Review of Windows 7 (after 1 day)
I can see how much more resources Microsoft spent on Windows 7 than Vista when it comes to…marketing. I can’t see that it’s really that much better of an operating system.
Don’t get me wrong, I was one of the big defenders of Vista, so as long as Windows 7 is at least as good, then I’ll be okay, but I’m not convinced about all the hoopla about it being such a far superior OS.
For one, Microsoft apparently chose style over substance in a lot of its changes. The CPU fan works much, much less, as I’m sure you’ve heard other say. Obviously proof that it’s able to perform more efficiently, right. Wrong. I also have a CPU temperature meter running, and Windows 7 routinely allows the CPU to run 5 to 10 degrees hotter than Vista did, which will make the fan run less, giving the illusion that the system is more efficient.
Most of the rest of the bells and whistles I found either annoying or completely useless. I turned off the animation and the grouped buttons. I couldn’t set my start menu to classic (something people are already complaining about) the Vista style menu is clumsy, but it looks as if I’ll be forced to endure it until someone comes up with a stable work around.
Aero snap is a useless toy. So is the stupid thing in the bottom right corner that lets you see the desktop. Why would I need to see the desktop?
Windows 7 doesn’t seem to multitask as well as Vista. It hangs often when I have multiple programs running. Something Vista rarely did.
W7 also shut my screen down when I tried to set up dual view (for outputting video to our TV) I had to cold boot several times before I could finally get it to show both the laptop screen and the TV.
Oh, and apparently Window 7 doesn’t like cold boots. It randomly turned things off and I had to hunt them down and turn them back on. It also fails to load quite a few things which I’ve specified to load at startup. There are at least 4 applications I have to open manually, every time I reboot.
And what the heck is with this glaring white button? The highlight on the button currently on top makes it almost impossible to see the text beneath.
I’ve had trouble with the built in wifi adapter since I got this computer. When transferring anything bigger than 500m it will simply vanish, and I’d have to put the computer to sleep and wake it up before the wifi could be detected again. I transferred a large (700m) file with the new system and the wifi kept working. I was pleased. Then I rebooted because of an update, and the wifi wouldn’t work. It could see it, but kept saying it couldn’t recognize it. Once I plugged in the Belkin USB adapter, W7 suddenly recognized the old adapter. I had hoped to be able to put away the USB adapter, since it’s a bit bulky, but apparently I’ll have to keep using it.
Oh, and all of the programs their silly Upgrade Adviser said wouldn’t work, work fine. One I had to set to use Vista compatibility mode, but after that it worked like normal.
As far as I can see Windows 7 is nothing more than Vista with a few more (useless) bells and whistles and a whole lot more marketing. Perhaps if so many people hadn’t wined so much about non-existent problems with Vista, MS would have simply built a better OS, instead of selling the same OS with a better PR launch.
Posted by Danny Carlton at November 27, 2009 4:27 PM