March 12th, 2009

Is Windows 7 reliable enough to release now?

Posted by Ed Bott @ 3:54 pm

Categories: Windows 7

Tags: Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Corp., Adrian, System Uptime, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Ed Bott

Earlier today, I read about the latest leaked build of Windows 7 to appear on BitTorrent. The text on the desktop suggests that build 7057 is part of the release candidate branch. With the exception of some new wallpapers and default account pictures, it appears to be mostly unchanged from build 7048, which means most of the RC changes are checked in, and it’s now crunch time in Redmond.

Adrian has already reported on the impressive performance of this build Windows 7, even compared to XP. So how does it stack up in terms of reliability? That question is much harder to answer with hard data, but I can offer anecdotal evidence. I installed Windows 7 build 7048 on a Dell XPS 420 one week ago, and after a few hours of road testing decided to begin using it as my main production system. (I’ll have some more notes on that process later.)

So how’s that working out?

Shockingly well. In fact, this system could be the poster child for how Windows 7 should behave when it’s finally released. Here, see for yourself.

System uptime is currently approaching 72 hours (that includes several overnight sessions when the system was in sleep mode). Here’s the overview from Task Manager:

Reliability Monitor notes one program crash per day on March 8, 9, and 10, one each for Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, and the Microsoft Windows Search Filter. In each case the program recovered without losing any data or affecting other apps. In the case of IE, for example, a single tab crashed and auto-recovered; if I had blinked, I might have missed it.

Update 13-Mar: Some commenters have suggested that this is an unacceptable level of reliability. I’ll repeat here what I said below: Maybe “crashes” is the wrong word to use here. The “stopped working” indication in Reliability Monitor doesn’t mean the program crashed and the system had to be restarted. In the case of Windows Explorer, the shell restarts automatically and the user doesn’t even notice that there was a minor glitch. In the case of IE8, a web page can hang or crash a single tab, which then recovers automatically. These incidents get logged as “IE8 stopped working” but the user experience is pretty smooth and certainly not painful.

This system is running a 64-bit OS and has 4GB of memory. Right now, about two-thirds of that RAM is in use:

Note that this memory monitor includes a new Standby classification that designates memory that has been used but can be instantly discarded if another process needs it. That gives a more accurate picture of memory usage than the memory usage reported in XP and Vista, which reported only Free memory. In Windows 7, the numbers in blue at the right of the memory bar are added together and displayed as Available.

How much of a stress test have I put this machine under? Details on the next page…

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