First Impressions : Windows 7 RC1

Blame my unimaginative thinking for the title, but that’s besides the point. What is the point is whether Microsoft’s new OS is upto the task. I openly admit that I”m a staunch XP user. I may dabble with Linux from time to time, but for everyday tasks, I prefer Windows. What I also believe in, is that Windows Vista was a blot on Microsoft’s otherwise not-so-spotless record (ref. Windows Me, Windows 2000 and so on). It was resource hungry. It was bigger than J’Lo’s ass…which can be considered a complement to her posterior. It was quite buggy, with way too many security loopholes, and a useless UAC system. Drivers were incompatible, and the ones that were claimed to be, were often buggy. All this after Microsoft spends the better part of a decade in development. Even Vista SP1 didn’t help too much.

So, naturally, to clean up its act, to fix the problem, a new, better OS was in order. Essentially, I consider Vista to be a Beta version of 7, but one which you paid for…suckers. I’d consider this relationship –> Win95 : Win98 :: Vista : 7. Windows 95 had its fair share of bugs and BSODs, and I think the same can be said about Vista. The Windows 7 RC1 ISO is around 2.36 GB, which is actually less than the final version of Vista Ultimate. The setup was pretty painless, and relatively quick. I was having some problem with my PC hardware, but that’s another post. I did a fresh install on a new partition, not wanting to mess up XP.

The very first thing I noticed about 7, is the new load screen. Essentially, before 7, all of Redmond’s OSes had horizontal loading bars while the OS booted. In 7 this has been replaced by a video of a glowing Windows logo. Not an essential change, purely cosmetic. In fact, earlier it used to be easy to compare boot times by counting the number of cycles the bar animation went through, and a pulsing logo is tougher to spot, so I kinda prefer the older version.

Login screen is almost identical to Vista, except that Microsoft has opted for a semi-flowery background, but that’s OK. After logging in, one of the first things you notice is the new taskbar. Looks better, with more Aero treatment. 7 comes preloaded with Internet Explorer 8 and Windows Media Player 12. IE8, looks good, feels good, but isn’t really enough. I know, being a diehard Firefox user, that it just is slow. There’s no other word for it. OK, I admit, it’s really fast to start up, because Windows now integrates IE, WMP and the core OS more tightly, but beyond that, page rendering still sucks. Chrome, Opera and Firefox are better anytime. Windows Media Player 12 is a bit weird. The Now Playing screen is only accessed from Ctrl+3. Play music, and it will stick to the library mode, like iTunes. Overall, it looks better, and seems quick. Much quicker than iTunes, at any rate.

One thing I found slightly disconcerting…the taskbar. Aero looks good, I know, but that isn’t the point. Opening any more applications just shows the icon. Hover your mouse over it, and it gives you a peek of the window (Aero Peek). For Windows apps like IE and Windows Explorer, it still shows one icon, even if you have several tabs/windows open, just that there will be faint translucent icons behind the original ones. The Shut Down button has finally become a Shur Down button again, instead of a Sleep button, although all of this can be customised. Thing is, most people won’t go to the lengths of customisation, so it’s good MS changed all of this. I just have one niggle with the GUI. In XP, I could make a toolbar out of a folder (Shortcuts, on my Desktop), and attach it to the top of my desktop. In 7, I can make the toolbar, but there’s no way I can get it to the top of my desktop.

I should point out that 99% of the software which ran on Vista, should run perfectly on 7 as well. With the exception of Daemon Tools. It’s a virtual CD software, which needs to create a virtual drive which 7 doesn’t like for some reason. Probably to do with permissions et al.

Finally, performance. I know that my PC’s over 3 years old. It frequently goes to its knees, motherboard failures, hard drive detection failures and all. But when it works, 7 works like a breeze. Agreed, if I try doing too many things together, two different hard drive operations, 10 or so IE tabs open, installing Windows Updates and installing Firefox and iTunes, it does tend to slow down, but otherwise, while doing normal everyday stuff, I really don’t think it’s slow. Although I can’t say the same about file copy operations. 7, like Vista, takes ages to just count how many files there are, before it begins the agonisingly slow copy procedure.

Windows now has a better way to monitor system resources. It’s called Resource Monitor (resmon.exe). It was something I’ve been waiting for a long time for. It shows really in-depth stuff, including network usage, disk usage, memory usable, reserved. I could go on and on, but to cover that, I’ll need another post. Windows Update no longer needs an IE window to be opened. I don’t know if this was fixed in Vista or not, but I can tell you that it was really annoying in XP.

As far I can see, there’s nothing really wrong with 7. I like it…so far…