Windows 7 Beta Review
I’ve been eager to give the Windows 7 Beta a workout following the demos I saw at CES.
My living room Media Center PC was an ideal candidate. It’s a three year old Pentium 4 which takes care of all our viewing, media and browsing needs on Windows XP Media Center 2005. Microsoft has claimed that Windows 7 is a streamlined OS capable of running on lower spec hardware than Vista, it’s time to see if that’s really true…
Test environment
For reference my PC is running a 2.93GHz P4 with 3GB DDR400 RAM, 500GB hard disk and a low end Geforce 7200GS. Not the most scintillating system by modern standards and probably equivalent to a $250 purchase these days from the refurbished inventory of e-tailers. The version of Windows 7 Beta I have is Build 7000. I’ll refer to it as W7B in this article.
Installations never go smoothly…or do they?
Installation was initially nerveracking but ultimately painless. Nerveracking because I had to split a live primary partition into two, to create a boot partition for the new OS. Painless because once Linux GParted had done its partitioning stuff, Windows 7 Beta installed in superfast time, restarting a couple of times and then it was done. I had backed up my XP partition to another drive just in case, but fortunately all went according to the masterplan and W7B automatically created a dual-boot environment for me. XP booted just like before and I so was all set for my W7B test.
Stopwatch at the ready
The first thing I noticed was a faster boot time. This could have been due to having a fresh install so I initially reserved judgement on that one. However now that three weeks has passed and I’ve installed everything I’m likely to for a while, the swift boot-up lives on. It’s not a life changing improvement but in the region of ten seconds faster than my XP boot sequence once all startup items have completed.
Sounding off
All navigation elements were very responsive: Aero, widgets and snap-to-edge all performed well with no lag. But then I noticed there was no sound. W7B had found my motherboard’s SPDIF output but did not configure it correctly. A quick internet search revealed the latest Vista drivers which duly solved the issue. In fact I now get proper Dolby transmission and far more signal reaching my amp, which means having to apply less gain within the amp therefore achieving a better signal-to-noise ratio than with my XP setup.
Taskbar implemented cum laude
Taskbar, oh glorious taskbar. So much has been written of thee already, what can I add? This really is a great addition in W7B, I can envisage how well it could work once the touch interface gets enabled on the full release. Seeing thumbnail representations of an application’s open windows is a fantastic browsing aid. Being able to jump into application functions directly from thumbnail menus takes everything a step further. Best of all, the thumbnails are dynamic representations so if you are waiting for a window to complete a certain action you can hover over its taskbar icon to view its progress in the thumbnail.
CPU and Resource Management
Having an older spec PC presented a good opportunity to see how W7B would cope with average resources. 
In the initial days following installation I noticed some frantic CPU and disk activity, which I traced to Windows Media Player cataloging my music and video collection. Once that was done, CPU activity became XP-like whilst memory allocation was definitely smarter.
Like Vista, W7B was able to address all 3GB of RAM whilst my 32-bit XP build was never capable of this. W7B also supports ReadyBoost so I threw in a 4GB SDHC card and dedicated the whole thing to the OS. That’s a cheap 4GB at $10, although ReadyBoost doesn’t make use of flash cards in quite the same way as conventional RAM. However the combination keeps my paging file to a minimum and I’ve not experienced memory crunches.
Windows Firewall
The versions of Windows Firewall built into XP and Vista were never taken too seriiously by the security fraternity due their inability to block outbound traffic. So whilst others had difficulty reaching your computer, your computer could reach others…which is a pretty big risk given the amount of nasty malware out there. The W7B Firewall changes all that with firewall rules configurable for incoming and outgoing traffic. This could seriously hurt the likes of ZoneAlarm and others, who have thrived to date on the weakness of Windows Firewall. I run ZoneAlarm on my XP partition, but I haven’t needed to download it for my W7B setup so far.
Internet TV & Media Center
Ever since the touchscreen demo of W7B Media Center I saw at CES, I’ve been aching to try out the integration of Internet TV in the EPG. Until now we’ve needed to open a browser, navigate to NBC’s website, find the news page, find the video page and then start streaming the news. W7B changes this by putting content from nbc.com (and many others) right into the EPG so it’s accessible from within Media Center with the remote control.
The demo of this looked awesome and it’s just as good in my living room. Content takes a little while longer to access than regular TV channels, but it’s a heck of a great feature and the integration is seamless. News, concerts, full episodes are all available and free to access with occasional advertisements for some content.
