It’s been a three year long ride. Windows Vista was released January 2007, and its reception by the press was very negative, which made sure public perception was very negative as well. Sales were slow, people wanted Windows XP, and businesses didn’t care about Vista either. Microsoft needed something that would make the world forget about Vista, and it needed it fast. The journey is over: Windows 7 has gone RTM.
Windows 7 builds upon Windows Vista, bringing together the various technologies and frameworks introduced in that troubled release, and building upon them, exposing them to users in useful manners. HomeGroup, for instance, the technology that makes networking painless, doesn’t use any new technologies – it just brings together Vista technology in a useful way.
There are also a lot of interface overhauls in Windows 7. After using 7 since last Christmas, the amount of work Microsoft has poured into the user interface and user experience has become one of my favourite “features”. Where Windows Vista was a barrage of colours and weird glossy nonsense, Windows 7 has been toned down and made less eye-piercing, the best example of this being (for me) Windows Explorer. Colours removed, useless widgets dumped, everything streamlined.
The taskbar and Aero Snap and Peek are other interface additions and overhauls. The new taskbar takes some getting used to, but once you’re in, you’re hooked; the new system tray really helps here. Aero Snap may not seem very useful at first, but wait until you need to work with lots of multiple documents, and you’ll start to value being able to ‘snap’ various scientific articles next to one another easily.
Performance-wise, Windows 7 is also an improvement over Windows Vista, and some benchmarks (for whatever they’re worth) even say over Windows XP – which actually doesn’t seem too weird seeing how Windows 7 will be able to use modern hardware more efficiently than Windows XP can.
It’s not all about roses, of course. The biggest issue with Windows 7 is the massive security hole in the default User Account Control setting. While this issue can easily be resolved by moving the UAC settings up to Vista levels, most people won’t actually do that, allowing malware writers to have a field day once Windows 7 gets released.
Today, Microsoft announced that Windows 7 has hit “Release to Manufacturing”, meaning the code is finalised, and the operating system is ready to be prepared for shipping. Windows 7 will be released October 22.
There’s even a corny video of the Windows team signing the RTM build. Sadly, no footage of Julie Larson-Green in this one.
It’s not just a “blame the media for swaying the public” thing in my opinion… Microsoft really brought the Windows NT product line to a head with Windows XP.
To top that, they needed to create a product that had all the speed and stability of XP in their encore.
Vista didn’t do that. People notice when they buy a brand new laptop and it runs slower than their previous Windows XP machine ran…
Oh I’m not blaming the media. Vista really sucked.
Sucked on release. But on an older desktop, I notice no difference with Win7, in day to day performance on a desktop PC.
I used to work in a computer store the last two years and I can say Vista sucked on Laptops. Definitely.
Well some laptops only, others were packaged well.
Since when is it okay to admit that Vista indeed was everything but what it set out to be? I can read it here, I read it in the newspapers (De Stentor, Netherlands)… So what changed?
I remember in the days that Vista was just released, one would be jumped by a whole army for criticizing Vista. Granted it did not contain any of the promised major milestones (journaling Yukon/WinFS, Paint multilayer support, etc.), Vista was “good”, period! The fact that the graphic appearance improvement further slowed world’s most sluggish OS was simply dealt with by cranking the minimum system requirements way up.
Truth of the matter is that Microsoft, after a six-year holdup, simply had to release something. Both for the sake of revenue and because customers were demanding it from them. I think they did a pretty good job there and Vista, as a “filler” release, is actually not all that bad. Provided you see it as a “filler” release and not as the next major advancement.
I have always recommended people who intended to buy Vista to wait until its follow-up was released, which would be in about 1.5 years according to a Microsoft announcement. Windows 7 is highly acclaimed, though the “Longhorn promises” of many years back still are not being met. And that, I do find a pity.
Using Windows 2008 as a workstation rather changed my opinion of it ;-).
Same here, Im also using server 2008 as a workstation and I have no complaines about it.
Ditto, but I’m curious of Win7 memory usage in comparison.
I’m not impressed (server 2008 64 on 8 core), its far too easy to bring to its knees totally, the IO and network performance are abyssmal.
People I know who have evaluated Windows 7 say it’s not noticeably different from vista. I’m just wondering if Windows 7 is more an innovation in marketing than anything else (trying to not make the same mistakes made with vista).
Edited 2009-07-23 04:37 UTC
Under what workload do you notice bad I/O and network performance? Just curious.
I played around with the last RC of Win7 on my laptop back in May/June – better than Vista, but nothing that I found to be “OMG wow” compelling.
