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Hands-On With Windows 7's New Features

Posted by timothy on Tuesday October 28, @12:17PM
from the less-sucking-is-good-in-this-context dept.
Windows Operating Systems
Barence writes "Microsoft has released the first pre-beta code of Windows 7, and PC Pro has a series of in-depth, hands-on examinations of all the new features. The revamped user interface has clearly gleaned more than a little inspiration from the Mac OS X Dock, but it goes further than the Apple concept with 'jumplists,' new gadgets and an updated system tray. The much-vaunted multi-touch controls were there to play with, and it seemed to work well. Networking has been given the full treatment, with new features HomeGroup and Libraries. Windows 7 debuts a new feature called Device Stage that has the potential to be unbelievably handy ... or a complete disaster. Finally, several new features could make PCs easier to manage and secure for IT departments, such as BitLocker To Go and Branch Cache." All in all, these features together lead some people to the conclusion that Windows 7 will "suck less than Vista" — that last link from reader ThinSkin, who also points to a related sampling of screenshots from the current iteration of Windows 7.
windows os !totalrewrite lookslikevista couldnotbemuchworse
tech windows
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Firehose:Hands-on with Windows 7's new features by Barence (1228440)
[+] Windows 7 To Be 256-Core Aware 441 comments
unassimilatible writes "As new features of Windows 7 continue to trickle out, ZDNet is now reporting that it will scale to 256 processors. While one has to wonder, like with Vista, how many of the teased features will actually make it into the final OS, I think we can all agree, 256 cores is enough for anybody." This Mark Russinovich interview has some technical details (Silverlight required).
[+] Is Windows 7 Faster Or Just Smarter? 603 comments
Barence writes "The Windows 7 unveiling garnered largely positive coverage, with many hands-on testers praising it for being faster than Vista. But is it actually? To find out, this blogger ran a suite of benchmarks to see just how much quicker Windows 7 really is — and the results weren't quite what he expected. 'The actual performance gap between Vista and Windows 7 is ... nada. Absolutely nothing. Our Office benchmarks and video encoding tests complete in precisely the same time regardless of which OS is installed. [...] It's tempting to see this as a bit of a con. They've sped up the front end so it feels like you're getting more done, but in terms of real productivity it's no better than Vista."
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  • Capabilities (Score:5, Funny)

    by Divebus (860563) on Tuesday October 28, @12:18PM (#25543671)

    Yeah, but can it run all my old viruses?

  • handy disaster (Score:5, Funny)

    by gEvil (beta) (945888) on Tuesday October 28, @12:25PM (#25543765)
    Windows 7 debuts a new feature called Device Stage that has the potential to be unbelievably handy ... or a complete disaster.

    Hmmm. I wonder which way Microsoft will take this....

      • Re:handy disaster (Score:5, Insightful)

        by idontgno (624372) on Tuesday October 28, @12:33PM (#25543909) Journal

        If I read TFA correctly, what Microsoft does with this "Device Stage" [pcpro.co.uk] thingie is not much at issue. What the hardware manufacturers do is critical.

        Microsoft is essentially handing control of the Device Stage screen to the hardware manufacturers, allowing them to embed links to their online services and client software.

        On the one hand, it's a perfect opportunity to make life easier for consumers, by opening their eyes to features and services that apply to their particular model. On the other, it could be used as little more than a cheap form of advertising, with manufacturers attempting to lock consumers into their own proprietary software and services.

        I'm betting the latter. Do I have any takers?

  • Plus ? (Score:5, Funny)

    by ze_jua (910531) on Tuesday October 28, @12:27PM (#25543803)
    Will there be a "Windows7 Plus!" to allow users to create funny themes ?

  • New features are irrelivant... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ivanmarsh (634711) on Tuesday October 28, @12:27PM (#25543807)

    Does it out perform XP?

    I didn't put Vista on my machine because every benchmark said it was slower than XP. Can I assume that 7 is going to be even slower?

