News & Views

To say there is some hype surrounding the Microsoft's upcoming Vista replacement would be an incredible understatement. While the reasons for this hype range from "disappointment with Vista" to "slow news season," everyone can agree on one thing. Windows 7 will be Microsoft's best chance at redemption after a mostly dismal Vista run.

Since Microsoft released Windows 7 Beta, I thought it would be a great idea to post my own experience with installing, configuring, and using the Windows 7 Beta on my own Vista-compatible hardware.  So, to start things off, I went online and downloaded the ISO of Windows 7 Ultimate Beta 64 bit. I'll just call it W7 for the remainder of this article. Then, I used Nero to burn the ISO file to a DVD.

Installation:

Because of my requirements, I performed a slightly different than usual installation process. Since I'm testing W7B on my primary computer, which I use to do other things, I decided to put it on its own drive and dual-boot my system. I grabbed an old Maxtor 500GB drive I had on a shelf and bolted it into my case. Inside Vista, I partitioned the second drive, set it active, and formatted it as NTFS. Then, I rebooted from the DVD and selected that second drive when prompted for the location. In total, the install took maybe 30 minutes tops. It probably would have gone quicker if I wasn't using an older (slower) drive. I had to answer perhaps 5 questions in total during the process before the system finally rebooted into W7 for the first time.

First run:

The first thing I noticed after getting into W7 was the landscape of the slightly-tweaked desktop. Even to folks like me who used a double-height taskbar in both XP and Vista, this new taskbar is obviously different from the previous generations. The Start button is there, but next to it are big icons for quick launch. The standard icon tray is next, followed by the clock and one more oddity. There is what looks like a skinny button with no label or icon on the far right end of the taskbar.

Moving my mouse over this skinny button, the windows on the screen turned into transparent window frames so that I could see my desktop. I'm not sure what purpose is served by turning ALL of my windows transparent. I could see turning the top window transparent so that I can see the window underneath, but a button to let me quickly look at my wallpaper? My guess is that it might allow you to view Sidebar gadgets on the desktop, but that isn't clear with no label on the button. I'll let you know what I figure out on that one when I setup the gadgets in part 2.

Next, I clicked the Start button to see what was different. The look of the menu is familiar, but the contents have changed. Search seems to be more prominent somehow. The menu seems simplified, maybe too much so for my tastes. There is still no Videos folder listed with Pictures and Music. The first item on the left is a link to that Welcome dialog. Other than that, it doesn't look much different at first glance.

Bringing up Windows Explorer, I see libraries. This seems to be a system-wide addition. It probably even shows up in file open dialogs. If you are familiar with iTunes, you know that you can have two songs in your music library that are actually located in two different folders on your hard drive. This is the difference between the "library" and the "folders" in W7, too. You can have songs all over your hard drive and have them all show up in one folder in your music library. In fact, I suspect they could be on different physical drives and be in the same library folder. I'll test this later.

As I poked around using the new Windows Explorer, I noticed something annoying. I didn't see any filename extensions or hidden directories or files. So, I searched for the option to turn those back on. Nothing. As far as I've been able to find so far, there isn't a way to make Windows Explorer display hidden items anymore. Perhaps I'm looking in the wrong place, but I find this really annoying.

I decided it was time to install my favorite browser (Firefox) so I opened Internet Explorer to jump online to download the 64 bit version. Looks like they shipped the Beta of Internet Explorer 8 with W7. I typed "64 bit Firefox" into the search field, hit enter, and boom. Internet Explorer 8 crashed. I closed it and tried again with better results, but it continued to behave oddly with delayed responses to clicks and scrolling. IE8 doesn't seem like a Beta to me. More like pre-Alpha. It eventually worked long enough to (slowly) download Firefox 64 onto my computer, which is all I needed it to do.

After telling Firefox to install, a UAC prompt popped up asking me if it was ok to allow this program to install. I clicked the first prompt, fully expecting more to pop up as it progressed, but nothing happened. It installed and was done. Wow, UAC has changed! That's when I realized I had been poking around at stuff for quite a while without ever seeing a UAC prompt pop up.  It only appeared when I was actually installing something. Nice change! I looked at the settings on this and immediately discovered there are multiple levels of prompting you can set or you can turn it completely off. I'm thrilled with this.

So what is the score at this point?

Install: The install process has definitely improved. Seemed faster and less annoying. Fewer reboots, for me at least, and less user involvement aside from basic information. Networking already worked when the OS came up.

Taskbar: This is different, but it isn't clear whether this is better or worse yet, so I'll call that one a wash at this point.

Windows Explorer: This is both better and worse. It's probably better for new users because it hides things that could hurt them and simplifies finding things. It's worse for advanced users who want to be able to view ALL the information and files on their systems.

Internet Explorer: This is decidedly worse at this point, largely due to the extreme instability and flakiness of what they floated as a beta release.

User Access Control (UAC): This is VASTLY improved. The default setting out of the box warns of drastic actions without being the annoying pain in the ass which prompted most power users to turn it off entirely in Vista. Big plus on this one.

Stability: I'll update on this as I use it longer. So far, not a single OS crash, hang, or reboot. This OS is really solid for a Beta release. It's the polar opposite of the IE8 Beta, in my experience so far.

So the score after my first look is a mixed bag. Overall, I think it looks much improved for average users, but power users may get annoyed by some of the walls they have built around parts of the OS. Just avoid using IE8.

In my next post, I'll take a closer look at some of the improvements and annoyances I discover about this new OS as I continue to use it.

Labels: Microsoft, Opinions, Windows 7