Like all the other geeks out there I downloaded the Windows 7 beta and slapped it in a VM. And just like every other geek out there I decided to write a post about it (because, you know, Microsoft hangs on my every word and all).
Now, I haven’t chosen to run Windows since about Windows 95/98 era. I did a long stint on Debian Linux until about the time Panther came out then I switch to Mac OS X. Of course, I work with computers so I’ve used just about every version of Windows – just not by choice. I’ve also never used Vista – not for any particular reason, it has just never come up.
Overall, while I won’t be switching to Windows 7 for my day to day OS, I am quite impressed with some of it. Maybe some softie might stumble upon this and gain some feedback, but paradoxically I don’t think anyone would care what I think about it. I’ll try to be constructive.
Installing
I am very impressed with Windows 7 install time. It took from 7:53am to 8:13am to get it fully installed. Mind you this is in a VM which generally makes installing much slower. When I installed XP for example, it took about an hour and a half.
It was painless, and it just worked. YMMV. Since this is in a VM there was far less chance of me having driver problems, and I have no idea if Windows 7 is better than Vista in the driver department.
Running
I gave the VM 512MB of RAM, and Windows 7 runs screamingly fast. I know Microsoft doesn’t like OS comparisons on Beta software, but it was impressively snappy.
The speed increase might be because the lower amount of RAM / graphics card disables the eye candy, but I find Microsoft doesn’t do eye candy very well. So the eye candy off probably makes the overall OS look better to me anyway.
The overall, basic look is nice. It reminds me of Gnome a bit. I like the panel better than the task bar. I find bigger icons are easier targets which make me have to focus less on what I am doing and more on what I am trying to accomplish which makes for a more fluid experience.
Using
I guess you can call most of these my barrier’s for entry. Some of these you might find silly, but these are the reasons I wont be using Windows 7 for day to day use. Maybe there are some gems in here that will help with development, maybe not. Any snippiness is likely an attempt at humour.
The notification balloons are retarded. They have always been retarded. Take them out. Now, at least, they fade away after time instead of forcing you to click on them, but it’s not enough. The new Action centre, where you click the red X to find out what’s going on is perfect. Let me initiate the process, quit nagging me.
The command prompt is the same as Windows 95. Come on. How hard is it to add proper copy and paste and a resizable window? A real, actual shell would be nice too. Not the power shell or whatever; a real shell like bash or csh or something. Yes, I know there are third party apps I can install (like cgywin) but mate come on… what is a computer with out a decent shell? Answer: Mac OS 9. I was hoping the shell would get some sort of refresh.
Compared to Mac OS X, the information organisation is still not done very well (I would even say KDE is better, and I dislike KDE). I don’t have any constructive suggestion here only to say that the system needs to be laid out better. To do anything on the system seems to take an extraordinary amount of steps. For example, setting an environment variable:
This is an extreme example, but it seems like so many tasks are like this. This is vague, and I am not sure what to suggest other than better organisation and/or less features changeable in the UI.
On the flip side, the new “Search” box on the start menu (similar to Spotlight on Mac OS X), can save some of the clicks. For example, typing “Environment” in the box brings you to the environment variable screen directly. This is very slick, but navigating the “long way” shouldn’t be so hard or it shouldn’t be there. Reduce the clutter.
The ribbon has been added to paint and wordpad. I’ve never used the ribbon before, and I think it’s a nice improvement. It’s like the Mac OS X inspector pane which I am a fan of as well. The only thing I would suggest is to add some sort of “icon only”ish mode which somehow makes it vertically smaller – or better yet let me dock it on the right side of the window instead (most people have more horizontal space these days). The ribbon takes up a lot of the window, and, unlike the Mac inspector pane, you can’t move it out of the way or “show small icons”. You can hide it altogether, but that is rarely what you want (unless you really know the keyboard shortcuts).
Man, I am just rambling on as if someone is like… oh yes Rob… tell me more…
So one last thing (and this is just an observation): the folder icon. Why is it sideways standing on end? I mean, if it’s supposed to make me think of a real world thing why is it in such an unnatural position? Who keeps folders like that – sitting on their side with all the stuff spilling out? I get you want to show the neat “picture icons are really the pictures in the folders” thing, but I don’t think that feature is really that helpful anyway. It just looks… wrong.
Blah, blah, blah.
All in all Windows 7 seems like a vast improvement over Windows XP. If you are a Windows fan, I think you will be quite happy with it. It seems like a lot of hard work went into this, and props to the guys and gals who’ve worked on it.
Despite my, somewhat harsh, criticism I am impressed with Windows 7, and I haven’t been even mildly impressed with Windows in a long time. I am going to keep the beta around and play with it a bit.