Tech, Politics, and Whatever’s Relevant

It’s been almost three years since the release of Vista, and Microsoft is releasing it’s new operating system tomorrow, packed with a lot of new features. Now, I never really believed that Vista was as bad as people made it out to be. It was stable, had many new features, and it was more aesthetically advanced that it’s predecessor. Unfortunately it did have some downfalls in that start-up time could be on the long side (I found that drivers were the most likely cause of this) and it did consume a lot of resources.

I’ve been using Windows 7 since the release Beta 1 (Build 7000) and I have to say that I’ve been impressed. It isn’t a complete overhaul by any means, but it has key refinements where they need to be. In this release, Microsoft seemed to focus on speed, appearance and ease of use. I can’t help but think that this is in part thanks to Apple, and all of their knocks on Windows being dull and difficult to use. In this review, I am using the Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 64-bit Edition.

Taskbar
Upon start-up the first thing you’ll be greeted with (aside from a slicker boot screen and quicker boot time) is the new taskbar everybody has been talking about. I like that this new design mimics the feature that I most used in Windows, and miss in OS X… the Quick Launch Toolbar. You can pin or unpin a program easily by right clicking either the shortcut, or the running program itself, and selecting pin/unpin to taskbar. I did not like the fact that this taskbar uses alot of screen estate, but there is an option to decrease it’s size by right clicking the taskbar, and going to properties. The Show Desktop option has been moved all the way to the clear portion on the right-most side of the bar (to the right of the clock) but I’m finding that because of it’s remote location, I use it far less. When you run more than one instance of a program, the icon for that program appears as a stack. If you hover over this stack, you can see a live preview of each instance of that program. For the most part the start bar hasn’t changed, so there isn’t much to report there. Overall I find it to make things more convenient, and an improvement over past versions.

Compatibility
One of the nice things about Windows 7 is that even though I’m running the 64-bit Edition, I haven’t had very many compatibility issues… The only real problem that I found is running Alcohol 120%, but even then my problems were solved by performing an update. There still isn’t any Flash support for the 64-bit version of Internet Explorer, but Microsoft included a 32-bit version that’s compatible with any plug-in somebody may need. Most of my drivers worked great out of the box, and all of my drivers worked fine upon install.

Speed
The main reason most people would want to upgrade to Windows 7 is the vast improvement in speed over Windows Vista. Windows 7 boots up much quicker than Vista, and it is snappier when up and running as well. Aside from launching programs faster, it seems to manage memory much more efficiently as well. I can run multiple programs at once, and not see a dent in speed.

Appearance
Where Windows 7 shines more-so than in any other operating system is it’s appearance. This iteration of Windows is easily the best looking operating system made thus far. Aero is further refined in this version to display more transparency effects, but not enough to ever get distracting. Because you can see your background from anywhere, you can change the mood of your entire computer just by changing the background without having to mess with color schemes. Aside from Aero, the entire interface is very clean, crisp, and nicely designed.

Gaming
As far as gaming goes, I have seen no changes in terms of game compatibility and how well they run. I’ve tested out Simcity 4, Half Life 2, Sims 3, Flight Sim 2002 and I have not run into any sort of problems.

Windows Media Player 12
One of the things I did not like very much was some of the changes made to Windows Media Player 12. It has gone the route of iTunes as being the vehicle through which Microsoft manages the media on all of it’s portable music players, and has thus become over-bloated and inconvenient to use as a simple music player. With WMP 10, I could easy add all of my music, and just have a now playing playlist, but with 12, you have to add the music to the library, and then add that music to a playlist, and open the playlist. In my opinion, Windows Media Player 12 is kind of a step to the side, more than a step forward or backwards.

Overall
This version of Windows is easily the best yet. If you have Vista, I would recommend upgrading if you feel that your computer runs a bit slow, and you would like to give your computer a needed facelift. If your running XP, unless your on a custom built computer you may be best off purchasing a new computer with Windows 7. It may be worth noting that I am running Windows 7 on the 2.26ghz 13″ Macbook Pro.