Submitted by Microsoft has given a bit more insight into where to go from the Windows 7 beta to general availability. There will only be a release candidate (no second beta), and even though an exact release date is unknown, it is most likely released before the timebomb date of the beta (July 2). The RC will take much longer to expire, too.
that is not to say there will be no more beta releases. only that there will not be any made to the public.
Just curious since I ended up not installing the beta and my time over the past fortnight has been very limited…… has there been any real issues with the new Windows 7?
I’m not interested in any trolling (i.e. everything IE sucks, everything UAC sucks) so some real views would be appreciated.
So far what I can see is that, Windows 7:
1. Is faster than Vista and some claim XP
2. Has at least par, but maybe slightly better drivers
3. Has all the rough and sharp edges of Vista smoothed over
4. Has improved UAC to reasonable levels
Anything else? If the above is true then I think I’ll get myself a copy.
As I have shunned the Windows world for a while now you may wish to take this with a grain of salt, but I really do like what I’ve seen of W7. It ran flawlessly on my Mac mini, and overall it is very Linux-y compared to previous versions of Windows. The GUI, and the taskbar in particular, feel like a custom skin on KDE 3.5. The command prompt is nearly as powerful as a full *nix shell, and many of the more arcane system settings are command-line only (boot manager setup, for example).
I like it. I won’t switch back — my Mac is a perfect fit for me– but for anyone put off by Vista, I think W7 is worth waiting for. It seems to fix the nagging issues in Vista while making great leaps forward in user interaction and visual feedback.
Edit: I forgot to mention that it also ran quite well on a circa 2006 HP Pavilion laptop with a Turion 64 and 1.25GB DDR RAM. This laptop has a Radeon 200m video processor and all features including Aero are nearly as fast as the on the Mac. It blows XP and Vista both out of the water regarding performance and UI responsiveness.
Edited 2009-01-31 03:05 UTC
Can you expand on this? Do they include Powershell into 7 as standard?
Edited 2009-01-31 04:28 UTC
Yes.. PowerShell V2.
Sorry for the late reply.
I’m not sure on the Powershell thing, but quite a few Bash tricks that are second nature to me work in 7’s command line interface, such as piping output of a command to a file and adding locations to the PATH. Some things have slightly different syntax but once you get that right the results are great.
Piping output to a file has worked since the days of NT 4 yore though, you just substitute cat for type
Well, my experience with Windows 7 was terrible. I’ve tried build 7000 like everyone else thinking I’d be able to use it in my day to day desktop activities, especially after everybody telling everybody how awesome it is.
It wasn’t good at all. I don’t know what to expect from Microsoft beta releases, it’s the first time I’ve tried one.
My biggest problems:
-Having to force drivers to works with W7 (that could be expected) and bluescreens probably caused by those drivers. W7 was supposed to be Vista SP2, smooth transition, etc – not so much. If you’re using some obscure hardware from weird chinese manufacturer you might be left on your own.
-Incompatibility with 3rd party “drivers” like protection systems in games and some utilities like Daemon Tools.
-Dock being the only way to display tasks list. You can add text labels but it becomes so annoying if you have lots of apps added to dock/launchbar it seems like it’s designed to make you use defaults.
-Widgets only on desktop – hey, I liked sidebar!
-LOTS of minor bugs but that’s to be expected.
Of course my stability problems are anecdotal but MS will have to work on improved compatibility with older apps (as always, I guess). Lots of people will complain about Dock-like taskbar.
It’s great to see cruft services removed, W7 might be actually usable with a machine with 1GB of RAM. Libraries are awesome (although they don’t work with Ext2/3 partitions handled by IFS driver), interface has been simplified a lot (Windows Media Player that I can even consider using – this is newsworthy!
).
Don’t buy into hype and you should be satisfied with W7. Just don’t try beta, especially if you’ve got spoiled by high-quality betas of Ubuntu and other Linux distros.
I really don’t know what to say about that because I’ve used plenty of terrible Linux betas.
I’m usually switching to a new Ubuntu around 5th alpha or first beta and it’s more or less very useable and most of the things that can break are caused by updates. It’s very rare to have serious stability issues, hardware support regressions or problems with app compatibility. Then again Linux distros are often in state of perpetual beta even though they have strict release schedules.
IIRC doesn’t Microsoft have CTP (Technology Previews) which are almost like builds in between beta’s and rc’s? maybe some one can correct me but just because they are don”t release public builds after the official RC1 – it doesn’t mean that there aren’t builds for partners and big customers.
Yes, but they’ve been considerably less when compared to Windows Vista’s development cycle.
Vista in Beta1 was in a much less happy state than Windows 7 is. Windows 7 in Beta has small annoyances, while Vista had some true problems (Anyone remember DWM.exe taking up 350MB? Yeah, those kind of problems)
I expect to see some Pre-RC private builds come out of the wood work soon, with a final and public RC come out a month or two prior to their RTM date. From what I’ve seen in my use of Windows 7, it’s almost ready.
You know, I would completely stop selling Vista if I were them if Windows 7 is the new priority. They forced Vista on everyone, compatible or not, fixed or not, stable or not. We didn’t have a choice. It was just there. SP1 just isn’t enough to say that it’s finished. I don’t know, just the idea that Windows 7 is being rushed out seems to irk me. If they want to do it, they need to do it right. There’s just no way Windows 7 is much better than Vista at all. I’m sorry, but MS is just crap at compatibility these days, and I dread the day when x86-64 and managed code is the norm instead of the exception. (I have never flamed Microsoft in my life and am a long-time user, but it’s hard not to see some cracks in their veneer.)
If you want a BASH shell, simply go run a secure, stable, multi-tasking, multi-user, multi-processor, FREE, BSD, or Linux distro!
Also, you will be safe from the million Microsoft virus/bot/trojans, and exploits!
Also, much of your legacy scanners, printers, web cams, will work. Don’t you just hate having to purchase Gigabytes of memory, new printers, scanners, etc. so you can run Vista or W7!?
Microsoft insists on pushing us to purchase unneeded hardware, from their ‘trusted partners’, for every ‘new’ Microsoft virus magnet release!
Homer Simpson would say, “Doh!”!
Edited 2009-02-03 18:32 UTC