Ooooh, pretty. Look at how nice those fonts are…
Okay, but seriously, I’m probably a little late on writing this up, but on the other hand, I’ve been living with the Windows 7 beta for longer than a week now.
First things first: This sucker flies. I haven’t sat down with a stopwatch while it was booting up, but it definitely seems pretty speedy in that respect. However, boot-up speed isn’t that big of a deal to me. What concerns me more is how long after the desktop is displayed do I have to sit around waiting for the hard drive to stop spinning before I can actually use my computer.
In fact, that factor is the reason why I’ve been using Ubuntu Linux for the past six months – I can use it almost instantaneously after the desktop loads. Meanwhile, Windows XP’s desktop to usability time was being measured in minutes.
Well, even with a bunch of programs set to load at start-up, Windows 7 is usable about 10 seconds after logging in. I’m happy.
The task bar
The new task bar is what pretty much everyone whose written about Windows 7 has focused on and I can see why. It’s great.
Rather than having a bunch of bars at the bottom of the screen that say what program is minimized there, you just have icons (which can be “pinned” to the bar as launchers.)
If you hover over the icon for a running program, you see a little preview of the window pop-up. Now this was already in Vista, Linux does it as well (I don’t know about Macs since I haven’t used one since OS 9) but Windows 7 adds something special. You can interact with that little preview.
For example, the other day I was moving a bunch of files from one drive to another. By hovering over the Explorer icon, I got previews showing me the different directories, along with a progress bar showing me how far along the copying was. I could click on the individual Explorer window I wanted to see up close or just go back to whatever else I was doing.
Being a beta, only Microsoft programs really take full advantage of the task bar, but hopefully by release time, other developers will have updated their apps.
Even in the current form though, it feels like a more intuitive way to navigate than hitting Alt-Tab and running through a dozen windows in some cases.
Libraries
This is a feature I both love and hate at the same time.
Rather than just having folders that contain files, like the now ingrained My Documents structure, Windows 7 uses Libraries, which is a way in indexing the contents of multiple folders but keeping it in one spot.
For example, I keep my music on a portable hard drive and was able to tell Windows to add it to the music library. So now as long as the portable drive is plugged in, Windows knows to check it for music.
The Libraries feature is great for that purpose, but there’s also a downside when using anything besides the built-in Explorer to find a file. I discovered this when I was trying to find an image file I had downloaded to the Pictures Library. I expected to find it in /My Documents/My Pictures but no, no such luck.
Instead it turned out to be somewhere like /Users/Public/Pictures – Huh?
Gripes
Now, this is a beta release so I suppose I should expect to see some issues. The fist one I noticed is that for some reason, OpenGL doesn’t work. That means no Quake for me unless I reboot into Linux to play it (something about rebooting from Windows into Linux to play a video game seems kinda ironic…)
My Blackberry doesn’t seem to like Windows 7, either. I was looking forward to being able to manage it properly again with RIM’s Desktop Manager, but no. When I plug in my 8700, the computer recognizes it for a few seconds and then pretends it’s not there. I can’t even charge it off my USB port (unless I reboot into Linux again…)
Also, this is a minor issue, but as much as I like the weather gadget on my desktop, I really wish there was a way to keep it pinned to the taskbar.
Conclusion
I like this and I’ve never been excited about a Windows OS in my life. That includes Windows 95 (I was one of those geeks who couldn’t believe they were killing DOS.)
For an early release, it’s pretty solid and I can only imagine it’ll get better before it’s released commercially.
Which brings me to my biggest issue with Windows in general and why I’m trying not to get too attached. As nice as this is, I feel a tad ill to realize that once the trial expires, it’ll probably run me around $300 per computer to keep running Windows 7.
Meanwhile Linux keeps getting better (though it still has it’s own list of flaws) and is completely free. I really wish Microsoft would listen up on their licensing policy. I don’t expect them to make a free operating system but I don’t think it would be unreasonable for a retail version of Windows to come with licenses for three computers to way Office Home and Student does.
That alone is enough to keep me using free open-source software.
Internet they once were. At least, that’s certainly how I felt watching last week’s season premiere of Lost on 
