Windows 7 Early Looks: First Impressions and Future Possibilities Windows 7 Beta on 2 Desktops and a Netbook Rob Enderle
I've been using Windows 7 on two desktops and a Netbook now for about two weeks and I'm very impressed with the offering. It is what Vista should have been: clean, easier, leaner, more intuitive, and faster on existing hardware.
However, much like the '90s was the decade of the Internet and the browser increasingly became the center of our world, this decade is about "the Cloud" and how we increasingly are living in it. The hot products over the last several years have been phones, not PCs. And increasingly they have been differentiated more by back-end offerings like Application Stores, location-based services, and streaming media.
Let's talk about my experiences so far with Windows 7 and then shift to what we'll be working from next decade as the market transitions to its next phase.
Windows 7 Beta on Two Desktops and a Netbook
One of the questions I've been hearing a lot has to do with Microsoft's promise that Windows 7 will work on a Netbook and whether we should believe it. The answer after two weeks is: absolutely.
Windows 7 runs fine on a Netbook and improves on Windows Vista in a number of ways. The improvements include a more intuitive user interface with fewer menus left over from Windows NT, less annoying warning messages, faster performance, a more advanced taskbar, and vastly easier networking configuration.
Currently I'm running it on two desktops as well, both on the other side of the performance curve. Both are I7-based, with one running twin ATI 4870x2 cards with twin high-speed flash drives and the other running three NVIDIA 280s and fast magnetic drives.
One big takeaway has been that flash, or Solid State, drives make a huge difference in performance and system noise. The other is that the systems seem to be rock solid under Windows 7 — incredibly fast and generally much more networked-capable.
I run twin 24" screens (used to run 4 19" screens) and I'm always losing windows. The new task bar is wonderful for finding stuff you have open on the desktop and managing it. This may, for me, be worth the price of admission for this thing all by itself because it's a huge time saver.
Even games seem to be working better; though as is frequently the case, I did have issues with the antivirus product I use, which ironically, is Microsoft's own OneCare Live.
Overall this is what a maintenance release generally is, primarily a product that addresses the shortcomings of what came before. And Windows 7 is arguably the best general purpose PC operating system I have yet used, even though it is in beta. Still, and this is a rule I'm clearly breaking myself, I wouldn't use any beta product on a production platform, and care still needs to be taken.
There was a 4th computer system I tried Windows 7 on and it didn't like it at all, primarily because it hit the market after the beta of Windows 7 I'm using went out.
This means there are risks and you'll probably either want this on new hardware or want to wait a few weeks after launch before installing it so that others can discover all of the little surprises and fix them before they hit you.
Granted, official launch is still some time out and we have yet to see how Snow Leopard will stack up or Google's rumored Netbook version of Android. But if you are on a dying XP machine or frustrated with Vista, Windows 7 will definitely give you something to look forward to.
Windows vs. The Cloud
I'm not going to bother with the typical Windows vs. the MacOS commentary because I think the real fight brewing is between the desktop and Cloud-Based Portable Personality, not between companies that have PC offerings.
Apple's iPhone experience is much more compelling than their PC experience and I doubt it will be that long before elements of the phone start showing up on Apple PCs. And partially what makes it compelling is the Cloud-based Application Store and MobileMe (when it works).
But the real change appears to be being driven by Google, which was first to embrace "The Cloud" as a platform. And, much like PCs replaced mainframes, the Cloud blends a virtual client with a Cloud-based back-end and could – and likely will – replace PCs. Intel just announced a partnership with Citrix to get the client side of market there.
