[PCWorld]

Post your comments for The PC World Challenge: 72 Hours of Windows 7! here

[Itsjustbill]

sheeesh. another one?? and i just got a new laptop with Vista Home Premium i don't know how to effectively use. Think i'll stick to my old pc in my office with XP

[BearPup]

Danger Will Robinson, Danger!

The one thing I've yet to see in any article - - except Microsoft's own Release Notes for the Beta version - - is that little formality of going back to whatever OS you were using before you installed the Beta. Bottom Line: You can't, you have to do a clean install of your prior OS. The Notes go on to say that you can't even install an upgrade from any Beta (Beta 1, Beta 13, etc.); you must first uninstall whatever you've got running, and then do a clean install of whatever OS version you'd like to go back and actually run

Now when even Microsoft says this, instead of its usual interoperability crap, it won't be 24 hours of Version 7 / Vista SP2, but more like 24 months!

There's danger out there, Will Robinson, beware.

[jhendrickson]

SP2 is already out in Beta form. This is more like SP3. I agree that it is a lot like Vista, but let's be honest, who wants another 2 years of trying to get your drivers and devices to work? I am glad that Windows 7 is so much like Vista, and by the way, Mac OS X has not changed a whole lot since version 1, and no one complains that they haven't done a kernel rewrite.
Also, MS did a good job by not releasing the Beta until they setup their infrastructure to make it work well. I downloaded the file in less than an hour on Saturday morning with zero problems.
And finally, as many readers have pointed out in the past, what's with all the MS bashing? Is this not PC World? I am getting tired of it.

[mynamesafad]

I really want to read what everyone has to say on Mac OS X Snow Leopard. If we compared it to Windows... That would be more of a service pack than Windows 7.

[opiniator]

I tried something similar to David Murphy's Win7 adventure/misadventure. However, I was able to download the Win7 .ISO very quickly, at 700mbps early 01/11 Sunday morning. I installed it in a clean partition, on a spare hard drive I have for my souped up laptop, where switching hard drives takes just a couple minutes. It installed smoothly and reasonably quickly. After rebooting and connecting to the internet for drivers to get the nVidia laptop GPU driver things were almost okay, except for Aero. I typed Aero in the help system which provided a troubleshooting utility for Aero, which worked well, reconfiguring the display settings for Aero nicely, with all Aero's features and the full 1920x1200 resolution of my 17" laptop.
I should say first that I don't like Vista and I dislike Windows 7 even more after spending Sunday trying to use it on my laptop. Unlike others, I am NOT impressed with Win7's visuals as are other people. I find the Vista/Win7 graphic bells and whistles distracting, cloying, and annoying, and I am female. If Micro$soft thinks that kind of "shiny" is appealing, I have news for them.
Here are some of my impressions. The taskbar sucks because it is too big, it is too flat and it lacks 3d shaping. The taskbar icons also lack the wonderful 3D shaping of icons in WinXP. I agree with Murphy that Win7 is nothing but a disfunctional VistaSP2. Although I am a diehard Firefox user, I must admit that Micro$oft has turned IE8 into a rendering speed demon. They must have had a dedicated team working for months doing nothing but instrumenting and analyzing their html page rendering engine to find ways of making it more efficient. Having done that kind of duty myself, I can attest it is difficult to accomplish. However IE8's rendering speed is the only remotely positive impression I have of Win7.
My biggest gripe about Win7 is the removal of what once was the very useful Outlook Express, where I could have endless email accounts configured, all of whose emails could be automatically organized neatly into folders based on automation rules. With Win7 I had to download a neutered Windows Live Mail piece of junk that seems to be pure feces compared with its predecessor. Its user interface, sans menus, is simply annoying. I do not know of an email client that supports unlimited accounts and automatic filtering and sorting as Outlook Express does, that might be able to replace it. What a huge loss.
My conclusion is that Micro$soft is making software difficult to use and frustrating. What is Micro$soft's user-interface design committee smoking? This is coming from a seasoned C/C# developer, who has the impression that Micro$soft has lost its way along with the megalomania that long ago deranged Steve Ballmer's mind. There must be some serious psychedelic additives in the beverages being delivered to One Micro$soft Way, because what is coming out of the Redmond campus has the feeling of something produced by people on a really bad acid trip.
Thank goodness I can just stash that extra hard drive for now, with the Win7 beta misstep installed on it, into a drawer. I think I will be using XP for everyday work as long as possible, while begrudgingly using Vista for development compatibility on a development only machine. The future of computing on Windows machines appears to be doomed. Too bad I now have to test software under development using Micro$soft's new dog of an OS.

