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Windows
7 is finally here. Will it redeem
Microsoft's Vista-tarnished image? All
indications are that it will. The
hardware driver issues that plagued
Vista won't
recur, for the simple reason that
Windows 7 reuses the same deep plumbing
code that Vista did, and after nearly
three years, the incompatibilities have
actually been ironed out. In other
words, most of the drivers already
exist. Microsoft has also remedied the
other two big complaints about Vista:
its bloat and those obnoxious User
Account Controls. While the trend has
long been for new OSes to be bloated
with new goodies, Windows 7 actually
performs better and takes up less disk
space than its predecessor. Long story
short: I like Windows 7 a lot, and with
its new taskbar, user interface, and
home networking enhancements.
The new streaming media functionality, together with Windows 7's new taskbar, Device Stage, HomeGroup networking, and XP Mode make this Windows far more than a service pack for Vista—though the two operating systems share much underlying plumbing. That means we haven't seen the compatibility hassles we saw with Vista. But Windows 7's lighter system footprint makes for faster start-up and slightly faster performance. Cap all this with rock-steady reliability, and Microsoft may just have a winner.
Editions and Setup
There will be three editions of Windows
7 for sale: Home Premium ($119.99
upgrade, $199.99 full), Professional
($199.99 upgrade, $299.99 full), and
Ultimate ($219.99 upgrade, $319.99
full). Anyone with a valid copy of Vista
or XP is eligible for the upgrade price.
Most users will opt for one of the first
two, with Professional obviously suited
to workplaces and hard-core techie
users. Ultimate includes everything from
the other editions, but doesn't add much
more than the abilities to encrypt USB
drives and switch to any of 35
languages. (Gone are the "Ultimate
Extras" of Vista days.)
A fourth edition, Starter, will come preinstalled on some netbooks, but won't be available at retail outlets. Starter won't run eye candy like Aero Glass, though we have found most netbooks run regular Windows 7 well in PC Labs. The Home Basic edition, seen in Vista, is gone (in the United States—it will be made available in developing countries), so Home Premium is the only home choice. Note also that these are list prices, and you can expect to see markdowns as time passes. Also note that Microsoft offers a Student upgrade license for just $29.99, and PC part suppliers have already offered OEM versions, without all the packaging and support, for $99 (Home Premium), $134.99 (Professional), and $174.99 (Ultimate).
There will also be so-called "Anytime Upgrades" from the lower editions of Windows 7 to the higher editions. Upgrading from Starter to Home Premium will cost $79.99, from Home Premium to Professional will cost $89.99, and from Home Premium to Ultimate will cost $139.99. Finally, a Family Pack pricing option will allow installation of Windows 7 Home Premium on three PCs for $149.99—a pretty sweet deal compared to the individual licenses.
The operating system's install routine has new icons and a few splash screens ("Checking video performance," and so on) with a new starburst effect. Even the Starting Windows and log-on screens have gained a leafy, patterned background. The installation smartly wouldn't allow me to set up the OS while my laptop was unplugged. And the installer asks to look for updates on first run; I recommend agreeing to this.
If you want to do an upgrade installation, you must be running Vista SP1 or SP2 and have 12.9GB of free disk space. Remember, upgrade installation, in which all your programs and documents are maintained for the new OS, is only available to Vista users. Users of XP and other versions of Windows will have to choose Custom and do a "clean" install.
Installation
The installer can format or create new
partitions if you choose its Custom
choice. Installation took 30 minutes for
a machine that already had the release
candidate of Windows 7 installed, longer
than the 20 minutes RC took on a blank
partition. The installer copies programs
and data from the previous installation
to a "windows.old" directory, as Vista
did. Installing to a blank new partition
doesn't require that step, so
installation went faster, at 24
minutes—still slightly slower than
installing the RC took. But all of these
times beat the heck out of Vista's
minimum time requirement of 45 minutes
to an hour.
After a year of displaying the Siamese Fighting Fish, aka Betta (get it? Beta?), the central desktop image is now a redesigned Windows flag. One startup characteristic that disappoints me is that the sound is identical to Vista's startup sound. You'd think Microsoft would commission a new startup sound for such a hot new OS. The default theme of the interface has its own new look, yet Vista users will feel mostly at home. Even upgrading XP users will have little trouble with the UI, but neither will they be able to cling to the past.
