My first impressions of Windows 7

[mitchellvii]

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.

 

[Guest]

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

 

[Scotteq]

Right Click a blank area on the taskbar - Properties - Taskbar Buttons Dropdown... I recommend "Combine when Taskbar is full". Then select "Use Small Icons" and Apply.

Much nicer than the defaults.

 

[mitchellvii]

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.

 

[mitchellvii]

As far as I can tell, there is NO reason for the new space put between the icons on the taskbar other than to just be annoying (which M$ does exceedingly well).

 

[50bmg]

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.

 

[bhowell]

Well, seeing as I pay $250 a year to be able to use any Microsoft PC or Server Operating system, I will most likely upgrade closer to the time that 7 goes gold. The only issues I have had so far was: 1.)my onboard sound card didn't have any drivers available for it. I was unable to find any online or on Dell's website, and 2.)Explore.exe and IExplore.exe kept bombing every few mins they were running. After about an hour of that I reformatted my drive and put Vista back on. I will try Win7 again on the next beta or Release Candidate release.

 

[ajcroteau]

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

 

[mitchellvii]

My impressions after a few days using W7.

Meh.

I keep asking myself, "where's the beef?". I keep going back and forth between Visat 64 and W7 64 and for the life of me, I can't tell the difference. To make the comparison better, i put the same wallpaper on both. Results? I seriously cannot tell the difference exceot that I have decided I HATE HATE HATE the layout of the new Task Bar.

Why the HELL do they put the icons so far apart and size them so close to the top of the Taskbar? It just looks WEIRD. I have TONS of QuickLaunch Icons on my Vista toolbar and I love them. Can't do it on W7 because of the idiotic spacing between icons. (For the life of me, I cannot undertsand what this new "spacing" does. It is just bad design.

As far as I can tell, W7 is just a reskinned Vista, and not very well reskinned at that. It reminds me of how the totally screwed up Office 2007 when Office 2003 was a great product.

Someone at M$ just LOVES them some big ass buttons and wants to put them everywhere.

 

[gamerk316]

Win7 = Vista Lite

 

[mitchellvii]

Ok, ok, W7 is growing on me.

Here's a few reasons. I figured out how to add my quick launch programs to the new taskbar as a "New Menu" Item. That definitely helped with functionality. I also put the taskbar on the left side and side itt o autohide. that overcame my problem with the bar being too short for the icons.

GAMING:
I have an 8800 GT Nvidia card. In Vista, I could only overclock it to 740 | 1750 | 900. In W7, I've pushed it to 740 | 1850 | 950 in Multiplayer and it ran smooth and looked very very good. Unless you kkow something about video cards, that is a pretty high overclock for that stock card.

So gaming is thumbs up on W7.

Like I said, it is growing on me.

I only wish they had the drivers for my HP 3200 Laserjet (yeah, I know, it's 8 years old, but it still works!) printer.

 

[randomizer]

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.

 

[mitchellvii]

Regarding the Taskbar:

I have found that if you set it to autohide and place it on the left side, it is much less 'kludgy" than if you try to put it along the bottom. Give it a try and see if you agree with me.

Overall, I am also noticing a generally improved "smoothness" to the operation of W7 compared to Vista. Hard to pinpoint. The general color scheme seems easier on the eyes.

 

[randomizer]

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

 

[50bmg]

I am coming from win xp sp 2 32b it and never really used vista. I like 7's interface / desktop. little things like the task bar being transparent, the windows key + tab key rolling thru the apps, search, lots of control panel items, sticky notes etc.

This is really a 64 bit thing, i like using all my RAM. I like the way it handles video RAM.

 

[sportsfanboy]

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?

 

[50bmg]

I have win 7 beta, but i have 2 3870's, so i cant confirm how it works, but here is a Tom's article:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-cpu-gpu,6645.html

 

[dokk2]

http://pcworld.about.com/od/window1/Windows-7-Unmasked.htm?iam=momma_100_SKD&terms=windows+7


check this out 1st!!!

 

[cjl]

http://pcworld.about.com/od/window1/Windows-7-Unmasked.htm?iam=momma_100_SKD&terms=windows+7


check this out 1st!!!

Why? Because it's an old article talking about an old build that isn't relevant to the beta?

 

[Shadow703793]

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.

 

[pip_seeker]

was there any changes to the file system? Back before they released Vista they were making a new file system. I wonder if this made it?

From what I read so far about it, sounds like Vista SP2 repackaged as a new OS.

If that's the case M$FT must think we are stupid.

 

[cadder]

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.

 

[pip_seeker]

your post was longer than mine so I think you care a little more than what your letting on. lol.

I've used Win3.11, win95,win98,winME,WinNT,Win2000-pro,WinXP-pro and Vista64. The only one I jumped from was win98SE.

But with vista64 I waited til sp1, and I would do the same again with Win7 most likely. vista64 is better than xp in most cases... there are a few annoyances... programs going poof etc.

I've already read win7 has some of the same, so what does that tell you?

 

[croc]

My impressions after a few days using W7.

Meh.

I keep asking myself, "where's the beef?". I keep going back and forth between Visat 64 and W7 64 and for the life of me, I can't tell the difference. To make the comparison better, i put the same wallpaper on both. Results? I seriously cannot tell the difference exceot that I have decided I HATE HATE HATE the layout of the new Task Bar.

Why the HELL do they put the icons so far apart and size them so close to the top of the Taskbar? It just looks WEIRD. I have TONS of QuickLaunch Icons on my Vista toolbar and I love them. Can't do it on W7 because of the idiotic spacing between icons. (For the life of me, I cannot undertsand what this new "spacing" does. It is just bad design.

As far as I can tell, W7 is just a reskinned Vista, and not very well reskinned at that. It reminds me of how the totally screwed up Office 2007 when Office 2003 was a great product.

Someone at M$ just LOVES them some big ass buttons and wants to put them everywhere.

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.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

^ +10