Snap-to-side
Throwing a widow to the side of the screen results in W7B automatically resizing it to fill half the screen. This makes comparing documents or images super easy. Throwing to the top maximizes the window. Again it’s easy to see how these small but useful enhancements will make life easier once the touch version gets released.
What’s needs work?
Hmmm…I haven’t found anything yet inherent in W7B which consistently fails. My sound sometimes cuts out following a video call, which could be a driver issue. My computer wakes from standby mode much more often than it did in XP, probably due to some strange service which I might not need to be running. Skype is not yet fully compatible. There’s also a registry fix out there for .msi installers which fail – I had an issue installing Office 2007 and when the installer failed W7B automatically downloaded the fix article from Microsoft’s knowledge base…finally intelligent context sensitive help has arrived. After following the instructions in the article to update the problematic registry entry the installer worked.
A game-changer for Microsoft?
Apart from that the whole experience has just worked superbly and I’m happily running W7B as my everyday environment now. The Beta version expires on August 1st, so perhaps this hints at the possible release timing of the full version. Remember that the release version will hopefully be touch-enabled, so that will be a whole new ball-game, and from what I’ve seen so far Microsoft could hit a home run with this one.
Neil Berman
theONbutton@CES – Windows 7 Beta new features hands-on
If you tried to download the Windows 7 Beta yesterday you may have been part of the huge demand which overwhelmed Microsoft’s download servers. Fear not, theONbutton is at hand with an exclusive video of many of the new Windows 7 Beta features to help you make up your mind…
Neil Berman
theONbutton@CES – MSI X320 differs from Macbook Air design by providing removable battery?
This is a shot of the underside of the MSI X320, which as we already know looks very very similar to the Macbook Air. However those of you salivating in anticipation of the X320 release may be even further encouraged by what appears to be a battery release catch. Thank you MSI for keepin it real and thinking of great design, real-life practicalities and the environment.
Neil Berman
theONbutton@CES – Blackberry Curve 8900 announced and fondled
Blackberry’s Curve has been a popular smartphone to date, balancing size, weight and features to good effect. The new Curve 8900 seeks to capitalize on its predecessor’s success, adding a 3.2MP camera, a Bold style screen and revised keyboard. The new Curve 8900 is due to be released in the US in February on T-Mobile, although with EDGE data only unlike the Bold which offers 3G on AT&T.
Gallery…
Neil Berman
theONbutton@CES – Palm Pre wins CNET Best In Show
Could this be Palm’s come-back moment? Click the images for close-ups.
Neil Berman
theONbutton@CES – Images of CES 2009
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- Panasonic SDR-SW21 Camcorder in fish tank
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- Casio dynamic photo
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- Sony HBH-IS800 ultralight stereo bluetooth headset
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- Sony flexible OLED
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- Nokia N97 received constant attention from onlookers
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- Asus Fold/Unfold design concept
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- One of two Lambos I spotted
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- Alan Mulally (Ford CEO) and Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) talking about Sync, which is getting a global rollout in 2010
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- Ford’s EVA in-car avatar concept, reading a news article from the internet
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- MSI’s ultrathin X320 (white design concept model)
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- Turning off the hard disk on the MSI U115, the solid state disk keeps going in the meantime
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- Hitachi gesture remote control
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- Samsung’s massive panel display
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- M&Ms want to be eaten
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- Looks like Coby is about to enter the netbook market…and has a few designs to choose from
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- Sony Vaio P unveiled
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- Sony OLED technology showcase
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- Screens everywhere in Sony’s booth
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- NBC Universal prepares a broadcast
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- LG’s 15″ AMOLED screen is just 0.85mm thin
Neil Berman
theONbutton@CES – MSI booth walking tour including X320 and U115
MSI’s X320 is about as close as you’ll ever see to a Macbook Air without an Apple logo on the back of the screen. When the lid is closed the laptop is a dead ringer for the Cupertino model, aside from MSI’s black and white color models which accompany the silver one. The X320 should be released in the US in Q2 this year for under $1,000, sporting an Intel Atom and 13″ screen.
The U115 hybrid has a SSD and a traditional hard drive as well for mass storage. The spinning hard drive can be turned off for extended battery life, MSI claims up to 12 hours of total usage.
Note that the white X320 in the video is a mock-up concept.
Neil Berman
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