Microsoft hired some pretty gifted artists to create images for new Themes, including Architecture, cartoonish characters, Landscapes, Nature, Scenes of whimsical art, and United States views. Basic and High Contrast options let you simplify the visual presentation for low-powered machines or no-nonsense-type users. There's even one that looks like Windows of long ago, called Classic. But there's no XP emulation Theme in Windows 7, as there is in Vista, although there is a Windows XP Mode in the Professional and higher versions that allow for XP emulation—more on that later.
When you start up the OS, you see some snazzy eye candy: colored glowing dots that become the Windows flag. The taskbar also has more noticeable changes.
In a nutshell, taskbar buttons are taller than before (although you can make them smaller again). You can choose whether to combine all instances of one app in one button or keep all separate, or to combine them only when space is short on the taskbar.
Taskbar buttons glow when you hover the mouse pointer over them, with related buttons glowing the same color. They also display side-by-side thumbnails with filenames of any documents the app has open, and full-size previews when you hover the mouse pointer over a thumbnail. Clicking a thumbnail opens the app, with the doc in question loaded. You can now move buttons to whatever position on the taskbar you like. Finally, an option lets you pin (or permanently set) a taskbar icon so that it's always present. That's a good thing, since Quick Launch icons have disappeared in Windows 7.
The Windows 7 Start menu is nearly identical to Vista's, except that applications can now display what's called a Jump List when you hover the mouse pointer over one's entry. This list presents a choice of the files and operations most recently and frequently opened and performed with that program. Note, however, that it works only for the large Start menu choice, not when you click on All Programs, and it only works for programs that specifically implement it. Another Start menu difference is in the options that appear to the right of the program list: Network and Connect to are gone, and a Devices and Printers choice has been added. Presumably, Microsoft now trusts users to visit the Network and Internet control panel for networking tasks.
Gone, too, is the Sidebar, although the gadgets that once lived in it can now float freely anywhere on the desktop. If your screen is covered with application windows, the new Desktop Peek function can reveal these gadgets by making all windows on the desktop transparent when you hover the mouse in the lower-right corner of the screen. I prefer the explicit nature of the Show Desktop icon in XP and Vista, rather than the nonintuitive clicking on the unmarked corner. I also found that occasionally all my windows would go away if I'd moved the cursor to the corner unintentionally.
Peek is known as an Aero Desktop Enhancement. Another such enhancement is the new behavior that maximizes a window when you drag it to the top of the screen. Drag it back down and it returns to its previous size. If your desktop gets cluttered and you want to focus on the one window you're looking at,"Shaking"—clicking on the top window bar and moving the mouse rapidly from side to side—minimizes all other windows on the screen.
Another Aero enhancement lets you move two windows to opposite sides of the screen to fill exactly half the screen with each. For this to work, you have to grab the title bar with the mouse pointer and drag it all the way to the edge of the screen. I'm not thrilled about dragging a window to the display's top edge to maximize it, but if you resize one just enough to hit the top or bottom edge, the window will maximize vertically only—quite useful. Double-clicking still maximizes the window, too.
Libraries
When you open Explorer windows in
Windows 7 (most likely from its
by-default pinned taskbar icon), you get
a new choice on the left side:
Libraries. These let you group related
files regardless of location, whether on
separate drives or networked PCs. Four
preset libraries are included:
Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos.
You can create as many new Libraries as
you like, and when you navigate to any
directory, an Include in library
selection at the top of the window lets
you add it to the library of your
choice.
One note: When in a library, you can arrange the contents not only by folder but also by date or tags. Letting people group content in ways defined by use rather than storage location is a move in the right direction. Still, Microsoft could even take it a step further by letting you create a library based completely on content type—say, all videos—rather than making you specify which folders should be included.
The UAC and Other Interruptions
The barrage of messages from User
Account Control (UAC) has been a
constant source of complaints about
Vista. Install a program or make any
kind of system-level change, and you get
interrupted. Microsoft designed UAC to
make Windows more secure by preventing
unwanted program installations and
system setting changes. The company
claims that, as a result, 60 percent
fewer malware infections have occurred
in Vista than in XP SP2. Maybe so, but
the feature seriously annoys users. You
can actually turn off these
interruptions in Vista, but that hasn't
stopped the chorus of disapproval.