My biggest gripe was the changes made to the Alt-Tab UI in Win7 – it shows text labels with a small preview of the window. The problem is, at 32×32 pixels, an Explorer window is largely indistinguishable from a Thunderbird Window, which largely indistinguishable from a FileZilla window, ad infinitum.
There are already images that are specifically-designed to be recognizable at those sizes – know what they’re called? ICONS! (which is what you get in XP) It feels like one of those features that got added because someone thought it would be cool (or “change for the sake of change”), without any thought to usability implications.
Eh, alt-tab uses Aero Peek to show you the full-size window. This was added in the RC – the beta didn’t have it.
Beats icons everytime.
You sure? Admittedly, I don’t have Win7 installed anywhere to check anymore (went back to XP after about a month), but that sounds more like the behaviour you get from Win-Tab – rather than Alt-Tab.
It was RC1 I was running – not the BETA.
Edited 2009-07-22 22:30 UTC
Without Aero, alt-tab acts like it always have, with a row of 32×32 icons below the currently selected window title as you flip through.
With Aero turned on, it shows a large preview (aprox. 1/10th full screen resolution on my display) with the 32×32 icon located in the bottom-right of each corner. Note that this preview is smaller than you’d get if you had the alt-tab replacement powertoy for XP, but it does perform better.
The win-tab combo shows all the windows scaled back and at an angle, and the whole window stack slides forward, with the front most window moving to the back. The previews are quite large, as the whole thing takes up most of the screen (at least, on my monitor. Not sure if higher resolutions result in larger previews). The previews are large enough to read text off of them if you feel like squinting.
I run Windows 7 RC on all my three machines (that I use, anyway), and they all have it – using alt+tab. Win+tab is the pointless Flip3D.
Alt+tab on Windows 7 with Aero turned on uses live thumbnails in the switcher, and Aero Peek.
Edited 2009-07-22 22:45 UTC
From what I remember, it’s only the “active” thumbnail that’s large enough to be easily-identifiable tell what it is (aka, the thumbnail for the app/window that will be activated if you release Alt-Tab).
In contrast to XP and earlier, where the Alt-Tab popup will show up to 21 icons at a time (3 rows of 7 icons). I find that much more useful, since I can tell what the app is with just a glance at the icon – rather than having to tab through (or mouse-over, from what I recall) to get the large thumbnail.
I do agree that the Flip3d thingy is pointless, though – it seemed like a half-arsed attempt to copy Expose, but in a way that wouldn’t raise the ire of Apple’s legal dept.
Edited 2009-07-22 23:40 UTC
What happens is when you alt tab, everything behind it disappears except for the active window, which will change as you tab. The large thumbnails are there for everything in the alt-tab dialog itself, with the icon (which is all that used to be shown) in the lower left hand corner of the thumbnail.
I find task switching between multiple instance of the same app to be substancially improved the new way.
” …its reception by the press was very negative, which made sure public perception was very negative as well..”
No the reason is that the PC market has matured, people needed a compelling reason to switch to Vista. Needing a brand new high powered PC just to look at a prettyfied GUI & incessant UAC nag screens was’nt it. Microsoft cut out the advanced new file system & concentrated on riddling the OS with oppressive performance suffocating DRM. Gee is it any wonder Vista was a total flop…
Do you morons even know what DRM is and how it works? This is one of those annoying horses that thinks the beating feels good.
This release is going to be interesting to see how it plays out. They better hit this one out of the park.
My first experience with Vista was SP1 and I haven’t had any issues with it all. This is the first time I’ve used Windows since 3.1. I don’t find the interface or icons annoying. UAC seems fine to me.
Now, I know it sounds crazy, but stick with me.
Vista has been a hardware compatibility craps shoot, devices that are allegedly ‘supported’ often end up buggy or not fully supported, a lot of legacy hardware doesn’t work right, many devices aren’t supported from lack of effort or interest by the hardware makers (yes Creative, I’m looking at YOU!), a lot of things you’ve expected the OS to be able to do for a decade or more are just outright missing (mismatched video adapters for example), it’s plagued by niggling little issues that many people wouldn’t notice but annoy certain demographics no end, and has lots of little glitches that make it feel unfinished/unpolished (like the fixed cyan line when changing skin color, the artifacting when dragging and dropping icons, inconsistency of navigation layouts) and claims of being better when it’s a slow buggy memory hog – but if you happen to have the magical combination of hardware and aren’t too picky about the small stuff it can satisfy the users needs.