  • Look familliar... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bazer (760541) on Tuesday October 28, @12:28PM (#25543845)
    I see the KDE team made leaps and bounds in their Windows port.

  • Visuals (Score:5, Interesting)

    by StreetStealth (980200) on Tuesday October 28, @12:30PM (#25543857) Journal

    I know that there's plenty of time for this to change between now and release, but Aero's visual details continue to leave a vast amount to be desired.

    There's simply far too much detail on elements that don't need it -- window borders, toolbars, status bars; everything seems to have about twice as many lines as are needed, with various controls popping up and down like the terraces of some ancient courtyard. This makes windows look more complicated than they should.

    And don't get me started on the ridiculous transparency + airbrush titlebars. The first thing they should have done was to accept that the translucent window experiment failed (or at least to boost the opacity to ~90% like another company addicted to transparency learned to do), but the Windows UI team doesn't seem to have realized it yet.

    • Re:Visuals (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kisrael (134664) on Tuesday October 28, @12:37PM (#25543969) Homepage

      Windows Vista is a very sad exercise in "More is the new More!" design.

      I took a snapshot of first desktop scene of my Vista laptop [kisrael.com]. Some of that's the usual OEM cruft, but man, what a visual assault! Harsh colors, the OEM cruft (icons, windows, toolbars), messages screaming at me... and then this dumbass sidebar. Because, you know, I always wanted a slideshow permanently putting up a new picture to distract me every couple minutes.

      I still run w/ windows maximized, just a way of focusing, but Windows UI is running in the opposite direction.

  • No more registry? (Score:5, Funny)

    by seven of five (578993) on Tuesday October 28, @12:30PM (#25543861) Homepage
    Ha ha, just kidding!

  • Surprise! (Score:5, Funny)

    by clarkn0va (807617) on Tuesday October 28, @12:39PM (#25544015)

    Next week's news: Windows 7 is actually--surprise!--Windows Mojave!

    db

  • Page fault madness (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MegadeTH_ (177721) on Tuesday October 28, @12:39PM (#25544027)

    have they done anything to improve memory management and the incredibly insane amount of page faults?

    Vista is terrible slow with it's default config, super prefetch, using all the memory and then paging applications your actually trying to run to swap, which is hundreds of times slower than ram, and sure feels like it too.

    osx, and linux and most all other operating systems that I've used will not swap memory until the machine is completely out of ram, and are noticeably faster in this area. Vista starts to swap before your even logged in, and page faults like crazy

    with 4 gigs of ram, less than one half used, why does vista page fault important programs like dwm.exe, my machine has 7 million page faults on that one app and it's only been turned on 12 hours

  • Cheap Hack (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Midnight Thunder (17205) on Tuesday October 28, @12:42PM (#25544083) Homepage Journal

    I took a look at some of the screen shots, and quite honestly I get the feeling unpaid open source developers could have done a better job. It doesn't feel like a qualified UI expert sat down to really improve thing. If they don't put a proper effort into the UI design, then Ubuntu is going to be the better OS.

  • Bloat... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AVonGauss (1001486) on Tuesday October 28, @12:46PM (#25544151)
    If they didn't take a step back and seriously consider what should be part of the operating system and what should be a free standing application - i.e. the bloat, then Windows 7 will suffer the same reception as Vista in my opinion. Microsoft has many different initiatives in many different areas, but still seems unable to resist using their operating system as the launching platform for those unrelated initiatives. At the end of the day, people want an operating system that works and works with them and for a reasonable price. Their idea for many different "tiers" to their operating system should have been the first clue to their management team that it is time to reign things in and refocus efforts.

  • Virtual Desktops? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hatta (162192) on Tuesday October 28, @12:46PM (#25544157) Journal

    Do they have virtual desktops that actually work yet?

  • Device staging = Marketing TOOLS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sun.Jedi (1280674) on Tuesday October 28, @12:47PM (#25544169) Journal

    From TFA:
    A printer manufacturer, for example, might include a direct link to buy new ink cartridges for that specific printer from their website

    The purpose of an OS is to provide a stable, secure framework for which to run applications.

