My Windows 7 Review

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I Pre-Ordered Windows 7 Professional (Digital download) many months ago and have already been using it since Friday. Since many people are still iffy about whether or not buying W7 (and rightly so) I hope that my review will help relieve some of that iffiness.

Sweet Sweet Eyecandy:

Something we all know about Microsoft (herein referred to as 'MS') is that with each Windows that they launch they always kick it up a notch on the 'looks' department. I wouldn't call W7 'revolutionary' in that area, since Vista was already beautiful on it's own, but they have definitely made it a lot nicer.

When I first started W7 the taskbar hit me like an over sized font on a small display, it looked HUGE. Sure the taskbar now includes the oh-so-gorgeous 'glass' look (Aero) that Vista is so known for, but the large icons and bland Start button might throw some people off. However, with time I have come to get used to it and have even found that it will complement almost any window I have up. The large icons are still bugging me a bit, but I'm welcoming the change.

After shaking off the first bad impresion I decided to right click on the desktop and take a look into these new themes. First off, the various different sounds that each theme provide and very welcomed, secondly, the wallpapers are out-of-this-world-hearthrobbing! On top of that they have matched the colors of the taskbar with the wallpapers. But the best thing of all when it comes to the themes is the ability to make your own. Add your own wallpaper, sounds, screen saver, and window color (there are also some nice themes available online). After that I checked out the gadgets. I downloaded and added the AccuWeather gadget and gave it 20% opacity, now it matches perfectly with the Aero look. Also, there is no longer a sidebar where you were to dock your gadgets (which I personally despised).

I went ahead and opened several IE windows and tried the Aero Peek, Shake, and Snap (if you do not know what they are, click here). I must say I was in love! This along with the ability to make any running taskbar icon show you a preview made it all come together for me. There are many other eyecandy features on W7, but I'll add that later (I need to keep going!).

Performance:

We all know what one of the most complained about problems with Vista was: It is a performance HOG! But MS made things right for once. I have not had to wait for any window to open. No lag (even slightly) when minimizing and maximizing windows (I just shake it and bam!), and no issues running any memory-intensive program. As for games, they actually seem to run faster now! I had serious issues with Crysis lagging every 20 or so steps and now that's completely gone! I must say that when it comes to performance I have to give W7 two thumbs up.

Compatibility:

So far: NONE. All the same games that I played on Vista work on W7, and better too! I've played:

Crysis
Mass Effect
World of Goo
Runescape
(I'll be installing and trying many of the games supported by SP soon, look out for updates).

I also have not run into any issues with my Google Chrome (my favorite browser, Google rocks!), nor with any program that I tend to use, some are:

Direct 2 Drive's download manager.
WinRAR
WinZIP
McAfee (I get it for free thanks to my ISP)
(I'll add more programs as I try them).

Summary:

I have to say that the only thing I am not liking about Windows 7 is that the UAC (User Account Controls) box keeps bugging me whenever I try to install something, sure it's easy to switch off but I like to keep receiving any necessary updates for my W7 since it just came out and an SP is bound to show up eventually. The UAC is causing some programs not to install (like BitTorrent - no I'm not a pirate! - ) because for some reason when you select the Yes button to allow the program your installing to modify your computer it simply does nothing, you keep pressing install and the UAC keeps popping up. However, I am optimistic and hope this will be resolved (or I'll turn UAC off).

Overall I am very please with Windows 7 an I am glad to have purchased it when the upgrade was 50% off. Windows 7 is Vista how it should have been, plus more!

Feel free to post your comments, complaints, suggestions, and personal experience with Windows 7 and about my review! I'll update it as days pass by.

PS: No I am not a MS fan nor work for them or am associated with them in any way.

 

Re: Taskbar, Compatibility and UAC

Windows 7 is very customisable. To change the size of the taskbar and icons go to 'Personalisation' -> 'Taskbar and Start Menu Properties' -> folder 'Taskbar'. There check 'Use small Icons' and there you are.

Which doesn't mean that things that ran just fine under XP run as well on Windows 7 or Vista. I have to use Win98 and Win XP compatibility modes and execute as administrator a lot to make things work.

UAC takes some getting used to, and rightly understood it is indeed an improvement over VISTA and more secure though somewhat more troublesome than XP.

What struck me as the greatest improvement of Windows 7 was the ease of installation and the automated driver download. Linux users know that for a while, but for Windows users like me it's new. It's really nice that after installation your computer works and you can proceed to download which latest software and drivers you need and want. Very convenient.

 

Security software is hit and miss. For example, ZoneAlarm will not work...but apparently ThreatFire does. I haven't verified that TF does indeed work.

My favorite feature by far is Home Group...for the first time ever, I was able to setup a home network and share files between computers!

 

@Ragusa: Thr taskbar doesn't go down any farther, BUT I did not know about being able to make the icons smaller, I'm going to give that a try ASAP.

I have not run into any compatibility issues with anything so far, mind posting some of the programs you're having issues with?

@Kitrax: I have never heard of those, perhaps they aren't 'supportedL because they aren't one of the big dogs like Norton or MacAfee.

 

You've never heard of ZoneAlarm? It's one of the best firewalls ever made...and it's free! ThreatFire is less known, but it's an awesome tool that uses techniques that most anti-virus programs don't.

 

What I meant was that the task bar will adjust itself to the size of the smaller icons and get 'slimmer'.

 

Well, yes and no. I installed it and it ran in 7; it appears on the task bar, it updates everyday, and appears to be working in the background. But if you click on the desktop icon, it does nothing. What's worse is that after a short while, I kept getting annoying messages from Win 7 that a program was trying to run but failed, which was Threatfire.

 

Err... couldn't you do this way back in Win95? Or did they radically change something about the way this works?

 

Yeah I figured that's what you ment.

I just tried it and it does look a lot better. However, now the icons are too small, it seems that they should take up more space in the square that surrounds them. Thanks for letting me know about this!

 

You're welcome