Linux, so far as using it as a desktop OS has a lot of the same problems – despite the wide base of ‘supported’ hardware most of it is poorly supported or only partially functional (webcams and printers for example), some legacy hardware doesn’t work right on newer versions that did on older ones (the whole 2.6 kernel vs. APM thing – best bet on a non ACPI laptop is to go back to the 2.4 kernel) while other hardware remains completely unsupported becuase of vendor lack of interest, a lot of the things one has grown uses to being fully supported out of box (multiple displays, Xinerama is a joke, and kiss off compositing at the same time) are still a buggy mess if present at all, it’s plagued by niggling little issues that many people wouldn’t notice but annoy certain demographics no end (freetype kerning text like a sweetly retarded crack addict), and has lots of little glitches that make it feel unfinished/unpolished (video artifacts, constant video mode swapping, every set of instructions telling you to go to the command line even for **** that you can do from the GUI), and claims of being better when it feels slow and buggy due to X11 being the dead albatross around it’s neck, there being too many WM’s with each program preferring it’s own ‘type’, and too many layers of abstraction between the video and the app – but if you happen to have the magical combination of hardware and aren’t too picky about the small stuff it can satisfy the users needs.
Users of both who have no problem wonder what the devil people are on about when they talk about the ‘problems’ inherent to each – while the people for whom the experience is, well, less than satisfying, sit around wondering how the devil people can even USE it.
Windows 7 doesn’t actually do a lot about the hardware aspect (apart from fixing the damned audio stack, see below), it is just that it’s able to build on three years of Vista support being expected in new hardware. Using the same WDDM stack new hardware has no excuse, nor does anything made over the past three years. In an industry where 3 years is obsolete and five years is the scrap heap, this should be a suprise to no-one.
Where Windows 7 shines is fixing the little annoyances and leaning things down. It easily has half the memory footprint, on a number of things it seems to be faster than even XP (though slower on others), and all the things that were supposed to impress us in Vista for the UI are actually DELIVERED this time.
I’ve been running Win7 as my primary OS on my workstation since the RC – This is a system where Vista was effectively unusable due to stability issues, and it’s not like this is old stuff – Nforce 680i chipset mainboard, three 1tb drives, one 1.5tb drive (no RAID), Q6600, 4 gigs of RAM, GTX 260 driving center two displays, Ge8800GTS running outer displays and configured as the primary Physx/CUDA card. While I have an occasional glitch or problem in Win7, it’s no worse than I experienced under XP x64 and can most always be attributed to a legacy application (usually games) not handling multiple-cores properly… something easily fixed using IMAGECFG.EXE
One area I had constant problems in Vista and what made me swap to XP x64 was Audio. Even on the integrated sound with applications like Reaper, Sonar and Aria would crackle, pop, cut out intermittently and be effectively useless – and even ASIO4ALL did little to help – the situation only got worse if I tried to run my Audigy 2 ZS Platinum where even THINKING about using VST’s was guaranteed to force a reboot. Recording audio from any input was right out as the ’64 bit motorboat’ effect made even simple **** like Skype impossible to use – and the usual fixes of dicking with the hardware sampling rate did nothing.
With Windows 7, it all works (though the lack of soundfont support in Sonar is annoying, thankfully I’m more reliant on VST’s now) with no stability issues.
They also seem to have beefed up backwards compatibility, or at least the installer overrides, since even my crappy little Linksys CIT200 Skype phone not only works, even the installer for the crapplet to make it plug into Skype actually ran without a hitch. (speaking of applications that suck in both Linux and Vista)
Hell, Vista KILLED that phone, literally. It did SOMETHING that crashed it, and I had to pull the batteries and short the power connections to reset it to get it working again.
I liked Windows 7 so much, I wiped XP Home off my MSI Wind U123 and put the RC there, I liked it so much I wiped Ubuntu 9.04 off my HP NC8000 and put it there… Hell I’m eying the Apple IIE in the corner that I turned into a Atom powered hackintosh and am twirling my mustache like a second rate silent film villain…
Edited 2009-07-23 02:35 UTC
deathshadow – like you said “here’s looking at you Creative”. Get rid of that POS Creative Sound Hardware and spend a couple of $ on something from Echo Audio (given you are using Reaper and wanting to do some audio work).
Vista and Win 7 have great x64 drivers from Echo Audio and everything works a treat. For basic day to day sound your onboard sound hardware is well suported with Win 7 (integrated Motherboard sound) or at least in my experience of Win 7 testing it has.
