Windows 7 Experience
Windows 7 Experience
DAY 1:
I burn the Windows 7 Beta iso to my DVD. After restart, the system took me to the Windows 7 installation menu. Based on my reference to other web sites, I made a custom installation so as to enable my Vista - Windows 7 dual boot. To my surprise, the setup was extremely fast and was finished well under 15 minutes. The only user intervention required in the setup was to enter the user name and password and to setup the timezone and off course, enter the key.
After restart, I selected Windows 7 from the boot menu. The Windows 7 Boot screen was pretty impressive, with the four blocks (or rather drops) of windows logo zooming in to their way. And then comes the all new Windows 7 desktop, and it loaded much faster than vista. The first thing I noticed was the taskbar. It was a good step forward compared to the conventional taskbar. I guess Microsoft learned a few lessons from Mac and Ubuntu. There are no labels in the taskbar and the content preview is given on mouse over. It means that you can have a bundle of open tasks and still able to see the list in the same taskbar. To my surprise, I couldnt find the classic start menu option anywhere. I hope its added in the final release.
But soon I realized that Aero was not working in my laptop. On further checking, I discovered that it was because my copy of Windows 7 was still not activated. I though that this would be the most simple part of all, as I had a genuine key for installation. But guess what, it dint turn out that way. When i tried to activate it through internet, it continuously gave me time out error. I am still stuck with that problem and the screen looks horrible without Aero experience and zero shadow. Hope I can activate it tomorrow. (Fingers crossed.....). Its getting pretty late for me to try out other new features. So I decided to try out my luck tomorrow.
DAY 2:
After a long days' work at office, I reached home in the evening. The first thing I did was to switch on my laptop and log into Windows 7. Then I tried my luck by activating Windows 7, and bingo!!!, it activated this time. But still I was not able to get the Areo running. That was because the laptop was still running on the basic VGA and my nVidia was not installed for Windows 7. Luckily windows update automatically detected the driver and poped up that the driver in available in Windows Update.
So after running windows update and restarting my system, Aero was running at its best. To my surprise the desktop still loaded much faster than Vista. Whereas I had to disable desktop gadgets in Vista in order to load it faster, but in Windows 7 its loaded much faster even though both Aero and the Gadgets were enabled.
Then I started playing around with themes and other customization features. Windows have more vibrant themes and are customizable to the last finest level. The options are also much more easier to change when compared to Vista, where the UAC intervention happens on every step.
Some interesting features in desktop customization are the option to change the wallpaper automatically after the specified time and the option to change the wallpaper from the desktop context menu. To my surprise, Dreamscene was not available here. I have no idea why such a good feature was removed from Windows 7. I hope it comes out in the final version.
So that was my experience on windows 7 for the second day. As of now, I am really impressed by its performance and features. Will be trying some other features tomorrow.
DAY3:
Today seems to be the lucky day. So I started to try other other new features. First I started with the Tablet PC Input Panel which has handwriting recognition features. I must say that I was impressed by its performance. The system was able to recognize the words with great ease. But I noticed that the system only recognized the words in dictionary, and if the word is not found, it simply shows the nearest match. This feature is good at some time, but not in most.
Then I opened the much talked about Windows Media Player 12 for Windows 7. The first noticeable feature was that the now playing section was separated with the media library section, which is a very useful improvement. The media player can now show both visualization and album art at the same time. Then I ran Internet Explorer 8, which I found was similar to the one available as beta for Vista(or may be I dint notice anything new).
After that, I installed the daily use programs like the Anti-virus and MS Office 2007 and both of them installed and worked without any problem. I must say that in past 3 days, the system never popped the UAC permission required message. The reason for this is that in Windows 7, the user can control the UAC control message as per their requirement. I am not sure whether this will compromise with the security or not.
In the past few days I had tried almost all the basic activities from the new Windows 7, and I felt that it can rather be a very good alternative to the earlier versions of Windows. I am eagerly waiting for the final release and will surely install it in my laptop.
Harish
Signing Off....
Keep Rokin!!!
