In-Depth With the Windows 7 Public Beta

Dozer writes "With the Windows 7 public beta out, Ars Technica has an in-depth look at the release. There's praise for Windows 7's UI changes and polish as well much-needed changes to UAC, but also a warning that those who have problems with Vista won't like Windows 7 much better. 'If you couldn't stand Vista's UI (whether it's because you didn't like Explorer, Aero, Control Panel, UAC, or anything else), Windows 7 is unlikely to do much to help, as it builds on the same UI. If Vista's hardware demands were too steep, Windows 7 will likely cause you the same grief, as its hardware demands match. And if Vista didn't work with a program or device you need to use, Windows 7 will offer no salvation, as its compatibility is virtually identical.'"

Comments

What's the point??

[digitalhermit]

I wonder what Win7 is supposed to fix. I'm probably in the minority, but I actually like the Vista GUI. It's cleaner, a little "Tonka Toy" in areas, but seems more polished than XP. What I don't like about Vista are the problems with wireless, power, CPU utilization, random disk storms, and some strange memory issues when running large JVMs. If Win7 fixes the non-gui related issues then I won't mind using it.

Strangely enough, on my Linux desktops I prefer a very minimal GUI such as fluxbox or xfce4. I turn off almost everything except for a gkrellm monitor. I did play with compiz and beryl for a while, and it was interesting at first, but quickly became annoying.

Re:What's the point??

[timmarhy]

windows 7 is to vista what win98 was to win95. if people still aren't understanding this, they have problems

Re:What's the point??

[im_thatoneguy]

Polish and User Experience in my view IS the operating system.

What the OS does for me is hide all of the ugliness of computers.

I just want to run a bunch of applications. Be able to switch between apps quickly. Setup a network to media with my XBox. Find files I'm looking for and boot quickly. It's all "Surface" stuff. But for me Vista has been incredibly stable so I haven't seen any need for improvement.

Windows 7 has added a lot of really nice things on top of Vista. People buy new operating systems because they increase their efficiency. That's why people love a mac. Those are the important new features. Being able to drag a window to the side of the screen in a big new feature. It might not take as many dev hours but it's a huge time saver for the user.

Service Packs fix bugs. New versions add features. Windows 7 is as much about adding features as it is bug fixing. And so far I've really liked a lot of the new features. I like that I don't have to manage my music and video sharing with my Xbox independently of my Zune independently of my WMP and I look forward to Winamp taking advantage of it as well.

I like the new taskbar even if I had to enable labels and disable application grouping. I don't like that it mixes running apps and icons but at the same time I do kind of have to remind myself "Why do I care?" At most I usually only have 2 icons mixed in that aren't running. And since figuring that out I've reorganized my pinned icons so that I rarely have an 'orphaned' icon.

I don't notice any performance bump. Then again I don't own a computer with less than 3GB of RAM and really... what excuse is there for only having 1GB of RAM? You can buy 1GB of RAM for $15.

I like the new wifi widget.

I like the new driver search feature (it found new updated drivers automatically and installed them. Handy!)

I like the new taskbar look and I like that I can change the taskbar's color. Seriously. I have to look at it all day. I didn't want black on my black background.

I can't stand that MSN now won't go to the notifications are and instead goes to my taskbar leaving TWO!! TWO!!!! STUPID #$*)@# taskbar entries for the same application.

I don't like that I can't have something pinned to the taskbar and start menu.

I like being able to drag an application up to the top of my screen to maximize it.

I like the updates to touch for my tablet PC.

I like the jump menus. Handy for Microsoft Word.

I look forward to Device Stage or whatever it is they call their USB connected device system.

And I look forward to being able to tell media to 'play on' my xbox from my PC.

And those are just the things I can think of off the top of my head from 2 days of use.

As far as performance and bugs are concerned perhaps you could call this SP2. But everything beyond that are the kinds of enhancements and improvements that I expect from an OS upgrade.

What did I get out of XP? An improved Start Menu? Easier Networking? More stability? Was XP just Windows 98 SP3?

Re:Problems with Chrom in the x64 version

[PAPPP]

I didn't have any luck with daemon tools under Windows 7 (32bit), but SlySoft Virtual Clonedrive (free, http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html ) works fine for me. On a more general note, Windows 7 is making it not a chore to leave my usual Linux/XFCE environment, so they must have done something right.

Re:Hardware demands match?

[LWATCDR]

The current beta seems to Windows 7 Ultimate... Good grief they have learned nothing... My guess is we will be seeing at least 5 or 6 version of Windows 7
Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate, and Enterprise come right to mind. I just hope they don't offer 32 and 64 bit versions of each...
I just found out one of my programs that I tested under W2k,XP, and Vista doesn't work right under Vista 64!!!! And what is worse I can not figure out what is causing it!

Re:FFS

[im_thatoneguy]

I still see the odd Windows 98/95 installations. I'm certain XP will outlast Windows 8.

People get stupid ideas in their heads like "Windows 98 is TEH FASTEST!!!" and they never switch. Such is life. The rest of us actually evaluate it. Make an informed rational decision and move on with our lives.

Re:So in other words...

[travbrad]

I also like how he says home users hate change, then a few sentances later says everyone will switch to linux.

Yeah..linux is so much more similar to XP than Win7.

P.S. I'm not a vista/Win7 supporter by any means. I'm still running XP, and don't see any reason to switch. When games start using 4GB+ of memory I may have to though.

Re:Hardware demands match?

[sr180]

Actually, linux solves a whole heap of problems. On my laptop, only resolutions programmed into the BIOS can be selected by the video card. 720p and 1080p are noticeably absent. Linux solves this problem by adding extra modes to the video bios on boot. Hence under linux I can use 720p, however with windows I can not. And no, powerstrip can not help me here.

Re:smithers!

[TerranFury]

Recent versions of VLC have left me very disappointed. Video quality is just bad; VLC isn't even doing decent upsampling (I just get nearest neighbor!). Plus performance is abysmal on Linux. Hence, I have switched allegiances and now use SMPlayer* on both my Linux and Windows machines. SMPlayer has better video quality, a nicer GUI, and proper subtitle support. There is a codec pack to download, but installation is trivial.

(* It's really just a nice frontend for MPlayer.)

It's a pity, because VLC can do a bunch of awesome network streaming stuff. Sometimes I get the feeling that VLC's mission isn't very clear. There was a time when it set out to be something more interesting than just another movie player.