    The purpose of a device driver is to provide stable, and secure interface between hardware and the OS.

    Marketing fluff does not belong in an OS, or a device driver. I surely hope there is an opt-out for this tripe.

  • Most of the original scope of Windows 7 has been abandoned. The new cleaned-up native API? Not a word about that. The Classic-like sandboxes for legacy APIs? Gone. What we have is more like a Plus Pack for Windows Vista, the same way Windows XP was a Plus Pack for Windows 2000.

    So I don't think there's any reason to treat it as a joke. Windows 7 really is Mojave. It's Vista with some new bundled apps and gratuitous user interface changes (who came up with the ribbon? What was he on? Does the DEA know about it?), and a fresh new name to try and dump the bad PR from the botched release. It worked in the Mojave Experiment, so they see no reason not to go ahead and expand its scope.

    • I was looking at buying a new gaming rig recently but I refuse to buy an operating system that hobbles the performance.

      I know what you mean--they all hobble performance. Anything past the BIOS is just bells and whistles that ruins my gaming experience completely.

      On a related note, do you know where I can pick up a copy of Tie Fighter that works on IBM's Extended Firmware Interface (EFI)?

      • Re:What's a gamer to do? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by mweather (1089505) on Tuesday October 28, @12:36PM (#25543957)
        You joke, but what good is the desktop environment to me when I'm playing a game? I liked the days of DOS games much better.

      • Re:What's a gamer to do? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Chaos Incarnate (772793) on Tuesday October 28, @12:39PM (#25544031) Homepage

        On a related note, do you know where I can pick up a copy of Tie Fighter that works on IBM's Extended Firmware Interface (EFI)?

        The Windows 95 port ought to work just fine. You lose the MIDI music (as DirectMusic didn't exist at the time of the port) in favor of canned CD audio music edited from Williams' soundtracks. In return, though, you get 640x480 resolution in both TIE Fighter (which may have supported it in DOS?) and X-wing (which definitely didn't).

    • Re:What's a gamer to do? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by sqrt(2) (786011) on Tuesday October 28, @12:37PM (#25543971) Journal

      If you're looking to buy a new computer anyway, get Vista. A couple less FPS isn't going to ruin your gaming experience. That's what you're worrying about; getting 120 FPS in counter strike or 123. Vista is rock solid on new hardware*, even 64 bit version just doesn't have the problems it did a year ago. I'll admit that the gap becomes more noticeable the lower your hardware specs get but you said you're building a gaming machine which says to me you're willing to spend a little more to get more power so the difference between Vista and XP won't be apparent to your eyes--you'll need benchmarking software to measure the difference.

      Vista WORKS now, guys. Why don't you try it again and stop basing your idea of Vista on your impression of it at launch, which was no worse than XP when it first came out.

      *disregarding the problems from vendor added crapware, but that'll affect you even if you buy an XP machine. Install a clean version of Vista.

    • Re:What's a gamer to do? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ceseuron (944486) on Tuesday October 28, @12:38PM (#25543991)
      I actually replaced Windows Vista with Windows Server 2008 Standard x64, which thus far has played every game I've thrown at it. It's about 10GB smaller than Vista and, with a few tweaks, performs VERY well. Check out http://www.win2008workstation.com./ [www.win200...tation.com] If Windows 7 shows the same patented buggy, bloatware approach Microsoft took with Vista, I won't be touching it or any future desktop operating system from Microsoft in the future.

    • Re:What's a gamer to do? (Score:5, Informative)

      by bigstrat2003 (1058574) * on Tuesday October 28, @12:47PM (#25544191)
      I game on Vista, and it works beautifully. There is no reason to avoid Vista, unless you'd rather avoid Windows altogether (Vista is a good Windows entry, but if you have problems with the product line, it's obviously not going to solve that).

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