Since I have a subscription to Microsoft developer network (MSDN) – I have a *legal* copy of Windows 7 Ultimate – and the other day I stuck it on my HP laptop to play with it.\u00a0 Here’s my quick first review<\/p>\n
The Good:<\/u><\/p>\n The bad:<\/u><\/p>\n The Ugly:<\/u><\/p>\n Verdict<\/strong>: C+ Since I have a subscription to Microsoft developer network (MSDN) – I have a *legal* copy of Windows 7 Ultimate – and the other day I stuck it on my HP laptop to play with it.\u00a0 Here’s my quick first review The Good: Faster – yes, it’s faster.\u00a0 I even installed the 64-bit version on my laptop with 2gb ram, and it’s quite noticeably faster than Vista 32 was on the same machine for opening apps, switching apps, etc. Driver…<\/p>\n\n
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\nThe time to start an average app is now more than doubled for me and I usually have to click twice as many times as before.\u00a0 So, I created a folder on my desktop with my apps on them, and start them that way because my muscle memory automatically gets me 90% to the app I want when the folder opens – because they don’t move around.\u00a0 Now how stupid is that for trying to work around this problem?\u00a0 They removed the ‘Use classic menus’ option – which was in the betas.\u00a0 If I’d known they were going to drop classic, I would have raised holy hell.
\nAnother point about the ‘last N apps used’ – I don’t know what algorithm it uses to put those apps on my start menu – but it seems like a dyslexic monkey is picking them.\u00a0 I for the life of me can’t figure out why firefox never seems to get on the list (which I use daily), but the solitaire I ran one time is still on there…<\/li>\n\n
\nThis is a fundamental difference between Apple and Microsoft.\u00a0 MS will hit you with dialogs that really, honestly, don’t help you solve the problem – but just tell you all about the problem and maybe enough info for the person to Google a solution.\u00a0 Apple carefully removes features so that it will often pick a solution for you based on the smaller data set and do it – without asking.\u00a0 Yeah, it’s a bit more draconian, but I’d rather have the OS do that – and then give you the power user tools to go change it by hand if you care – than having tons of knobs and tubes and covering it with a nice sheet so it doesn’t look so bad while still not actually solving your problems. \u00a0 With Win7 you feel as if you walked through all kinds of fluffy menus that seem to take you twice as long to get to the darn thing you want.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\nIt’s a good effort – good improvements – and a then a few steps back on usability.\u00a0 It was telling when I did a bios update and it somehow nuked my RAID setup – requiring me to reinstall.\u00a0 I had both a Windows Vista Ultimate x64 DVD and Windows 7 Ultimate x64 DVD sitting on my desk.\u00a0 I thought for a minute, and picked up Vista Ultimate for re-install.\u00a0 For all the goodness of Win7, I still prefer Vista right now.\u00a0 If they fix some of these UI features, I’ll switch.\u00a0 Till then – I’ll probably wait till Win7 SP1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"