Windows 7: Let's See How It Runs

I wasn't sure if I should mark this OT or not. I didn't run it on Dell
hardware, the Dimension 2400 is busy with other stuff and I didn't
want to take it down for this.

In case you're wondering, I wanted to be particularly mean to Windows
7, just to put Microsoft's claims of vastly improved performance (even
for Beta 1) to the ultimate test*.

So I chose similar hardware in the form of a Compaq Evo D510 SFF, with
the following specs:

Intel 845 Chipset and Integrated Video
Hitachi 500GB hard disk (yes, the machine has 48-bit LBA support in
its BIOS...)
1GB DDR400 RAM (the minimum said to be required for the beta, the
machine will support more)
Integrated sound, USB 2.0, a Lightscribe DVD burner, a SATA PCI card
(unused for now) and a Firewire 400 card round out the hardware.

On to the installation! (You may want to take this opportunity to sit
down, and place any beverages safely away from your computer. I've
warned you.)

Windows 7 Beta 1, from first startup screen to last confirmation of
details (user name, computer name, product key, etc.) installed itself
*completely* within 18 minutes.

Yes, you read that correctly.

I haven't gotten very far with the UI yet, but I have a few initial
observations:

1. The speed is just about night and day over Vista. My only "regular
use" Vista machine is an Athlon 2500XP-based system built in 2004. And
ironically enough, it is the best performing Vista system I've ever
seen. (To be fair, I have not seen any ridiculously powerful
firebreathing game stations. The comparison is amongst both bargain
basement and pretty darn respectable upper-mid-range machines.) Most
things are snappy, boot up time is fast and I haven't yet noticed the
grinding, grinding, grinding of the hard drive that Vista seemed to
enjoy doing so much.

RAM use with only the control panel open was steady at 420MB or so.

Internet Explorer 8 loaded and came into working order in an
acceptable amount of time. It was a little draggy in the process of
getting started, but it smoothed out once everything had loaded. It
took about 30 seconds to run IE8 the first time.

2. The UI...well, I still don't really like it. There are some
interesting features. You can drag a window to the left or right edge
of the screen, and a blue highlight appears. If you release the
window, it expands to fill the blue outline. Kind of a neat idea. It
also works to maximize windows if you move them all the way to the top
of the screen. Surprisingly, moving them to the bottom doesn't do
anything. (I'd have expected it to minimize the window.)

My real complaint is with the Control Panel, and while some of it is
due to the unfamiliarity of the UI, things are nested a little too
deeply. It took more effort than it should to change the wallpaper.
Finding the Device Manager took a lot of looking around, although I
had a vague idea of where it should be.

The taskbar is interesting. Programs minimize to be icons, instead of
buttons with icons and names. I suspect there may be something that
pops up a shrunken view of the window like Vista had, but it doesn't
show up on non-Aero capable graphics hardware.

Bundled apps like Wordpad and Paint have the ribbon UI. I don't like
it. I didn't see any ribbons in Explorer windows, although the
toolbars are still stupid.

3. Oh, and the hardware. Most everything worked out of the box. The
only two problem areas are the sound (which is curious to say the
least--it's nothing more than a SoundMAX codec) and the SATA PCI card
(not so surprising).

The machine scored as follows on the Windows Performance Index: (7.9
maximum)

Processor 3.1
RAM 3.1
Graphics 1.0 (unsurprising)
Gaming Graphics 1.0 (also unsurprising)
Primary Hard Drive 5.9 (*very* surprising -- it's a PATA/100 drive!)

Well, all things considered...this went a lot better than I thought it
would. I'm willing to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt
here...it seems that they have addressed the Vista performance
concerns and not done too badly at it. And it's even pretty stable so
far. Using Vista for this long, I would have surely received some kind
of "Stopped Working" error. Windows 7 has yet to give me one of those.

Clearly, I'll have to find something more minimal and try to be
meaner. I think I just found something to try with my Dell Precision
220 workstation. (It meets the minimum RAM and CPU requirements!)

I also plan to try the Atom on the D945GCLF and GCLF2 Intel Desktop
boards, the Celeron 220 on the D201GLY2, and the 64-bit version of
Windows 7.

I do plan to go a little deeper. This was just a very brief look at
the Windows 7 beta 1 release. I'll try more hardware and some
additional software just to see what happens.

William

Oh, drat. I forgot the footnote:

* The Compaq Evo D510SFF used in this production (!!!) dates to very
late 2002 from the date codes on various motherboard parts and the
case. I don't think it gets any more hardcore than that!

William

* The Compaq Evo D510SFF used in this production (!!!) dates to very
late 2002 from the date codes on various motherboard parts and the
case. I don't think it gets any more hardcore than that!

