Posts Tagged ‘windows 7’

My Windows 7 Experience

I finally was able to get my hands on a preview copy of Windows 7. After all the hype of the new OS being much lighter than Vista, I decided to put it to the test. While I didn’t crunch together any stats on performance (Windows crashed before I could), I was able to install it on some pretty low-end hardware. I used my old school-issued Gateway tablet. It’s a Gateway M275 running at Centrino processor at 1.7Ghz with a whopping 512MB of RAM. I’d heard the chatter about running on 1GB of RAM and wanted to see what it could really do.

The first thing that I noticed was that it was pretty much the same as Vista. This early preview didn’t have the newer taskbar or application switcher as Microsoft promised. The machine was fairly responsive and my tablet pen worked right ‘out of the box’. I could launch IE, Windows Journal, Paint, and a whole host of the default built-in tools that Windows comes with at the same time and it didn’t choke out too bad. Sometimes it was obvious that Windows had to swap an application out to disk and when I switched it brought it back, but the GUI was still fairly responsive. The network manager was slightly clunky. I had to add my network manually before I could just select it out of the list and connect, but I would assume that that is just something that hasn’t been implemented yet.

In all fairness, the OS ran about as fast as Ubuntu does on that machine with XGL enabled. Of course, I am comparing Ubuntu with most of the GUI eye-candy enabled with Windows 7 without any eye candy. That being said.. we’ll see what happens when the changes are actually implemented, but Microsoft did make a vast improvement over Vista performance-wise. We’ll see what happens to performance once the release date comes closer and some of the changes are actually put into a public beta.

Unfortunately, my experience came to an end after a couple of hours of playing. I closed the lid and went away for just a few minutes. When I came back the machine had shut itself down. I went to turn it back on and Windows said it had been corrupted and couldn’t boot. I didn’t even have time to pull off my screenshots! Luckily, just a bit of quick thinking, a Ubuntu live CD, and a forced mount on the partition later I had my screenshots pulled off onto a flash drive. Windows 7 is definitely much faster than Vista and I think it might actually be slightly better than XP on that older machine. It even ran decently on my little laptop with only half a gigabyte of RAM which is much better than Vista would have done.

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Filed under News : Comments (3) : Nov 12th, 2008

Microsoft: Hardware Vendors Be Ready for 7

This week is Microsoft’s WinHEC conference. The conference is aimed at hardware manufacturers to help them develop the best hardware and drivers for the Windows platform. According to APC Magazine, Microsoft is urging hardware makers to be more prepared for Windows 7 than they were for Vista. Microsoft appears to have learned their lesson that poor cooperation from hardware makers can really mess things up for them. Microsoft doesn’t want the assault it took when Vista was launched for the release of Windows 7.

This type of attitude from Microsoft towards hardware vendors has been showing ever since they started talking publicly about the next release of their Windows operating system. A beta of Windows 7 is promised in early 2009 with a release promised the same year as well. Microsoft stated that there will not be another WinHEC before the release. Since WinHEC is an annual event, that pretty well locks them into sometime before the latter half of Q4.

Microsoft is finally getting a taste for what Linux users have been experiencing for years: bad hardware support. Having to rely upon outside entities for your flagship product to be a success is a dangerous road to walk down. Luckily for Microsoft, they can push their weight around quite a bit with vendors to ensure things are in place and Windows 7 has a nice platform to launch from, but if hardware makers are as prepared for 7 as they were for Vista, they could be in for a lot of trouble. In its early days, Windows really took off because Microsoft made an OS that didn’t have to be prepared with a certain model or brand of computer. Remember that video for just over a month ago on Ballmer laughing at how the Apple didn’t have separate its OS from its device? Now, it seems that Microsoft is not wanting to sleep in the bed it made for itself.

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Filed under News, Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Nov 6th, 2008

Linux Finally Taken Seriously?

Computer World ran a story a couple of days ago that made it popular on Digg that I found very interesting. The article was “Windows 7: Microsoft’s Linux Killer?“. Has Linux finally been given the status it deserves? Normally we hear about how Linux may some day give Windows a run for its money and about Linux equivalents to Windows applications. It’s definitely nice to see an article that talks about Windows as the underdog rather than Linux.

