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The latest Microsoft Operating System - Windows 7 - is finally here.
17 October, 2009 in Software
Windows 7 has already stirred up quite a bit of excitement with those who have been using its free to the public Release Candidate for the last several months, but those who have not yet experienced it first hand all have the same question burning in their minds: "Is it really better than Vista?"
Despite the fact that Microsoft unleashed an arsenal of updates and tweaks, and hardware manufacturers have dramatically improved their drivers for Vista, Vista has never escaped the stigma of its launch, which was plagued by buggy graphical drivers and subpar performance. Windows 7 turns out to be just the breath of fresh air Microsoft needs to shake off the pungent stench of Vista.
Among its new features, Windows 7 has introduced the first real taskbar overhaul since Windows 95, creating an amalgamation of the classic Windows taskbar and the Apple OS X Dock. There are also numerous minor-but-handy interface shortcuts, including the "reading view" designed especially for modern wide-screen displays (to trigger it, simply drag one window to the left side of the screen and another to the right and each will take up exactly half of the screen space). You will also enjoy the lightning fast Search feature that will search your entire hard drive, including Outlook, usually in less than 2 seconds.
Windows 7 also introduces one of the most user-friendly home networking systems with its HomeGroup design, which handles every aspect of setup. The one caveat is that HomeGroups will only work with Windows 7 computers, although it is always possible Microsoft will add support for legacy connections in the future.
Even those who approved of Windows Vista generally complained about the widely-loathed User Account Control (UAC). Windows 7 has dramatically toned down the number of UAC prompts you will see, and has made it much easier to tone down UAC even further without completely disabling the useful service.
Windows 7 has removed a few familiar applications - namely Windows Messenger, Windows Movie Maker, Windows Photo Gallery, and Windows Mail. These are all available in the optional and free Windows Live Essentials download packet, which Windows Update will suggest for all users the first time it is run.
Windows 7 is shaping up to be a fantastic OS from day one, and it will only get better, but don't just take our word for it:
During the open beta test, the writers at ExtremeTech.com picked apart Windows 7's new Display Driver Model, WDDM 1.1. WDDM 1.0 was responsible for a significant chunk of early blue-screens in Vista, and even when games ran stably, ATi and NVIDIA sacrificed roughly 10% in performance vs Windows XP in having to adapt to this new driver model. WDDM 1.1 introduces only minor changes to Vista's model, but this is a move designed to ensure that buggy drivers will not give users grief. ExtremeTech found that, even in the beta, WDDM 1.1 had a 5-10% performance increase over Vista's WDDM 1.0.
After extensive testing, Techradar concluded that Windows 7 takes all the best security and architectural improvements from Vista and adds in better performance than XP is capable of delivering.
MaximumPC has performed perhaps the most in-depth testing of Windows 7 in comparison to Vista and XP, and they declared it a "massive leap forward in usability, security, and support for new hardware." The harshest complaint MaximumPC could level was that Microsoft has not yet abandoned the at-times draconian Windows activation process - a concern all-but-nill for users on notebook computers, since the radical hardware changes that often cause desktop power users to trigger piracy alerts are virtually impossible on notebook computers.
With Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate also offering a Windows XP Service Pack 3 virtual machine for perfect backwards compatibility, Microsoft seems to have addressed every complaint from Windows Vista and given us a worthy successor to Windows XP at last.