Windows 7 tested and reviewed

There are hundreds of Windows 7 reviews out there.  We hope this review might bring something slightly different to the table.  Windows 7 is impressive, very impressive.  Be advised that the public beta offering will be pulled on Feb. 10, 2009 so if you are interested, best to grab it now.

Downloading the 64-bit ISO took about 90 minutes for me but that will vary on connection speed and the time of day you attempt it.  The actual installation took about 25 minutes on a somewhat old laptop that I had lying around.

Specs of the test laptop include 2GB of memory, a 40GB 5400RPM hard drive (the Achilles’ heel) and a Turion 64×2 mobile processor operating at a speed of 1.8GHz.  This laptop had Vista Home Premium installed so I decided to put Windows 7 on the secondary internal hard drive.

It had been called into question before as to whether or not clean installs or just upgrades would be possible with the beta.  I’m happy to report that both options are available.  Though I do not recommend the upgrade path.  It could be hard to move back to Vista after the Windows 7 beta expires and loss of access to data may occur.

If you are going to install the beta, either do it on a second hard drive or partition your main drive so that Windows 7 has its own home.  Again, the upgrade is possible but is not a path I would take.  It can also be run within a virtual machine but you won’t be able to use all the features of it and there may be some sluggishness as a result.

When I say the installation took 25 minutes that is 25 minutes from start to finish.  Unpacking the files, installing and finishing the installation.  It’s simple and dare I say it borders on installing Mac OSX.

Pop in the DVD after you’ve burned it with an ISO utility (Nero, for example) and wait for it to boot.  The installation screens are very similar to those used with Vista though the new loading graphic is very pretty, so is the “loading” scroll bar.

Windows 7 is both beautiful and usable.  It’s not an understatement to say Microsoft really has outdone itself and did not just fix problems with Vista but went a step beyond to make sure most, if not all user complaints were addressed.

What I found most interesting was that even before the desktop booted it offered to set up my wireless network connection (just like Mac OSX would have) and did so with little fuss.  Windows Vista takes a few seconds before it sees my wireless connection.  Windows 7 sees it instantly.

I had all of two driver problems upon fully booting to the desktop for the first time.  In Vista that would have been a huge problem because it wouldn’t have been able to fix itself.  Windows 7 is capable of fixing just about anything that goes wrong.  It recognized that the graphics driver had not properly installed, automatically checked Windows update, found the new driver and installed it.  This may vary if you do not select the “recommended settings” during the initial setup.

Since the graphics driver had not been properly installed in the first place, Aero was disabled.  There didn’t appear to be an easy way to fix that in the Control Panel but I had gotten a bit impatient at trying to fix things myself.  Unlearn everything you have learned about Vista.

The “Find and Fix problems” diagnostic tool identified that the desktop manager wasn’t running, started it and enabled Aero – all by itself – no user intervention required (except for actually starting the diagnostic tool).

Upgrades are finally possible with Windows 7, hardware will be recognized, drivers will be installed and problems will be fixed almost completely without the user lifting a finger.  I hate to say it but not even that can be said of Linux (though it is more configurable), most people (myself included) want something that just works.

Microosft has decided to replace the Security Center with the Action Center which not only monitors your security status but any other problems it may have detected with your drivers, software or hardware and suggets resolutions which will usually work (unlike Vista where it probably wouldn’t have).

The new taskbar is a dream.  Yes it could be considered a copy of the Mac OSX dock but who cares because it just works.  I for one am thankful that the “quicklaunch” area is gone and has been replaced with program shorcut icons.  In fact any running program is represented by an icon when minimized to the taskbar.  It’s about time.  Minimized and active programs are highlighted with a box.   Running program icons in the taskbar are also highlighted by different colors.  At first it appeared to be random but the same program is assigned the same color each time.  One of my friends suggested that it selects the “most common” color used in the program and selects it.  Since I have no better evidence to go in it seems reasonable.  There may be something else at work behind the scenes but I’m not really sure what else it could be. Even if it is random, it is still a good idea.

Other reviews have mixed feelings about this thinking that it will confuse users who are used to every other previous version of Windows.  Adapt or die.  I happen to like it and I do not want to go back doing the way things older versions of Windows did it.

