windows 7 first impressions and short review
First impression: what?
Review: Blue Screen of Death. Boots faster.
Ok, so the BSOD might be caused by the fact the software is beta or maybe my hardware made it unhappy.
The install was super easy and about 100x faster than previous windows installers, which seemed to function near their own black holes. Post install, most of the MBPs hardware was already set up, and the boot camp installer screwed the pooch, so i did a system restore (which worked).
The interface is basically exactly the same as XP, except that in their attempt to streamline things like preferences, they've made it maddeningly difficult to find what you're looking for. The "dock" is the same ole windows crap. It has no cool animations.
The start menu basically sucks just like it always did - requires at least 3 clicks to find what you want and a lot of navigation through menus which are poorly ordered.
I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to show the "My Computer" icon on the desktop and gave up.
They made changing the screen resolution easier.
Performance: TF2 seems like it might be running a little faster, but I didn't bench it. The OS boots and shuts down faster and when it loads its more or less ready to go. It seems like it multitasks about 1/10th as well as OSX, as even one app (like firefox) seems to kill the others. The look of the OS is better than the default XP crap, but still just bizarre. Why is there like a 10 pixel border around windows? What's up with the ugly buttons all over the place? The whole system is still lacking from an integrated look, which really helps OSX just look better.
I had a bunch of times when I had windows pop behind other windows that I needed to move everything out of the way in order to proceed. "Do you want to install this?" Kind of warnings, which I COULDN'T SEE!
This is the first OS I've used by M$ since XP, and frankly, if I paid for it, I'd feel totally ripped off. Even with the marginal performance benefits, I can't see paying money for this over XP.
What a POS. Maybe the final one will be better. This one is marginal.
For the record, I'd rather like it if M$ would make an OS that didn't suck because so many people use it, they think that computers should work like shit. W7 is a step forward, which puts them right where they were 8 years ago when XP came out.
So sad.
Review: Blue Screen of Death. Boots faster.
Ok, so the BSOD might be caused by the fact the software is beta or maybe my hardware made it unhappy.
The install was super easy and about 100x faster than previous windows installers, which seemed to function near their own black holes. Post install, most of the MBPs hardware was already set up, and the boot camp installer screwed the pooch, so i did a system restore (which worked).
The interface is basically exactly the same as XP, except that in their attempt to streamline things like preferences, they've made it maddeningly difficult to find what you're looking for. The "dock" is the same ole windows crap. It has no cool animations.
The start menu basically sucks just like it always did - requires at least 3 clicks to find what you want and a lot of navigation through menus which are poorly ordered.
I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to show the "My Computer" icon on the desktop and gave up.
They made changing the screen resolution easier.
Performance: TF2 seems like it might be running a little faster, but I didn't bench it. The OS boots and shuts down faster and when it loads its more or less ready to go. It seems like it multitasks about 1/10th as well as OSX, as even one app (like firefox) seems to kill the others. The look of the OS is better than the default XP crap, but still just bizarre. Why is there like a 10 pixel border around windows? What's up with the ugly buttons all over the place? The whole system is still lacking from an integrated look, which really helps OSX just look better.
I had a bunch of times when I had windows pop behind other windows that I needed to move everything out of the way in order to proceed. "Do you want to install this?" Kind of warnings, which I COULDN'T SEE!
This is the first OS I've used by M$ since XP, and frankly, if I paid for it, I'd feel totally ripped off. Even with the marginal performance benefits, I can't see paying money for this over XP.
What a POS. Maybe the final one will be better. This one is marginal.
For the record, I'd rather like it if M$ would make an OS that didn't suck because so many people use it, they think that computers should work like shit. W7 is a step forward, which puts them right where they were 8 years ago when XP came out.
So sad.
Comments
... Vista and Windows 7 use NTFS, so the idea of using FAT-32 and being able to read and write to the Boot Camp partition from Mac OS X will not happen without XP. ...
There are both commercial and freeware NTFS drivers available for MacOS X.
When someone uses the term M$ it pretty much ruins the review for me.
Microsoft's pricing deserves a $ in their name. It is not just a question of charging for software, but when you scale up to their enterprise solutions and decide on per-cpu, per-user, CAL, etc. you will appreciate their ability to rip people off. The only thing keeping them in check is the surge of open alternatives. OS X isn't free, but at least the server's pricing is sane.
When someone uses the term M$ it pretty much ruins the review for me. Everything seems biased from then on no matter what's being said. Apple$ able to charge too you know. Your review is way too one sided, but moreso the 'tone' of it. It sounds like you wanted to review to be bad from the start. We need to be realistic about the whole OS situation right now. Windows will never be OS X because it's not.
I was really expecting windows 7 to be a lot better. Given the amount of time and money spent since XP came out, I was hoping for something good.
Win 7 is about the same as XP from what I could see.
Microsoft (notice the highly referential tone) has pissed me off in my life more than any other company. Simply from their sheer hatred of their users, my reviews will always give them a hard time.
There's my bias - take the rest of it with a grain of salt if you want.
RE: Leopard bootcamp installer - when i installed apple's bluetooth and sound drivers, both things stopped working. The sound was fixed by finding the driver online and installing it manually. I got sidetracked for awhile b/c i thought i had realtek sound but i had the other one.