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Hands-On With Windows 7's New Features

Posted by timothy on from the less-sucking-is-good-in-this-context dept.

Barence writes "Microsoft has released the first pre-beta code of Windows 7, and PC Pro has a series of in-depth, hands-on examinations of all the new features. The revamped user interface has clearly gleaned more than a little inspiration from the Mac OS X Dock, but it goes further than the Apple concept with 'jumplists,' new gadgets and an updated system tray. The much-vaunted multi-touch controls were there to play with, and it seemed to work well. Networking has been given the full treatment, with new features HomeGroup and Libraries. Windows 7 debuts a new feature called Device Stage that has the potential to be unbelievably handy ... or a complete disaster. Finally, several new features could make PCs easier to manage and secure for IT departments, such as BitLocker To Go and Branch Cache." All in all, these features together lead some people to the conclusion that Windows 7 will "suck less than Vista" — that last link from reader ThinSkin, who also points to a related sampling of screenshots from the current iteration of Windows 7.

40 of 662 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Capabilities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Yeah, but can it run all my old viruses?

    You are joking but I'm sure the malware authors and spam bot masters are wondering, "Yeah, but can it run and accept all my old botnets?"

    And I'm sure they have nothing to worry about.

  2. What's a gamer to do? by pzs · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I was looking at buying a new gaming rig recently but I refuse to buy an operating system that hobbles the performance. Most of the benchmarks show that Vista is just slower than XP. These reports don't make future versions look that hopeful either.

    It's pretty hard to buy a non-Vista machine these days. Am I going to have to blag an XP license from work to get a proper OS for gaming? How long am I going to have to hang on to these licenses before Microsoft releases a decent product or games companies start supporting Linux?

    Yes, I know, buy a console. I still prefer PC gaming for many types of game.

    1. Re:What's a gamer to do? by mweather · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You joke, but what good is the desktop environment to me when I'm playing a game? I liked the days of DOS games much better.

    2. Re:What's a gamer to do? by sqrt(2) · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If you're looking to buy a new computer anyway, get Vista. A couple less FPS isn't going to ruin your gaming experience. That's what you're worrying about; getting 120 FPS in counter strike or 123. Vista is rock solid on new hardware*, even 64 bit version just doesn't have the problems it did a year ago. I'll admit that the gap becomes more noticeable the lower your hardware specs get but you said you're building a gaming machine which says to me you're willing to spend a little more to get more power so the difference between Vista and XP won't be apparent to your eyes--you'll need benchmarking software to measure the difference.

      Vista WORKS now, guys. Why don't you try it again and stop basing your idea of Vista on your impression of it at launch, which was no worse than XP when it first came out.

      *disregarding the problems from vendor added crapware, but that'll affect you even if you buy an XP machine. Install a clean version of Vista.

      --
      If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
    3. Re:What's a gamer to do? by Jaysyn · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I like to be able to play "slower" games (Neverwinter Nights, Kinghts of the Old Republic, GalCiv, etc.) via a window & chat with my friends at the same time. But maybe that's just me.

      --
      There is a war going on for your mind.
    4. Re:What's a gamer to do? by tknd · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's my main machine and I don't have problems other than the ATI video driver crapping out every now and then but vista is able to restart just the video driver and keep running whereas XP will just blue screen.

    5. Re:What's a gamer to do? by Jaysyn · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Anecdote: Last weekend I was trying to get wireless set up on my friends Vista laptop. I made the damn thing crash no less than 6 times. It took me an hour to do what it would normally take me 15 minutes to do in XP & Ubuntu.

      --
      There is a war going on for your mind.
    6. Re:What's a gamer to do? by dogmatixpsych · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That's true for the most part. However, after running Vista for over a year and a half I finally went back to XP because I was sick of incompatibilities and some of the other stupid things Vista did. I will miss a number of things about Vista but it got to the point where it was even frustrating my non-tech savvy wife. I think 1.5 years is a pretty good trial of Vista. In the end, it just wasn't worth it for me. I was a Vista advocate for many months but now I would not recommend it to anyone

    7. Re:What's a gamer to do? by znerk · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Gaming Performance: Windows Vista SP1 vs. XP SP3:

      Yeah, I noticed that Vista didn't get any faster with SP1, but XP got a little bogged down with SP3...

