Robert Pendell

Well Windows 7 is right around the corner.  For those that do not know it is due to come out on October 22nd which is less than a month away.  I have been running the RTM build for ultimate for almost 2 months.  At least the computer is telling me that.  So my impressions.  Well here goes.

• Windows 7 is faster than Vista
• Windows 7 has less issues than Vista
• Windows 7 has less UAC prompts than Vista (but some are still present)
• Windows 7 has better hardware support than both Vista and XP
• Windows 7 has native and built-in biometric support (checked and tested with my upek brand fingerprint reader)
• Windows 7 uses less resources and has better memory management than both XP and Vista; Uses approx 33% – 50% on a normal day.  Even after extensive use doesn’t usually exceed 55%
• Windows 7 has virtually non-existent compatibility issues when moving from Vista.
• Going from Vista to Windows 7 is likely going to be fairly smooth unlike moving from XP to Vista.  XP to Windows 7 is still going to be bumpy but not as bad as the XP to Vista move since most companies are getting things out early this time around.

Now then I can’t really test performance of XP against Windows 7 but when I did XP against Vista I obviously found the latter to be slower on the same hardware.  Why?  Well XP is older so it will naturally run faster on newer hardware.  I did have a co-worker upgrade her netbook from XP to Windows 7 though and she reported a marked improvement in performance on it.  In addition she loved it more than XP so that was a very good thing.

On a Gateway P-7805u gaming laptop Windows 7 had an included driver for all devices except for graphics (expected) and media reader slots.  Oh wait it had half the driver for the media reader slots.  It also had a solution and that was to go to the Gateway site and download the proper driver.  The graphics it got from Windows Update but I would get the latest release from the OEM.