Article Index
Living with Windows 7 RC - A Windows 7 Review, from the perspective of an Ubuntu user
The Window 7 taskbar
Microsoft Windows 7 Media Player
Conclusions
All Pages

I have been using Ubuntu as my main system for a few years now. I moved over from XP, I tried Vista now with Microsoft latest and greatest OS it’s time to see what they have to offer, it's time for a Windows 7 Review. I have heard some scary things like – ‘Oh, it’s just Vista with a new interface’. I find that very scary. Being a bit of a techno slut, I find it very difficult to really remain faithful anything that is not just genuinely better. I found the move from XP to Linux full time easy, as I was at the time going through my tinkering phase. Then as I didn’t want to tinker so much anymore, I discovered Ubuntu, oh wonder of wonders – all the control of Linux with most stuff already pre tinkered so I don’t have to. Mostly, stuff just worked. I tried to get comfortable with XP a few times since, but I just found XP unrewarding and insecure. I missed my virtual desktop bitterly. No Compiz, no, no, no I just didn’t get it anymore. With that in mind I gave Vista a solid chance. I was eager to see what the biggest tech company on the planet – the World leader – can pull out of the hat this time. I really wanted it to impress me, it didn’t. On my fairly powerful laptop with 3 gigs of RAM it ran OK, then after a couple of weeks, for no apparent reason slowed down to a crawl. I think it was due to Microsoft updates. MS Office Outlook then got itself infected with a virus that no virus killer was able to find. Not that I am particularly fond of Outlook, this along with the 3 weeks to copy or unzip a file meant that we had come to the end. There was just not enough of a cherry, I had none of these problems with Ubuntu, it found its way back onto my laptop like a long lost friend where stuff just worked without spending 3 days finding all the drivers and setting it up etc...

 

 

Windows 7 R C

The Windows 7 RC came out and I eagerly downloaded a copy set it to run in a virtual machine. To my surprise, it actually worked reasonably well even inside a virtual machine. This was a pleasant surprise. I could see that this needed further investigation.

 

 

The Window 7 taskbar

The Window 7 taskbar inside the virtual machine was not hardware accelerated and as such was unforgivably ugly. I looked for an option to make the taskbar look like Vista, but the option was not there. I guess that it was not put in because they really wanted people to properly test out the new interface. Well, if some of the starter edition doesn’t run with the transparency that comes with accelerated hardware, they will really need to look into the design of the taskbar, as it really is ugly. After much thought I cleared some partition space and decided to give it a chance to run against the actual hardware. I discovered, that the taskbar with hardware acceleration it is a really good. It is pretty and very functional. They really thought about the way the taskbar should work and rewrote it, when you hold your mouse over an open window you get a preview, no biggy there, both Vista and Linux with Compiz do the same, but this is where the little flourishes that Microsoft are so good at come into play. They are not just for looks, the previews are integrated into the application so that they have close buttons in the corner and when you hold the mouse over the previews, without actually selecting the window, it comes to the fore and the other windows become transparent. These are some of the functions that I find myself using very often.

 

All files/folders are now grouped and the quickstart bar idea has been developed upon so that it now forms the basis of the taskbar. In my opinion, it really works. For me I find this an actual productivity boon. I can really say that. Although I love Ubuntu, I love the stability, the way I can control it, the sense that its mine. The Gnome taskbar interface has stagnated for years. KDE 4 are trying to make some progress, but, their platform is still very much in development, and the Ubuntu version of KDE 4 is just plain broken at the time of writing this.
(Back to Windows 7) The copying and unzipping of files now takes place in a normal human lifespan, this was a great improvement and a demonstration that it was not broken, like Vista.

If you hold a window by its title bar and shake it, it causes everything else to be minimized. This is a load of rubbish, I have no idea of what marketing guy decided that, that was a must have. Also if you move a window by its title bar to the top of the screen, it maximizes the window. Very irritating, however, if you move a window to the side of the screen it resizes the window to take up half the screen real estate. Maybe, this has a future, this needs to be played with more. I don’t know why Microsoft are still resisting the ability to have virtual desktops. This is one of the biggest things that I miss coming from a Linux background, that and some of the app’s that are only available for Linux (Yes, it works both ways!). But on the other side MS Office is a delight to use under Windows 7.

