Windows 7 RTM Reviewed & Benchmarked

An anonymous reader writes "The code is final, and CNet has reviewed the final version of Windows 7, with benchmarks to support the case that it's not only the fastest version of Windows to shut down, but also looks like 'the operating system that both Microsoft and its consumers have been waiting for.' The review continues: 'By fixing most of the perceived and real problems in Vista, Microsoft has laid the groundwork for the future of where Windows will go. Windows 7 presents a stable platform that can compete comfortably with OS X, while reassuring the world that Microsoft can still turn out a strong, useful operating system.'"

Re:16GB?

[Tukz]

My fresh install of Windows 7 RC Ultimate on my old rig, didn't take up 16GB of space. Only about half IIRC.

Re:The competition is OSX

[ohmiccurmudgeon]

User that know what they are doing can perform more tasks per unit time via a command line than poor old GUI users wandering through menus and dialogs. Objective studies have repeatably shown this. Just compare the time it takes you to copy a file via the old Windows COPY command versus selecting the file in Windows Explorer, right clicking to copy, then paste, then rename the copy. You don't have to be an expert to appreciate the command line.

Re:The competition is OSX

[shutdown -p now]

Are all these non-server versions in your view?

Yes, of course. Enterprise is for "enterprise" desktops (it has BitLocker, not sure what else, above Professional). Ultimate is the one with everything. None of them are server versions. Server one is 2008 R2 (which also comes in Standard, Enterprise, etc editions).

Re:"the fastest version of Windows to shut down"

[peppepz]

Actually, Windows 3.1 required to be "shut down", otherwise it left tons of temporary files in C:\DOS (at least in Standard Mode).
DOS required to be shut down, too, if you used SmartDrive (which, IIRC, was active by default at least since MS DOS 5.0, as it improved performance quite a bit). What you had to do was to press CTRL + ALT + DEL before turning off the system, to let SmartDrive write back to disk the dirty blocks in its cache. It would display a short message during the operation, then reboot the computer. This behaviour was recommended in the DOS user's manual.

Re:Great goals

[BikeHelmet]

You should look into nLite [nliteos.com]. It might help you out - there's a setting there that can terminate anything that refuses to shut down within 5-10 seconds.

nLite lets you customize your WinXP ISO.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Great goals

[xalorous]

start/shutdown/shutdown is not kernel level request, it's a user level request.

from commandline: shutdown -f -t 0

THAT is a kernel level request and WILL work, put it in a shortcut and you have a guaranteed shutdown button.

Re:16GB?

[rekenner]

See also: Page file.

Re:Copying

[dave420]

That was fixed over 2 years ago.

Re:The competition is OSX

[peppepz]

- There is nothing "non-standard" in QT and GTK. Every single linux distribution since 1994 will provide them. If you manage to find one that doesn't, you're free to distribute the libraries with your application (or link statically), as everybody does on Windows.
- GTK has broken backwards compatibility just ONCE in 11 years, when switching from gtk 1.2 to gtk 2.0. Applications based on gtk 1 continue to run flawlessly in current distributions.
- QT has broken backwards compatibility 3 times since 1991. The last time it has done so, during the 3.3 -> 4.0 switch, it provided a compile-time source compatibility layer. I no longer have 2.x apps around, but I can assure that 3.x applications keep running with no problem.
- Both QT and GTK are used under Windows and other operating systems so at least some developers find them attractive (see Google Earth, Paint Shop Pro, PowerDVD, Virtualbox, Skype, Firefox, Gimp, Inkscape, Pidgin).
- QT offers out of the box a state-of-the-art UI designer (I don't know about GTK+, but I guess the situation won't be different).

If you really think Linux is great, then please don't spread FUD, it hurts the platform.

Re:The competition is OSX

[amRadioHed]

Look in the forums of any distro (even Ubuntu) and I bet you'll find the vast majority of the fixes don't start with "goto System->Preferences/Administration ..." but "open a terminal, and paste this into the shell".

Well obviously. A forum is a text based system. Text commands are the easiest way to provide help. If you were getting help from someone in person maybe they'd show you how to solve your problem using a GUI. Describing GUI actions in a forum is much more difficult and error prone for both parties, that would never be my first choice when helping someone on a forum.

Re:Copying

[sqrt(2)]

I'm using 7 right now and copying is just as fast as XP, and that bug was fixed in Vista a long time ago.

Re:The competition is OSX

[smash]

- There is nothing "non-standard" in QT and GTK. Every single linux distribution since 1994 will provide them.

Which version? Do GTK and QT provide APIs for database access, network connectivity, HTML rendering, etc? No... you need Gnome or KDE for that, and they're still in flux.

