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Monday, January 18, 2010
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Article:
Windows 7 Keeps the Good, Tries to Fix Flaws
Windows 7 comes out Thursday. And if the programmers at
Microsoft have any strength left at all, they are
high-fiving.
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Their three-year Windows Vista nightmare is over. That
operating system’s wretched reputation may have been
overblown; at the outset, it was slow, intrusive and
incompatible with a lot of gadgets, but it’s been
quietly improved over the years. Nonetheless, the
corporate software buyers who order copies of Windows by
the gross weren’t impressed. As recently as this summer,
at least two-thirds of corporate computers were still
running the positively ancient Windows XP.
Windows 7 is a different story. It keeps what’s good
about Windows Vista, like security, stability and
generous eye candy, and addresses much of what people
disliked.
Item 1: Sluggishness. As Microsoft’s triple redundancy
puts it, Windows 7 offers “faster, more responsive
performance.”
Item 2: Hardware requirements. They’re no steeper than
Vista’s three years ago (the standard edition requires 1
gigabyte of memory and 1 gigahertz processor; more is
better).
Item 3: Nagging Windows 7 is far less alarmist than
Vista, which freaked out about every potential security
threat. In fact, 10 categories of warnings now pile up
quietly in a single, unified Action Center and don’t
interrupt you at all.
Best of all, Windows 7 represents a departure from
Microsoft’s usual “success is measured by the length of
the feature list” philosophy. This time around, it was,
“Polish, optimize and streamline what we’ve already
got.” That seems to be the industry mantra for 2009 —
see also Apple’s Snow Leopard release in August — and
it’s fantastic news. There are three ugly aspects of
Windows 7, so let’s get them out of the way up front.
Upgrading from Vista is easy, but upgrading from Windows
XP involves a “clean install”— moving all your programs
and files off the hard drive, installing Windows 7, then
copying everything back on again. It’s an all-day hassle
that’s nobody’s idea of fun.
Microsoft doesn’t think XP holdouts will bother; it
hopes that they’ll just get Windows 7 preinstalled on a
new PC. (It’s no accident that new operating systems
come out right before holiday shopping.) The second bit
of nastiness is the insane matrix of versions. Again,
there are five versions of Windows 7 — Starter, Home
Premium, Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate — each with
its own set of features, each in 32-bit or 64-bit
flavors (except Starter), at prices from $120 to $320.
Good luck figuring out why some cool Windows 7 feature,
like the much-improved, TiVo-like Windows Media Center,
isn’t on your PC.
(No wonder a raft of books about Windows 7 is on the
way. A disclosure: I’m writing one of them.)
Finally, out of fear of antitrust headaches, Microsoft
has stripped Windows 7 of some important accessory
programs. Believe it or not, software for managing
photos, editing videos, reading PDF documents,
maintaining a calendar, managing addresses, chatting
online or writing e-mail doesn’t come with Windows 7.
What kind of operating system doesn’t come with an
e-mail program?
Instead, you’re supposed to download these free apps
yourself from a Microsoft Web site. It’s not a huge
deal; some companies, including Dell, plan to preinstall
them on new computers. But a lot of people will be in
for some serious confusion — especially when they
discover that the Windows 7 installer has deleted their
existing Vista copies of Windows Mail, Movie Maker,
Calendar, Contacts and Photo Gallery. (Mercifully, it
preserves your data.)
Otherwise, though, Windows 7 is mostly great news. The
happiest developments help Windows live up to its name:
there are some slick, efficient new features for
managing windows.
You can drag a window’s edge against the top or side of
your screen to make it fill the whole screen or half of
it. You can give a window a little shake with the mouse
— kind of fun, actually — to minimize all other windows
(or to bring them back again) when you need a quick look
at your desktop.
The taskbar now resembles the Dock in Apple’s Mac OS X.
That is, it displays the icons for both open programs
and those you’ve dragged there for quick access.
(Weirdly, though, you can’t turn individual folders and
documents into buttons on the taskbar, as in Mac OS X,
only programs.)
Better yet, if you point to a program’s icon without
clicking, you see Triscuit-size miniatures of all the
windows open in that program. And if you point to one of
these thumbnails, its corresponding full-size window
flashes to the fore. All of this means easier navigation
in a screen awash with window clutter.
Windows 7 also introduces libraries: virtual folders
that display the contents of up to 50 other folders,
which may be scattered all over your system. Libraries
make it easy to keep project files together, back them
up en masse or share them with other PC’s on the
network.
Speaking of which, networking is also more refined in
Windows 7. Handling of Internet hot spots is much better
than before, and the new HomeGroups feature lets you
unify all Windows 7 computers and printers on your home
network without having to mess with accounts or
permissions. You just enter the same long, one-time
password on each machine. (Only at Microsoft do
“user-friendly” and “write down this password:
E6fQ9UX3uR” appear in the same sentence.) Once that’s
done, each computer can see the photos, music and
documents on all the other ones. It’s a little buggy,
but it’ll get there.
Compatibility is excellent. I connected a couple dozen
cameras, phones, iPods, printers and scanners, and
Windows 7 recognized them all. Recent, brand-name apps
fare well, too, but there are no guarantees. I found a
couple of smaller, older programs that wouldn’t work in
Windows 7.
Some Windows 7 developments fall under the heading, “If
you build it, they might come... eventually.” For
example, the updated Windows Media Player program can
now send music playback to another gadget on your
network: an Xbox, digital picture frame, another Windows
7 machine and so on. The catch: the other gadget has to
be D.L.N.A.-certified, which you’re supposed to know
refers to an industry compatibility standard.
Or take the new Device Stage screen. When you connect a
gadget to your PC, you’re supposed to see its actual
photograph, model name and list of relevant features.
But until all the gadget makers get on board, you
sometimes see only generic icons here.
Even the multitouch feature of Windows 7 falls into that
hit-or-miss category. On new laptops and even desktop
PCs with multitouch screens, you can drag two fingers on
the screen to rotate photos, scroll and zoom, exactly
the way you do on an iPhone.
Alas, software programs have to be rewritten to
understand these gestures; for example, they all work in
Microsoft’s Photo Gallery, but only the zoom gesture
works in Google’s Picasa. You’re in for many “Doh!”
moments as you realize you’ve reached out awkwardly with
your arm, dragged around on the touch screen, and
produced nothing but gross grease streaks.
Now, Windows 7 is still Windows. It’s still
copy-protected, it still requires antivirus software and
its visuals still aren’t consistent from one corner to
another.
On the other hand, it’s still Windows in a good way,
too, meaning that it’s your ticket to a world of choice
— a huge catalog of software and computer options. This
Win is a win if you’re in the market for a new machine,
or if you’re running Vista now and you’re not thrilled
by it.
Above all, Windows 7 means that Microsoft employees can
show up in public without avoiding eye contact. Looks
like 7 is a lucky number after all.
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