I have no extended experience with Windows Vista so I do not know what improvements or changes there are in Windows 7. I believe there are blogs on CNET with better entries than mine so you might want to search for those and read them for further details.

However, I must say I like it a lot when I looked at these figures. 30 minutes to install and roughly 1.5mins (87secs to be exact) to boot up a freshly installed copy of Windows 7 on the Lenovo X61 (bought almost 1 year ago) is quite impressive. Comparatively, I recalled a recent re-install of Windows XP (32bits) took me 39 minutes on my old HP dx5150MT Desktop (AMD Athlon64 3200+ @2GHz with 2GB RAM, bought in 2005) and it doesn’t quite match Windows 7 in terms of boot time. While that is not a fair comparison since the Athlon64 is a technology that’s 3 or more years old, I recalled that Windows XP is even older than the system. (After all, it says © 2003 Microsoft Corp on bootup in Windows XP).

Shutting down Windows 7 is a breeze too. On top of that, if you put it to sleep mode on the laptop, opening the cover will wake Windows 7. I believe this is what it should have been on all Windows versions, and only on this version they got it right.

Aesthetic wise, Windows 7 is nice. But gone are the old Pre-XP Start menu and themes. Even selecting the ‘Classic Theme’ does not restore it to pre-XP state. So it might take a bit of time to get use to navigating around Windows 7. The Control Panel is a little different as well, but it didn’t take me too much effort to try and find what I want. Controls are also more responsive and killing off offending programs that misbehave is far easier. In fact, on one particular occasion Windows 7 actually prompted me when a program has stopped responding, and ask me what to do with it.

That may have happened because that program is Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Beta, but still, it actually just closed the offending tab (not the entire IE) and restarted it when I selected the option to leave it alone for awhile. So far I hadn’t seen a BSoD (Blue Screen of Death) so I am quite happy with it. In fact, I can’t even recall when was the last time I actually saw a BSoD even on Windows XP.

The Quick Launch Toolbar is also gone in Windows 7, though that doesn’t mean you can’t have your favorite programs on the taskbar anymore. You can now pin a particular program to the taskbar, and Windows Explorer, Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer are pinned by default. I recalled someone mentioning that this is stupid, but again, I liked it with the Aero UI since I can tell from the thumbnails the individual tabs opened in IE8 or which windows are opened for a particular application and go to them specifically.

So, the Aero UI from Vista is retained and I suspect its performance will be tied to the system’s GPU as usual. This is something I seriously dislike and I actually considered it the ‘Achilles Heel‘ of Windows 7. The reason being, users will probably find their experience varied between systems, and for users with older systems their experience may not be as pleasant as mine, and it might even actually be unpleasant. If that happens, sentiments from the loudmouths among these users may sink this otherwise decent OS.

Unfortunately, I do not have an older system with a less powerful CPU & GPU which is Windows 7 capable to verify whether the user experience will be different. On the other hand, I was told by some Mac users that installing a newer Mac OS on older Mac hardware does not usually give a varied performance. Granted, one may find a new version of Mac OS running a little slower on older hardware, but it’s not so significant that you will actually complain about it.

Thus, while UAC (User Account Control) may cease to be the chief irritant here, Microsoft may not be able to regain market share as long as it continues to build new OS where user experience is mostly affect by one single component on a system. Using the Lenovo X61 as the example, the Processor, RAM, even Gaming Graphics and Hard disk obtained a sub-score of 4.7 ~ 4.9, but a pathetic 3.5 for Graphics for the Aero UI. Just like my old gripe with Windows Vista, I have no idea why an aesthetic feature continued to be given priority over functionality. If this is done to appeal to Mac users, and the end result is losing more Windows users to the Mac, Microsoft should really give this ‘strategy’ a serious rethink.

Beyond this, I can’t say more about it. I have installed a number of stuff on it, from Google Chrome to VLC Player, and they all installed without problems. Nokia PC Suite (v7), however, refused to install in the beginning, and complained that it’s a version of Windows it doesn’t recognise. After toggling it to run in Windows Vista mode, it installed without much of a fuss. UAC comes up frequent enough, but not as frequent as it does on Vista. At least I no longer find UAC to be the pain in the ass compared to the time I was trying to solve a virus problem on a friend’s laptop running Vista.

I believe I’ll upgrade to a copy of Windows 7 when it is shipped. However, from what I gathered, even while there are not going to be much hassle for users buying a new PC, users who intend to upgrade will be confront with a myriad of versions just like Windows Vista where certain functions are missing from certain versions. Again I do not understand this business strategy. It is fine that network domain connection features are missing in the Home Edition, but having the Ultimate and Professional Editions with varying features is… rather annoying.

Sometimes I wondered whether Microsoft actually listened to our feedback at all! After all, the many confusing versions of Windows Vista have been one of the main gripes among Windows users for a long time.

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IHT: Paul Krugman: Decade at Bernie’s