A Windows 7 Beta Review

Microsoft gave the public access to the Windows 7 Beta from early January to February 10th. We had a chance to test drive the beta, and simply put, we liked it. The full version of Windows 7 will be available later this year. For an idea of what to expect from Microsoft's upcoming Windows OS, read our full review of the beta below.

Windows 7 Beta Review

It’s no secret that Vista was greeted by boos and jeers upon its clumsy release. Microsoft unleashed Vista before they had ironed out the numerous kinks that resulted in crashes, jitters, laggy performance and frustrations of every stripe. In short, Vista was unpolished. In marked contrast to Vista, the Windows 7 Beta runs like a well oiled machine. Microsoft made great efforts not to repeat the mistakes of their Vista release, and we have to say—it looks like they’ve pulled it off with the Windows 7 Beta. When Windows 7 hits store shelves, users can expect a nearly effortless transition from XP or Vista.

The Windows 7 Beta’s system requirements are significantly less demanding than Vista’s. This means that everyday users with less than 4GB of RAM on their computers can run Windows 7 and expect smooth sailing. Gone are the nefarious snags and stalls at boot up, launch and at critical moments that we remember from the early days of Vista. The Windows 7 beta frees up precious processing resources and RAM reservoirs. Switching between open applications is an instantaneous affair.

Microsoft lists the minimum system requirements for the Windows 7 Beta as:

• 1 GHz processor
• 1 GB RAM
• 16GB of free hard drive memory
• 128MB of video memory
• DVD drive
• Internet access (for activation)

We ran the Windows 7 Beta on a machine with modest specs to see how the OS would perform on the average PC. We did a fresh install of the Windows 7 Ultimate Beta build 7000 on a compact Dell Optiplex 745 with a 2.8GHz processor and 1GB of RAM. Our aging office tower ran XP perfectly but huffed and puffed a bit with Vista. Because our Dell Optiplex struggled with Vista under the hood, we expected Windows 7 to run somewhat slowly.

Contrary to our expectations, the Windows 7 Beta was ridiculously easy to install, required minimal set up, and was up in running without hiccups in just a couple of hours. Getting on line, setting up a printer, and transferring music from an external hard drive was a simple matter of plug and play. Vista doesn’t even come close to Windows 7 in terms of a user friendly set up. Even at this early stage in Windows 7’s life, Microsoft’s efforts to make manual driver installs a thing of the past is very evident.

Microsoft has made comparably aggressive changes to general navigation in Windows 7. Mac fanatics and haters around our office pretty much all agree that Windows 7 borrows heavily from the Mac OS. How’s that for irony? Nowhere is Microsoft’s muse, Macintosh, more evident than in the retooling of the taskbar. Just like Mac OS, Windows 7’s task bar is populated with icons for both active and inactive programs. The task bar along the bottom of the display is now the interface for launching, minimizing, maximizing and organizing programs. Open programs no longer claim their own rectangular space along the taskbar like they did in Vista, XP, Windows 2000, Windows 98, or any other incarnation of Windows. Instead, when a program is active, its icon glimmers ever so slightly. A hover of the mouse over an active icon opens a miniaturized window of given program. When we had 4 website windows minimized, a quick hover over the glistening Firefox icon triggered 4 side-by-side thumbnails that we could then choose from. With two windows open simultaneously, simply dragging them to the edge of the screen will default them to splitscreen mode.

The learning curve on the Windows 7 Beta was no issue for us. After about five minutes of experimentation, the Windows 7 Beta has the familiarity of a longtime companion. The only real disorientation occurred when we started stumbling around in the control panel. It’s significantly more cluttered than Vista or XP’s, but with a bit of patience, we found what we were looking for.

Home Use: Excellent

The easy, plug and play setup means that Windows 7 will be friendly to even the most amateur computer users. Connecting to a network or the internet is a simple matter of plugging in the LAN or USB cable. Additionally, any peripheral devices, from an Xbox to an external hard drive, are consolidated in one place. This eliminates the time consuming process of hunting around in various hardware folder.

We get a glimpse of what the future holds with some of Windows 7's onboard touchscreen software. With the release of Windows 7, touch screens on the PC and laptop will no longer be a mere novelty. We experimented with Windows 7’s math input panel and found it to be functional and intuitive. Windows 7 comes preloaded with the same entry-level productivity software seen on Vista—Paint, WordPad, Media Player 10, and Internet Explorer 8. Web browsing, enjoying multimedia, doing homework or any other everyday task is nearly identical to previous versions of Windows.