The inactive icon area has also gotten a makeover.  The only icons displayed by default are the Action Center, Power Status (for laptops), Wireless connection status and volume along with date and time.  The new taskbar is also what I would call the “double thick” one but is designed in such a way that it’s not ugly (as with XP, Vista).  It is possible to customize the inactive icons just like it was in Vista but the default setting is both clean and functional.

The Sidebar is gone by default in the beta, at least.  It can be turned out but really it is more annoying to me than useful.  Users can turn it on if they want but with Vista quite a few people just wound up turning it off.

Wordpad has gotten a slight makeover with the use of the Ribbon Interface as is seen in Office 2007.  What can I say, it works.  If it weren’t for the need of a spreadsheet and all the other tools that Office provides you almost wouldn’t need another word processor.

This doesn’t mean everything is unicorns and rainbows.  The new Control Panel is somewhat of a disorganized mess.  As with Vista the default view of the Control Panel is the task pane where you select System and Security, Network and Internet, Appearance and Personalization, etc but the Classic View appears to be gone with the wind.  I liked the Classive View.  While there is something similar to the Classic View, it’s not the same and is one of the harder adjustments advanced users will have to make.

If that’s the worst thing that can be said about Windows 7, Microsoft has done it’s job well.  I’m finding it very hard to find things to nitpick on about Windows 7 but I’m certainly going to try.

One small issue that I have noticed is that Windows 7 won’t immediately recognized a second hard drive that has a previous version of Windows on it.  Some reports point to the fact that it won’t see a second hard drive at all regardless of where or how it is installed.  This only seems to apply to internal hard drives and not external USB drives.

The fix is to go into Computer Management and assign the hard drive in question a drive letter.  Windows 7 assigns itself the C: drive regardless if it is installed on D: or E: or XYZ drive.  Simply assign a drive letter to the other hard drive.  This does not appear to break Vista or affect anything else so you’re pretty safe in doing it but if there is any doubt at all best to leave things the way they are.

This problem will likely get fixed in the final version of Windows 7.  This is a minor problem and should not stop any (advanced) users from trying out 7.  If you find yourself completely lost at this point it’s probably a good idea to avoid installing Winodws 7 or anything else for that matter.

Another issue is that Bluetooth works just about as well as it did in Vista.  It works fine right after the initial install but when resuming from suspend, it simply doesn’t work.  Attempting to eject the card and reinstall it also doesn’t work either.  The only way to resume normal Bluetooth functionality is to restart the system – sometimes it may be necessary to physically uninstall the card and let Windows reinstall the drivers.  Of course, this is only a temporary fix if you happen to put the computer in suspend mode again.

This is a slight step back from Vista where you can at least get Bluetooth working one way or the other without having to uninstall the card.  Bluetooth stereo support has been renamed to Bluetooth Audio Render and under newer drivers it seems to select the modes automatically.  Recognizing Bluetooth peripherals is much easier and faster in Windows 7 but getting your Bluetooth card working is nothing short of a painful experience.

Windows 7 also seems to have a delayed reaction when you connect USB devices and disconnect them.  I’m reminded here of a quote from “Rain Man” where Tom Cruise remarks “he is answering a question from 15 minutes ago” which is almost how Windows 7 responds to USB removal.  Recognizing the devices is a bit faster.

Some users have also reported problems with sleep mode.  As in it won’t resume and may reboot several times.  If it locks up when in sleep mode sometimes the only option is to manually power the computer off by holding the power button.  Windows 7 doesn’t like that and may not boot at all after doing so.  Sleep mode in Windows 7 is broken so it’s a wiser decision to just disable it until the kinks are all worked out of it.

Though this may be a problem with driver configurations or software and not the operating system itself.  I have not had this problem and your mileage may vary.

In another post we will be comparing Windows 7 head to head with Windows Vista so stay tuned.

• Pirates pleased with Windows 7
• First impressions of Windows 7 RC1
• How to get old(er) Bluetooth devices working in Vista
• Intel already has Windows 7 drivers
• Windows Vista finally made to play nice with Dell printer