Hands-On with the Windows 7 Beta: Surprise! It's Actually Not Terrible
Let me get this out of the way for those of you who are skimming the ol' RSS feeds--this beta, despite all expectations, seems to actually be a good operating system.
Don't let the trade dress fool you. You're still going to see the Aero theme when you start things up, but the hands-on experience is different enough from Vista that it'd be a mistake to think you're getting more of the same. In the interest of full disclosure, though I've always used and liked XP, Vista turned me off enough that I uninstalled it after less than two months of usage, and I installed the latest Windows 7 beta build with the utmost reluctance. It's still Windows, but there are a ton of tiny performance tweaks and UI improvements that make it more than the sum of its parts.
Installation
Installation was, pleasantly, a very straightforward affair. After asking me where I wanted to install Windows, what my time zone was, and what name and password for the Administrator account I wanted to use, it pretty much left me alone from that point until it dropped me on the working desktop in under 15 minutes after rebooting once. The best thing I can say about installing Windows 7 is that there's not much to say about it. I've installed every flavor of Windows, OS X, and about 10 different Linux distros multiple times, and Windows 7 may be the most hands-off--and fastest--install I've had from a stock install CD.
The clean desktop (with Media Player running). Click for larger version
Hardware Detection
This ease of installation wouldn't mean much if I then had to go back and configure all of my hardware and devices, but nearly everything I had was detected and required no configuration. I installed the Windows 7 beta on a homemade rig with a dual-core AMD 64 X2 4800+ with a Radeon 3870 and multiple peripherals--trackball mouse, Wacom tablet, Logitech wireless gamepad--and it all worked out of the box. Even on my previous Vista machine I had to manually enable all of the desktop effects, but these worked immediately in Windows 7.
One thing it did not pick up was my iPhone, which it could charge but not browse. Normally you can browse and download the photos on your iPhone on a Windows machine, but they didn't appear here. Also, note that Windows 7 still uses the Vista kernel, so compatibility with legacy hardware is going to continue to be an issue.
The Desktop
The most significant change in the UI is the taskbar. The slightly-reworked XP taskbar that Vista had has been replaced with a clean, text-free, and transparent taskbar that's a little taller but more easily readable. Finally (FINALLY) taking a cue from OS X, there's more integrated animation all around--hovering over items in the taskbar pops up smoothly animated windows with live previews, called "jump lists", and the start bar has more menu transitions. Overall things feel more unified, with a smooth distinctive style shared between windows, the taskbar, and applications.
The system tray has been pared down to the bones. The stock desktop has exactly three icons, all unobtrusively small and white: system volume, network status, and the "Action Center". All of the constant annoying notifications that plagued Vista have been condensed into the Action Center, and under each of the system components like User Account Control and Security Center is an option to turn them off. Let me repeat that: you can turn off all annoying messages in a couple of clicks. (NOTE: you can actually turn these things off in Vista as well, but the process is arcane and a royal pain for mainstream users.) I did run into one issue though--every once in a blue moon I'd get a popup asking me to turn on Windows Defender even though it was already on.
You can turn off annoying messages in the Action Center
Taking another cue from OS X, the desktop wallpaper can also be set to a slideshow. The default themes that ship with the beta all come with wallpaper suites that smoothly transition every few minutes, and of course you can replace it with your Pictures folder or any other set of predefined images.
One of the features of Windows 7 is the ability to split-screen one or two windows. Called "window snap", you can drag any window up to the upper left or right of the screen and it will automatically fit the window to half the total screen. Doing it with another window makes it take up the other half. A simple but very useful tool if you do a lot of text or graphic editing.
One disappointing thing about the desktop was the absence of virtual desktops. Every other OS these days has the ability to extend the desktop into virtual workspaces, and I'm still scratching my head as to why Windows still hasn't hopped on board on a standard install. It's easy enough to add them in with a third-party program, but the absence of virtual desktops here was notable.
