age still work.
The old Command Prompt is still there as well. There's also PowerShell ISE
(Integrated Scripting Environment) for scripting system operation - the updated
version of batch files.
One new application that caught our attention was the new Snipping Tool first
seen in Vista for taking screenshots. It allowed us to capture specific windows
and regions
of the screen easily. If you're in the business of writing system documentation
this will prove to be a very handy tool. There are twelve games there so that
you can hone your mouse skills as well, including a couple of different
versions of Solitaire, Chess and Mahjong.
We tested out a few applications and didn't hit any significant snags. One
program required that we ran it in Windows XP compatibility mode but that was
easy to configure. The brand and model of our digital camera was correctly
recognised and we were able to import images and video from the camera easily.
One new feature is the Windows 7 Action Center. One of our annoyances with
Windows XP and Vista is the number of alerts that appear in the System Tray. It
seems that every application feels the need to pop some sort of message up at
the bottom of the screen. The Action Center provides a single point for system
alerts. For example, antivirus software updates, Windows Defender scans and
other maintenance tasks are all stored in the Action Center. A single click of
the mouse shows them all rather than each utility popping up its own alerts.
Performance
Given that the release we're testing is the first public beta of Windows 7,
we're not getting too worried about benchmarking yet. However, we found that
Windows
7 was able to boot and be usable in just under a minute on our Dell test
system. That means that the operating system and AVG Free antivirus (downloaded
and installed separately) were completely loaded and ready for action. Internet
Explorer 8 loaded in just a couple of seconds although the default homepage
will add to that depending on your Internet connection.
In contrast, the Eee PC took about 2.5 minutes to start up and be usable and
Internet Explorer took a few seconds longer. However, once it was loaded it
performed quite well. With the Eee PC, we installed a trial version of
Kaspersky antivirus so that may have impacted performance. That said, the Eee
PC 900, running Windows 7 was by no means unusable and on a par with Windows
XP, the OS that shipped with this particular Eee PC.
Homegroups and Libraries
Windows 7 has extended the concept of the Documents folder and the new Windows
Explorer displays. Libraries allow you to aggregate the content of multiple
folders into a single logical location. For example, if you store some photos
on your local hard drive and others on a network device, then you can tell the
"Pictures" library folder to pull the content of those different locations
together.
Library folders can be easily shared as well. By creating a Homegroup, members
of the same local, home network can easily share their media and documents.
This helps to overcome one of the trickiest things most users encounter - the
ability to share files, printers and other resources with other computers in
their home.
It's fair to say that Homegroups is a feature that's still in development. In
our testing, the help documentation didn't match what we saw on our screens and
we couldn't establish a working Homegroup. However, the feature shows great
promise and we look forward to seeing it operating more smoothly in a
subsequent beta release.
Taking the plunge
So, should you take the plunge? Well, that depends on how adventurous you are.
Although we didn't encounter any system crashes on any of our test systems,
it's
clear that you'll need to be ready with drivers for things such as video cards
and webcams. But if you can negotiate those sorts of issues, then there's no
reason Windows 7 couldn't slide into regular use.
We'd strongly advise that anyone planning to put Windows 7 on a main work
machine to thoroughly research support for all their hardware and software. In
addition, we'd suggest having things such as video and network card drivers
ready just in case your specific hardware isn't supported by the drivers
supplied with Windows 7. Furthermore, this beta release of Windows 7 is
time-limited and will expire in August 2009. If you're a hobbyist or have a
secondary machine then it might be fun to take Microsoft's latest and greatest
for a test drive, but we'd urge caution.
The final word - Windows 7 shows a lot of promise and looks to address many of
the problems faced by adopters of Vista. If the focus from this point is on
stability and performance rather than adding new features, we could see Windows
7 help restore Microsoft's ailing reputation.
Note: Anthony Caruana© Permission to copy or quote extracts
from this article may only be done with the written permission of the author.
Reprinted from the February 2009 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
