Windows 7: Review

Although Windows 7 is not officially released to the public until October 22, 2009, it has been released to MSDN subscribers. The version that has been released and that I have been using is WIndows 7 RTM also known as release to manufacturing also known as going gold in which the operating system starts to become released to manufactures.

After using Windows 7 on multiple computers and making the switch from Windows Vista, I take the time to comment and consider whether or not the new Windows 7 is worth the upgrade.

Let me start out by saying that I was never impressed with Windows Vista. In fact, I still had Windows XP installed on both my laptop and my desktop computers. Recently, I built a new desktop and used Windows Vista Business 64 bit version for 3 weeks since Windows 7 had not yet been made available to me. Windows Vista is a memory hog and this was evident on my sister's Lenovo laptop with Windows Vista and 2 GB of ram.

The laptop just never worked well. It was slow, sluggish, and the boot time was even slow than my laptop running Windows XP. However, the technology and hardware in the Lenovo laptop was significantly better and newer by several years.

I formatted the hard drive, after backing up important files, on the Lenovo laptop and installed Windows 7 Professional 32 bit. From the get go I was very impressed with the speed improvement and less memory that was being used. The computer finally after all this time felt like it was working well. Now it is much quicker and I prefer using it over my laptop running Windows XP.

I also upgraded WIndows Vista 64 bit on my new desktop to Windows 7 64 bit, both professional versions. I was glad I could do the upgrade instead of the clean install which would have required me to format my hard drive and reinstall all programs. However, Windows 7 is picky about being able to upgrade. You can not upgrade from Windows XP and can only upgrade for certain versions. For example, I could not upgrade my sisters Lenovo laptop from WIndows Vista Home Basic 32 bit to Windows 7 Professional 32 bit. You should refer to the official Windows 7 upgrade chart to help avoid confusion and determine what you can do.

On my desktop I am running a 3 monitor setup, meaning I have 3 monitors side by side and I use all three of them to increase my productivity. However, it seems to me like he Engineers at Microsoft behind Windows 7 designed Windows 7 for users who only use 1 monitor. There are several major issues with using Windows 7 and multiple monitors. This has to do with the new GUI called Aero.

For example with Aero Shake, you quickly drag back and forth a window and this minimizes all other windows. Except it does this on all monitors, not just the one you are shaking on. Another example is with Aero Peek. This allows you to hover over the taskbar icon which brings up a thumbnail of the program. However, when you hover over the program thumbnail it minimizes the windows on all monitors again. This is extremely annoying. I ended up having to turn off Aero via right clicking on the Desktop, going to Personalize, and then selecting Windows 7 basic theme. The windows 7 engineers turned off the feature to disable thumbnail previews. Aero Snap also is annoying to use with multiple monitors as well. I was never able to drag a window to the left or right of one of the screens and have it only fill up half the screen, instead it would fill up the whole screen.

In addition I continue to have to use an external program in Windows 7 to help aid in multiple monitor support called UltraMon. UltraMon allows me to extend the Windows 7 taksbar to all of my monitors and also to have a separate desktop background for each monitor. Unfortunately these features were not implemented into Windows 7. It will take yet another Windows release before Microsoft starts to realize people use more than 1 monitor sometimes.

Another annoying thing about Windows 7 is the lack of a quick launch. You can add it back in but novice users may have some difficulty. It is very helpful to have the "show desktop" icon on the left of the screen. Windows 7 by default has a "show desktop" tab on the very far right of the screen. However, I rarely ever drag my mouse to the bottom right of the primary display and doubt most users will as well. There is no option to move the default show desktop tab.

All in all Windows 7 does offer some nice visual improvements. Numerous free themes and stunning backgrounds are provided for free and for free via download. A nice touch is desktop wallpapers that rotate and change besides just using 1 all of the time or having to set up more than 1.

Windows 7 also certainly does use less memory than Windows Vista and seems to be faster in everyday use. It is certainly highly recommended for anyone running Windows Vista on a laptop with around 2 GB of memory. If you are still running Windows XP it may be time to make the switch to the newest and greatest Windows Operating System yet. Although you should check the system requirements and I would recommend having over 1 GB of RAM. Windows XP still can get the job done though so it is not essential to make the upgrade to Windows 7. However, if you are running modern hardware and want to use a 64 bit version of Windows and thus more than 3 GB of RAM, Windows 7 is the way to go.