My first impressions of Windows 7

In a word, "meh".

Maybe something really new and exciting is happening underneath the surface on Windows 7, but to me anyway, just seems like a re-skinned Vista. Frankly, I look at this and say to myself, "what the hell have those thousands of software engineers at M$ been doing all these months?"

YMMV but I am very NOT impressed. My least favorite part? The layout of the new taskbar. It's just, well, kludgy. It's too short in height for the icons on it as they almost bleed off the top edge. If you use "small icon" they are TOO small. Also, what purpose is served by the BIG space between icons? It looks funny and uses up valuable space to add quicklaunch items. It seems as if they added this big space separating the icons just for the hell of it.

Maybe the final version of W7 will be great, but as is, I won't be in any rush to replace Vista.

Rubbish,win 7 is fast to load up .less cluttered desktop. very fast browser.running on my acer laptop core 2 duo 1 gb ram .faster than ubuntu on dual book same laptop. final version should be awesome if build 7000 is anything to go by.down load from ms site not torrent as torrent corrupt.

georgee

georgee,

I think Windows 7 is rubbish. Faster to load? Oh boy, now there's a reason for me to spend $200 on a new OS. Just think of what I can do with that extra 10 seconds I've saved every day.

Less cluttered desktop? Lol, that reason is just too silly to even argue against. Your desktop is only as "cluttered" as you want to make it, even in Vista.

Browser faster? Nope, not any difference at all. As is, with a cable connection and the right tweaks, my browser in Vista is pretty much instantaneous.

Nope, no reason to blow $200 on this Vista + OS.

Well maybe so, but for users like me with win xp 32 it may be a better choice. I will skip vista and go directly to win 7 64.

My win 7 build boots faster, browses quicker, gives me better fps in games, transfers big files faster to my ext HD than xp 32. And my win 7 build is on a 4 year old sata. IF i had it on my new sata II 7200.11 it would be even faster.

Now if you already have vista 64, it may not be that big a deal. IF i was already on vista 64 and was on a budget, i would spend my money on something else.

I definitely think that if there going to offer this as an improvement from Vista, they should offer it at a steep discount for those people running Windows Vista.

AJ

Win7 = Vista Lite

I second the OPs opinion (although I've only used W7 for a very short time). It definitely boots a little faster than Vista, although not significantly, but the overall time after boot before the system responsiveness peaks is alot less. Perhaps that is because SuperFetch hasn't kicked in yet. We'll see in time. Anyway, I would certainly not drop $300AU on this OS, but if it pops up on MSDNAA I'll grab it.

I have it on the bottom with small icons. It's just the same as Vista in size that way.

I heard windows seven is going to use idle cpu cores, or cores with low amounts of load to help out the graphics card when gaming. Can anyone validate this?

http://pcworld.about.com/od/window [...] =windows+7


check this out 1st!!!

It's still in BETA!!! Hopefully all the problems people are having will be fixed soon. I'll be installing the x64 Win 7 on the weekend.

We bought new computers for our company nearly 8 years ago, with Windows 98SE. They worked great and were fast. 3.5 years ago we replaced those with new computers running XP. They were fast too, but overall not any faster than what we had before. 98SE vs. XP? Maybe easier to recover if one of your apps crash, easier to attach USB devices, otherwise to the user they are close to the same. I have Vista on a couple of laptops, looks like XP with rearranged menus and different fonts. Maybe there are improvements under the skin, that's what I've heard.

I guess you buy a new computer, you move to the next version of the OS. If the old OS is working for you then just stick with it. I just bought a new workstation for my office, it came with XP. I'm going to replace my desktop at home, will probably go with Vista. I downloaded the W7 Beta, might try it too.

Repackaged Vista? Repackaged XP? I don't care. I'm familiar with XP so I wouldn't mind if they just fixed some things that were wrong with it and improved other things, and let it look exactly the same.

The icon spacing in Vista appears closer because there is a 'hide' slider that win7 doesn't have. At least in this build. The spacing gets closer as you add more icons. I haven't filled up the taskbar yet to see what happens then, but I don't really find it unacceptable, just different.

If you want something to whinge about, try whinging about the fact that many programs install as 'system' user, and taking ownership of the top level folder seems impossible. Or that MS has once again played around with the TCPIP stack and winpcap will no longer load. Find something real to whinge about, then send in a bug report, be part of the solution.

I just installed the beta Windows 7 and my downloads speed are so damn slow. Anybody know why? I am running a 5MB DSL service and getting 100kbps


Asus p5b Deluexe

My take so far is it is not any faster or slower then Vista. I WILL get it for my next system, but there is no point in upgrading this system.

Like Vista the prefetch works well. There is ALLOT of tweaks to make life easier.

-Middle click(Mouse3) any program to launch a new copy of it(this is good because when you pin an item to the start menu and want another one its a pain)
-The sort by "date modified" has now been added as a default of the sort menu again. THANK GOD.
-The volume mixer no longer gets refresh errors(Black boxes).
-navigating windows is now better then ever with the new thumbnails.
-Desktop wallpapers can be auto cropped to fit. May be in vista, I honestly never looked(Just check, its not there....yet)
-There are lots of little tweaks here and there to make easier to use.

What would I like to see?

-An affinity section added to the program compatibility tab for programs.
-some kind of 16-bit emulator(even if it slow these apps are likely not looking for speed anyway) for installing 32 bit apps that used 16 bit installers or even running 16-bit apps.
-I want my quick launch back. Its a easy fix anyway. Made my own.
-Some tweaks to the new thumbnail preview system.

Actually "whine" and "whinge" are two different words, but with similar meanings.

mitchellvii ... croc - stop this, now. No more.

Mojave experiment released into the wild? Not really, but not too far off...

No WinFS was a disappointment, but all of the many small tweaks do add up. Do they add up to a new OS? Not yet, but we're still in beta... They could still surprise. Pricing will be critical, methinks, for this to be adopted widely. If it is priced at the price-points that Vista was originally, I think there will be a huge sound of silence. But if an upgrade is ~50 USD, and a full install is <100 USD, retail...

And I hope they don't try to rob and pillage those of us that aren't in the US this time.

So we wait and see.

I don't get the point of the home groups, I never read much about them.

I'm not, although I did download the beta, just like with Vista. It's clearly Vista repackaged. They could probably have SPed it, but where's the money in that.

I haven't used it, I don't like the idea of running a Beta OS. AFAIK, WinFS is still MIA. Perhaps we'll get that pillar back with windows 8/9. Until they get all four pillars up and running, or DX10 makes a bigger splash, I see no reason to upgrade from XP.

I like how you can grab windows and resize them just by where you drag them. That is actually quite convenient. Also, I use dual monitors and the thing where you click WINDOWS + SHIFT + ARROW to have active window jump to second monitor is a nice touch.

The OS fine but IE8 is a total abortion. I haven't had a single browsing session without having some kind of issue.

So far it games better than Vista, may actually be on par with XP or little faster.

Mojave II (yea you)

Making a "new quick launch" is easy

Make a new quick launch folder under your user folder(easy clean place for it)
Add you shortcuts to it(i was lazy and just copied them over from Vista)
Right click the taskbar and Toolbars => New Toolbar....
Select you new folder and tada. If you want to go all out hit the taskbar properties and set "Taskbar buttons" to "Never combine"

the only problem with "being part of the solution" is that M$FT is a $Bil Co. It is their problem to fix it, not me to fix it or suggest how to fix it and then buy it.

This is not open source, not a grass root effort. If we have to suggest how to fix it, then we should be on the payroll.