Playing With Windows 7 Beta: First Impressions

Author: Rees | Date: December 29, 2008

So I find myself testing the new Windows 7 beta… Is it any good?

First, the details of my test setup:

Intel 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo
VirtualBox Virtual Machine running on Ubuntu 8.10 64-Bit Host
2GB RAM (512MB available to Windows 7)
128MB VRAM
10GB HDD Image

The installation is painless, fast, and also very pretty – in fact, it’s like a faster version of the Windows Vista installer, which certainly is no bad thing (I’m an operating system junkie and have tried pretty much everything out there – and Vista’s installer ranks among the shiniest). I have no doubt that with more RAM and a proper native hard disk it would fly even more than it did.

First impressions are very good indeed. I’m not a huge fan of Vista’s “dark” taskbar, but the Windows 7 semi-transparent greyish-blue affair is very nice indeed (it looks even better with 3D acceleration enabled, but unfortunately VitualBox’s drivers don’t support it… Yet).

The Start Menu itself is Vista-esque, but seems to have fewer options. Also, there’s only one “Shut Down” button this time, and it’s very obvious what it actually does. The System Tray has been moved to a little pop-out window, which seems odd but also should help it from becoming too cluttered.

The Quick Launch has taken on a little OS X influence, with some animated launch feedback. Much like Apple’s dock interface, It also extends off to accommodate other programs as they are launched.

Venture into the Control Panels and a Vista user will be right at home. All the hideously complicated options are still there, however digging deeper into them reveals that they’ve been tidied up a lot, and once the right option is found it’s actually pretty easy to fiddle with your settings to get the desired effect.

Windows Explorer is more of the same, being essentially identical to the version found in Vista. It does all look a little bit cleaner, however.

So, what to take away from my first experiences?

First up, I should say that although I’ve only looked at the desktop and aesthetic things in this post, I have explored the OS thoroughly and will go into more detail in the near future. I’ll probably reference some things below which might not be obvious from my experiences above – rest assured that I have tested everything thoroughly.

So, first up, Windows 7 is fast. It starts up fast, programs launch fast, and the interface is very, very snappy. Compared to the first beta of Vista this is truly miles ahead. What makes this all the more impressive is that I’m running in a virtual machine – a proper native installation on similar hardware would be even quicker.

7 is pretty. It takes all of the good bits of Vista (there are some if you look hard) and builds on them, getting rid of some of the visual inconsistencies that Vista is known for. It’s also brighter and lighter – geryish-blue is indeed the new black.

While it would be unrealistic to talk about stability as this is only a beta release, it’s absolutely miles ahead of the Vista betas and to be honest, on par with Vista itself. If the final release is going to be at least this good, then perhaps Microsoft aren’t losing it after all. Let’s just hope there aren’t any huge issues with the OS when the final version appears, whenever that may be. I don’t think it will be in the too distant future, however…