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Microsoft Windows 7 Media Player

Microsoft Windows 7 Media Player made famous for not being very good and not playing very much. Ironically, more often than not, if you just need to get something to play, no messing around, it’s easier to just install VLC and get on with it. Well, Windows Media Player has had yet another redesign, once again, someone somewhere had spent some time thinking about it. It is a vast improvement. They have removed all unnecessary permanent controls and also spend time thinking about the fact that how peoples content is organized is just as important as playing it. But, they still haven’t yet cracked it in my opinion. Whilst it is better than it has ever been, if you have a lot of stuff, it is still not easy to find it using the current layout system.

 

 

Windows 7 Libraries

Windows 7 Libraries are another new addition that in my opinion is as yet unfinished. What they do is allow you to label locations under a common name so that where ever they happen to be they are always available. It is like mapping network drives but even when it is on the same disk and with this several locations can be mapped under the same library name. Except if you have lots of content it just gets messy. The real answer is to make sure that the Meta data on all the data is correct and that things are stored accordingly more with a database mindset than a file system mindset. For instance if I have a series consisting of many videos grouped by subject and sub subject, I want to be able search them appropriately. I want to start with the main subject then if I want, drill down. If I have an Album, I only want to see the Album, then, if I want, drill down and see the individual songs. It does none of this and for what it was designed for, it just falls flat. Actually, it was quite a disappointment, because I could have really done with this feature.

 

The Backup Feature in Windows 7

The Backup Feature in Windows 7 was something that I got to sample, which was particularly important after I cleverly screwed up my partition table. I sighed, took another breath, and then became very philosophical. I went to reinstall the system, thought that I might try the system backup feature, didn’t expect much and WOW! It restored my partition table set my system to almost exactly how it was before the debacle, I say almost because, even though it restored a lot of my personal data on my Ubuntu ext4 home partition, it didn’t do a perfect job (I have since moved it to a ext3 partition and I DON’T want to put it to the test!). And of course, it rewrote my boot sector to boot straight into Window – this is a Microsoft standard procedure, the way I see it. It took 15-20 min’s to complete and I had a running system. That set the pattern for me. I now have a snapshot of a well running system backed up just in case the unconscionable ever happens again. Or just in case I install something that leads me to really regret doing that, or the system becomes virus infested, etc.

 

Conclusions

Well as someone who has been a Linux fan boy for the last few years, namely an Ubuntu fan boy. I am a little grieved that Microsoft has released a system that appears to be so much of what Vista should have been and never was. Microsoft also made the absolutely ingenious decision to have the RC beta tested for almost a year. On so many grounds this was a great idea. It means that when it is released properly, it will be in a place that Vista was in when it had is 1st service pack released. It is a much more stable system. People have kicked the tyres in and have gotten used to the new interface. More than likely people have gotten used to it enough so that they probably won’t want to go back. Vista suffered a lot from people telling others that it was no good so that others just avoided it without even trying it for themselves. Now that happened in that case to be fairly true, but so far, Windows 7 seems to be far better (I probably wouldn’t touch it on a netbook though). It makes Vista seem like it was alpha software in comparison. It gives time for drivers to get written and software to get tested although the driver architecture is the same as Vista. My laptop has never worked so well and can you hear that? That is the sound of, well nothing, because my fan is hardly working. Well done Microsoft! Being a bit of a self confessed techno slut, I don’t mind moving over. Yes I will feel a little remorseful, but I will be OK. Deep down I am really rooting for Ubuntu and the rest of the Linux community to rise up to this challenge. If I could put into one word what I have to say about my experience with the latest release of Microsoft’s operating system that word would be flourish.

Written by M Roberts, all rights reserved.

 

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