There has been a great deal of fuss regarding the Windows 7 beta release and how it may be everything Vista should have been. To see what all the fuss is about, I grabbed a copy and set about installing it in a virtualbox VM and having a play. Here are my observations.
It’s very polished for a beta. It looks more like Apple OSX than any previous version of Windows. It seems quite stable. It boots and shuts down reasonably quickly (about XP speed to my eyes) and uses an order of magnitude less system resources than Vista. However, all of the above points bring to mind one question: Vista was created after many many years of development, whereas Windows 7 was evolved from Vista in about a year I think. So why was/is it so hard to get Vista to perform like this? It almost looks like they released Vista as a buggy bloated waste of hard drive space on purpose just to make the next (much sooner) release look so much better.
When you think about it, Windows 7 has almost the speed and system resource usage of the 8 year old XP OS, it can still suffer from Viruses and Spyware, It doesn’t seem any more or less stable than XP (which was pretty good in my experiance), so I’m left wondering why people are singing the praises of an OS that manages to mostly match its much much older sibling? Don’t get me wrong, Windows 7 is a MASSIVE step up from Vista. Unfortunately for Microsoft, it’s only a minor step up from XP. It looks better than XP or Vista, it seems easier to use and more intuitive than Vista as well. (I’m so used to and familiar with XP that my opinion is not valid as to its ease of use)
Conclusion: Well done Microsoft for fixing the problems with Vista, but why didn’t you do this the first time around? Also, XP has been a pretty good OS for Microsoft and for end users. Until something really revolutionary comes along, everything is going to just seem like an incremental upgrade of XP.
Windows 7 is a good looking, stable and solid OS, but I’ve not seen anything so far that would compel a tight fisted company bean counter to justify replacing XP as it doesn’t really do much extra for a corporate desktop. As with MS Office, Microsoft’s older OS products are going to become their biggest competitors, especially with the current financial crisis making everyone nervous.
January 18th, 2009 at 12:30 am
Windows 7 is Vista SP2. A simple rebranding. Microsoft wants to look like OS X so bad but they don’t have the guts to completely redesign an OS like Apple did.
January 18th, 2009 at 1:48 am
I got the beta only to find not a single driver to be had. When I tried the Vista drivers for my Asus P5Q Pro not one driver for vista would work. So, to me this is just the same disaster that Vista had with me. I build systems and the error I get is that it didn’t recognize the new OS number so, show me the money in drivers. Otherwise XP will be mine for the next couple of years just like XP adoption was it took 2 years to get to be really useful. I did like the interface though and the speed to up and down was impressive. But!
Concerned
January 18th, 2009 at 2:30 am
Gubinsky is FUBAR, praying to the macNcrap altar. Apple lives under the BS cloud that “form is more important then function” — a common disease found in France. Try to find the power switch, USB plug and …. on an apple mac mini — real handy, if you can find it on the back !!! And good luck with finding the pull-down corner of a window — no mouse-cursor indication your on the right hot-spot. I have one of the eight, original apple prototype mice — three buttons. I guess more than one button was too much for Steve Gobs. Spare me, amateur PC-users, Windows 7 is XP-program-compliant, more built-in drivers than XP Pro and runs WELL on a 1.5 GHz CPU with one Gig of RAM. & Perry: “Butt!”
January 18th, 2009 at 3:27 am
It’s sad that MS is trying so hard to be like Apple. Hardly any point in having more than one OS if they are just going to copy everything the other ones do. MS is digging their own grave – if they make Windows more like OSX, eventually people are just going to move to OSX. I say this in all humility as a Mac hater and a long-time Windows fanboy: MS has done more to make me appreciate Macs than Apple has. Apple should just close down their advertising department, since every new Windows release turns more MS users away. Apple ads should just say “Go ahead, try Windows… we’ll be here waiting for you with open arms when you’ve had enough”.
And Gubinsky is right: Windows 7 *is* just Vista tweaked, or maybe Vista *finished*. That’s why it took so little time – it’s also why Windows 7 will never touch a computer of mine. Every ‘innovation’ MS adds to Windows is a step backwards, so I’m going to stick with XP as long as I possibly can. After that, who knows… probably one of the Linii; I simply don’t have enough ego infrastructure to be an Apple customer.