Updates to Applications
One thing that OS X and most recent Linux distros have always had over Windows is that they come pre-bundled with much of the software that a normal user would need. Windows 7 unfortunately doesn't change this tradition, with more or less the same application suite as Vista, but several of the applications that do come bundled have some desperately-needed updates. There's more of an integrated look overall to match the recent visual trade dress of Office 2007, and Paint--the long-suffering love-it-or-hate-it drawing program--finally has a visual and functional update, with new brushes (including watercolor and chalk), new shape tools, and a scaling view slider.
Paint and Wordpad finally get a new set of clothes, and new features. Click for larger version
The Internet Explorer 8 beta is also included as the default browser. This deserves its own post, but there are a lot of readily noticeable improvements here even though it's not quite ready for prime time. It claims to be the first triple-engine browser (it's not; Lunascape is), with rendering engines for IE6, IE7, and the standards-compliant IE8. It's noticeably faster at rendering web pages and is pleasantly speedy overall; my "spot check" test had it loading many pages just as fast and in some cases faster than a vanilla install of Firefox 3. There are several new features: there's a "speed dial" view similar to Opera, a "Suggested Sites" feature that's functionally similar to StumbleUpon, and the menu bar has been replaced with an icon-based quickbar that lives next to the window tabs. It still has issues rendering certain pages, particularly where text input fields are involved, but the release candidate of IE8 is definitely going to be worth a look once they work out the kinks.
Conclusion
This is a beta, not a release candidate, so some instability is to be expected. That said, everything has been largely stable so far. There was the Windows Defender popup, the inability to see pics on my iPhone, and once coming out of standby mode it stopped detecting my mouse. No blue screens of death or application crashes, though to be fair there's a large difference between an out-of-the-box environment and the same environment with tons of third-party programs installed.
All in all, Windows 7 feels like what Vista should have been out of the gate. Things feel and look more integrated, what's there is easy to find, more things appear to work out of the box, and there's the choice of never having the annoyances like security popups or User Account Control notifications. It's unfortunate that Microsoft these days takes so long to absorb the industy's better ideas rather than leading by innovation, but that said Windows 7 so far feels solid and usable. If they can work in more legacy support for games and hardware, then I'm happy (and kind of surprised, frankly) to say they have a strong desktop on their hands.
We'll keep kicking the tires on this beta, testing out features such as multitouch and media enhancements, so stay tuned.
It's speedy, elegant, and visually pleasing. Click for larger version
--Aric A.
Jordan B on January 11, 2009 at 01:00 PM
Just wanted to say, I loved the write up, and I also wanted to ask, what the background is. It's lovely and I really like it.
Again awesome write up and when will this one be released as my vista, which hasn't been horrid, but has def/ been a chore at times. I look forward to a step up from vista and directX 10!
Aric Annear on January 11, 2009 at 10:15 PM
@Jordan: Thanks--the background is actually one of the stock themes that comes with the Windows 7 beta.
The full OS is slated for release in the second half of this year, but as of January 8 you can grab a copy of the open beta to try out for yourself.
Michael on January 12, 2009 at 11:01 AM
Let me first say, I use both a PC and Mac on a daily basis, and I think they are both great operating systems. I've always loved Windows..even Vista. I had to tweak it a little to make it stable, but it works great for me. Though the look of Windows 7's taskbar is "new" it has always been there. It was called the quick launch and I'm not sure if they were copying Apple, or maybe Apple just expanded on something that Windows have already created a while ago. Nonetheless, good post. I will most likely get a copy of Windows 7.
Success Prabhu on November 27, 2009 at 08:10 PM
Greetings...
Nice Review about Windows 7, But Kindly guide me how I can split the windows. Because simultaneously I need to type in MS word seeing the PDF file Vertically or Horizontally. How I can do this in Windows 7.
Thank you
Terry L. on January 27, 2010 at 05:42 AM
To enable the split screen, I hear you have to hit the Winkey + Left or Right.
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