I installed Windows 7 beta 1 on what was left of my media center pc and I have to say overall I’m pretty impressed. I think I am going to try it out on my IBM X40 to see if it really does run as well on the net book style pc (My X40 is a 1Ghz Centrino ULV). I’m not convinced it will run that great given its performance on the machine I have it running on right now (more on that in a bit). The performance isn’t that bad but its no XP either.
The current machine
I’m currently running it on a 2.8 Ghz Dual Core Pentium D (not a spectacular processor if I’m honest), 1GB DDR2, and a mATX Asus Digital home board with the Intel 945 Chipset. It is running integrated Intel graphics which runs Aero but isn’t that spectacular beyond that. For HD I used an ATA100 IDE hard drive I had sitting around. It gets a 2.2 experience rating, lowest common denominator being the Video.
Drivers for this motherboard worked out of the box with Vista and the same held true for Win7 though I have had some issues with the Video driver. Asus didn’t even provide a Vista driver since Vista came with the Intel driver and I’m guessing that same driver is in Win7. As a result I have to use the driver that came with Win7 which doesn’t seem to like 1680x1050 on my widescreen monitor. I end up switching it to my 1280x1024 monitor because right now I have to run it at 1280x960 and its I had to run the widescreen at 1280x960 and just didn’t look right.
For what I have used it for up till now the performance hasn’t been too bad. Its better than Vista on this machine but once in a while grinds to the halt (like if I open Media Center).
UAC
I was thinking about all of the stuff I liked about Windows 7 over Vista after using it for less than a day and I was coming up a bit short. Then it hit me, UAC has HUGE improvements over Vista. They have changed the prompt box and the way it is displayed. In Vista its a rather jarring experience where you get abruptly shunted to the secure desktop and get the Continue/Cancel generic something happened box. Now it smoothly transitions, even on my pitiful integrated graphics, and appears to have some context about what is happening.
The next big improvement is Control Panel items don’t require the prompt to enter them, only when you do something that requires the permissions which is very nice. As a general observation I don’t see it nearly as much as when I am setting up a Vista machine.
The Taskbar
At first the new taskbar felt a bit awkward but it has steadily been growing on me. Its not a feature I really miss moving back to Vista and XP machines but it is quite handy when applications have meaningful icons. Oddly though the Remote Desktop Connection link on the start menu does not:
The executable (mstsc.exe) has the correct icon but not the link which is definitely odd. Using the default icon can be annoying if more than one app running at a time uses that icon (not a big thing, but still).
Show Desktop
The show desktop button is in a bit of an odd place, its that tiny little bar on the right side of the task bar. If you click on it you get the desktop but if you hover over it you get an interesting visualization.
Take this screen:
and if you hover over the show desktop button you get this:
This peek feature at face value seems to bit a bit of flair and not much else but it actually is quite useful but not because of the visualization but because you can see the desktop by just hovering over it and then going back to the app you are using just by moving the mouse away from it (okay, maybe its not that significant).
Internet Explorer 8
I was ready to hate IE8 in Win7 because I had been using the beta on Vista and had nothing but headaches. It is much better than the beta was, which is a very good sign.
The Rest?
I’m sitting here having used Windows 7 a little, but not a whole lot and I can’t say I have found anything other than the new Taskbar and improved UAC that has stuck out for me as real improvements. That’s not to say there aren’t other ones, there is a Screen Resolution on the context menu for the desktop which is handy and you can now do a slideshow background. Bundled apps like WordPad and Paint are improved (or should I say have been updated for the first time since Windows 95).
You can burn ISOs now I guess, haven’t had a reason to do it yet, but ISO Recorder isn’t that hard to find so its not a huge deal for me. Windows Mail/Outlook Express are finally gone in favor of the Live Essentials (which I love) which means that they will actually be maintained. Hopefully in the next couple of days I’ll get a chance to does some development on it to see if there are any advantages or disadvantages.
Media Center
I used to be a huge Media Center fan, and part of me wishes I still could be. But frankly the TV Pack ended my media center days. I’d like to think they wouldn’t do the same thing again but it will likely suffer the same fate as the likes of Outlook Express/Windows Mail. It will only be updated when the OS is updated and frankly its a bit insulting to give OEMs fixes for TV handling and tell the custom builders to buy a new OEM or buy a new OS… in a year or so. I The only thing that can get me using MCE again would be Hulu support, but I don’t think I will be going back any time soon.