[opiniator]

So much pseudo "shine" and yet Windows still does not have things like basic file system exploring features like those found in a utility called FolderSizes. Still can't generate a text listing of files and folders or reports about hard drive statistics. Windows still does not have features to compare folders and drive contents. System automation is still an arcane and difficult task that requires cryptic script languages and developer level savvy, or third party utility software.
Microsoft has forever ignored basic user utility features, giving us graphical "shiny" instead of basic useful real world system management tools.

[TechieXP]

Anyone who would wipe their system, install a BETA of a new OS and then install all there applications into it, already proves they have no idea what they are doing. As far as I can remember especially with Windows NT based OS's, if you install a BETA you can't upgrade to the RTM. If you were expecting this then DANGER DANGER you just broke an OS that isn't even finished which means you will do worse when it is.

[TechieXP]

At the beginning you were off to a very good start. However as you progress you begin to sound just like the other writers of articles here. When MS first talked about 7, they indeed said it uses the Vista Kernel, which means it would be pretty identical to Vista. Which is just like any other OS they have ever done. However this isn't Vista SP2. SP2 will not have the same impact on a system as 7 will. To be specific, one of teh things MS is working on is speeding up the kernel. One way this could be done is not allow the kernel to run certain features. For example, even thought the sidebar is nice...it was a waste to run it at the kernel level. This is true of Vista's many other features. Also is you run Windows 7 in a Virtual PC and compare teh services list you will see that many of 7 services that appear in Vista don't start at boot, meaning they aren't running at kernel level. This will either allow you or an application to turn them on. This is one of the things SP1 did for Vista. Also Windows 7 would have an advantage with drivers. Vista was a totally new OS, since 7 uses Vista's driver model...MS at this point 4 years later obviously would have more drivers under their belt, don't you think? As one commeter said it is cool 7 isn't a huge change in this area as it won't be hard to find hardware. This also means by teh tie Release Candidate appears, all your Vista applications should work well. Many of them now break. But this is expected as it is a beta. I have been playing with the beta in Vware and it runs pretty fast. I gave it 1GB of RAM and 2 of my 4 cpu's. If it runs this good in VM i know it will directly on hardware. But again it is a beta and since not much is there it will be fast. A better speed check cwn be done on a RC release. As far as looks...the look is ore simplified over Vista's but it isn't better...it is less cluttered. I don't like the new taskbar. & is using the same theme base as Vista and I even copied the themes fro 7 into Vista and they work fine. the only application I installed into it was Office and that was just to see if MS's own app would fail. It didn't. I a sure someone will find a way to move Vista original thee over to 7 as it looks way better. I didn't see the icon for the 3D flip. I hope it is good. When I first saw Vista I really thought that would be cool when I saw it advertised, however I never ever found a use for it other then to tease my nephew because he was still using XP ad his system can't run Vista. In fact many fancy graphical toys like you see in Ubuntu is just for show and provide nothing ore then a toy to play with and is best left out by MS. Games are the best way to show off graphics power, not wasting it on resource hogging os features. I think MS got that point and that is why 7 doesn't look the same. Opinionator, I too agree with what you said about the graphics. They could use a woman touch. However I remember when people first saw XP"s graphics they didn't like them either, however I still see more ppl using the GUI ov classic. However I do like Vista look over 7 and that is what attracted me most to it. Its a bit shinier then XP...y7 looks dull with its dull colors...however its amazing ppl complained about Vista bright colors and the greens. Now S changes it, and they hate it too. They will never win. One thing to fix is hope a 3rd party themer will create nicer themes. They always do. I do like the nicer wallpapers and that helps. And there is always the classic look. Also when installing a new driver Vista in many case will turn of Aero by default. This is to force you to use the assessment tool in the OS. The tool actually checks the hardware and the driver to verify is will run Vista properly. If it gets the correct score Aero is turn-on automatically.
However its still beta and i think every1 is being to critical to early. This is onlt early early stage. Again RC is the best release to see what teh final version will be. Believe me MS is listen to testers and anything can change from now to RTM. and since you are good with programing, as a woman suggest to MS what would be pretty for a look as far as color scheme. Men have always been bad with colors..amazing though some of the best clothes designers are male. Maybe MS should speak to a few.
Based on what I have seen so far and since i am not and havent had any Vista issues, I will stick with Vista until I am forced to change. I'll probably just continue playing with RC4 until Windows 8 if we get that far. GL to all.

