Windows 7 RTM Reviewed & Benchmarked

An anonymous reader writes "The code is final, and CNet has reviewed the final version of Windows 7, with benchmarks to support the case that it's not only the fastest version of Windows to shut down, but also looks like 'the operating system that both Microsoft and its consumers have been waiting for.' The review continues: 'By fixing most of the perceived and real problems in Vista, Microsoft has laid the groundwork for the future of where Windows will go. Windows 7 presents a stable platform that can compete comfortably with OS X, while reassuring the world that Microsoft can still turn out a strong, useful operating system.'"

Comments

Re:16GB?

[Tukz]

My fresh install of Windows 7 RC Ultimate on my old rig, didn't take up 16GB of space. Only about half IIRC.

Re:"the fastest version of Windows to shut down"

[peppepz]

Actually, Windows 3.1 required to be "shut down", otherwise it left tons of temporary files in C:\DOS (at least in Standard Mode).
DOS required to be shut down, too, if you used SmartDrive (which, IIRC, was active by default at least since MS DOS 5.0, as it improved performance quite a bit). What you had to do was to press CTRL + ALT + DEL before turning off the system, to let SmartDrive write back to disk the dirty blocks in its cache. It would display a short message during the operation, then reboot the computer. This behaviour was recommended in the DOS user's manual.

Re:Great goals

[value_added]

from commandline: shutdown -f -t 0

For completeness' sake :

shutdown -f -t 0 # shutdown
shutdown -f -t 0 # reboot
shutdown -h -t 0 # hibernate
shutdown -l -t 0 # logoff

At least that applies to /c/WINDOWS/system32/shutdown.exe.

PowerShell users should be happy to know they can type:

(Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem -ComputerName ).shutdown()

Between the dozens of third-party utilities people generally download and install (Sysinternals, among others), and Microsoft adding/subtracting what's in the various Resource Kits or generally making things up as they go along, I've always relied on Cygwin's own version of shutdown.

Here's a randomly selected page that details some of the ugliness.

Re:The competition is OSX

[Anne Thwacks]

I just bought a Fujitsu-Siemens P4, and replaced the 40GHD with a 400G HD. Obviously an OS install was required. (Yes, I have an OEM FS recovery fdisk from my former FS desktop, now dead, and yes it was a slightly different model). The only way to install the correct Windows NIC drivers is to run a desktop application, which fetches them over the Internet (of course, it cant cos with no NIC drivers, yer cant download nout!).

Ubuntu installed in under 40 mins, including applying all security fixes, and was able to access pron^h^h^h^h Youtube with no grief. After installing about 40 apps, it asked for a reboot for some reason. I went to bed and started it the next day.

Eventually I got the NIC drivers by fowl means (Yeah, someone e-mailed me a chicken with the drivers on an SD card clipped to its leg), and was able to get Windows running. Approx two days and 33 1/3 boots later, the urgent updates were complete, and it was ready for use, apart from the limited range of apps (Windows Paint is not all that useful). I asked not to install IE8, but it sneakily tricked me into installing it as a "necessary update" anyway.

Default boot is going to be Ubuntu for now! If i get any of that "Windows Genuine Disadvantage" crap, then I will reclaim the disk space and use it as a dedicated partition for something. Windows is just annoying the hell out of users for no benefit.

Windows 7: My First 24h

[fahrvergnugen]

Reposted with a few slight edits from my own blog a few days ago:

My poor PC broke. Some of my RAM went bad due to the summer heat, combined and my obstinate refusal to turn the AC on until the temperature in my office is well into the 90's. Fortunately RAM is cheap as hell these days, and I can get twice as much memory for half the price I paid a year ago, so I ordered a full 8GB of replacement memory, as much as my motherboard can handle.

The problem is that I was running Windows Vista 32bit, which can only address a bit under 4GB of RAM. The only way my Windows computer could use the extra memory I'd purchased would be to re-install a 64-bit version of Windows. But I've already pre-ordered Windows 7 Pro, and it seems silly to install Vista 64-bit now when my copy of Windows 7 will arrive in October. So, over the weekend I got a correctly-checksumming ISO of Windows 7 from The Usual Sources and installed it without a key, giving me 30 days to register. The plan is to just use the rearm trick to tide me over until my legal activation keys come in the mail.

It took a few hours to get everything installed, but today all my apps and games are back, and my files are copied over. I gotta say, if you're going to run a Windows desktop, this is the way to do it. It's NICE. It feels much snappier than Vista, and while it's got more overhead (and thus runs a bit slower) than XP 64-bit, the UI enhancements make up for it. Since today is apparently a bullet-list day, here's a quick rundown of my favorite things:

• The taskbar / quicklaunch toolbar / system tray / start menu have all been revamped, and the new way is awesome. The taskbar and the quicklaunch bar have been completely integrated, making the functionality very similar to the OS X Dock. To see the open windows for a running application, just hover your mouse over the icon. IE8 integrates very well with this, showing a preview window for each of the open tabs, regardless of window, and allowing you to switch quickly. It's like mini-expose. All very polished. Right-clicking on a Windows 7-native app, whether it's open or not, gives you a jumplist of recently used items, similar to right-clicking on a systray icon.
• The icon management in the system tray is much improved. You can banish icons from your sight forever, so annoying applications that refuse to let you remove the icon can be shoved off the desktop. No more company logos cluttering up your screen.
• IE8 rules. Who'd have thought? The privacy filters let you duplicate the functionality of adblock by importing an XML file, and the accelerator framework lets you do things like hilite text and post it to a blog, or email it to someone, all with a couple of clicks. New pages and tabs are linked in a security jail with their parent and can't work with other tabs/windows, and they're automatically color-coded. I like it a lot.
• The 'show desktop' hover / button in the bottom right. I HATE not being able to look at the desktop for stray icons or whatnot. Now there's a permanent show desktop button in that little strip of pixels between the system tray and the edge of the screen. Formerly useless real estate has been reclaimed for a good purpose!
• Vista's sidebar gadgets are now completely free-roaming anywhere on the desktop. This is nice, since I always liked the idea of gadgets but didn't want a whole sidebar. Now I can put them wherever, not worry about putting Windows over them, and just hover over the "show desktop" area on the taskbar to check the weather.
• Fast fast fast. 64-bit IE is speedy! File copies are speedy! The operating system is speedy! Everything just feels snappy and quick.
• Libraries - this is really neat, Libraries are consolidated collections of folders that all have the same kind of data. So if C:\photos and d:\photos both contain images, I can make them both part of the photo library, and view it as one folder. What makes this interesting is that I can plug in an external disk o' photos, add it to my Library, and as you