      --
      This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
    8. Re:What's a gamer to do? by Calinous · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Mod parent up - usually the games fit into memory (but sometime they didn't, and fighting to find it was interesting at least)

    9. Re:What's a gamer to do? by MBGMorden · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually I had DOS based 3dfx enabled games that would do 800x600 mode easily (probably higher too but my crappy 14" monitor I used back then would spaz at 1024x768). For a good while I didn't take Windows games seriously because Windows games were always like the flash games we have today: simple diversions with very limited gameplay. For a "real" game you dropped into DOS.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    10. Re:What's a gamer to do? by Archwyrm · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This is how I run all my games. And it is even simpler than you say, e.g.:

      xinit `which quake4` -- :1

      Not only is the task switching nice and efficient, but you also avoid hanging your main X session with a crashed game, screwing up your resolution and thus jumbling all your windows (though I run a tiling WM), and so on.

      True, the selection of games suffers compared to Windows, but honestly there are enough worthy cross-platform and FOSS games to keep one entertained if you are willing to forego drooling over the latest AAA games out there.

      --
      Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini
    11. Re:What's a gamer to do? by Haeleth · · Score: 2, Interesting

      But overall, that still shows XP to have better performance, so why should someone buy the more recent, very slightly inferior product when they can get the better one, and probably have an install disk for the better one lying around?

      Yeah, why on earth would someone want to take the easy route and stick with the OS that came set up on their computer, when they could gain at least one whole frame per second if they waste hours installing an older OS?

      I'm not a Microsoft fan at all. The only thing I use Windows for is games that won't run in WINE. But the version of Windows I play games in is Vista, and I haven't had any issues with it. Most of the criticisms I've seen have been either inaccurate or inconsequential. (How quickly we forget how unpopular the now-beloved XP was when it first came out!)

  3. Visuals by StreetStealth · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I know that there's plenty of time for this to change between now and release, but Aero's visual details continue to leave a vast amount to be desired.

    There's simply far too much detail on elements that don't need it -- window borders, toolbars, status bars; everything seems to have about twice as many lines as are needed, with various controls popping up and down like the terraces of some ancient courtyard. This makes windows look more complicated than they should.

    And don't get me started on the ridiculous transparency + airbrush titlebars. The first thing they should have done was to accept that the translucent window experiment failed (or at least to boost the opacity to ~90% like another company addicted to transparency learned to do), but the Windows UI team doesn't seem to have realized it yet.

    --
    Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
    1. Re:Visuals by kisrael · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Windows Vista is a very sad exercise in "More is the new More!" design.

      I took a snapshot of first desktop scene of my Vista laptop. Some of that's the usual OEM cruft, but man, what a visual assault! Harsh colors, the OEM cruft (icons, windows, toolbars), messages screaming at me... and then this dumbass sidebar. Because, you know, I always wanted a slideshow permanently putting up a new picture to distract me every couple minutes.

      I still run w/ windows maximized, just a way of focusing, but Windows UI is running in the opposite direction.

      --
      SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
  4. the best taskbar i could think of... by kisrael · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I tend to dial Vista's UI way, way back.
    (though I still miss the old Ctrl-F as seperate app from Win95/98 time - search as "sidebar" is a UI wasteland of lost context and difficult to mentally model behavior surprises)

    I don't like the OSX dock, and its lumping together of "start a new task" and "return to a previous task context"... (not to mention the hopelessness of "alt-tab to the application you're thinking of, then alt-tab (or whatever) to the window in that program) instead of Window's "alt-tab to your task"
    but I was thinking a better windows task bar would be just the icons of the running programs, but hovering or clicking brought up all the mini screen shots of just that application... that would actually be useful, one of the Windows 7 shots gave me hope that that's what they're leaning towards...

    --
    SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
    1. Re:the best taskbar i could think of... by reidconti · · Score: 4, Interesting

      >I don't like the OSX dock, and its lumping together of "start a new task" and "return to a previous task context"... (not to mention the hopelessness of "alt-tab to the application you're thinking of, then alt-tab (or whatever) to the window in that program) instead of Window's "alt-tab to your task"

      Really? I always thought the way that the dock combined task management and app launching into one place was genius. In windows, you typically have 3 places from which to launch apps (desktop, start menu, quicklaunch) and one place to manage tasks, the taskbar. Why the hell do they waste all that screen real estate on taskbar item titles, when they'll be unreadable once you have 4 apps running anyway? Why do I need quicklaunch and taskbar to take up separate real estate? And why are there multiple, confusing ways of accomplishing the same task (this goes for the proliferation of control panels as well)?

