With a heightened hype factor typical to that of any
Microsoft product launch, Windows 7 Beta 1 wasrecently made availableto those of us
within the industry willing to put our necks on the block and
install this operating system "work in progress" to see if it is
likely to change our lives.
With many users hovering in the "once bitten twice shy"
shadow of Windows Vista, a key concern for many now will be
whether Microsoft has made good on its promise to deliver a product
that is fully compatible with users' existing hardware, device
drivers and popularly installed applications.
Individuals who have experienced incompatibility problems may
take some comfort from knowing that, at heart, Vista is an arguably
more stable operating system than XP was and it has experienced
respectable
enterprise deployment in some sectors. If Microsoft can build
on this "stability" with additional usability then it may just be
good news for all of us.
What you need to
know before installing Windows 7
We approached this task with an installation of the 32-bit
version on a five-year old machine running 512MB of RAM and 80GB of
available hard disk space. This Beta 1 version of Windows 7 is
specifically for "test purposes only", so if you do not have an old
machine to use, think very carefully before doing this.
It loaded up just fine on our Acer Ferrari 3200 powered by an
AMD Athlon-64 processor (although as stated, the 32-bit Windows 7
was used) with 128MB of graphics memory, which is the minimum
Windows 7 will allow.
Set up procedure is
fairly standard and should be familiar to previous users of
Windows
Some reports have suggested that installation creates a 200MB
partition in addition to the computer's main drive, but ours
partitioned only 9MBs when selecting the "custom" (advanced)
version. It may be the case that users who install the "upgrade"
option experience this partition for rollback purposes if
needed.
This configuration may be done to protect a user's BIOS and this
could well change before the final product ships anyway.
Install "Upgrade" or
"Custom" (advanced) version
Out-of-the-box driver support turned out to be good as promised
and overall installation impressions were comfortably
trouble-free.
Finalising settings
prior to final reboot
We needed four reboots after accepting the end-user license
agreement before we could get going (yes, Microsoft still makes you
do this even for pre-release software). But the install-wizard
warned of "several" restarts and the number we experienced could
simply have been down to the configuration of the system being
used, so be patient.
End-User License
Agreement
The installation resulted in the previously installed version of
Windows being shunted aside and placed into a 20GB folder called
Windows .old, which was fully accessible. The previously mentioned
9MB partition was, however, not accessible or usable, but once
again this may change as we move towards the final product.
Once settings were finalised, this Beta version appeared to
generally run faster than Vista had done on the same machine
despite it being a five-year old piece of hardware.
First
look
The much-anticipated first look is appealing and distinctly
reminiscent of
Apple's current Mac OS X Leopard. Microsoft has in the past
hinted that there will always be some "crossover" between the Mac
and Windows operating systems and looking at the new Windows 7 task
bar and the "full-screen file preview" option, it is not hard to
see this in evidence. Now we just need to decide whether to call it
a task bar or use Apple terminology and call it a "dock".
The almost Mac-like
task bar/dock with transparency enabled
As expected the following applications that had previously been
part of the basic Vista install are now absent: Windows Mail,
Windows Calendar, Windows Movie Maker and Windows Photo Gallery.
However, all are available free as part of the Windows Live
Essential suite and you do still get Windows Fax and Scan, Media
Player, Media Centre and DVD Maker.
Jump
Lists
A neat little addition comes in the form of "Jump Lists" which
spring up from popular applications to offer a variety of regularly
used options such as recent browsing history in your browser or
recently opened files in Microsoft Word.
These Jump Lists appear when the mouse pointer is hovered over
an item and remain in place as long as the pointer stays in the
task bar area.
Action centre allows
you to check system status (whilst still keeping an eye on Media
Player if you want to)
Bill Gates suggested to
Newsweek that he
hoped Windows 7 would be a better more user-centric product and the
User Account Control (UAC) functions have been stripped back to a
basic default level. This means that security is now in the hands
of the Windows 7 Action Centre and the pre-installed Defender
security package.
What level of robustness this pair offers, it may be too early
to say. We found the UAC easier to use as it offers more
controllability than previous tools.
So what else is new from Microsoft in Windows 7 Beta 1? Well,
it handles and ejects USB storage devices in a slightly less
painful manner. It appears to allow video playback through Media
Player whilst browsing multiple windows with relative ease (doing
this using Vista would grind things to a near halt on our test
machine).
Also, there is a more unified approach to some of the most
commonly performed tasks you will want to carry out.
A more powerful
Task Manager
At the same time as this more simplistic GUI-driven approach,
Microsoft has clearly taken the trouble to make sure that there is
plenty going on in the engine room behind the user interface. The
Task Manager seems to be evidence of a greater degree of
functionality with management, and monitoring options more varied
and presented in a quite appealing new skin.
On-screen life could be better too if users take to some of the
new drag and drop options. A user can now maximise a window by
dragging its border to the top of the screen and copy files or
compare the contents of two windows by dragging the windows to
opposite sides of the screen. As the cursor touches the edge, the
window will resize to fill that half of the screen.
Better device
management as well as greater overall management and
control
Windows 7 might just finish the visually-driven approach that
Vista tried so hard to start. Device management and disk navigation
appears to have been given another makeover with a view to trying
to radically alter users' experiences if they are still tied to
XP's apron strings.
A single-screen view of all devices from iPods to cameras to
familiar items such as mouse, keyboard, printer and screen is now
available.
So is Windows 7 a
completely new platform?
So does Windows 7 represent a fundamental new plateau for
Microsoft and perhaps even for operating systems in general?
Turning once again to Bill Gates' comments in Newsweek magazine,
"In every product we ship, the team knows of features that I asked
them to put in that they did not get in.
So you never ship a perfect software product," said Gates. It
would be hard to imagine that we will not be conducting the same
kind of analysis again for the next iteration of Windows sometime
soon next decade.