July 29th, 2009

Windows 7 first look: More than just "Vista, fixed"

Posted by Ed Bott @ 1:36 pm

Categories: Windows 7

Tags: Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Ed Bott

[Update; For my final, official review of Windows 7, see Windows 7: An impressive upgrade. For a hands-on look at the final code in action on 10 desktop and notebok PCs, see Windows 7 in the real world: 10 PCs under the microscope.]

Windows 7 won’t be officially available to the public until next week—Thursday, August 6, to be exact—when MSDN and Technet subscribers will finally get the chance to download the software legitimately and activate their copies with product keys. It’s the first step on a long rollout that will end October 22 when the software will be available for purchase in retail boxes and on new PCs.

I’ve been able to get a head start, using the official RTM build (7600.16385). For the past 10 days, I’ve been methodically installing and testing the final release of Windows 7 on a wide range of desktop and notebook configurations in my home and office. I’ve done upgrades and clean installs, with and without the Easy Transfer utility, using different editions in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. I’ll have a through review of Windows 7 later. Today, I want to offer some first impressions and an image gallery based on my initial experience with these final bits.

Windows 7 isn’t perfect, but it is greatly improved over its predecessors in many ways. Calling it an “evolutionary” release in comparison to Windows Vista is probably a fair characterization. However, if you assume that Windows 7 is simply “Vista, fixed,” you’ll miss many small but meaningful changes and several large ones that give Windows 7 its own identity. In daily use, I continue to be impressed by the attention to detail that went into the Windows 7 iterations of features that are part of every Windows user’s daily routine. I’ve also found some hidden gems, which I’ll spotlight here.

[See my image gallery for a close-up look at key features and hidden gems in Windows 7 RTM]

From a design standpoint, Windows 7 makes the 2001-vintage XP design look downright primitive. Switching between Vista and 7 is less jarring, but the improvements in consistency and visual presentation are still noteworthy and make 7 feel more graceful and modern. The palette is softer, and many of the UI rough edges have been smoothed out.

Arguably, the visual presentation is just eye candy. The more important changes, as far as productivity is concerned, are those that improve usability. When I switch from Windows 7 to a PC running an earlier version of Windows (or, for that matter, running OS X or Ubuntu), I miss some of the window management tricks that I’ve come to rely on, including the ability to peek at thumbnails of open windows on the taskbar and to “snap” windows into position with a flick of the mouse.

Over several months of use, I’ve really come to appreciate Jump Lists, which are pop-up menus that can be summoned with a right-click on a taskbar icon (or, more easily, with a quick upward flick of the mouse. The default Jump List for a program allows you to see a list of recently used files and pin favorites to the menu.

I fully expect that some Windows veterans will grumble over a few of the changes in Windows 7. In some cases, those are just different approaches to design. In others, they reflect the Windows 7 learning curve. As I’ve discovered after six months of intense research, some new features take a while to adapt to. A few, like Libraries, which are the new default file-organization scheme in Windows Explorer, are deceptively complex and require some basic training before they can be used to best advantage.

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