Ciao
DAY 1:
I burn the Windows 7 Beta iso to my DVD. After restart, the system took me to the Windows 7 installation menu. Based on my reference to other web sites, I made a custom installation so as to enable my Vista - Windows 7 dual boot. To my surprise, the setup was extremely fast and was finished well under 15 minutes. The only user intervention required in the setup was to enter the user name and password and to setup the timezone and off course, enter the key.
After restart, I selected Windows 7 from the boot menu. The Windows 7 Boot screen was pretty impressive, with the four blocks (or rather drops) of windows logo zooming in to their way. And then comes the all new Windows 7 desktop, and it loaded much faster than vista. The first thing I noticed was the taskbar. It was a good step forward compared to the conventional taskbar. I guess Microsoft learned a few lessons from Mac and Ubuntu. There are no labels in the taskbar and the content preview is given on mouse over. It means that you can have a bundle of open tasks and still able to see the list in the same taskbar. To my surprise, I couldnt find the classic start menu option anywhere. I hope its added in the final release.
But soon I realized that Aero was not working in my laptop. On further checking, I discovered that it was because my copy of Windows 7 was still not activated. I though that this would be the most simple part of all, as I had a genuine key for installation. But guess what, it dint turn out that way. When i tried to activate it through internet, it continuously gave me time out error. I am still stuck with that problem and the screen looks horrible without Aero experience and zero shadow. Hope I can activate it tomorrow. (Fingers crossed.....). Its getting pretty late for me to try out other new features. So I decided to try out my luck tomorrow.
DAY 2:
After a long days' work at office, I reached home in the evening. The first thing I did was to switch on my laptop and log into Windows 7. Then I tried my luck by activating Windows 7, and bingo!!!, it activated this time. But still I was not able to get the Areo running. That was because the laptop was still running on the basic VGA and my nVidia was not installed for Windows 7. Luckily windows update automatically detected the driver and poped up that the driver in available in Windows Update.
So after running windows update and restarting my system, Aero was running at its best. To my surprise the desktop still loaded much faster than Vista. Whereas I had to disable desktop gadgets in Vista in order to load it faster, but in Windows 7 its loaded much faster even though both Aero and the Gadgets were enabled.
Then I started playing around with themes and other customization features. Windows have more vibrant themes and are customizable to the last finest level. The options are also much more easier to change when compared to Vista, where the UAC intervention happens on every step.
Some interesting features in desktop customization are the option to change the wallpaper automatically after the specified time and the option to change the wallpaper from the desktop context menu. To my surprise, Dreamscene was not available here. I have no idea why such a good feature was removed from Windows 7. I hope it comes out in the final version.
So that was my experience on windows 7 for the second day. As of now, I am really impressed by its performance and features. Will be trying some other features tomorrow.
DAY3:
Today seems to be the lucky day. So I started to try other other new features. First I started with the Tablet PC Input Panel which has handwriting recognition features. I must say that I was impressed by its performance. The system was able to recognize the words with great ease. But I noticed that the system only recognized the words in dictionary, and if the word is not found, it simply shows the nearest match. This feature is good at some time, but not in most.
Then I opened the much talked about Windows Media Player 12 for Windows 7. The first noticeable feature was that the now playing section was separated with the media library section, which is a very useful improvement. The media player can now show both visualization and album art at the same time. Then I ran Internet Explorer 8, which I found was similar to the one available as beta for Vista(or may be I dint notice anything new).
After that, I installed the daily use programs like the Anti-virus and MS Office 2007 and both of them installed and worked without any problem. I must say that in past 3 days, the system never popped the UAC permission required message. The reason for this is that in Windows 7, the user can control the UAC control message as per their requirement. I am not sure whether this will compromise with the security or not.
In the past few days I had tried almost all the basic activities from the new Windows 7, and I felt that it can rather be a very good alternative to the earlier versions of Windows. I am eagerly waiting for the final release and will surely install it in my laptop.
Harish
Signing Off....
Keep Rokin!!!
Ciao
Labels: Windows 7, Windows 7 Beta, windows 7 boot screen, windows 7 taskbar, windows explorer 8, windows media player 12, windows UAC, Windows Vienna
posted by Harish @ 9:51 PM
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