Windows 7 aims to reduce the number of
actions that pop up the dialogs and give
you finer control over what triggers
them.
In the new UAC's settings panel is a four-position slider whose two ends are Always notify and Never notify. This won't solve all UAC annoyances, but at least it gives users more control than just "on" or "off." Another new Windows 7 strategy designed to reduce interruptions is the "Auto-Elevate" list—a whitelist for apps that are green-lighted to bypass UAC confirmations.
Windows 7 also reduces distractions from system tray notifications. The OS gives fine-grain control over what balloons a program pops up from this lower-right area of the screen. The icon area itself has been relieved of clutter. By default, you see only a few icons, with the rest accessible via an up arrow. If you like to see all the icons, however, you can set Windows to show them. You can turn icons on and off—even system icons like Clock, Volume, and Network icons. One new system tray entry, Action Center, takes over for the Security Center icon in previous Windows versions. Action Center also handles notifications from several other Windows features, including Updates, Backup, and UAC. Many will welcome the reduction of tray clutter. Personally, I prefer to see all the icons.
Microsoft has also modified a trait of the Vista shutdown button that confused some people. By default, clicking on the red "off sign" button in Vista put the computer into sleep mode. This allowed for a much quicker restart—a few seconds on some PCs. But users thought clicking the button would completely shut down the machine. Now there's no ambiguity left: Shutdown is the default, and only after clicking on the arrow next to it will you see sleep, hibernate, log out, and lock.
Security
The new UAC philosophy naturally has
security implications, and security guru
Neil J. Rubenking has produced a series
of articles addressing those and other
Windows 7 security considerations.
Security comes into play right from the
get-go—that is, at setup, and "Security
in Windows 7: Setup"
addresses this—particularly noting that
the OS lacks built-in antivirus
software, although its "Solution Center"
does grumble about the need for it, as
well as suggesting that you activate
automatic updates.
The firewall in Windows 7 has been much improved. It makes configuring home networks smoother and offers separate configuration settings for private (Home or Work) and public networks. Other security-related goodies in Windows 7 are discussed in "Security in Windows 7: BitLocker and More," including BitLocker To Go (encryption for removable drives), AppLocker, and System Restore. In general, the verdict is that security in Windows 7 has been tweaked and a few new niceties added, but it's not a quantum leap in strategy the way Vista was.
One final step Microsoft has taken to improve security is removing Autorun from non-optical drives connected to a PC. This prevents malicious code on a USB key from contaminating your PC by running when you insert it. The infamous Conficker worm has been known to use this method of infection. And the Engineering Windows 7 blog quotes a finding in a study by Forefront Client Security that "malware that can propagate via Autorun accounted for 17.7 percent of infections in the second half of 2008—the largest single category of malware infections."—
Device Manager
In addition to new icons, the aged
Device Manager and the Control Panel
have a versatile new jump list, as
you'll see if you right-click on their
Taskbar buttons. The Control Panel
itself gets a few minor tweaks. A new
View by menu appears beneath the Control
Panel search box. This lets you switch
from the default category view to a view
that shows all Control Panel items.
Many Control Panel options have been subsumed by the Devices and Printers control panel, or moved elsewhere in the OS. The ClearType Text Tuner, for instance, is still easily found in the Display control. Some of the changes are surprising, however. What's happened to SideShow? For anyone interested in this long-neglected technology, don't worry. I added a SideShow device to Windows 7 (a beta version of the now-canceled Ricavision remote control) and installed the drivers, and the Control Panel appeared. It seems that certain items are keyed to appear only if relevant—which makes sense.
Device Stage
Connecting devices to your PC and
getting what you want from them has
always been a pain. Connect a cell
phone, for example, and you have to
decide whether you're interested in the
music, contacts, or pictures. The
situation is the similar for other
devices, too. Many printers do fax and
scan, in addition to printing. Microsoft
Device Stage provides easier access to
all a device's capabilities.