And they still didn't include the drivers in the OS ? hehehe

William R. Walsh wrote:
I wasn't sure if I should mark this OT or not. I didn't run it on Dell
hardware, the Dimension 2400 is busy with other stuff and I didn't
want to take it down for this.
SNIP

I loaded it on Dimension 9100 with 3 gigs of RAM and Pentium D
processor. Took about the same 18 minutes you got but needed no updates
at all. Every driver for every piece of hardware was there.

I've gone on record as being a fan of Vista (on the right hardware) so
take my initial impressions as you may.

There's some serious potential here. I had Vista on this machine and it
was, let's say, not spectacular. With Windows 7 it's pretty darn peppy.
It's boots very quickly as well.

I'll be playing around with it for a while but I really like the new
task bar. Full previews pop up when you mouse over them.

The apps I've installed so far (Creative Suite 4) seem to run okay as
does AVG Free. UAC has been expanded to allow the user to choose what
type of actions to be nagged about.

Networking is a piece of cake...in fact there's nothing to do, it just
works.

All in all...so far, so good.

Bob

On Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:30:32 -0800 (PST), "William R. Walsh"
wrote:

I do plan to go a little deeper. This was just a very brief look at
the Windows 7 beta 1 release. I'll try more hardware and some
additional software just to see what happens.

William

Thanks for your excellent review! I am glad to hear that from a
performance standpoint things seem to be good.

My first impression after looking at the MS beta page videos is that
at least MS is adding some value to this next release rather than just
eye candy.

I think it will make sharing data easier for consumers, both on a home
network, and on the free 25 GB of storage.

Providing the online storage, accessible through a Windows Live ID,
also may move MS into a more competitive position with search engines,
Instant Messaging, and other online services.

I volunteer as a "computer person" for some small organizations that
mostly have consumers at the lower end of technical expertise. I
could see them learning and using the MS vocabulary to ask someone to
share files. The learning curve doesn't seem to be that much.

Being in both the PC and Mac worlds, I naturally think of how Windows
7 might affect the competition between the two OS's. I think that if
Windows is "good enough", and "simple enough" and "fun enough", even
if it's not as good as what Apple's OS will be when Windows 7 is out
price is a major factor for consumers and Windows will have the
advantage there. A lot is riding on Windows 7 for MS, and from what I
see, if they follow through then it would be hard for me to recommend
a significantly higher costing Mac computer if the total cost of
ownership is in favor of Windows.

The question will be whether Apple can innovate in a way that will
"Wow" consumers more than Windows. Time will tell. I will likely be
in both worlds, and likely prefer the Mac, but that doesn't mean I
would recommend a Mac to most of my friends who may not benefit from
any advantages the Mac might have.

I don't know if the Windows 7 beta can be run virtually on a Mac using
VMWare Fusion or Parallels, but I intend to find out and will be able
to give my own impressions of Windows 7. If not I'll dedicate one of
the hard drives of my XPS 410 to the beta and run it that way.

Thanks again for the good initial review.

journey wrote:

The question will be whether Apple can innovate in a way that will
"Wow" consumers more than Windows. Time will tell. I will likely be
in both worlds, and likely prefer the Mac, but that doesn't mean I
would recommend a Mac to most of my friends who may not benefit from
any advantages the Mac might have.

Snow Leopard will be Apple's version of Windows 7. More concentration on
improving what's there rather than making revolutionary changes. I think
both companies have finally realized that they need to fix what's broken
before trying to invent new broken things.

Bob

Hi!

And they still didn't include the drivers in the OS ?
hehehe

I found it surprising, but in the interest of being fair--obviously
it's still a beta, maybe Analog Devices has to provide the drivers (I
already dislike the SoundMAX for a variety of reasons), and it was the
only piece of hardware that didn't work.

The SATA board is a Silicon Image SteelVine based unit, and I'd
believe that Silicon Image just hasn't gotten around to writing
Windows 7 drivers for it. I haven't checked that.

William

Bob Levine wrote:
journey wrote:

The question will be whether Apple can innovate in a way that will
"Wow" consumers more than Windows. Time will tell. I will likely be
in both worlds, and likely prefer the Mac, but that doesn't mean I
would recommend a Mac to most of my friends who may not benefit from
any advantages the Mac might have.

Snow Leopard will be Apple's version of Windows 7. More concentration on
improving what's there rather than making revolutionary changes. I think
both companies have finally realized that they need to fix what's broken
before trying to invent new broken things.