Been very happy with Win 7 testing and computing. Feel like MS has delivered a decent OS for a change. This for both Graphic Design, Audio Work and entertainment (Gaming and Multimedia platform). Win 7 has stepped upto the plate and delivered.
While Echo makes some great products, one thing their hardware is lacking is a HARDWARE wavetable synth, one of the few things that kept me with Creative as long as it did since it’s like a bargain version of an EMU APS. You know, MIDI that doesn’t suck? (once you get a gig or so of soundfonts in memory)
While increasingly I’m more reliant on VST’s for synth (an interesting transition for someone who’s been using Cakewalk since the DOS days and only retired his Roland U110 six months ago), having the hardware capability is something I’m really just used to as a composer and performer… Echo’s products are wonderful for recording, but greatly lacking in the performing arena. (and Proteus VX while cute, really doesn’t compare)
Not that for live performing it matters all that much anymore since I’ve gone to using my MSI Wind U123 for that with a EMU 202 USB for the audio out – much more practical since I’ve switched from dragging around a tenor sax to using an EWI USB.
Edited 2009-07-23 08:05 UTC
Fair enough on the hardware synth element. I have just used VST’s for me needs although if I was to go hardware it would be for something like a Nord or a Prophet 8 type of synth that would complement the VST’s I utilise.
For a rompler Dimension Pro has been interesting except for it’s 24/96 issues. Runs well at 24/48 though and would be a boon for you if you want to take your Sound Font libraries into it.
Use:
Dimension Pro
Zebra 2
RMV
Vanguard
Have some others but these cover my bread and butter stuff nicely. Just need to pull the finger out though.
All work under Win 7 x64 nicely but I’m waiting on a good VST x86 to x64 plugin for Reaper x64 before I jump in that direction.
Multiple Displays are detected OOTB with Fedora 11.
I have it running on an MSI-Wind U100. When I plug in an external monitor, the Gnome Display widget configures it easily including screens with different resolutions.
Perhaps your Linux experience is a little out of date?
This PR fluff of an article is excellent, my eyes started to water up at the “The journey is over” bit. Well done!
for rtm?
The build number is 7600 for Windows 7 RTM, i6 golt that data from the windows team blog website http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/07/22/window…
I am not such a *Nix fanboy that I can’t say “Congratualtions Microsoft!” Looks like you’ve put a lot of hard work and effort into this, and it’s going to pay off for you. You’ve learned from your mistakes, and now we all stand to benefit from them.
“You’ve learnt from your mistakes”
Ah, like they’ve learnt from Windows Me?
Ah, like they’ve learnt from Windows XP (pre-SP1)?
I don’t really care how good people think Windows 7 is WRT to Either Vista or XP. As long as the Windows OS continues to annoy me with constantly whining about there being no firewall software running or continually popping up a title about updates being available, I’m going to continue using Linux. Why? Because the computers I use are supposed to obey and serve me, not the other way round. I have no need of Windows anti-virus software/firewall stuff because the hardware firewall in the router is a more than adequate substitute. Furthermore, neither anti-virus and firewall software would even be necessary if Microsoft had designed a secure OS in the first place. Microsoft needs to bite the bullet once and for all and drop ALL of the legacy hardware support in any new OS they write. Anyone still using CGA/VGA cards for example, needs to trade in their ancient hardware for something newer, instead of relying on Microsoft to crutch their stinginess. And I haven’t even touched on DRM and WGA issues! In short, there are just too many philosophical differences about who owns the hardware and software between Microsoft and myself, so no thanks, I’ll stick with gentoo Linux and my old Windows XP CDROM (on the rare occasions when Windows is actually useful).
Edited 2009-07-23 09:46 UTC
Vista (as well as Linux) has worked flawlessly for our entire company from a business stand point. Vista performed extremely well on our desktops and laptops (Dells) after SP1. We have had no issues with deploying applications, setting permissions for users GPO with Vista, made the switch easier from an administrative point.
However; I cannot honestly comment on Vista as a consumer home use product, since I do not run Windows at all at home. The 3 systems I have there are Opensolaris, Linux, and OSX.
In all honesty, I think it can be true to say that every OS release, whether it be Windows, Linux or Mac has had it share of issues, changes, and user based gripes. What I am seeing here (and other places) is everyone was completely either turned off, or prejudiced against Vista that Windows 7 seams like a much anticipated race horse (Yes, we are testing Windows 7 here as well). Sure it may be leaner, and may have answered a few annoyances that others may have pointed out but, it still feels and runs the same to me. Again this is a personal observation and my view is just based on what we are running and seeing here at our company.