For each device, the idea is that Device Stage shows a page with a picture of that exact piece of hardware and icons for all its capabilities. Manufacturers create the page in an XML format freely available from Microsoft. Media syncing between a phone and the PC is an example of a task Microsoft hopes Device Stage should make easier. As with Vista's initial driver problems, it's up to the hardware vendors to make this work. If they don't provide the data, a standard property dialog will display. If they do supply the data, everyone wins. But only time will tell if all the parties play ball. So far, I've had very little luck getting devices to present me with a lovely page of options on plug in—even new Windows Mobile phones (forget about my iPhone).
Another hardware-related feature is Windows 7's Bluetooth setup process. Just click on the Bluetooth system tray icon and choose "Add a device." When your phone or other device is discoverable, Windows generates a password to type into the device. If it's a keyboardless device, you can enter a code printed on a compatible device, or pair without a code (for things like mice). I tested the process this with an iPhone, and the pairing worked easily. I could then view my iPhone in Devices and Printers (accessible from the Start menu). That's a very cool setup system.
Designed for Touch from the Ground Up
Microsoft is betting that the future of
PC computing is touch, and has put a lot
of thought into making Windows 7 work
with it. I tried the touch interface on
an HP TouchSmart, and it's impressive,
although I initially had a little
trouble resizing pictures by pinching
and spreading two fingers. The OS can
pop up a mini-keyboard for "touch
typing"—something that points to
keyboardless tablets. I should note that
multitouch wasn't operational right
after OS installation; I had to download
and install additional drivers.
Touch-capable PCs that ship with Windows 7 will include Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7, a set of six multitouch-optimized applications and games designed to showcase Windows Touch in Windows 7. It consists of three casual games, and three Microsoft Surface applications that have been ported to Windows 7. Microsoft hasn't made the pack available for public download, but let's cross our fingers that it will soon. The included Globe app is particularly cool, letting you zoom in and out and spin it using multitouch.
One cool thing you can do is draw in Paint with two fingers at a time. When you touch the screen, the location where you touched it, or "touch point," can be represented by a mouse image. You can then click the left or right button of this virtual mouse, but I find it easier to use the default "water drop" feedback image when your finger touches the screen.
HomeGroup Comes to Networking
One goal of Windows 7 was to make home
networking simple enough for any user.
HomeGroup is the result. When you join a
wireless network, you can choose to set
it as home, work, or public. Choose the
first and you have the option of
creating a HomeGroup—provided you have
the right version of the OS. Note that
although any Windows 7 installation can
join a HomeGroup, the Home Basic (not
available in the U.S.) and Starter
editions can't create a HomeGroup.
Assuming you've got the right version,
you specify which libraries and devices
you want to share, and, when you hit
"Create now," Windows will generate a
password. Joining a HomeGroup with
another PC is a simple matter of
entering the HomeGroup's password in the
joining PC's network options.
A neat advantage of the HomeGroup feature is that if you move between work and home with your laptop, you won't mistakenly print that recipe Web page to your work printer from home. It automatically goes to your default home printer, since you're now connected to the HomeGroup. Making home networking this smart and simple to set up could really be a feather in Windows 7's cap.
In a smaller networking improvement, the new system tray networking icon also simplifies connecting to Wi-Fi. Clicking the icon pops up a window showing all available connections. This saves you from having to open the networking dialog and choose to show available wireless networks. It's a small touch, but it makes a lot of sense for the typical laptop usage scenario, where you might be shifting from network to network quite often.
More Media in More Places
Windows Media Center has gone through
dramatic changes between Windows Vista
and Windows 7. Eagle-eyed users will
note that PlayReady, Microsoft's new DRM
scheme for protecting recorded
television shows, gets updated to
version 1.3 (you can see this in the
Programs and Features control panel,
once Media Center installs). The
inclusion of Internet TV (still beta 2)
in the Guide is a big leap forward,
exposing even those without an
integrated TV tuner to the fun of
IP-based TV.
Despite the recent efforts to organize items under Movies, News, Sports, and other categories, content is too sparse; the hoped-for integration of Hulu, TV.com, and other IP-based TV doesn't exist. Yet. Netflix integration with Windows 7 Media Center, however, is a big plus, and Microsoft has hinted at more such announcements on the horizon. Microsoft's search engine Bing and MSN both play Hulu content, so it's not a stretch to expect the content to jump to Windows 7's Media Center.
