Hello everybody, and welcome to my amatuer review of Windows 7. Here I'll go over every aspect of Windows 7 that seems to matter to me. I'm sure the topic of Windows 7 has been beaten to death, but at the risk of sounding cliche, I'm going to add my opinions and perspective to the fray. I'm sure there are other people out there with a similar outlook on computer usage as me and will find that this preview answers a lot of questions.
This installment of the review will focus on my first impressions of the beta snapshot of Windows Vista.
Old Habits Die Hard... (Regarding the superbar):
First and foremost, the taskbar that ships with Windows 7 is a beautiful thing. The way it organizes windows is a delightful and refreshing change that is sure to help people save time, but most importantly, I feel that it goes a long way in abstracting programs, in regards to whether they're running or not.
My first experiment with the new taskbar, surnamed "super bar", was creating a shortcut to Mozilla Firefox. The magic that is super bar abstracts a shortcut and a running application perfectly, and even groups them in such a way that is easy to use. In short, creating a short cut to Firefox, like I did, didn't just create a shortcut, but a permanent access point to the program, running, or not, and to any open instances of. Here is a picture showing the relavent information of two screenshots I took (of the taskbar with nothing open on the left, and the taskbars instance manager opened by a left click on the icon with more than one instance of firefox).
Notice how there is no way to distinguish between it being a shortcut and it being an instance of the program? In almost every single way, this is a better implementation of the system, and offers a truly useful feature that will affect the way we use both Windows itself, and our PC's, in general. No longer will we have to be so specific with our actions... in short, turning our activities to accessing our programs into a single, solitary, heuristic. (something I'd also like to point out, is that hovering over an entry in the instance manager brings the window to the foreground temporarily until you select one of the instances you'd like to permanently bring forward)
The one negative to this, though, is I noticed how much I lost time to this method. Windows 7 does not appear to support the start menu based shortcuts to browsers, mail readers, etc. What I did find in my experience thus far, is it's wasting my time. In theory, this is a great method and I'll grow to love it, which I can see clearly... but as of right now, I'm wasting several mouse clicks by clicking start, and wondering where the hell "Internet Browser" is.
And old hardware lives strong (Hardware Support):
A while back, I had intended to use Windows 7,perhaps wishfully, exclusively until the trial period had ended so that perhaps I could submit some kind of feedback that might change the course of Windows development. Okay, I'm lying... it was mostly due to the what I had heard about it being such a step up from Windows Vista, and also due to it being less resource intensive and more stable. My initial experiences were tainted by the same issue as my Windows Vista experience, being my old creative add in board, an Audigy 2 ZS Platinum. Since my initial flight with Windows 7, I've upgraded to an X-Fi Titanium, and what impressed me was that it worked! What is more, it worked on initial start up! Even further, so did all of the rest of my hardware. Even my fake raid nForce 4 setup with twin velociraptor hard disks... which I've had countless issues with. It's safe to say that Microsoft's claim of Vista driver compatibility is true... because for several items in my computer that's exactly what I'm using.
Thus far, I can say that I'm having no problems in adapting my old rig to Windows 7. In short, I was up and running, with almost no effort on my part, and only a slight change in my installation methods for Windows 7 (from Windows Vista), being that I no longer have to load the sata_raid folder, only the sata_ide folder (for some, this may be key for getting your fake raid to work) which for the uninitiated, are two folders you have to point the Windows 7/Vista installer to, in order to get hardware support for fake raid devices with nForce based configurations.
Adios, I'll be working on my review for the next week or two, mostly giving my unique perspective on this exciting new product from Microsoft. In my next update, I intend to go over game support and performance. I can't provide a reference to windows, but maybe my opinions will be useful here as well.
This installment of the review will focus on my first impressions of the beta snapshot of Windows Vista.
Old Habits Die Hard... (Regarding the superbar):
First and foremost, the taskbar that ships with Windows 7 is a beautiful thing. The way it organizes windows is a delightful and refreshing change that is sure to help people save time, but most importantly, I feel that it goes a long way in abstracting programs, in regards to whether they're running or not.
My first experiment with the new taskbar, surnamed "super bar", was creating a shortcut to Mozilla Firefox. The magic that is super bar abstracts a shortcut and a running application perfectly, and even groups them in such a way that is easy to use. In short, creating a short cut to Firefox, like I did, didn't just create a shortcut, but a permanent access point to the program, running, or not, and to any open instances of. Here is a picture showing the relavent information of two screenshots I took (of the taskbar with nothing open on the left, and the taskbars instance manager opened by a left click on the icon with more than one instance of firefox).
Notice how there is no way to distinguish between it being a shortcut and it being an instance of the program? In almost every single way, this is a better implementation of the system, and offers a truly useful feature that will affect the way we use both Windows itself, and our PC's, in general. No longer will we have to be so specific with our actions... in short, turning our activities to accessing our programs into a single, solitary, heuristic. (something I'd also like to point out, is that hovering over an entry in the instance manager brings the window to the foreground temporarily until you select one of the instances you'd like to permanently bring forward)
The one negative to this, though, is I noticed how much I lost time to this method. Windows 7 does not appear to support the start menu based shortcuts to browsers, mail readers, etc. What I did find in my experience thus far, is it's wasting my time. In theory, this is a great method and I'll grow to love it, which I can see clearly... but as of right now, I'm wasting several mouse clicks by clicking start, and wondering where the hell "Internet Browser" is.
And old hardware lives strong (Hardware Support):
A while back, I had intended to use Windows 7,perhaps wishfully, exclusively until the trial period had ended so that perhaps I could submit some kind of feedback that might change the course of Windows development. Okay, I'm lying... it was mostly due to the what I had heard about it being such a step up from Windows Vista, and also due to it being less resource intensive and more stable. My initial experiences were tainted by the same issue as my Windows Vista experience, being my old creative add in board, an Audigy 2 ZS Platinum. Since my initial flight with Windows 7, I've upgraded to an X-Fi Titanium, and what impressed me was that it worked! What is more, it worked on initial start up! Even further, so did all of the rest of my hardware. Even my fake raid nForce 4 setup with twin velociraptor hard disks... which I've had countless issues with. It's safe to say that Microsoft's claim of Vista driver compatibility is true... because for several items in my computer that's exactly what I'm using.
Thus far, I can say that I'm having no problems in adapting my old rig to Windows 7. In short, I was up and running, with almost no effort on my part, and only a slight change in my installation methods for Windows 7 (from Windows Vista), being that I no longer have to load the sata_raid folder, only the sata_ide folder (for some, this may be key for getting your fake raid to work) which for the uninitiated, are two folders you have to point the Windows 7/Vista installer to, in order to get hardware support for fake raid devices with nForce based configurations.
Adios, I'll be working on my review for the next week or two, mostly giving my unique perspective on this exciting new product from Microsoft. In my next update, I intend to go over game support and performance. I can't provide a reference to windows, but maybe my opinions will be useful here as well.
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