Windows 7 – First Impressions
May 17, 2009 Articles
So, after a long wait, I’m finally working on a totally new setup! And all for the low cost 700AUD. And to top it all off, I got a copy of Windows 7 RC1 to put on it.
I must say I have grown extremely biased against Microsoft products, but it is hard to dismiss their continuing relevance in our everyday use of our systems. I still cannot drop Live Messenger to keep in contact with friends, nor can I stop using Microsoft Office for documents despite all the rave reviews about Open Office. Similarly, I still cannot get rid of Windows as a result of my work.
This does not mean I’m a total pushover when it comes to what I need. I was not pleased with Vista, just as I was disgusted by Windows ME. What is strange, though, is that most of the time, it is hard to identify the things I disliked about either of them. But most people still manage to express either positive or negative impressions despite being unable to elaborate on their position. This is my attempt.
Installation
Installation, I must say, is a big major improvement. The entire process was very streamlined, and apart from the lengthy copying operation at the beginning the rest of the process breezed by. Of course, I have never personally installed an instance of Vista on any of my systems, so many of the things I notice may not seem as impressive to some who are already familiar with it.
Initial Setup
The first step of any Windows installation I perform is always installing Firefox. The version of Win 7 I have is the 64 bit edition, and I’m glad to note that it copes with 32bit applications just fine. Within 10 minutes I had Firefox up and running, with XMarks (formally FoxMarks) importing my precious bookmarks, something I have not accomplished with Chrome just yet.
All of my year old hardware was detected upon installation, so there was not much needed from my end.
The first problem arose with the sound system. My motherboard (Gigabyte DS3) comes with an inbuilt Realtek Azalia high-definition sound card, for which Win 7 did not fully recognise. Which brings us to the very first challenge for Win 7 thus far: will it be able to handle drivers meant for Vista/XP?
The answer? Thankfully “yes”.
I downloaded and installed the Realtek driver/toolkit (for Vista), rebooted the computer, and fiddled with the input jack settings until sound came out of my speakers and all was good!
Memory Usage
With a Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 with 2gigs of DDR2-667 RAM, the operating system copes fine. Admittedly, I am not pushing the system terribly hard; at time of writing, I have 2 Live Messenger conversations, Firefox buffering a 30 minute episode of anime while watching a Dylan Moran dvd in Windows Media Player, and memory usage peaking at 1.2gigs.
I will be try to run some of the more intensive applications such as Flash eventually.
Task Bar
I had mixed feelings about the new Taskbar. I liked the minimalistic look of the icons, making for a less cluttered Taskbar. However, I felt the icons were too big. I use “were”, because I quickly found out how to make them smaller. So problem solved!
Unfortunately, window management is still a pain, and has not improved much. Although, I’m considered part of a minority (with a beautiful 24inch screen), it is still too difficult to organise windows easily. Granted, this has always been a problem for me, but at least Gnome had multiple “desktops” which let me organise my windows easier.
Overall
1 Day in, and I’m relatively pleased with Windows 7. Perhaps this is just the honeymoon period, where the lack of desktop and registry clutter makes for a smooth experience, but I don’t see any reason not to continue trying it out for now.
Tags: Impressions, Windows 7
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