Windows 7 review

Windows 7 is Microsoft's next installment in its popular Windows 7 family range. It was released worldwide on the 22nd of October this year. As we all know, it is the successor to the highly criticized Windows Vista. Its predecessor had garnered negative reviews throughout the world because of its long load times, slow performance, high system requirements, compatibility issues with other applications, unwanted user administrative control restrictions, its lack of new features to justify a standalone OS, and the plethora of bugs which plagues computers worldwide. After the reception received by Vista, Microsoft went back to the drawing boards with the aim to rectify all its mistakes and create an OS which was worth the money spent by users. It aimed at correcting all the problems caused by Vista and make an OS which was scalable and which would cater to the needs of one and all. And the result is Windows 7 which in my book is the best OS Microsoft has ever released.

The system used to review Windows 7 is a mid range system by todays standards.

* System
CPU - Intel Core 2 Quad 9400 2.66 ghz.
RAM - 2048 * 2 Kingston.
Video - Nvidia 8800 GTX 768 mb DDR3

Now we will see the features and functionality of the OS one by one.

* Installation:-
Windows XP as i vividly remember took around 33 minutes to install and another 5 minutes for first boot. Vista took around 45 minutes to 1 hour to install and another 15 minutes for first boot. In contrast Windows 7 took me only 11 minutes to install and first boot. Microsoft really has hit the nail on the head this time.

* Startup
Windows 7 booted up with all my graphics, sound, chipset and LAN drivers installed. This is the first time that i installed an OS and didn't have to spend 2 hours downloading drivers from the net and manually installing them. Windows 7 includes drivers for older systems as well as newer systems. It includes the latest drivers for most video cards and also detects network devices and installs drivers for them. If it does not contain a driver for a particular device, it prompts you to connect to the internet, and once it has access to the internet it downloads and installs the latest driver for that device. A very nice crowd pleaser i must say.

* Performance
The performance of Windows 7 has been greatly improved over that of Vista and to some extent even XP. It boots up faster as we said before. It runs much smoother than Vista. It navigates through the explorer at a much faster rate. Even if it is under load still it will be smooth to operate with no hangups at all. I tried running 2 heavy duty games simultaneously, ALT + TAB'ed my way to the desktop, and tried playing a song. It started playing almost immediately with no hiccup's. Even the games were running smoothly. This has to do something with the hardware i agree. But doing the same on XP regularly forced me to restart my PC due to the hangup. Also the search function in Windows 7 has been greatly improved. Search results are now shown faster.

* Functionality
This is where the OS really shines. Windows 7 comes with a brand new taskbar!!! And i am in love with it. That alone is reason enough to buy this OS. It is much smoother and easier to navigate through windows through this taskbar. It organizes pages and folders relevant to the same application in a different way. This reduces the congestion that can occur if too many windows are open. It can handle those in a much better way this time. It includes a new feature called Aero Peek which complements the functionality of the taskbar. Just hover you mouse over any icon on the taskbar and you get a mini view of the page or folder. If you have many windows relevant to the same application, it organizes and displays them in a simple, horizontal view. It also lets you close the page or folder from this mini view and also lets you alter the contents of the page. It also allows a user to view the desktop by making all other windows transparent. Just hover the mouse the to far right corner of the taskbar and see everything disappear!!
Another new feature of the taskbar is jump lists. Just right click an icon on the taskbar. Instead of the usual minimize maximize and close options you now have an array of other options. These options can be unique to the particular application. You can also permanently pin an application to the taskbar. Just right click on the icon and you have the option to pin it.
Windows 7 allows users to run programs that were compatible with XP but which do not work in Windows 7. This is done using the new XP mode. It allows you to download a setup for XP and the setup for Microsoft virtual machine from the MS website. After installing both of them you can use older programs such as Turbo C in XP mode.
Other new features include libraries which can organize stuff according to the type of content such a music, movies, documents etc. It can also arrange content on you local network in the same way thus allowing you to see all music, movies, games etc on you entire network in one common folder. The general organization of files on the computer is more efficient now.

* Compatibility
One of the main gripes with Vista was that many programs were not compatible and used to crash often. This is not the case with 7. Most of the programs that were compatible with XP also work in Windows 7. The ones that don't work can be made to work using the previously described XP mode which can be downloaded from Microsoft.

* Requirements
Probably the biggest problem with Vista was that the requirements were too high. You needed to have a minimum of 1.5 GB of ram and a video card to run Vista properly. These requirements have been brought down drastically for Windows 7. Now you need just 1 GB of RAM and a 1 Ghz CPU to run it. Hence it should work on the most trivial of systems.

* Gaming
Vista was any gamers worst nightmare. Games that worked properly in XP ran like screenshots in Vista. Microsoft had hyped Vista mainly as a gaming OS. We all know how that ended up. Windows 7 on the other hand is great for gaming. I'll let the numbers talk:-
Crysis(all high 1024 * 768)
XP - 30 fps
Vista - 12 fps
7 - 35 fps
Fallout3(all high 1024 * 768)
XP - 50 fps
Vista - 30 fps
7 - 60 fps


Throughout the review i have constantly compared Windows 7 with Vista. That is because both are built on the same architecture. But Windows 7 is the OS Vista should have been. 7 is simply head and shoulder above Vista in all fields. It is the jack of all trades but also the master of most of them. However it is not perfect. There are some cons:-
* Windows 7 is just a compensation for the debacle that was Vista. Hence it just does not justify the hefty price tag. The basic edition is 119$ which i think is a bit too high. It should be 99$ i say.
* Windows 7 comes in multiple sku's. Microsoft should really learn from Mac. 'One version for one and all'.


Overall i would say i am very satisfied with what Microsoft has achieved. Unlike Vista i plan to work with Windows 7 for quite a long time. It is smooth, stable, efficient, pretty; overall a geeks wet dream.

My review - 9/10