Windows 7 – First Impressions
Those who know me know that I am anything but a fan of Vista. There are too many little things that bother me. Now, the beta of Windows 7 has been leaked onto the internet. I have a close, personal friend who's decided to download and install it on one of his laptops. He and I have very similar views of Vista, so his testing of the OS will be very informative for me.
This will certainly be a difficult test for Windows 7. It is, reportedly, very similar to Vista in look and feel and my friend is extremely critical of many of the "features" such as User Account Control. Additionally, the laptop it will be installed on is several years old. Here are the specs:
Gateway 7508GX
Mobile AMD Athlon™ 64-bit 3400+
1 GB RAM (PC2700)
ATI MOBILITY™ RADEON® X600 64 MB
40GB Hard Drive (5400 RPM) (Not stock - old 80GB died and had to be replaced)
He's already installed it and used it a little and here are his first impressions:
"I'm really quite pleasantly surprised. The install was very easy. It asked a few basic questions like what language and time zone to use. It also asked me to setup a password but made it plainly obvious that this was recommended but not required. After only a few screens (three maybe?) it began the install. It was completely automated and fast. The whole thing was installed in less than a half hour. I never thought I'd say this, but one nice thing about Windows 7 is that it uses the same drivers as Vista. This meant that I was able to use Driverheaven's Mobility Modder to install the latest ATI Catalyst drivers.
One notable improvement is in the User Account Controls (UAC), where the annoying popups have been reduced and it's no longer an all-or-nothing endeavor. Inside the UAC Control Panel is a slider bar that allows you to adjust how often you are prompted, or turn it off entirely. Mobility Modder requires UAC to be disabled, so it was quite nice to be able to adjust it so easily.
The Windows 7 Beta also includes the Internet Explorer 8 Beta so I'll be trying it as well. I usually use Firefox but Microsoft has been making great claims about this new version so I'll give it a shot. So far it's been pretty similar to IE7. There's a Compatibility Mode that is easily enabled on a per page basis, but whether it makes a difference remains to be seen. I'll continue trying this out and let you know how it goes."
Could be interesting.
January 8th, 2010 - 08:28
So I obviously never got back to site to finish this. It should be no surprise that “my friend” was just an attempt at plausible deniability. At the time I wrote the post, Windows 7 could only be obtained via bittorrent. Later, Microsoft made it available to anyone and I was quite happy with it.
In case anyone cares, it ran great on that laptop. At the tail end of 2009, I repaced it with a much newer beast and almost immediately wiped Vista and installed Windows 7 RC1. I love it so much that I keep putting off the work of moving up to the release version (I’ve got it on a disc sitting in my kitchen).