      I sorta see your point with the alt-tab thing, but the problem is, in windows, alt-tabbing thru browser windows is an exercise in futility because you have no clue which one of the 10 firefox instances your proper window is until you try them all. In OS X you have a much shorter list of things to alt-tab thru, then cycling windows is cake. It does take a little bit of getting used to, but I vastly prefer it.

      I do understand that alt-tab behavior in Vista is different -- if it allows you to preview content of the window before you switch (like alt-tilde in OS X does for window switching) then it would be better. I just haven't used Vista so I don't know.

  5. Re:Why dont they call it what it is? by Farmer+Pete · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yeah, but if you look at the history of Windows, the best OSes have been rehashes of older ones. Sometimes it takes a bit of tweaking to make a good OS.

    Windows 3 to 3.1

    Win 95 to Win 98

    Win 2000 to Win XP

  6. Page fault madness by MegadeTH_ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    have they done anything to improve memory management and the incredibly insane amount of page faults?

    Vista is terrible slow with it's default config, super prefetch, using all the memory and then paging applications your actually trying to run to swap, which is hundreds of times slower than ram, and sure feels like it too.

    osx, and linux and most all other operating systems that I've used will not swap memory until the machine is completely out of ram, and are noticeably faster in this area. Vista starts to swap before your even logged in, and page faults like crazy

    with 4 gigs of ram, less than one half used, why does vista page fault important programs like dwm.exe, my machine has 7 million page faults on that one app and it's only been turned on 12 hours

    1. Re:Page fault madness by MightyMartian · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I agree. Vista a fucking dog performance wise. I finally got Ubuntu 8.04.1 running on my HP laptop with 1gb of RAM (the first version of Ubuntu that does so with full audio and WiFi support), and it's like a different world. In Linux, it's really fast, and it's pretty much ready to go once the Gnome is up and running. With Vista, it takes about twice as long to boot to login, and then the login process can take easily another minute or so, and this is after I turned off or uninstalled most of the shit that Microsoft and HP throw at you. As well, I've had nothing but problems with the Vista drivers for my el-cheapo HP multifunction, and even now, it still fucks up about a 1/3 of the time you go to print or scan. Ubuntu's printer support, still not as polished as Microsoft's, has yet to give me a problem, which is a real first for *nix printing (and I've been fighting it in all its evil forms since my first experience with *nix around 1991).

      Vista sucks, and if Windows 7 is more of the same, then it's more of the same crap.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  7. Higher Requirements by WebmasterNeal · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Judging by all the transparencies, gradients and drop shadows this will require an even more powerful computer than Vista. On the flip side probably every new version of windows has required a bit more than the last. The new taskbar reminds me a lot of the KDE taskbar.

    --
    "During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
  8. Bitlocker and backups by mlts · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I like the fact that they have extended BitLocker, but I really wish they could get BitLocker to do something relatively simple.

    As of now, with a TPM chip, you have TPM alone, TPM + a PIN, TPM + a USB flash drive.
    Without a TPM chip, you just have a USB flash drive.

    I really wish they could add a mode for machines without a TPM chip requiring a password and no USB flash drive. Of course, technically I could go out and install TrueCrypt which does the job nicely (TrueCrypt is arguably one of the best security tools out there), but on an enterprise level, it would be nice for the OS which has this functionality to include this relatively small item so I don't have to push out another .MSI file to bunches of machines for security.

    Another thing I wish Windows 7 came with would be a more configurable backup utility. You can sort of kludge ntbackup from an XP CD, but that's no solution. I'd like to see something similar to Retrospect or Backup Exec that offers backups, but offers the option to encrypt the backups (perhaps similar to how EFS is done with recovery policies.) Encrypted backups are a must these days, and its a shame that no operating system offers this.

  9. No, Windows 7 really is Mojave. by argent · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Most of the original scope of Windows 7 has been abandoned. The new cleaned-up native API? Not a word about that. The Classic-like sandboxes for legacy APIs? Gone. What we have is more like a Plus Pack for Windows Vista, the same way Windows XP was a Plus Pack for Windows 2000.

    So I don't think there's any reason to treat it as a joke. Windows 7 really is Mojave. It's Vista with some new bundled apps and gratuitous user interface changes (who came up with the ribbon? What was he on? Does the DEA know about it?), and a fresh new name to try and dump the bad PR from the botched release. It worked in the Mojave Experiment, so they see no reason not to go ahead and expand its scope.

  10. Re:New features are irrelivant... by roedelius · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Windows 95a outperforms XP.

