For the past coupla days I've been playing around with the Windows 7 Beta. I've made it my business to be involved in Windows beta testing for the past few releases, but it's never really gone beyond just installing the new OS. This time I've actually been more active in using it over the course of a working day and sending feedback.
So far I like a lot of what I see; it's really what Vista should have been. I always evaluate OS releases with my Network Admin hat on, as that's the day job and I like to see how much hassle I'm going to get from them.
Specific good stuff includes:
- Performance and resource utilisation; so far as I can see, it's back to XP levels. Of course, by default I disable a lot of the more heavyweight services (like indexing), but doing so never made any appreciable difference on Vista for me.
- Look and feel. The new taskbar is superb, and removing Desktop Gadgets by default was the Right Thing to do.
- Stability. OK, I bluescreened it in hour one by installing the Virtual PC 2007 add-ons, but this on research turned out to be a known issue. Otherwise it's been rock solid.
- Application compatibility. Vastly improved over Vista, several cranky 3rd party apps which persistently crashed under Vista work flawlessly now.
- Tunable UAC. I like the idea of UAC, but the Vista implementation was botched. 7 has 4 levels available, with the default being "don't nag me about anything I've launched myself".
- Microsoft still don't seem to understand corporate networks; all the multimedia and home networking gubbins remains there and in-yer-face even when joined to a Domain. OK, it'll probably be configurable via Group Policy, but a more sensible default for Domain members would be a good idea too.
- The Virtual PC crash - this is something that should have been anticipated and prevented.
- Some of the configuration dialogs are incredibly slow.
- UAC still doesn't integrate cleanly with Group Policy, causing elements like Logon Scripts to fail. At this stage it should be able to detect when something comes from a Logon Script, realise that this is something the Admin is doing, and just let it happen.
- "New ways to do familiar tasks" strikes again, with Control Panels and options having been arbirtarily rearranged. I largely skipped Vista so I don't know how much of this is a hangover and how much is new, but having to basically relearn everything from scratch with each OS rev is not good. Doesn't affect me so badly, as I do most of my config from the GPO editor, but it will affect some.
I'm also impressed by how polished and finished it seems. If this is only Beta 1 it bodes well for the final release, and I'll be following subsequent Betas and RCs with interest.
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