January 18th, 2009 at 6:44 am
[…] I came across a blog from a person who tried the recently released beta version here, http://htmlfixit.com/?p=1108 […]
January 18th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Pierre F,
Where did you read that it was XP driver compatible? I have used some Vista drivers, but most people I’ve spoke to have told me that XP drivers are a completely different design and are not at all compatible.
January 19th, 2009 at 12:05 am
Windows 7 IS Vista people so get over your ideal notions that M$ could develop a completely new OS in less than 3 years. It’s the same old game of using a previous build and giving it a make over. Remember NT 5.0? Of course not, it was rebranded Windows 2000. In fact XP still uses the NT error messages in some places. Vista failed on so many levels that the name is FORBIDDEN at M$. The same upgrades are needed from XP to Windows 7 as were needed form XP to Vista. The names change but the game stays the same with M$.
January 19th, 2009 at 1:31 am
Franki,
I worked with the CA School for the Deaf for years. But ever since then, I’ve had to endure talking [emailing] with the “Hard of Listening.” Win 7, like Win FLP works well on reduced hardware and is XP-PROGRAM-compliant. AND more built-in DRIVERS than XP Pro. The death to bloatware like M$ Windows Vista and macNcrap OS X.4/5.0.2.3.xxx that have tried to force us to buy/build MORE HW.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Pierre,
Windows 7 is not 100% application compatible with XP either, it is supposed to be 100% compatible with Vista, and one of the biggest complaints about Vista was that many XP applications would not run on it.
If you want proof of application incompatibility, do some google searches as there are plenty of examples out there.
January 21st, 2009 at 1:42 pm
franki baby,
“Windows 7 is not 100% app’ compatible with XP either, . . . .” DUH.
Brandon LeBlanc on Thursday:
Over on the MDOP Blog – Senior Product Manager Ran Oelgiesser has announced the availability of the first beta release of Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) 1.0 today. MED-V is the 6th product in the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack and part of the acquisition of the desktop virtualization vendor Kidaro. We acquired Kidaro in May 2008 and MED-V is the first product based off Kidaro technology.
So what is MED-V? MED-V is an enterprise virtualization solution that IT folks can use for compatibility challenges in their environments. MED-V allows IT Pros to easily create, deliver and centrally manage virtualized Windows XP or 2000 environments to run legacy applications on Windows Vista desktops.
For more information on MED-V and how to download the Beta, http://blogs.technet.com/mdop/archive/2009/01/15/microsoft-enterprise-desktop-virtualization-med-v-beta-is-publicly-available.aspx
to read more from Ran on the MDOP Blog.”
January 21st, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Pierre,
You’re a tool mate…. I can run Windows 7 in a VM as well.. or any other OS..
I suggest you go back and repeat kindy.. your obviously missing a few odds and ends. Your comment on MED-V completely negates your original post about Windows7/XP compatibility. If you need to use a VM, with another windows in it to use your apps, then you might as well ditch windows 7 altogether and use Linux to host the VM’s, it’s free and can run XP VM’s faster than windows can.
For what it’s worth, I work in the IT department of a very large university that has a good deal more access to Microsoft than you are likely to have.
I have to ask dude, are you one of the saps that I’ve heard Microsoft pays to say nice things about them in blog comments? I say this because you make as much sense as the Jerry and Bill ads.
January 21st, 2009 at 9:24 pm
I’ve been using Windows 7 for quite a while now, and I share the same positive response… but it does also make me question why Windows Vista had to come along. Surely waiting just a little longer and releasing this more polished version would make much more sense.
FWIW, I’ve had no success running any XP drivers with Windows 7.
May 17th, 2009 at 2:24 am
I’ve been using Vista 64 for over 2yrs and never had any problems with it….of course I built the computer to run Vista….the problem is most people that tried it were using older computers which I agree did not sit well with Vista as it loves memory and processing power. Now I’ve been using Windows 7 64bit RC for a few weeks and agree it starts, shuts down quickly and has a much better feel than Vista did….should Vista have been Windows 7? sure, but I’ll never regret installing Vista. Out of all the Windows versions, ME “Mistake Edition” was the worst….remember those days?
September 10th, 2019 at 3:34 pm
Glad to read here your opinion on windows7 as it was really a great deal of fuss regarding the Windows 7 beta release and how it may be everything Vista should have been.
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