ksagarsee

Ok, I just started using the Beta of Windows 7 (Build 7000), and my boss asked me to blog some of my findings, so heeeeere we go.

I think you’ll hear a lot of this sentiment, “This is what Vista was supposed to be”

The Bad

• McAfee 8 isn’t compatible with  Windows 7 yet. This really isn’t a big deal, MS was smart about this and expected problems here, so they’re giving free access to their Live Defender stuff, until Antivirus makers can catch up. Installed AVG instead which seems to work ok.
• I also got a message that my video card driver wasn’t compatible. No surprise there right? It’s a new OS, that’s always an issue. However, everything works fine videowise.

The Good

• Speed. Wow this is fast. I haven’t tried a reboot or a cold start yet, but in general, opening the start menu, Control Panel, moving through My Computer, launching Apps… all much faster.
• Cool Factor. Yes. They did steal a lot from Apple. Lets all cry about it. Truth is, Apple has a good product, and MS would be fools not to copy some of it.
  • The Task Bar is different. You don’t have big bars of open applications, you have 1 icon for each app, similar to stacks in XP and Vista, but here they’ve made some sweet improvements
  • You can “pin” apps to the Task Bar, basically adding them to the quick launch menu which just keeps expanding to hold all the pinned apps. Starts to look a bit like an OS X Dock!
  • While we’re in the Task Bar, mousing over an icon’s app shows you all open windows of that type. All your Word docs, all your IE Tabs that are open, and you can then mouse over anything in the window it gives you it does a very Expose` kinda thing… it brings that window or tab to the front, and hides everything else. Letting you find what you’re looking for faster.
• Control Panel does a cool slidey thing when you select something, or go back to the main Control Panel window.
  • Lots to geek with in Control Panel, I’ll be adding more here.
  • Personalization. Themes and stuff like what we had in Vista, but better. Changing your Theme, is instant and it fades in, instead of stopping everything and adjusting everything painfully like in XP/Vista.
    • Also, in these themes are background sets. They have some sweet wallpapers, and they rotate every 15 minutes by default. New coolness.
• Libraries!!!! I Just spotted this. Vista had saved searches, but I don’t know anyone that used them. in Windows 7 they advise you use them instead of your My Documents folder. You can now find all of your Documents, pictures, videos, and music, no matter where they’re saved.
• Start Menu. I installed Live Writer and Messenger, and expected the normal, All Programs Bar to glow a bit and say “New Programs have been installed”. Not quite what happened. If I go through the start menu, the folder of the new App is Highlighted, but also, one of the apps that was installed, showed up in the Frequently used list on the main page of the Start Menu! I’m guessing this lets the publisher get their app to you a little quicker. Just kinda neat.
  • Recent Items are gone, and that’s OK. If you Pin Word to the Start Menu, you now get an arrow next to it that shows you all of your recent Word Documents.
  • The Shutdown Button. Vista did a really annoying thing here that Windows 7 fixed. In the Start Menu, there’s a button that just says “Shut Down” and guess what it does?! It Shuts the computer down! The arrow list to the right is still there so you can log off or hibernate or restart or whatever, but the Start Menu won’t lie to you any more!
  • Devices and Printers. We’re used to the Printers and scanners window, well now we have Devices and Printers. If it’s hardware and it’s connected to your computer, you can see it here. Mine shows my keyboard, mouse, 2 monitors, Hard drive and thumb drive in Devices, and then under printers and faxes… all my printers and well… faxes. From here you can right click on anything and configure it or change it. Right clicking your monitors brings you to the display settings page where you can change which monitor is default, their location, and their resolution. Right click the mouse and you can change pointers. Right click the thumb drive and you have all different options. Cool.
• Speed again. I seriously can’t get over how fast this is. Opening your list of programs to remove (Add/Remove Programs in XP, remove Programs in Vista) you always had to wait for it to index and list them. It’s instant. I don’t wait.

“Oh but Kyle! Your computer is probably beastly and awesome! Myyy computer would never run that well with it!”
Here’s my specs: Intel Core 2 Duo 3.16 GHz, 4GB Ram, 32Bit OS, ATI Video Card with 512mb Video Ram.
Ya, this is a sweet machine, but here’s the deal… compared to Vista, things move a lot faster. My computer is stacked, and Vista still ate my ram and seemed to beg for more. Windows 7 is handling resources better.

I Like.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 9:57 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.