The Shattered Sky

Microsoft Windows 7

Those of you who follow the IT industry would probably know by now that Microsoft is set to release Windows 7 later this year; October 22nd to be exact. For those not in the know, Windows 7 is the followup to the heavily criticized Windows Vista. Now while I am going to be speaking fairly well of 7, do not think of it as a major overhaul of Windows. As far as version numbers go, Vista is Windows 6.0 while 7 is in fact Windows 6.1. What this means is it is a considerable update of the 6.0 (Vista) Operating System but not a full overhaul in the way Vista was to XP. In one sense though, it is fitting to name the OS Windows 7 after the stigma associated with Vista following its performance issues on older hardware.

Now, the really exciting news here is that a while back Microsoft made the Windows 7 Beta publicly available, and now more recently they have also made the Release Candidate available to the public. I downloaded it as soon as  it became available on Microsoft’s website but it was not until this week that I had a chance to install. If you are interested, the Release Candidate is available at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx complete with activation for up to three (3) computers valid till June 10, 2009.

Test Systems

I installed Windows 7 RC on two different machines; one at home and one at work. At home I installed it on my older PC; a home brewed AMD Athlon 64 system with 1 GB RAM and NVIDIA GeForce 6200 video card. At work I installed it to a brand new Dell Latitude E5500 laptop with Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM and Intel GMA 4500MHD integrated graphics. Both systems were set up in a dual boot configuration with Windows XP and Windows 7 on the same hard drive.

First impressions: The good

As with Vista, Windows 7 uses an image based installer. That is, you select (or create) the partitition you intend to install to, enter a few bits of information and in just a few minutes the entire operating system is installed. On both systems most drivers had been installed with the Windows setup.

The new boot screen is animated with four lights coming together to form the Windows logo. The welcome screen looks similar to Vista’s with new artwork, and the system picked up that I could use Aero on both computers right out the box with full transparency enabled. I must say that while I am a little more used to Vista’s version of Aero, 7 has a pretty nice feel to it as well. By default the taskbar is a bit thicker than before with larger icons, no labels for open applications and both the date and time displayed. I quickly adjusted these settings to provide smaller icons, labels and the thinner taskbar with just the time displayed as in XP and Vista.

Windows 7 desktop with Aero

The interface runs significantly faster than Vista with no performance tweaks required. In fact I will go so far as to say that in terms of the the general feel Windows 7 does not appear to be much slower than XP with SP3 on the same system. It appears at the moment to have about the same level of stability as 2000, XP and Vista, which is to say that as long as one is not reckless with computer usage then it should run quite smoothly and reliably. There are the usual annoying messages asking if to run programs and change settings but that is easily disabled with a User Account Control that has four different settings.

I will say that it is a significant improvement to Vista in terms of its ease of use and its performance but it is not perfect. Let me tell you a bit about the hiccups I encountered thus far.

First impressions: The bad

The welcome screen, just as with Vista, provides no option to revert to the classic XP login screen. For home users this is just fine but in a domain environment this makes it a chore if one switches frequently between local and domain accounts. I simply do not see it as an improvement to have to enter domain\user or user@domain instead of selecting the domain from a drop-down box.

One big problem that Windows 7 suffers is lack of driver support. Many vendors simply have  not made Windows 7 drivers available and this is a particular problem if you have older hardware. At home for instance, my  older Logitech Quickcam Messenger webcam is unable to be installed at all while my Realtek AC’97 audio is installed with what appears to be a ported Vista driver. They work, but I am asked after each reboot if to run soundman.exe. This is with User Access Control turned off. I also have a “Base System Device” at the office which I cannot seem to locate a driver for but that has not impeded any functionality. I suspect it might be part of the Intel AMT mechanism and will check further into that during the week.

soundman.exe prompt

I cannot hold Microsoft fully accountable for vendors not releasing drivers, however, I would have thought that they (Microsoft) would have created built-in drivers for common legacy hardware such as AC’97 audio.

I also had a peculiar problem that baffled me for a little while until the Internet Bible (Google) pointed me in the right direction. A little while after installing my applications at home I lost internet connectivity. Not network connectivity; just internet. I for some reason had two gateways detected on my network adapter, the first set to 0.0.0.0 and the other the correct one. Running ipconfig /release and /renew did not help, nor did a restart. It turns out that Apple’s Bonjour service was responsible, which is installed with Safari as an option (which I opted out of), iTunes (which I did not install) and Adobe CS3 and CS4 (I did install CS3).

The solution was to go to the Windows Services, stop and disable the service in question and then restart. The service as installed under CS3 was not called Bonjour but rather an obscure name starting with ##Id_String. For those unfamiliar with the Windows Services snap-in, it is easiest accessed by using the run command (Windows key + R) and running services.msc. It is also available in Computer Management (right-click Computer and select Manage).

Speaking of network problems, there does seem to be a minor bug at the office. There, Windows 7 is part of a Windows 2003 domain with internet access via an ISA proxy server. In short, a fairly common configuration for an office. While able to browse the internet and connect to Microsoft for Windows Activation, the system tray network icon and the Network and Sharing Center insist that there is domain access but no internet access. This does not impede the functionality of the system but it is a bit of an annoyance.

Summary

So far, Windows 7 RC seems quite promising and I while mentioning the above bugs I must also make note that this is the Release Candidate and as such will have several bugfixes before the final product is released to market. Vista, while running fairly well following the releases of Service Packs 1 and 2 has suffered from a very bad image after its initial launch and how slowly it ran on fairly modern computers. Windows 7 on the other hand is both significantly faster on the same hardware than its predecessor while the market in turn now has heftier hardware installed.

Windows 7 at first glance is not a major overhaul of the Windows OS but it is certainly what Vista should have been in the first place.