Microsoft released Windows 7 out into the wild for all of the personal computing world to experience some two months ago and now it is nigh impossible to walk into a computer store (excluding the Apple store obviously) with out being bombarded by ads for it. (There are also the rather strange Windows 7 ads, such as the "Windows 7 Whopper" in Japan or the recently reviled Family Guy Windows 7 Ads that got axed before being released). At any rate there is no doubting that this latest addition to the Windows line is going to quickly become a major player in the tech field.
In fact it already makes up for some 20% of gamers that use the Steam platform as of November 2009
At
any rate I try to make it a point to play with any bit of new
technology I can get my hands on so I figured Windows 7 should be no
exception to this rule. I previously only had Ubuntu 9.04 installed on
my laptop and I'd been meaning to upgrade it to the latest version for
some time now, so I took the opportunity to set up a dual boot with
Windows 7 Ultimate while I was at it.
Installation:
The
first thing I'd like to say about installation is that Windows 7 lost
one of the features I really liked about Vista - that is there was only
one install DVD and what type of install you obtained (home, business,
ultimate, ect.) was determined by the activation key you entered. With
Windows 7 they are back to a separate disc for each version, its not a
big thing really but I thought it was worth mentioning. The actual
installation process looks and feels a lot like of the Vista
installation process (except it now has Windows 7 branding of course).
It also takes the same God-awful amount of time to fully expand/install
all the files it needs to get running from the disc. Around forty
minutes and three restarts later I had my Windows 7 install up and
running.
Setup:
The first
thing that pleasantly surprised me was the fact that I had a working
wireless card from the clean install with my Intel wifi card. I was
quickly able to hop onto my wireless network and grab the couple of
updates that have been released for 7 in the past couple of months. As
anyone who has installed Windows before knows the next stop on my setup
route was downloading drivers. I went and obtained the most important
one first - my video drivers (which apparently are a 140meg download for
Windows? Guess I've gotten spoiled with them only being 22megs on
Ubuntu). At any rate a few clicks around on my laptop's manufacture's
website, a couple of downloads, and then a restart later (phew!) my
system was all ready to be used!
Well not
really. I now finally had the operating system installed, still need to
get it loaded up with applications for it to be truly useful to me.
Twenty minutes or so and another restart (thats five now) later I had AVG, OOO, Chrome, and Steam (among other things) all set to go and I was ready to use my shiny new operating system.
Usage:
The
first thing I noticed once I got my graphics drivers all setup is that
Windows 7 truly is shiny. The aero effects present give the operating
system a good feel and they ran quite smoothly on my modern hardware
(while they do not quite compare just yet to Compiz
it is a step in the right direction, to the average user eye candy is
always a winner). The main thing users will notice right away about
Windows 7 is the new task bar. It really is a great improvement, the way
it allows the "pinning" of commonly used applications is wonderus along
with how it sorts applications with multiple windows that are loaded.
My
applications all loaded up with out much issue (had some trouble with a
few of my Steam games at first - but that is really more of a Valve
issue than a Windows 7 one). I was now all setup to do my web surfing
and gaming under Windows 7 :)
Final Thoughts/Ubuntu Comparisons:
The
main draw back/time consumer in setting up Windows verses Ubuntu has
not changed any with the release of Windows 7. Drivers are still a must
for pretty much any hardware you want to use and to make the operating
system useful in the slightlest you need to install additional
applications. Resource consumption wise 7 is still a hog by comparison
at any given point I seem to be using around 1.3gigs of RAM at the very
least and the base install plus my applications (not counting games)
took up just over eighteen gigs of space (where is Ubuntu with the same
applications runs around two and a half gigs)
All
in all while Windows 7 did not "simplify my PC" any - it is a decently
solid operating system. Will I be using it as my primary operating
system anytime soon? Probably not, but I do plan to keep an installation
on my system so I can both stay familiar with the GUI and for the
occasional game I want to play that I cannot get working under Wine technology.
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