DLNA technology, a standout feature of Windows 7, enables something neat for PCs connected on the same network. A contextual Play To menu item lets you send a video, photo, or song to another PC or device. But Play To is disabled by default. Enable it on one PC by choosing "Allow remote control of my Player" and you'll be able to send files to that PC from others on the same HomeGroup, either from Windows Media Player or by directly clicking a file in Windows Explorer. This worked impressively in my testing.
Unfortunately, Play To is a Windows Media Player technology, not a Windows Media Center technology, even though Center relies heavily on Player's capabilities. This means that, ostensibly for security purposes, the Play To menu exists only when both PCs have WMP actively running. I'd prefer the feature just start the player, since you're sending a tune or video to that machine on which you've allowed the remote playing.
Microsoft is also making it easier to access content remotely in WMP. One new feature that jumps out is the ability to allow access to home media via the Internet. From the Stream pull-down menu in WMP, select the option Allow Internet to home media..., from which you can link an online ID. At present, only Windows Live online IDs are recognized, and the feature doesn't work if you're a member of a network domain (this would usually only be the case in a workplace) or if the home computer is on a public network. For Windows Live IDs, you'll need to download the Windows Live ID Sign-in Assistant software (you'll be prompted).
Link your Windows account to the online account on two computers and you can access media stored on one PC across the Internet, by logging into the online account on the other. Take your laptop to the local coffee shop and you can remotely stream your music from your desktop PC at home. That media shows up as a shared library in WMP—assuming you've left your home computer on and running it.
Another area where WMP has seen improvement is in media file and codec support. Now it can play MOV files. Files it can't play, such as Apple's lossless M4A or H.263 MPEG-4, won't be displayed in its music or video view. In addition, WMP can resume playback from a hard drive after the OS returns from sleep.
One of the coolest possibilities of this codec support is that the OS will transcode media files on the fly as you drop, say, a movie file icon onto a video-capable MP3 player's icon. This was demonstrated at Computex this year, but support from device makers is critical—note that iPods aren't yet supported. The transcoding will also be able to take advantage of graphics hardware, although this means the graphics vendors need to add support to their own drivers. We haven't had a chance yet to test drag-and-drop transcoding, but look for future stories on Windows 7 media at PCMag.com.
Performance and Stability
In PC Labs' testing of Windows 7 over
the past few months, we've found the OS
to be rock solid. For performance
testing, I used the same 2-GHz dual-core
Intel laptop with partitions holding
Windows 7 and Vista, with
Windows Live Essentials
installed. In terms of start-up times,
Windows 7 started up significantly
faster than Vista, which took 1 minute
and 2 seconds, compared with Windows 7's
34 seconds. That's not surprising, given
that Microsoft has significantly cut the
number of system processes that start
with the OS and made other boot
optimizations. Shutdown speed, too, has
improved: Vista took 25 seconds,
compared with 16 seconds for Windows 7
on an identically configured machine. I
should note that these times actually
sped up after multiple tries—something
you'd be unlikely to see in Vista.
I also ran PCMark Vantage, one of the more realistic tests that runs through a bunch of tasks users might perform, such as viewing and editing photos, video, music, and other media, as well as gaming, communications, productivity, and security trials. The results should be taken with a grain of salt, since the test is intended specifically to benchmark-test hardware running on Vista. (But remember that Microsoft has said that Windows 7 should run everything Vista does.) On PCMark Vantage, where higher numbers are better, the Windows 7 scored 4,107 compared with Vista's 3,567. So the new OS's score was a 15 percent improvement over Vista's on a test that's not even approved to run on Windows 7!
I also ran the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, which tests Web browsers' speed in rendering JavaScript, but also reflects system speed. I found a nearly 14 percent speed increase from Vista to Windows 7 using Firefox, when comparing the browser that shipped with Vista, Internet Explorer 7, with Windows 7's IE8, I found a fivefold improvement.