    All of my design/development applications run (well) on XP. Once Adobe starts releasing software that doesn't run on XP, and need some magical properties only found in Vista, and I actually need to upgrade to those new versions (because I'm getting files that I can't open), then I suppose then I'll have to "upgrade". But I don't see that happening for at least another 3-4 years. And who knows, maybe at that point it'll be to Ubuntu.

  11. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  12. That's not the OS X Dock by theurge14 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That's just right clicking on the current Windows taskbar and selecting Toolbars. By default they're set to Small Icons, but if you select Large Icons you get this. Most Windows users freak out when they see when I enable this on a Windows desktop.

    Quicklists? You can already right click on a running app in the OS X Dock and it has contextual tasks. Microsoft has a long way to go if this is what they consider groundbreaking UI.

  13. Re:No, but you get to sync their pr0n files. by ByOhTek · · Score: 2, Interesting

    don't worry, I'm sure you'll find a way to keep your parents from finding your alien-tentacle-hentai.

    --
    Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
  14. Re:Device staging = Marketing TOOLS by cliffiecee · · Score: 2, Interesting

    At my job we still use Word 2003. I make frequent use of Word's Help features for writing VBA macros- the documentation is actually pretty thorough. But since Office 2007 came out, underneath the 'See Also' section of every single help box are _several_ options for purchasing Office 2007 online. It's so stupid- if I'm running Word 2003, and looking for information about Word 2003, why the hell would MS need to remind me about Office 2007 two or three times in a list that has five entries?

  15. Slightly over the top there... by MrEkted · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Computers are getting faster MUCH MUCH more quickly than operating systems are getting slower.

    Just one second on that rant - I've got an 8-year-old Dell XPS T600 that I still use to play Unreal Tournament. I use it because it boots faster, starts the game faster, and has just as good a frame-rate as my current, Dell/Vista machine.

    If your assertion was true, then I would happily turn off my Windows 98 forever. Starting applications and using the OS has been getting steadily slower in the post-XP versions of windows, even with new hardware.

    In my experience, of course.

    --
    Tell the moon dogs, tell the March hare
  16. It's not just games by DesScorp · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "These reports don't make future versions look that hopeful either."

    I was afraid of this... that 7 would just be Vista with some new pretties tacked on. If 7 still takes a minimum of 2 gigs of ram just to make average functions bearable, then it's still shitty software.

    I couldn't even play my favorite game (Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory) on Vista until Microsoft came out with some patches. And I have a lot of old PC games that I like. Maybe I'll just move completely to the Mac ( I use one at work) and dual boot it under XP for my games. I'm simply not going to reward Microsoft for not giving me what I want out of an OS.

    I have my complaints about Apple too... ugly and overpriced hardware, that dreary grey-metallic theme... but Apple continually improves the performance of their software. Everyone knows by now about how Apple has made their operating systems faster, even on older supported hardware. And that's what counts.

    Has Microsoft ever... ever made an operating system that was faster than a previous version? Hmm? If that's too hard, then try this... have they even come up with one that wasn't noticeably slower on similar hardware?

    Even Vista basic needs 512 mb ram at minimum for tolerable usage.

    Windows 2000 was fast with half that memory, and it did nearly everything we wanted. What does Vista or 7 do that Windows 2000 does not that the public wants? Do we really believe that consumers were crying out for Aero Glass?

    --
    Life is hard, and the world is cruel
  17. Re:"/."BS Stack by mcgrew · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "Funny" gains no karma.

    --
    Free Martian Whores!
  18. Device Stage ... sounds potentially awful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    "Microsoft is essentially handing control of the Device Stage screen to the hardware manufacturers, allowing them to embed links to their online services and client software. A printer manufacturer, for example, might include a direct link to buy new ink cartridges for that specific printer from their website, or a link to a PDF of the deviceâ(TM)s manual."

    Uh, I vote "disaster", given the potential for abuse and bugs. If this is merely another way to install crapware, this time into the Device Manager itself, I am not impressed. That isn't serving the end users, it's serving the needs of other vendors.

    This does not suck less than Vista.

    This is not the operating system I'm looking for.

    Move on. Move on.

  19. Re:New features are irrelivant... by VoltCurve · · Score: 1, Interesting

    if OSX adds performance on every release, why do the system requirements continue to climb?

