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October 22nd, 2009 was a pretty big day for Microsoft. After the lukewarm reception (and in some cases, outright hatred) Windows Vista garnered when it was released 3 years prior, the worlds largest software vendor had another opportunity to set things right with Windows 7. Coming out of the gate, the critical reviews of the prior BETAs and release candidates were positive, if not outright impressive. Developer types who got their hands on the software early via MSDN or TechNet, as well as the technologically brave who were willing to take the plunge, also gave the new OS fairly high marks. Many claimed it was everything that Windows Vista wasn't, and this alone is what makes it so great. Is this really the case though, or is the "newness" of the product or perhaps the difference in Microsofts approach the true catalyst in winning folks back? Not being one to fully embrace second hand accounts from the web as fact, I just had to try out the new OS for myself. As has been the case with nearly every other Windows OS released in the last decade, I was at Best Buy on day one with credit card in hand.
After about a week of using it as my primary OS, I've found that Windows 7 is one of those rare cases where the most vocal of forum-going fanboys got it right for a change... Windows 7 is definitely a hit. The downside is that the most typically cited reasons for such enthusiasm are often misleading at best and in some cases, entirely incorrect.
The largest of Windows 7 proponents will blog that the new OS is "not Vista" and that alone makes it successful. By itself, this statement essentially forces the reader to think they are getting something with 7 that is radically different from the Vista experience. Throughout the overwhelming majority of the product, they are not and going forward, will not. This is ultimately a good thing, as none of the concepts behind Vista were significantly flawed to begin with.
The problem with Vista was that it became a transitional OS of sorts. It was never surprising to me that detractors made so many comparisons between it and Windows ME since they both share that same dubious distinction. Though the circumstances both OS's were subjected to were similar, a blind comparison overlooks the key difference between the two. Unlike Windows ME, where nearly all of the Win9X guts were scrapped in favor of the NT-code base for its successor, Windows 7 is nearly 100% carry over from what Vista had running under the hood. It's certainly tweaked, tuned, optimized, and assumingly running on more contemporary hardware, but it's still overwhelmingly Vista if you look just a little below the surface.
When you get there, you'll find that Windows 7 is an even more radical departure from XP than what Vista was. Case in point, at least Vista defaulted to the traditional taskbar system that, like XP, minimized your running programs into the tray with both icon and textual indicators readily visible. This has been a core function of Windows going as far back as 95. People are used to it and, while certainly not the most elegant of methodologies, recognize it instantly and know what to do with it.
Windows 7 does away with that concept almost entirely, effectively merging quick launch icons and the taskbar into one entity. Want to start a program that's not currently running? Simply click on the taskbar icon. Want to re-reference that same program running in the background? Click on that taskbar icon again and it will pop back into view. Multiple instances of a program are accessed via a "peek" view where the user can select which specific one to call up.
Ultimately, the marriage of the quick launch and task bars in Windows 7 is genius, leading to a much more intuitive and less cluttered interface. However, for those who hated Vista because it was "too different" from XP, Windows 7 certainly won't change their minds. In fact, it's difficult to argue that the migration from XP to 7 isn't more significant than the jump to Vista would've been. As can be expected, Vista users switching over to 7 will find that with the exception of the aforementioned task/quick launch bar merger, there are very few significant changes to speak of.
Another area that is often pointed to regarding 7's main advantages over Vista is that of performance. Vista was called out by nearly every detractor as a resource hog of the highest order. It took too much graphical horsepower, too much memory, and too much hard drive space to run when compared with XP. So how different is Windows 7, really?
The Vista Home Premium installation on one of my machines is a very clean configuration with literally no extraneous processes running in the background. After boot-up has settled down, this system uses about 650MB of RAM just sitting idle. Windows 7? Almost exactly the same amount. In both cases, this is literally 500MB more RAM than any of my XP installations.
The truth is, Windows 7 isn't any more or less of a "RAM hog" than Vista was. They both utilize memory better than XP ever did, but you still need more RAM than an equivalent XP box to realize those benefits. To that end, 2GB is still probably the sweet spot with 3 or 4 being optimal, particularly if you're running the 64-bit version. Running Windows 7 on a 1GB RAM machine (the minimum requirement) is definitely not for the impatient and not much different than the same experience under Windows Vista.
In the graphics department, 7 isn't Microsofts apology for its prior visual implementation in Vista either. The Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) is still here, just as it was in Vista and the same performance for stability compromise is in full effect. OpenGL-based games still take a noticeable performance hit (upwards of 20% or more) compared to an XP machine with the same hardware. The DirectX games I've tested (Far Cry 2, Ghostbusters, NFS:Undercover, and several other titles) all run comparable to Vista, but in some cases slightly slower than they would have under XP with equivalent hardware and image quality settings.
As for the Windows desktop itself, running with Aero enabled is still your best bet if you want those slick menu transitions and overall snappier response from the system. In contrast, running with the "basic" theme is almost as painful as running XP's non-accelerated interface. A PC running Windows 7 will need an upper low end or preferably a mid range DirectX 9.0 compliant graphics card to see any sort of appreciable performance upgrade. Not coincidently, this was a soft requirement for Vista as well.
With the CPU, a dual-core processor or at least one that supports Hyperthreading is pretty much a soft requirement as well. Windows 7 is much more "multiprocessor aware" than XP was. Many efficiencies in the Windows 7 OS are realized primarily because of a multi-core processor, not in lieu of upgrading to one. In fact, 7's abilities and enhancements in this realm are relatively comparable to... you guessed it... Vista.
On the subject of disk space, though 7 currently has a smaller installation footprint than Vista, its space requirements will climb just as those in previous Microsoft OS's have. After a service pack or two, don't be surprised to see consumed disk space for Windows 7 double or even triple compared to the "out of the box" installation. That's just the way Windows works. The more you update it, the bigger it gets. Vista started out as an 8GB install on day one for me too. Nearly three years later after various patches, hotfixes, and Service Pack installations it's currently eating up about 15GB. I'm sure over time, 7 will too.
So in the end, customers won't like Windows 7 because it's "not Vista", though they'll swear that's precisely the reason. They'll like it because it's a maturation and slight reformulation of the Vista platform with a heavy emphasis on user experience this time around. For me, Vista was always a capable OS even on day one. The worst thing I can say is that it leaned more towards raw concept rather than elegant execution. What was going on behind the scenes was always sound and represented where Windows needed to go to stay viable and competitive. However, much of this didn't bubble to the surface where your average user would notice just how relevant all those changes were. The fact that the hardware inside your typical consumer PC has "caught up" with what Windows 7/Vista is capable of will also be a major factor in shaping a more positive experience. The progression of hardware vendor driver compatability will also help transition users to Windows 7 less painfully.
To be sure, the biggest win for Windows 7 is clearly in its presentation. It "looks the part" a bit more and feels much less experimental than Vista was. I'm sure that's where the bulk of positive reviews are really coming from. Windows 7 is a great OS and a worthy buy, but what lays at its core is undeniably Vista... no matter what the bloggers and tech site reviewers may say.
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