Linux has been used on back end systems for years as the powerhouse for many organizations, but has been making its public appearance as a lighter-weight operating system. It has done very well on the new netbook-class laptops due to its lower memory consumption, though it doesn’t lack the 3d desktop effect (actually, it was first to makret). Linux was ready and waiting for the Vista compatibility and performance fiasco and Microsoft apparently is going after a faster-performing operating system to catch back up.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (1) : Nov 2nd, 2008

The OS Formerly Known as Vista

I’ve always enjoyed the “I’m a Mac” commercials that Apple has been playing over the last few years. When Microsoft finally came out with an advertising campaign to counter it, Apple got much more aggressive, however. I thought with the last few that they had gone a bit too far, but then I realized that with the “V Word” ad that Apple may have hit the nail on the head. Then the last couple of ads released have been hammering Microsoft over spending tons of money on advertising rather than actually fixing Vista’s problems. They have pretty much nailed it again.

It’s hard to find news coming out about Windows Vista any more. All the (Microsoft) technology news is about Windows 7 these days, it seems. Since I’m not one of the few who have actually gotten to play with the pre-beta versions, I’m going to have to go off promised features and reviews from others. However, what advantages do we get with running Windows 7 over Windows Vista? Well, what’s been promised so far is better performance, better reliability, a new OS X-like task bar (dock?), and multi-touch.

Okay, so they’re offering better performance and better reliability. I should hope it would do better than previous versions. I haven’t noticed any other operating system ad that didn’t say that it was the fastest or more reliable than the last. The biggest performance boost that I’ve read about is that Windows 7 won’t render application windows while the window is not actually being displayed. That’s something that should have been done with the first release of Vista, now it’s a pay-for upgrade.

Windows 7 is supposed to have a new taskbar that acts like the dock in OS X, even with a feature much like Apple’s “Stacks”. This isn’t much different from the Quick Launch menu in older versions of Windows, but it has a few additional features. I’ve always hated the idea of the start menu so this is definitely a welcome feature.

The big new killer feature that Microsoft has been talking about is its new multi-touch technology. Multi-touch technology has been around for a while in several products, both Microsoft (Surface) and others (specifically the iPhone and MacBooks). Microsoft has had its Windows Tablet Edition for several years and been a leader in built-in natural input on notebooks. The multi-touch technology is expected and a rather boring development, though necessary.

So what does Windows 7 give us over Vista? From what I’ve seen so far, it’s a pay-for feature that should have been a service pack. However, Microsoft’s marketing department has made it sound like a killer new OS, just like the Apple ads are saying. During this time of recession in the economy, Microsoft has found a great way of keeping profits high: sell features that should have already been delivered in previous sales. Microsoft didn’t even deliver on features promised to paying customers of Vista Ultimate. Why should we pay for a release that should be a service pack with a new theme? I think Apple had it right. The reason Microsoft is releasing Windows 7 rather than another service pack to Vista is to get rid of the Vista name. They have to add a few features to at least give the appearance of a new OS and then over-hype it to make us believe we’re getting something better.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (1) : Oct 30th, 2008

Windows 7 Name Announced

Microsoft has officially announced that the next version of its operating system originally codenamed ‘Windows 7′ will indeed be called Windows 7 once released. Microsoft has used a variety of ways to name its operating systems over the years, including version numbers. They’ve used version numbers such as Windows 3.1, years the OS was released such as Windows 98 or 2000, or other names such as ‘XP’ or ‘Vista’. They’ve even used a combination such as in Windows NT 4. Incrementing versions from NT 4 until version 7 is a bit confusing since Windows 2000 was version 5.0 and XP 5.1 or 5.2. Microsoft has stated simplicity as one of the core reasons for the decision. My personal favorite was in one of the comments on the blog entry: “Windows Vista NT” - to remind us it’s not the old Vista.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Oct 14th, 2008

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