Windows 7 First impression

[davehc]

I can see I am already disagreeing with a couple of the views, unfortunately that includes Paul Thurrot.. When I read his blog, I almost felt that I had been given a different release.
If you want to do it for the experiment, then good luck. You will get nothing out of M3 that you cannot get in Vista. It has many cosmetic changes, in spite of previous feedback on that subject, with Vista, particularly to the Control Pane. There are a couple of extra utilities which are used little by the average person. I am still battling to find the way to eliminate the unneccessary items in the Windows Explorer navigational pane.
It has also changed the way the desktop "personalization" operates, and has floated the gadgets.(You no longer need the sidebar)
Performance wise is where I seem to be standing alone.. I have two identical computers running Vista Ultimate and Windows 7, 6801. I could not detect any performance differences in the startup, or the running of programs.
It is still a base for the final release and I feel certain that even the Beta will show some improvements.
One cosmetic difference for me (I have an older video card. Nvidea 7600 series) was that, in Vista, my performance index struggled up to 4.9. In Windows 7 it was 1 (!!!), based on the Aero performance only, which I don't use -lol.
Anyway - still experimenting. Maybe more later!

 

[Matt]

Hmm, did you install the drivers for your GPU on Windows 7? That's the only reason that I can think of that it's rating you at 1.

Also about Paul's review, he had access to another build as well, 6933. 6933 has more features in it such as the new task bar, new aero effect, multitouch, et cetera.

I haven't installed 7 yet, so I'm not sure about resource usage.

Edit: I just installed it in a VM and ram usage is lower. 315MB vs 490MB for vista on a 1GB system.

 

[Kyle]

Sounds like you weren't running 7 the way it was supposed to be run.
PS: Mine boots in less than 30 seconds, compared to over a minute with a clean version of Vista SP1.

& My score was the same in Vista as in 7 as well, so you might want to check drivers (Just a note, Some vista drivers work in 7)

 

[davehc]

Ok. Interesting answers so far. I seemed to have the same differences of opinion with Vista so I guess I must have a really lousy computer. I have three, one of which is pretty superior.
My start up time has improved a little over Vista. I have had this discussion before. The startup time, by by reckoning, is from the dual boot, or disk manager, to a working desktop. This would include connecting to the internet, always a little slower, and loading the antivirus, - also a little slower. I have stripped the Msconfig of most startup items. Time = 50 seconds. As I said, I have been on another thread, concerning Vista, on this issue. I really cannot understand how this could be achieved, as have several claimed, in 15 seconds.

To be fair, I would say, at this very early stage, that "7" is giving me an impression of a much improved Vista.

"Sounds like you weren't running 7 the way it was supposed to be run"

I noticed one enormous improvement. My initial defrag took 7 minutes, as against the initial Vista defrag of 1 hour 35 minutes!
I have to start relearning the Control Panel. I am also a customising freak. I found it very difficult to move stuff around in the start - programs. I had to resort to Windows explorer and do a bit of copy and paste between the two startup folders.
I was accustomed to the little blue windows for my internet connection. Sorry they changed that to the ascending green bar.
Only other "complaint" (Not that really - just a comment) is that Ms have chosen to give us IE 8 Beta without the option. Still, the whole thing is a test so we cannot comment too strongly.

Fwiw. Regarding my earlier comment on the performance index. I played around with the Nvidea Control panel and have now got back up to a magnificent 4.8, with a computer with only 2gigs ram.


Quote "Sounds like you weren't running 7 the way it was supposed to be run" Hmm?? meaning?? Are there alternatives??

 

[Matt]

I got 7 on my laptop now, and it got a score of 2.1 for the graphics. It takes around 30 seconds to boot. Too me, it seems slow, but I think it's because upgrading from vista with only 10GB free caused fragmentation. I'll let you know when I finish defragging it.

 

[davehc]

What graphics card do you use Matt? I see you show an ATI in your Avatar??
Perhaps you should try what I did and tune up the card from the Catalyst. (Or the Nvidea Control panel, is such is the case) Worked a charm for me.
I cannot argue the merits of graphics manufacturers, but I have to comment that since I got my new computer, with an Nvidea, just about everything relating to performance has improved.