Office Use: Excellent

The Windows 7 Beta makes setting up networks, connecting to a network printer, and sharing files an intuitive affair. Small business owners will be able to use Windows 7 without relying on the arcane knowledge of an IT specialist. In our testing, Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook ran beautifully. We’d heard talk of Windows 7’s upcoming “Jump Lists” and we had our first chance to try them out the Beta. Basically, by simply right clicking on an icon the most recent files of that type are listed for easy access. Right click on the taskbar Word icon, for example, and the most recently modified, saved or opened documents will be listed for quick access. Jump Lists are a real time saver and we see them contributing to general productivity greatly. Even at the Beta stage, this feature really impressed us.

Multimedia/Entertainment Use: Excellent

Windows 7 makes better use of multi-core processors and frees up more RAM to allocate for video, multitasking and resource intense program use. At a glance, the Windows 7 Beta’s version of Windows Media Player functioned perfectly.

The extra RAM and processing power available due to Windows 7’s lighter operation, means that HD video and games get a significant boost. We loaded the Windows 7 Beta onto a gaming oriented desktop to see how video and games would fare. It’s hard to forget the compatibility issues many games had on Vista. Happily, Windows 7 appears free of such problems. Fallout 3, World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online booted up faster and ran every bit as well as they do on Vista. Hats off to Microsoft for throwing this bone to gamers.

Multimedia fanatics will find plenty to love in Windows 7. Naturally, Blu-ray, HD video, and media editing will be as smooth as ever with Windows 7’s freed up resources.

Security: Excellent

The Windows 7 Beta has security features very similar to those of Vista. At this point they appear to be more streamlined and first time Windows 7 users won’t be bombarded with continuous “security updates” the way Vista users were.

In addition to standard security features like the Windows Firewall, antivirus, and encryption options, the Windows 7 Beta integrates routine maintenance tasks into the security center, renamed the Windows Action Suite.

Networking: Excellent

The networking capabilities of Vista appear to have been consolidated in the Windows 7 Beta. Basic home networks are more or less plug and play. Businesses and individuals with complex networking needs will find additional code support for web services previously unavailable. Application install times and the persistent pestering of the UAC (User Account Control) have been reduced to meet user demand.

Practical Use: Good

Compared to Vista’s release, Windows 7 doesn’t seem to have any bugs that will interfere with ordinary computer use. For everyday tasks like web browsing and email, the Windows 7 Beta makes a very good impression. After just a few minutes, we had no problems at all switching between tasks, navigating multi-windowed tabbed web browsing sessions. Even in the beta phase, Windows 7 handles Firefox, Chrome, MS Office, Photoshop and iTunes perfectly.

Solid support for third party software doubled up with the familiar and user-friendly UI on Windows 7 make everyday use all the more convenient on Windows 7.

Laptop Use: Excellent

Given that Vista ate more resources than the Windows 7 Beta, and that load times on Windows 7 are significantly faster, it is well suited for laptop use. Many current netbooks even meet the hardware requirements for Windows 7. The support for touch screens opens up the possibility for Windows 7 on tablet PCs too.

Ease of Use: Good

Perhaps the Windows 7 Beta is so easy to use because it parallels the logic of the Mac OS. But, after watching some of our staff that haven’t even used an iPod before explore Windows 7, it’s clear that the Windows 7 UI is straightforward and avoids unnecessary clutter. A first time user will get comfortable with Windows 7’s layout in minutes.

The ease of install impressed us too. We didn’t have to track down a single driver manually. Windows 7 was on top of all of our hardware, peripherals and network setup.

Personalizing the desktop and theme on the Windows 7 Beta was easy and, frankly, fun. New options like slideshow desktop wallpaper, and colored transparent window panes are enjoyable novelties that add a touch of personality to a PC.

Technical Help/Support: Very Good

The Windows 7 Beta includes a comprehensive troubleshooting tool as well as thousands of pages of help files. Because we had such a smooth experience with the Windows 7 Beta, we can’t imagine tech support being nearly as necessary on Windows 7 as it was on early Vista.

Summary:

Microsoft has clearly learned from their mistakes with Vista. The Microsoft Windows 7 Beta is less demanding on resources, offers time saving navigation tools and interfaces seamlessly with hardware and everyday programs. If the beta version is this good, we feel confident that Windows 7 proper will receive a warm reception.