[WhiteVerveVixen]

Well, Mr. Murphy, unless Microsoft can give a user a decent internet browser they can put out Windows ME/XP/Vista/7 and I will still be spending most of my personal under the breath sign language, removing IE, fixing registry entries and installing Firefox/Safari.

Did the programmers who patched and patched IE leave the country???????????????

[ToyotaTundra]

Dude, grow a freakin pair and stop whinning. You complain about it being an easy install, you complain about the name; just grow a pair or put on a tampon. We've heard all of this before.

Why don't you just go join the Apple freaks!!

[TheBigOldDog]

Win 7 beta uses 450MB of RAM, with no programs running. Vista uses 415MB. Windows XP uses only 95MB of RAM.
Win 7 uses 25.9GB of HDD space. Vista takes 23.4GB while XP takes 2.7GB.
What do you get in exchange? very little if anything imho. That's why XP will be around for a long time to come. It Classic Coke to Vista/Win 7 New Coke.

[ozlaw]

Thanks for an informative review - wish I had read it and the comments before installing Windows 7. Anyone having problem connecting to a home network with the other computers using Vista Ultimate? I connect to the network, IE8 and FIrefox both open and seem to find the homepage, and then the green bar stops at about half way. When I click on Diagnose the Problem I get a page saying there is no problem. Everything shows me connected to the network at full strength, just cannot get onto the internet. Tried disabling add-ons, disabling firewall and anti-virus and everything else I can think of. Is anyone else having this problem? Has anyone got any suggestions? Thanks.

[TheBigOldDog]

ozlaw, can you believe in 2009, Microsoft still can't get peer-to-peer networking right? How embarrassing especially when tools like Network Magic have been out for years.

[greyaburton]

downloading it wasnt too bad.the size 2.44 gb is big,but anyone with high speed shouldnt have any problem.anyone still using dial up,forget it,youll be waiting a long time.make sure to write down or print the product key.it needs to be activated to continue using.do not install as your main operaring system.this is a beta.not guaranteed to work.if you dont have an extra computer or drive or the space or know how to partition your original drive forget it.install on my machine took about 25 minutes(i think i didnt time it).make sure to remove the install disc when the computer reboots for first time during install or the disc install will run again.after install,have to be activated.had no problem with the activation.after install discovered had no sound.went to windows update and an update included soundmax.installed it, but still no sound.alas looks like were going to have the same problems as with vista.waitng for companys to come out with updated software and drivers.here we go again.something new that people will try that wont work everything.when they released vista,they had a hardware compatibility program that they said to run before installing.should have done the same with this one.i went on windows forum and apparently there are numerous issues with hardware compatability(sound familiar.did we not just go through all of this).newer is only better when it works the way its supposed to.maybe it will after they re release it again and again and again.....

[Zorvan]

BearPup, why don't you do some research of your own? You can upgrade from XP or Vista perfectly from the 7 beta. Apparently, the author of this piece isn't the only one who makes half-baked claims based on assumptions rather than actual facts.
As for the author, 21 minutes to install on your oh-so-uber system? That's hilarious, because it took roughly 20 minutes on my 3 year old single core P4 2.6GHz, 2gb DDR 400mHz dual channel ram, 7600GS AGP w/256mb DDR2.
I had no trouble getting my internet to work stable ( worked perfect from the get-go and continues working perfect as I type this ). Blaming 7 for your incompetance is hardly what I call an "unbiased evaluation". In fact, most of your troubles seem to stem from manufacturer problems ( your "uber" Gigabyte motherboard seems to feature prominently in the article ) and plain lack of understanding on your part. Perhaps an article by a user who knows more than how to download WoW patches would have been a better choice than this drivel.










