WINDOWS 7 PREVIEW

Written by Paul Qureshi

With Windows 7 due out in October, I have been testing out the pre-release version which is actually identical to the version that will ship. You can download it until August 20th here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/download.aspx

you can then run it for free until June 1st 2010.

Initial impressions are very positive. Windows 7 is very polished, with all the annoying and badly designed bits having been fixed. The much hated User Account Control (where the screen goes dark with a big but unhelpful warning message every time you want to make a significant change to the system) has been toned down a lot, and in fact you can now decide what it warns you about.

Little niggles like the "Eject removable drive" icon you use before pulling out your USB memory stick being generally unhelpful and popping up a window in the middle of the screen have been fixed. The "tiny power button that isn't actually a power button" on the Vista start menu has been replaced by a big one which just shuts down your computer.

The Aero interface itself (the flashy effects on windows) has been vastly improved too. Even on fairly low end hardware, such as the GeForce MX440 I tried, it is smooth and many of the effects work. On a current entry level card everything looks nice and you don't get any of the glitches that Vista was prone to. Everything is responsive and fits together nicely.

The new task bar is the most obvious change from Vista. It's completely redesigned, and works well. By default, the task bar has a start button (similar to the Vista one) and some icons for often used programs, and then on the right hand side the "system tray" with some icons and the time/date.

The program icons can be used to start those programs, but they also double up as a way to access all the windows opened by that program. If you look at the picture, you can see that behind the Internet Explorer "E" icon there are another couple of panes of glass to indicate three opened windows. Hovering the mouse over the icon gives you the preview of all the windows you can see above the task bar. Programs can customise the way that works, so for example Internet Explorer can show you not only different windows but also different tabs.

There is a really big shift in design here. Before, icons on the task bar were for showing open windows. Now, they are for showing programs. There is no distinction between programs that are running, and ones which are not running but have icons pinned to the task bar. It's a lot more like a Mac, and it makes sense when you start using it.

Another nice feature is that you can now choose which icons appear in the system tray. Before, Windows would just try to guess which ones you want to see based on how often you clicked them, but now you can just tell it.

There are also some other nice additions to the desktop, such as being able to slide the pointer upwards on an icon to access a little menu of common tasks such as closing the program or making it fill the screen. Again, when you realise you can do it on a touch screen, much like the iPhone, it seems like a good idea. By dragging a window to the edges of the screen you can make it fill either the left or right half of it, which is very handy if you have a widescreen monitor and want two windows side by side.

Windows 7 runs remarkably well on low end hardware too. A laptop with 1GB RAM and an average CPU such as an Intel Atom runs it very well. Some people seem to think that 1GB RAM is a lot, but 1GB RAM modules cost less than £10 now so Windows 7 actually has much lower requirements, relatively speaking, than say XP which really needed 512MB that cost around £45 per module back in 2002. Windows 7 also has better support for the Solid State Drives found in some laptops, although I have not tested it.

For laptops without a DVD drive, you can install Windows 7 from a USB flash drive. Also, you can create your own restore DVDs or flash drive with the new Windows Backup software provided. The whole install system changed dramatically with Vista, and it's still a bit early to tell how much has changed in Windows 7.

Now, a word about the different editions of Windows 7. Vista was criticised for having too many versions, and at first glance it may seem that Windows 7 is the same. However, many of the versions will only be available in "emerging" economies, i.e. not in Europe. There are three versions available here:

1. Home Premium. The main version for consumers, it has all the fancy visual effects and things like Media Centre and support for touch screens.

2. Professional. Business oriented. It includes everything in Home Premium, as well as support for business networks (domains), remote desktop and Windows XP Mode.

3. Enterprise. Similar to Professional, but only available in bulk to large businesses and including some interesting extras such as hard drive encryption and a multilingual interface (presumably meaning you can change the system to another language, which only Vista Ultimate could do).

4. Ultimate. Similar to Vista Ultimate, it basically has everything. Available to anyone.

As with Vista, you can pay to upgrade to a higher version any time you like.

There is also the European edition ("E edition"). Because the EU does not want Microsoft to have a monopoly on web browsers, Microsoft are planning to include a choice of browser. This will most likely mean that when you install Windows 7, it asks you to pick a browser from a list which will include at least Firefox, Opera and Google Chrome. Big computer manufacturers will be able to override this choice, and it will be interesting to see what choices they make. Internet Explorer is familiar (sort of, everything moved again in IE8), but Firefox or Chrome would be much more secure and cut down on support calls from irate customers.

Regards,
Paul