A weekend with Windows 7

I've been playing with Windows 7 build 7000 over the weekend. I have been (for the most part) pleasantly surprised. It is the first version of Windows that I have been impressed with. I say this because back in the day Microsoft Windows 3.1 turned into Windows 95 which was less impressive than the Amiga OS I was using at the time. Windows Vista is being compared to Windows ME, with Windows 7 dubbed 'Vista done right'. So, what are the big news items that hit you right away?

Performance and Size

These are the two things that many users had problems with when using Vista SP0. I've not had a chance to do any timing checks but Windows 7 'feels' twice as fast as Vista SP1. This could just simply be that the user interface is more responsive but it is certainly nippy in many ways, although not as fast as Ubuntu.

At this point I should remind you that I am testing Windows 7 on a triple boot 5 year old laptop also running Vista and Ubuntu 8.04LTS so that I can see the differences of each OS running on the same hardware.

A bare bones installation of Vista Enterprise SP1 came in at a whopping 12Gb, whereas Windows 7 ultimate (containing more than Enterprise) comes in at a much smaller 6Gb. To massively over simplify, smaller files = faster reads = less RAM = faster computer.

Oh ok then, enough words already... Here's what it looks like.



Windows 7 has done a good job recognising my hardware, just need graphics card, audio, and ethernet. To be honest I would always install latest versions of these anyway. Windows update also detected and installed extra support for the laptop, a Sony Vaio GRT996VP.



The performance scores are pretty good. Desktop performance in Aero is slow but that is the fault of the poor graphics card and drivers. I used the same drivers that were used for Vista to check compatibility, it might be possible to improve performance further using better drivers although nVidia are annoyingly incapable of supporting their own mobile edition cards!



Slow Aero performance on older machines can almost be completely solved with one mouse click. Right-Click on 'Computer', choose properties / performance, then choose 'adjust visual effects' Untick the box enabling transparent glass and desktop performance will noticeably increase. It still looks nice.



When scanning the network it even discovered my Time Capsule.



A feature that I have grown to love on the Mac and Linux is the 'virtual desktop'. Although Windows 7 has internal support for these, you try getting them to work. I trawled the interweb for "Windows virtual desktop manager" and found several, unfortunately they were almost all completely awful. With the exception of two.

'yodm3d' is for those of you with a good graphics card and powerful computer. It imitates Linux's 'compiz' 3D desktop effects on Windows. Unfortunately while compiz running on ubuntu is ultra slick and very fast, yodm3d is as slow as a very slow thing, although it is easy to compensate by adjusting it's settings it is still no match for compiz.

My favorite virtual desktop manager for Windows is 'Vista virtual desktops' which works more like 'spaces' in OSX. In OSX 'spaces' is ultra fast, very slick, powerful and incredibly reliable. 'Vista virtual desktops' is fast, not very slick, nowhere near as powerful, and sometimes crashes, but it fulfils a need not serviced by Windows 7.

There are however good features unique to Windows. Dragging one window to the left and another to the right so that they can be automatically compared is a master stroke. Each window fills it's own side of the screen, returning to its previous size when dragged away.

The 64,000 dollar question is 'would I buy it?' what with me being a confirmed Mac convert. I'd have to say, at the right price, yes I would. On this particular laptop though, nothing beats Ubuntu hardy heron!