  20. Re:Capabilities by theEddieCurrents · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sure it can and WILL. Perhaps /.ers could begin a wish list? I know I have one request above all others myself: FIX EXPLORER. Since the beginning of Windows, when you browse your way to some folder on your hard drive, re-opening Explorer starts all over again, forcing you to click madly just to get back to where ever you were. On some other OS's, re-opening the Explorer equivalent starts back where you last were. This is infinitely preferable to the way Windows works. I read years ago that Windows did this to avoid some legal issues. Are they still in effect? This change would make what is now a big pain in the ass decent. Eddie Currents

  21. Re:New features are irrelivant... by nasch · · Score: 3, Interesting

    who really wants to spend $2,500 on a top of the line system when they can run an older OS on a $500 machine?

    Brand-new machines that run Vista just fine cost $500 now. There are new ones that come with Vista for under $300 too, but I can't say for sure how well they run it. Computers sure are crazy cheap these days... And without peripherals you can barely even get a prebuilt $2500 desktop anymore. What I mean is you can spend a whole bunch if you buy all the top components yourself and build one, but I just went to HP, picked their top (non-Touchsmart) desktop, specced it all the way to the top and it came in at $2479. That's quad-core, 8GB RAM, 1TB disk, Blu-ray drive, etc. Way, way beyond what's necessary to run Vista. A more modest but still high powered rig is about half that.

    the constant "allow/deny" requests are annoying as hell

    I'm not sure of your usage pattern, but maybe you only do system admin type tasks on it? The UAC prompts are anything but constant during normal usage. I get them when I install or uninstall software, move something to program files or some other area that Windows is touchy about, or mess with things like the firewall. None of these are tasks I think the average home user has to do a whole lot.

    I'm not trying to convince you to like Vista, that's obviously impossible, but I just wanted to respond to some of the factual claims.

  22. Re:New features are irrelivant... by realmolo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "With that said, the ONLY reason I would even think of switching to Vista is because it supports video hardware acceleration for the desktop. I just wish I could find an application to do that on XP."

    Uh, yeah. EVERY video card made in the past, oh, 15 years or so does GDI acceleration. Which is what Windows XP uses.

    So your desktop is already accelerated. In XP, anyway.

    Oddly enough, in Vista, if you switch to the "classic" desktop look (i.e., the Windows 2000 look), you don't get GDI acceleration. Your main CPU is doing all the work. As far as I know, there is NO GDI acceleration in Vista.

    I pretty much agree with you that Vista is slow, though. XP had the same problem, however. I would say it wasn't until late 2003 that XP started to feel fast on contemporary low-to-medium-powered hardware. So maybe that means by spring of 2009, Vista will feel snappy on your average $500 machine. Of course, a lot of the perceived slowness is because of the increase in the number of clicks it takes to do a lot of things. I don't see that changing, unfortunately.

  23. Device Staging = Solution to Non-Existant Problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I fail to see how or why anyone would use the Device Staging Manager to provide more useful information to the consumer.
    If I were a company and have all information on our website that a consumer might need, wouldn't it just be easier to put a link to our website on the desktop? (grrr)
    So..Microsoft has cleverly designed more work for device manufacturers to do, other than make sure your drivers work for our latest OS.
    No one ever voluntarily does more work that is of little benefit.

  24. Windows will dissapear unless it becomes Unix by wikinerd · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If Microsoft were smart they would rebuild Windows as a Unix system. Unix was on its way to become the standard OS back then, but the Unix vendors engaged in the self-destroying Unix wars and Microsoft managed to make DOS the IBM PC OS. When RMS came with his free implementation and got the idea of free software in the minds of guys and gals who had never heard of that era, the Unix-like systems started conquering the world again. Guess what, Unix-like systems are again on their track to become the standard OS, everywhere, from mobile phones to supercomputers. Microsoft will soon find itself being forced to become compatible with Unix-like systems or die. If I were the Microsoft CEO now I would focus on either acquiring MacOS X or rewriting Windows as a complete and certified Unix system.

  25. Here we go with the Apple vs. MS fanboys by recharged95 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    "more than a little inspiration from the Mac OS X Dock, "

    Looking at the layout and behavior, the new taskbar and navigation are more of a openSuSE 11.1 flavor

    I would not be surprised with the Novell-MS pact that we see some compiz/opensuse hints in Windows 7. IMO the openSuSE distro is taking off to be a really good enterprise desktop option--much better than a OSX in the long run.

  26. Dear Microsoft... by Somebody+Is+Using+My · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Just one thing: Classic Explorer view. Please. You can have the fancy-smancy new interface with bouncing icons and transparent windows and everything you want so it looks like OS X... but for those of us who work with the GUI on a daily basis, give us the option of falling back to the classic Explorer interface. Because, as much as I despise the DRM, bloat and kludginess of the UAC, the awful interface is the number one reason I don't upgrade. Thanks.