GTK has broken backwards compatibility just ONCE in 11 years, when switching from gtk 1.2 to gtk 2.0. Applications based on gtk 1 continue to run flawlessly in current distributions. - QT has broken backwards compatibility 3 times since 1991. The last time it has done so, during the 3.3 -> 4.0 switch, it provided a compile-time source compatibility layer. I no longer have 2.x apps around, but I can assure that 3.x applications keep running with no problem.

See above. I'm talking KDE and Gnome not QT and GTK. GTK and QT do not provide all the frameworks required for application development using standard libraries for stuff other than UI widgets. Gnome and KDE are nearer the mark, and they are continually breaking shit and changing (for better or worse).

There is no equivalent to appkit (for example) that you can RELY ON to be installed on a linux box as yet. There is no single platform to target. GTK and QT simply do not compare as an "application development framework", they're little more than widget libraries for GUI development. There is a lot more to applicate development than GUI widgets...

Re:Great goals

[value_added]

from commandline: shutdown -f -t 0

For completeness' sake :

shutdown -f -t 0 # shutdown
shutdown -f -t 0 # reboot
shutdown -h -t 0 # hibernate
shutdown -l -t 0 # logoff

At least that applies to /c/WINDOWS/system32/shutdown.exe.

PowerShell users should be happy to know they can type:

(Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem -ComputerName ).shutdown()

Between the dozens of third-party utilities people generally download and install (Sysinternals, among others), and Microsoft adding/subtracting what's in the various Resource Kits or generally making things up as they go along, I've always relied on Cygwin's own version of shutdown.

Here's a randomly selected page [tesco.net] that details some of the ugliness.

Re:The competition is OSX

[cbhacking]

The primary difference between Enterprise and other SKUs is that is uses volume licensing (no license keys, instead it connects to Windows Server box on its domain, and activates through that). However, one other thing that Enterprise has and no version below it does (Ultimate also has this, but sadly not Business/Professional) is the POSIX subsystem. Subsystem for UUNIX Applicaitons (SUA) is a POSIX-complaint user-mode subsystem on top of the NT kernel. Microsoft provides a minimal but functional operating environment called Interix that runs in SUA, and you can install a package manager and considerable amount of software for it. I use this constantly - I do more in bash on Windows than I do in cmd and powershell put together (and I actually like powershell, but bash is just quicker to do many things with despite beling less powerful). It's seriously underappreciated, and most people don't need it anyhow, but it works better than Cygwin in many cases and makes it possible to use many UNIX/Linux tools and programs without rebooting or virtualizing (I have a Linux install, but I need to do something on Windows that doesn't work in Wine more often than I need to do something in Linux that doesn't work on Interix).

Re:The competition is OSX

[Trahloc]

That pretty much jives with a study [google.com] by google. They found SMART to be pretty damn dumb.

Re:I never shut down

[Judge_Fire]

Mail on Mac OS X even saves the window positions, come to think of it.

Re:The competition is OSX

[Karellen]

KDE and gnome both exist, but [...] the API is still changing and breaking backwards compatibility regularly.

That is complete bollocks.

The point of the major version number in nearly every piece of Free Software ever is as a marker of backwards compatibility. Version x.y+n will be backwards-compatible with version x.y, for arbitrary n.

If backwards compatibility is broken, that is invariably a bug, and you will usually find version x.y+n+1 released within a day or two fixing back-compatibility. The broken version will rarely make it to any distro's repositories, with the rare exception of something like Debian experimental, which is truly for those who are technically capable, brave of heart, and wish to put themselves in a position to spot bugs like this and kill them before they get close to anything like a normal user.

KDE 3.0.0 was released in April 2002, over 7 years ago. All versions of KDE3 have remained backwards-compatible to that version. Any program written for KDE 3.0.0 will run fine on KDE 3.5.10 (released August 2008). KDE have released KDE 3 updates throughout the KDE 4 development process, and KDE 3 is co-installable with KDE 4. Your KDE 3 apps are guaranteed continue to work correctly under KDE 4, and the libraries they depend upon are not going to break backwards-compatibility *ever*. You can continue to write new KDE 3 apps if you like; they will work fine on old and new KDE desktops.

KDE 4 has similar guarantees about the stability and backwards-compatibility of new releases with respect to KDE 4.0.0.

Gnome 2.0 was released in June 2002, and all versions since then have maintained strict backwards compatibility with it. Any program written for Gnome 2.0 will work fine on Gnome 2.26, released in March 2009. I don't have that much data on Gnome 3 (I don't follow it's development) but there is no way that it could possibly cause Gnome 2 apps to break - absolutely *no-one* would use it if it did. You are free to write new Gnome 2 apps, and they will work for the indefinite future.