Bob

"fix what's broken before trying to invent new broken things." You need
to copyright that one! Perfect! Just as important, rather than all the
glitz and upside-down new user interfaces (e.g. Office 2007), how about
the industry figures out what else can be done to make people more
productive, spending less time waiting for the information they really
need? It's not just operating systems per se. It's Windows Update,
which breaks all too often. It's all the garbage that comes up on web
sites to sell you something you don't need or to tell you more than you
ever want to know by feeding worthless facts. Exhibit A is
www.charter.net , which I am expected to use as my "portal" to the web,
except for one thing. www.charter.net is slower than watching a maple
syrup bucket fill up here in New England, with all the news about the
rich and famous, little videos playing in small windows advertising TV
shows, complicated multi-layered graphics, and ads for dildoes and other
stuff I do not ever want to buy. They expect me to use it to read my
web mail, and I do not have enough hours in the day to click through to
my email login. So I use the lean and mean mail2web, highly recommended
for reading one's email when out of the office or whatever.

We're in an era of lean economic times. Lean and mean software is what
we need... Ben Myers

Hi!

Thanks for your excellent review!

You are certainly welcome. Thank you for reading it.

I am glad to hear that from a performance standpoint things
seem to be good.

You may want to stay tuned. I have intentions of putting Windows 7 on
even "lesser" hardware to see how it runs.

I think it will make sharing data easier for consumers, both
on a home network, and on the free 25 GB of storage.

I'm not sure if the end user really has a hard time sharing data.
There is some learning curve, of course. However, it seems like they
do manage reasonably well. Technology has made this easier, with e-
mail attachments, web sites that exist solely for the purpose of
sending files (Yousendit comes to mind), and large capacity removable
storage devices (a fancy-pants way of saying "USB memory key").

Online storage doesn't matter to me. I just wouldn't trust it, and
nothing would make me do so. This is probably due to a number of
different factors:

1. I remember the first .com bust. (Microsoft is arguably not a ".com"
but who knows if they farm the service out to someone?)

2. If the operation is closed down or cancelled, what happens to the
data storage devices used, and what happens to users who didn't get
their data out?

3. In the course of providing the service, what happens to the disks
that die or fail? How are they discarded? I'd like to think that the
data is encrypted or otherwise protected, but who knows? I have picked
up way too many computers from the curb and businesses that were *not*
purged of all information, not even superficially.

Providing the online storage, accessible through a Windows
Live ID, also may move MS into a more competitive position
with search engines, Instant Messaging, and other online
services.

I don't see that happening on a large scale. Presence with the
operating system will sway some people. I think that most people will
stick with what they know. Even many people fairly unfamiliar with
computers still know what "Google" and "Yahoo" mean (for example).

And the integration may just plant Microsoft into the anti-trust
courts once again.

I could see them learning and using the MS vocabulary to
ask someone to share files.

To a certain extent, I feel that people already do that. Windows has
done a lot (good or bad is up to the reader to decide) to shape how
people refer to actions on a computer.

Being in both the PC and Mac worlds, I naturally think of
how Windows 7 might affect the competition between the
two OS's.

I think that if Windows is "good enough", and "simple enough"
and "fun enough", even if it's not as good as what Apple's OS
will be when Windows 7 is out price is a major factor for
consumers and Windows will have the advantage there.

I would differ with you on that point. Vista has had lots of bad
press, and fairly or unfairly it has biased people, sometimes against
it.

Microsoft is going to have to produce a version of Windows that isn't
just "good". It will have to be excellent. I do believe they can do
it. I would strongly believe that they can't stand another "flop" for
a Windows release.

A lot is riding on Windows 7 for MS, and from what I see, if
they follow through then it would be hard for me to recommend
a significantly higher costing Mac computer if the total cost
of ownership is in favor of Windows.

I've never been sure that the Mac is the more costly option, other
than in the terms of the initial price of admission. (There are ways
around that, such as the Mac mini.)

I stand by what I said in:
http://greyghost.mooo.com/mmreview/
and http://greyghost.mooo.com/mmintelreview/
concerning the cost of a Mac as compared to a PC.

(Yes, the "Pentium" bit should be corrected in the Intel review.)

I don't know if the Windows 7 beta can be run virtually on
a Mac using VMWare Fusion or Parallels, but I intend to
find out and will be able to give my own impressions of
Windows 7.

If Windows 7 runs on a Pentium 4 at 2.4GHz, I see no reason why it
couldn't be virtualized*.

William

* Only two things would stand in the way--the EULA and the fact that
some virtualization platforms take shortcuts in their emulation of an
x86-based PC.

Update: The sound and SATA are now working.

I could not find any suitable Windows 7 drivers for the Sil3512 SATA
chipset and SoundMAX integrated audio. So I was stuck for a while,
until I happened to notice that the ability for Windows 7 to search
Windows Update for drivers was turned off.

When I turned that on, not only did Windows Update deliver working
drivers without intervention (!!!!), it also quietly and quickly
installed them. The end result is two hardware devices that now work
perfectly.

William