One remaining performance consideration—and an unwelcome part of the Windows legacy—is that Windows 7 still uses the System Registry, often a major cause of slowdown because of installed programs and hardware drivers that fail to clean up their Registry entries. Microsoft has made some tweaks to how the Registry operates, but it remains to be seen whether the same system slowdowns result from it after long-term heavy PC use. Microsoft's Mike Angiulo, leader of the Windows PC Ecosystem and Planning team, didn't have a clear answer when asked if any mechanisms in Windows 7 combat Registry clutter.
Windows Live Essentials and Internet
Explorer 8
In an effort to trim disk requirements
and install times, Windows won't come
preloaded with an e-mail program for the
first time in a decade. Furthermore,
photo, video, and blog editing, along
with instant messaging, have been
offloaded to a download in the form of
Windows Live Essentials. The updated
apps you get there include a new look
for these apps and some spiffy features.
The Mail app, for example, lets you
aggregate all your POP or IMAP accounts
into one interface.
The Windows Live Web services have been updated with social-networking features, such as status updates from members you invite to your "network." Groups can share pictures and conversations using the Web services and Live Messenger. A key feature in the new Windows Live Hotmail lets you send pictures without clogging your contacts' inboxes, simply by storing the photos on Web servers instead. The Live apps aren't as slick as Apple's iLife apps, but in some cases the Live Services actually offer more. And free Web space is included, whereas with the Mac you have to pay a hundred bucks a year for a MobileMe account, which gets you pretty similar capabilities. Windows Live seems to me a far better deal on this score.
The OS does include IE8, which is a notable improvement over its predecessors. The browser delivers category-leading security and adds some pretty slick browsing aids, such as Web Slices and Accelerators. It defaults to a more standards-compliant mode but still offers a backward-compatibility button. A predictive address bar brings it closer to Firefox, but the lack of a download manager and robust extension ecosystem hold the browser back. For the first time in over a decade, the OS lets you completely uninstall the browser if you choose.
New Accessories
At Microsoft's Professional Developer
Conference last year, Windows head
honcho Steve Sinofsky joked that the
team decided that it would be a good
idea to update the Paint and Calculator
accessories at least once every 15
years. Accordingly, the two applets and
WordPad finally get a refresh that
includes the ribbon interface introduced
in Office
2007. Office's
ribbon takes some getting used to, but
in Paint it's pretty simple, making
cropping images and so on much easier.
The ribbon also makes a lot of sense if
you're using a touch interface.
The new Calculator adds Statistics and Programmer modes, and you can cut and paste from it—finally! Calculator also now has a history feature, so you won't have to redo entries you've closed and need again. Templates for common calculations like gas mileage, mortgage estimations, and leases have been added. Unit conversions are a snap now, too. The new accessories are long overdue, but welcome nevertheless.
Windows 7 for Businesses
New features in Windows 7 are not
relegated to those targeting personal
and individual users: There's a whole
lot in it for businesses, too, such as a
far more powerful PowerShell scripting
language, better tools for IT staff to
remotely service workers' PCs, and a
neat feature called DirectAccess that
lets employees access network servers
without having to install and log in to
a VPN.
Corporate IT departments also get control over which programs can run on Windows 7 systems using AppLocker—no more games from home on those corporate desktops. Finally, BitLocker can encrypt entire hard drives, and BitLocker to Go, does the same on removable USB flash drives.
Lucky Seven?
Despite some pundits claiming that
Windows 7 is no more than a Vista
service pack, there's a lot more to it
than that. Microsoft has certainly
addressed many of the complaints
surrounding Vista, such as the lack of
backward compatibility, the lengthy
start-up and install times, the broad
disk and memory footprint, and the
inability to remove IE. But the company
has also added a number of new interface
helpers that will make the new OS more
pleasurable and efficient to use. Figure
in improved performance and networking,
a smaller disk and memory footprint, and
slick handling of devices, and it's hard
to call this anything other than a
full-fledged new OS.
Windows 7's reduced footprint and improved performance on lower-powered machines would be enough to make it a better OS than its predecessor, and there's plenty more to like about the newest OS. I do wish Windows 7 had dropped the System Registry, which can slow down PCs over time. But it looks like Microsoft has made the right moves to turn around the Windows ship following its ill-fated Vista voyage. Now that it's here, I can say with confidence that Windows 7 lives up to its hype in the way that Windows Vista didn't. I recommend it highly: It's far and away the best OS we've ever seen from Microsoft.