Windows 7 is Vista SP2? Sounds to me you spent more time playing World of Warcrack than you did actually evaluating Windows 7 ( or, as some call it, DOING YOUR JOB! ).


@Greyaburton,


You do not need to remove the install disk after the first reboot. You simply need enough common sense to not touch your keyboard when it says "Press any key to boot from disk". And the sound worked perfectly from the first boot up. Don't try to blame the OS for the hardware manufacturers problems.

[ClaudeD]

Add a wig and lipstick, it's still a resource hog. Mojave, Vista, Windows 7, it needs serious refinement and a menu system that's user friendly. Pretty may cut it for the less experienced but for business and serious users it's in need of help. Installed on a super fast quad core, it's considerably slower than XP Pro. Like a 30-40% loss of preformance and that translates to how quick your new pc is. It's a good article.

[Zorvan]

ClaudeD,
A "menu system that's user friendly"? How much friendlier can it be? Do you need a video tutorial to turn your PC on as well? Every damn thing anyone could want is a click away on 7. Go to control panel and choose to see all, and everything is there. Click on programs in the Start menu and everything is there. So exactly what is there that's non-user friendly about the menus? And of course, I mean users who can actually click on things without hurting themselves.
And it's hardly a resource hog when my ancient computer can idle at 0-1% cpu usage and 15% ram usage with all the Windows 7 bells and whistles turned on. Vista sure as hell couldn't manage that.

And as someone who used XP from 2002 through 2008, I can also say from experience with both systems that Windows 7 is as fast, if not faster, than XP SP3.

[mphenterprises]

Okay, before this gets way out of hand, please keep all responses in line with the article and the Discussion title. This Discussion is regarding Windows 7. There are plenty of other current Discussions regarding other Operating Systems. Also, you can start your own Discussion by clicking here

Also, please note that personal attacks will not be tolerated and any personal attack posts will be edited or removed. If you have any questions, please feel free to review the {document:id=1000}.

[trancethomas]

I have to agree with the article, that most of the immediate things noticeable are eye candy. I too tested Windows 7 for about the same amount of time, and I was initially surprised that for a beta 1 release it ran as smooth as it did, and I personally thought explorer windows and Firefox opened much snappier than Vista Ultimate.

The new task bar in my opinion seems similar to a few Linux distros which is a nice change. The little button on the right of the task bar brings you back to your desktop, where in Linux it just removes the task bar as it slides to the right and out of the way. I was actually going to use it until the August deadline my installation key told me it was good for, "UNTIL".

I tried to use my favorite Dvd program,"NTI DVD Maker Platinum" and it told me it wasn't compatible, even when trying to run it in compatibility mode for XP sp2, and Vista.

Then my favorite Dvd authoring program,"Convert X to dvd" would open then freeze the system. I had to hold the power button until it shutdown and reboot everytime I tried to run Convert X to dvd. My only problem that caused me to reinstall Vista Ultimate, was that it froze up about 10 times a day. Sometimes when just opening a folder it would freeze, and I mean stay frozen until forcing a shutdown.

I then installed it on a HP Desktop with only a Pentiun 4, with 1 gig of ram, and a 250 gig harddrive, and it ran just as good surprisingly, but I still had the constant freezes. Also, I had to install Comodo Firewall in XP sp2 compatibility mode or else during installation it would almost finish, then roll back the install and quit. And Comodo is a must in my book. Anyway, other than the freezes, which are expected in a beta tester, and a few incompatibility issues with must have software it ran pretty well, better than I expected. And I am sure by final release these kinks will most likely be worked out. Oh yeah, and as far as the new lesser annoying UAC controls, I didn't like the fact that unless you turn it all the way off, the only thing different was that it wouldn't grey out the screen, but you would still get the annoying pop up by just lowering the security level.