 

[kemical]

Unfortunately I can't get my sound card to work yet.. It just blue screens but thats hardly surprising as Creative only 'just' got them working for vista...grrr The UAC is a vast improvement over the old one (if this version stays)..
It does seem quicker generally though, snappier, stuff opens and closes a lot cleaner over vista..

 

[davehc]

In anticipation of comment!--
You may find that in Windows Explorer, "7" cannot see your Vista dual boot partition (Assuming you have this).
For some reason, "7" UNassigns the letter. You have to go to Computer management, where you CAN see the partition, and assign it a new letter designation.
P.S. This does not harm your dual boot setup in any way.

 

[Matt]

Yep, it's a ATI Radeon Mobility X300. I got around that score under vista also.

@davehc, hmm, interesting, though I'm not dual booting vista, only XP and 7. I am able to see the partition with XP on it.

 

[kemical]

After spending some hours playing around with 7 I have to agree with Davehc about it being a much improved version of vista.. I found myself thinking that this is like vista but with a good service pack installed... But hey, no complaints here and it's obviously still early days yet...

 

[Kyle]

Now that I've looked, it appears that 7 has killed my dual boot.
I wonder how the hell I can fix it.

 

[Matt]

I'm assuming that you mean a dual boot of XP and 7. Hmm, interesting, because I'm dualbooting them right now and it's working fine.

 

[Kyle]

No, I mean my dual boot of Vista and 7.
My Vista, however, had a custom bootloader, and therefore wasn't picked up by 7.
So, short of rewriting the boot instructions, I think I'm sol.

 

[Mike]

My impressions

I have tested it several days ago in VMWare Workstation (virtual machine) and it installs very quickly. I would argue the installation takes place much more quickly than Vista. Then again, VMWare Workstation is also emulating generic hardware and there are not many devices for the installer to deal with.

Overall my impressions are very good. It is faster and more responsive than Vista. Less resource usage. Were it released in stores in its current condition I would probably upgrade just for the better performance. Not caring too much about the special taskbar seen in later builds or the multi-touch (Someone is really going to have to sell me on something major to get away from the keyboard/mouse).

I can say that the OS does look very promising and I did not experience any problems.

 

[hanko panko]

Click the Start button and type msconfig in the "Search Programs and Files" Field.
Then Select the Boot tab and inspect your boot sequence.

 

[Kyle]

Click the Start button and type msconfig in the "Search Programs and Files" Field.
Then Select the Boot tab and inspect your boot sequence.

Yeah, that's what I eneded up doing...
Though I ended up having to rewrite that from memory (Which, I don't have a good one of to begin with).
It totally sucked.
-Note to self, don't dual boot with a custom bootloader.

 

[alstein]

Unfortunately I can't get my sound card to work yet.. It just blue screens but thats hardly surprising as Creative only 'just' got them working for vista...grrr The UAC is a vast improvement over the old one (if this version stays)..
It does seem quicker generally though, snappier, stuff opens and closes a lot cleaner over vista..

I also initially was unable to get my sound card (Creative Audigy Platinum) to work. But I then downloaded and installed their latest vista drivers, and that did the trick. The creative configurator, however, does not work for me.

 

[cmiuc]

I don't know if I can post here about this... but I really think it is 90% better then vista! I've been running x64 vista and it takes a long time to boot up and shutting down, forever... I've never seen such a slow shut down in vista...but with Win 7, quick and easy. For a beta, it's surprisingly unbuggy... I've had only a few issues, but mostly to do with IE8 in Win7(such as the flash plugins not installing and giving me that annoying ... need to install, so switched back to FF3.0.3 and it works like a charm).

My rating is 3.0 for a notebook that is 2 years old not so bad.
Running Nvida Geforce M7000/610M GPU(installed the latest using Driver Magician and it got aero running, where as the update from MS didn't work...

 

[Kyle]

@ cmiuc; I tell everyone I know to block windows update laptop drivers. They are geared to generic hardware, which isn't a good idea, since almost all laptop graphics chips have been modified by the manufacturer. Microsoft's drivers never work with my 6100 GO, I have to use my laptop manufacturer's, or ones geared to my unique device ID.

It's a common issue.