Windows 7 - First opinions

Well, I've been using Windows 7 for a while now - since the beta came out, in fact, and I think that I have been using it for long enough to be qualified to give my two-pence-sterling about this early release.

The first thing to bear in mind with this version of Windows is that it is meant as a preview. I have heard good things from other people about the completeness of this release, although I can't say that I've had the same experience.

First of all, the 64 bit version of Windows 7 does not have good compatibility with some of my favourite applications, the most notable being the browser Google Chrome, which didn't work at all for me. Historically, 64 bit versions of Windows have also had notable driver issues, although, impressively, all of the drivers for my NForce chipset and Nvidia Geforce graphics card worked "out of the box" - the same goes for the 32 bit release, and I think that this is something that Microsoft should have included in Vista. It's the sort of functionality that Linux has been able to provide for years. Still very nice that it's finally happened though.

So, having discovered that the 64 bit version was a bit unpleasant, I stuck with 32 bit Windows 7. This meant that it could only address 3.3 gig of my 4 gig of memory, which would be a problem for me in Vista, but not in Windows 7. My Vista installation is rediculously cluttered and tends to use at least 1.3 gig straight after boot. This is only using 800mb as I type this article.

The experience of using Windows 7 is mixed. On one hand, the new "library" system is great - being able to pull lists of files together from multiple locations is a real blessing. The search and indexing features are much the same as in Vista, although there is a slight annoyance in that the first time I searched my library it did not detect that the index was incomplete and resort to a manual search. The new "superbar" teeters between genius and down-right-irritating. In my installation, (but not in my friend's, mind) there was around a second delay between placing my mouse over a symbol and the window previews appearing - this is one of the top features of Windows 7 touted by Microsoft, and although the previews could be brought up instantly by clicking, it made the experience a bit less nice and a bit more clunky. I managed to reduce the delay by editing a registry value, though, as per a tip on a site I found.

With applications that were designed for Windows 7, the jumplist and preview features are great. It's possible to easily navigate your windows, tabs, IMs etc. The rub for me is that it doesn't work that well with anything else. The main problem is that applications have been providing tab features that duplicate the functionality of the "superbar" by grouping instances of an app into a single Window for a long time, and you find yourself, with such applications, first moving over the icon, then viewing the previews of the windows for that application before focusing on a window and clicking on a tab. It's a problem that I think is likely to go away, though.

There are other issues with older applications and the superbar though, for example, applications that minimise to the tasktray when closed appear as closed on the superbar. This isn't so bad unless you've got them pinned, in which case it's rather tempting to open new instances of the application by clicking on its icon. The other thing I found was that Google Chrome's application shortcuts also do not pin well to the task bar. Not so much a bug in Windows 7 but something not yet included in Chrome.

Whether or not the superbar works well is a moot point in my opinion. I feel that the biggest barrier to it lies in the fact that it's different. Sufficiently so to confuse a large number of users. The ribbon interface in Office 2007 is absolutely brilliant, but most users reject it at first because it's different and forces them to use better working habits when using their applications. If Microsoft go ahead with this superbar, they're going to have to market it and market it and turn it into some kind of demi-god if they want people to use it - and even then they'll only get the nerds interested.

Other than that, I have a couple of slight annoyances with Windows 7. The nvidia drivers that come bundled won't talk to my TV in dualview mode, for one, and when VLC is streaming the output seems pixelated where it was smooth before. It also had quite a lot of trouble getting permission from my document storage on my other hard drive to read and write, although it didn't have any trouble with Nat's. In the end I had to boot vista and set the permissions from there before it would work. That sort of bug is also likely to disappear before the final release. I can't get my front headphone jack to work in Windows 7. The sound card supports audio-jack detection, but my case is not wired for it, and the built in drivers in Windows 7 don't offer any way to turn it off.

I'm also slightly miffed that I seem to be using Internet Explorer more than even before. That's not because its good, though (it even fails to render blogger quite right), but because it supports the tabs-in-preview thing.

There are other things about Windows 7 that I like. The wordpad with Openoffice compatiblity (not personally tested) is nice, and the themes thing is great. Pinning applications is great fun, though somewhat hedonistic if you're like me and never un-pin things. A lot of people praised the way the gadgets have been moved from the side bar, and yes, I think that works well - especially with the new "Desktop peek" feature, and they feel more like a part of the OS than a 3rd party application now.

Overall, I give Windows 7 two thirds of a Stone Henge out of 0.981.