Re:The competition is OSX

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll. Windows has a perfectly good gui app dev environment, it's called win32 and you can program it in C/C++ and apps from 10 years ago (or more) will function more or less perfectly (unless they tried to do naughty things in the first place).

What is standard about Qt? nothing, does it come by default on the win32 platform? no, what about linux, nope, not there either, mac? nope, again, because it's not standard, because you have to obtain it and install it, that is why however good it maybe, it'll never be called a standard.

Now, if you try to say, it standardises app dev on multiple platforms, you'd be right, but if you tried to say, it's available on all platforms by default, or as a standard, you'd be wrong.

simple really.

Re:The competition is OSX

[Anne Thwacks]

I just bought a Fujitsu-Siemens P4, and replaced the 40GHD with a 400G HD. Obviously an OS install was required. (Yes, I have an OEM FS recovery fdisk from my former FS desktop, now dead, and yes it was a slightly different model). The only way to install the correct Windows NIC drivers is to run a desktop application, which fetches them over the Internet (of course, it cant cos with no NIC drivers, yer cant download nout!).

Ubuntu installed in under 40 mins, including applying all security fixes, and was able to access pron^h^h^h^h Youtube with no grief. After installing about 40 apps, it asked for a reboot for some reason. I went to bed and started it the next day.

Eventually I got the NIC drivers by fowl means (Yeah, someone e-mailed me a chicken with the drivers on an SD card clipped to its leg), and was able to get Windows running. Approx two days and 33 1/3 boots later, the urgent updates were complete, and it was ready for use, apart from the limited range of apps (Windows Paint is not all that useful). I asked not to install IE8, but it sneakily tricked me into installing it as a "necessary update" anyway.

Default boot is going to be Ubuntu for now! If i get any of that "Windows Genuine Disadvantage" crap, then I will reclaim the disk space and use it as a dedicated partition for something. Windows is just annoying the hell out of users for no benefit.

Re:The competition is OSX

[Z8]

Do GTK and QT provide APIs for database access, network connectivity, HTML rendering, etc? No... you need Gnome or KDE for that, and they're still in flux.

I'm not sure about GTK, but Qt provides modules for network connectivity [trolltech.com], HTML rendering [trolltech.com], XML parsing [trolltech.com], and database integration [trolltech.com].

Windows 7: My First 24h

[fahrvergnugen]

Reposted with a few slight edits from my own blog a few days ago:

My poor PC broke. Some of my RAM went bad due to the summer heat, combined and my obstinate refusal to turn the AC on until the temperature in my office is well into the 90's. Fortunately RAM is cheap as hell these days, and I can get twice as much memory for half the price I paid a year ago, so I ordered a full 8GB of replacement memory, as much as my motherboard can handle.

The problem is that I was running Windows Vista 32bit, which can only address a bit under 4GB of RAM. The only way my Windows computer could use the extra memory I'd purchased would be to re-install a 64-bit version of Windows. But I've already pre-ordered Windows 7 Pro, and it seems silly to install Vista 64-bit now when my copy of Windows 7 will arrive in October. So, over the weekend I got a correctly-checksumming ISO of Windows 7 from The Usual Sources and installed it without a key, giving me 30 days to register. The plan is to just use the rearm trick to tide me over until my legal activation keys come in the mail.

It took a few hours to get everything installed, but today all my apps and games are back, and my files are copied over. I gotta say, if you're going to run a Windows desktop, this is the way to do it. It's NICE. It feels much snappier than Vista, and while it's got more overhead (and thus runs a bit slower) than XP 64-bit, the UI enhancements make up for it. Since today is apparently a bullet-list day, here's a quick rundown of my favorite things:

• The taskbar / quicklaunch toolbar / system tray / start menu have all been revamped, and the new way is awesome. The taskbar and the quicklaunch bar have been completely integrated, making the functionality very similar to the OS X Dock. To see the open windows for a running application, just hover your mouse over the icon. IE8 integrates very well with this, showing a preview window for each of the open tabs, regardless of window, and allowing you to switch quickly. It's like mini-expose. All very polished. Right-clicking on a Windows 7-native app, whether it's open or not, gives you a jumplist of recently used items, similar to right-clicking on a systray icon.
• The icon management in the system tray is much improved. You can banish icons from your sight forever, so annoying applications that refuse to let you remove the icon can be shoved off the desktop. No more company logos cluttering up your screen.
• IE8 rules. Who'd have thought? The privacy filters let you duplicate the functionality of adblock by importing an XML file, and the accelerator framework lets you do things like hilite text and post it to a blog, or email it to someone, all with a couple of clicks. New pages and tabs are linked in a security jail with their parent and can't work with other tabs/windows, and they're automatically color-coded. I like it a lot.
• The 'show desktop' hover / button in the bottom right. I HATE not being able to look at the desktop for stray icons or whatnot. Now there's a permanent show desktop button in that little strip of pixels between the system tray and the edge of the screen. Formerly useless real estate has been reclaimed for a good purpose!
• Vista's sidebar gadgets are now completely free-roaming anywhere on the desktop. This is nice, since I always liked the idea of gadgets but didn't want a whole sidebar. Now I can put them wherever, not worry about putting Windows over them, and just hover over the "show desktop" area on the taskbar to check the weather.
• Fast fast fast. 64-bit IE is speedy! File copies are speedy! The operating system is speedy! Everything just feels snappy and quick.
• Libraries - this is really neat, Libraries are consolidated collections of folders that all have the same kind of data. So if C:\photos and d:\photos both contain images, I can make them both part of the photo library, and view it as one folder. What makes this interesting is that I can plug in an external disk o' photos, add it to my Library, and as you

Re:Slowest windows yet!

[Civil_Disobedient]

Can I just get XP that can use more that 3 point whatever G of ram?

Windows XP Professional, x64 Edition [wikipedia.org].

Released nearly five years ago.

Re:Free ugrade for Vista sufferers?

[b4dc0d3r]

We've been paying for a product and not getting it since Windows 95. The only time they admitted it was when they killed ME and tried to get everyone on XP.

Personally, I legitimately purchased one OS (W95) with a computer long ago, and I've been upgrading with all of the service packs they have released since. I am currently deciding whether to upgrade to the latest service pack nicknamed Windows 7, or to throw away my investment and switch to something I can at least fix if it misbehaves.

If they hadn't put out so much shoddy work, I would have happily paid for each version. If I had source code to some of the lesser apps so I could fix the problems myself, I definitely would have paid for it. Windows to me is like a table you buy and bring home, and one of the legs is shorter than the others. Of course you can't just fix it yourself, you have to wait. Service pack 1 is a deck of cards you're supposed to put under the short leg almost but not quite the right height, so it's still a little wobbly. SP2 is a table leg-shaped patch that sits under the leg and is the right height, but they wait till SP3 to give you the special glue to attach it. Now you have a table that works, except now there's a hole in the top you didn't notice before. Guess that's where they took the material for the peg-leg...

I paid for something long ago and never got it. Sounds like a class action suit waiting to happen - except the average person in the jury box will be swayed by the "computers just break sometimes" argument. Partly because computers are a mystery and they don't understand that software can be quite reliable, and ironically, partly because they are used to using Windows.

Re:Fast way to shut down!

[Totenglocke]

Use it on a high end system. I've run XP since it came out on various systems and it's been great -- however, you wouldn't believe how much more responsive Windows 7 is on the same system. The reason? My current desktop (which was XP until the Win 7 RC came out) is a quadcore and XP just doesn't do a very good job of load balancing across the cores. XP could say 25% of my total CPU power is being used while two cores are idle, one is at 10% and the other is at 70% (picking out numbers, I forget the exact numbers, but it was similar). On the same system running the same programs (and as close as I can make it with background processes) if Win 7 says 25% of total CPU power is being used, ever core is at 25% (or maybe one is 24% and another is 26%). It's much more responsive than XP and once the superfetch (or whatever it's called) learns what programs you use most and when you use them, programs launch noticeably faster.

I've promoted Linux to friends and family for a long time but always had Windows on my desktop because it's my gaming rig. However, I actually intend on buying Windows 7 when it comes out because it really is worth the money. In all the time I've been running Windows 7 on my laptop and desktop (sole OS on both systems) I've had a whole two crashes and that was when Win 7 was still the 7000 build beta - not the RC. Since the RC has come out I've had no problems at all -- even programs that wouldn't run under Vista run just fine under Win 7.

Try it before you bash it. For the first time in a long time (if ever) MS has finally done things right.

Re:The competition is OSX

[amliebsch]

How do you check the SMART info on windows?

Right-click the drive from "Computer" and select "Properties." Click the "Hardware" tab. Warnings are reported there, or an "everything's okay" message if there are no warnings.

Re:The competition is OSX

[shutdown -p now]

Which version? Do GTK and QT provide APIs for database access, network connectivity, HTML rendering, etc? No.

Actually Qt (not KDE) provides everything that you've listed. It's a general-purpose framework, not just an UI toolkit.