One day of Windows 7 will make you feel like in heaven! This is the first impression the new operating system has given me in the past week, and it’s truly been a pleasure using it, since I was among the “brave” ones to drop Vista in a split second, without second thoughts.
Microsoft has quite an impressive record of covering the needs of almost 90 percent of computers worldwide, but at the same time, it is also a record-breaker in terms of user dissatisfaction and computer viruses. So I must admit Windows 7 came as a surprise (a really good one too), especially since the beta version of it is much better than Vista itself (and I’m not the only one saying that).
Upon installation, I was among the lucky ones to see everything going smoothly, although on my second laptop I initially had a problem with Windows 7 finding my wireless device (it did find it though after I managed to connect to the Internet by plugging it into a router).
Sure, there are a few glitches here and there with unsupported programs (so far, I found Google Chrome was incompatible, and 7-zip was no longer appearing in my right-click menu), but aside from that, everything went smoothly, starting with the installation process.
The taskbar is very interesting, and it helps messy users keep a clean desktop. You can go around tasks easily if you’ve been using Vista, otherwise it will be a bit confusing, since the interface is much different from the XP one. But it is worth noting that things are usually easy to spot in Windows 7.
In addition to that, my computer seems to be much happier now, it takes less time to open or switch between windows (Vista usually just crashed when there were too many of them, and by too many I mean more than 2), and shutting down…well, it’s poetry now.
Last week, good news came from TweakTown, who published the results of their Windows 7 vs. Windows Vista SP1 SSD performance test. The results were more than encouraging: Windows 7 has the edge over Vista!
Windows 7 has managed to beat Vista in all tests (except one, which the TweakTown says might be a slip up), and the access time was clearly superior to Vista, scoring -1%on all tests (compared to 2-4% on Vista), although that might also be a reporting error (with a big consistency though).
I must admit I was very disappointed (and sick of) Vista, but Windows 7 made me forget all about it. I constantly try to remind myself that it is still a beta, but then again, I have the feeling that I’ve upgraded to a final version of an operating system. Microsoft, I forgive you for the Vista slip!
