Vista’s successor: Windows 7
Today I downloaded the first beta of Windows 7. I was wondering how this new Windows version performed when running under VMWare (Using 1 GB of ram and 20GB HDD). The first problem started when I wanted to download the ISO image of the beta. I am using Firefox for OSX and the according to the Microsoft site I needed to install Silverlight (I guess this is the way they want to push Silverlight into the market). I downloaded Silverlight and installed it on my Mac, restarted the browser and still no Silverlight detected…
Installation process
Next thing to do was launching Safari. Safari did not give an error on Silverlight, but started to run into an infinite Ajax call. I guess OSX is not the platform to download the Windows 7 ISO. My final thought was to startup my Windows Vista VMWare pc. Even on Windows Firefox did not work to download the ISO. Then finally when using Internet Explorer 8, I managed to open the website. When I clicked the download button I first needed an Akamai downloader component to install (Grrrrr). Ok component installed, and then waiting for the 2.4GB to come in…
Finally I got the ISO and started to install Windows 7 on my virtual machine. Within 30 minutes of copying data I was ready to launch my brand new operating system: Windows 7.
The first thing I noticed was speed. I use VMWare with Windows Vista and Visual Studio Express and sometimes it is really slow. Windows 7 feels a lot more responsive. Weird things happened when using this beta as well. I tried to change the screensaver and while browsing through the screensavers my whole system hung. Unlucky me…Another nice thing is the new taskbar. The current Windows taskbar can be filled in no-time when a lot application windows are open. The new taskbar uses a system where the application icon shows in the taskbar and all windows are listed when hovering the icon (see image below).
Taskbar
Summarized Windows 7 looks very promising compared to Windows Vista. Though I did not use it very heavily the speed surprises me. This immediately makes me wondering why they did not implement this speed boost in Windows Vista. The coming weeks I will use this beta according with Visual Studio Express for software development, in order to see how fast it is when heavily used.
A detailed review of Windows 7 can be found at http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/windows-7-beta.ars
Login window
Installing updates
My brand new desktop
Sooo, now you basically have KDE with a windows stamp on it and without the *nix base?
Well, I do not see the similarity between Windows 7 and KDE yet? Ok, it has a blue look and nifty icons, but beside that?