Windows 7: A failure before it even ships?

That’s right. You heard it here. Windows 7 is a failure. Well the servers it’s on are at least.

Actually I quite like it but most people can’t even download a copy right now, at least from Microsoft. Apparantly nobody at Microsoft had any clue, any hint that the Windows 7 beta might be eagerly awaited. Now, millions of geeks including me are getting impatient and we’re wondering where the keys are at. Where are the darn keys! Every MS blog says the same thing:

Due to very heavy traffic we’re seeing as a result of interest in the Windows 7 Beta, we are adding some additional infrastructure support to the Microsoft.com properties before we post the public beta. We want to ensure customers have the best possible experience when downloading the beta, and I’ll be posting here again soon once the beta goes live. Stay tuned! We are excited that you are excited!

At least they said something. Ten years ago Microsoft would have never even let us in on this much. Is this a marketing ploy? I doubt it. But, I do know this is good coverage for Windows 7. I mean how many times in the past has Windows interest crashed this many servers? Uh, huh. Never.

Windows 7 Public Beta Countdown

Not long before the public beta of Windows 7 is released! I must say I’m seeing a massive response to Windows 7 in general. Every forum I visit has a post about it. Ninety nine percent of the people posting in those forums are loving Windows 7. People are installing it on their laptops, desktops and netbooks. They say it runs faster and is less of a resource hog and they would be right on the money based on my experience with the new OS. It flies.

I switched back to Vista last night so I’d have all my programs and settings in place for discussing CES and I already miss Windows 7. I miss the thumbnail previews the most. I love this extension of Vista’s already handy feature. The task bar has grown to be my new favorite feature. Everything I do is there. The start menu, search, my most used programs and the most viewed documents I open in them via jump lists.

Mark you’re digital calendars and download a copy to try for yourself tomorrow, January 9. This is the biggest Windows release ever. It isn’t even that Windows 7 is a mjor step forward because it isn’t. It is however not Vista which is all the average computer user had hoped for at the end of the day anyway. Let’s not tell them it’s a new version of Vista, OK?

Living with Windows 7

I installed Windows 7 Beta 1(build 7000) on a spare drive a couple of days ago and since then have been using it side by side with Windows Vista. It feels faster than Vista for one. It also looks better in most areas. The new features such as jump lists and the improved thumbnail view are great. I really like the new show desktop feature. I’m always wanting to peek at the gadgets behind my open windows and this is a simple and effective way to do that. Windows 7 is much better at finding drivers like the one for my graphics card, my sound card and even my HP monitor that uses a driver to tilt to portrait mode.

Windows 7 has it’s problems though. I’m sure to most they are just trivial but I find them really annoying. My first gripe is the lack of options for showing desktop icons. I like a clean desktop free of icons but I also like gadgets to be visible. In Windows 7, there is no in between. You either have icons and gadgets both showing or you don’t. The only way to keep gadgets visible while “hiding” icons is to manually delete the icons! This is stupid.

Another big problem I have with Windows 7 is the lack of a mail client. I might be one of the few who actually use Windows Mail but it works great. It’s replacement, which is only available to download and doesn’t ship with Windows 7, is a pile of crap. It doesn’t combine accounts for one which drives me mad. I have to check for new messages for each of my three accounts which done several times a day can get tiresome. Windows Mail isn’t the end all of email clients but it’s better than Windows Live Mail. I realize it’s still in beta so I’m hoping they address the performance issues but I don’t see them changing the interface since that is likely a done deal and has been months ago. I guess I’ll use Thunderbird.

Windows Media Player 12 is also new. And it’s terrible. Gone is the transparent background near the playback controls. It’s replaced by a bland looking white section. I know its a cosmetic change it what really matters is how it works underneath the eye candy but it is a step backward. At least give the option to enable this for those who shelled out the moola for a graphics card to run Vista’s AERO interface. The newest version of Windows Media Player also has a new “Now Playing” screen. It’s detached from the player itself and is a separate window. The SRS sound enhancements and other settings are accessed via this new “Now Playing” screen and they too are in their own window which I hate. Everything was together in WMP11 and everything in WMP12 is separated from one another. Who thought this was a good idea? It sucks. Plain and simple Microsoft.

That’s all for now! Thanks for reading.

Windows 7

Something has me more than a bit perplexed. It isn’t that Windows 7 is coming sooner than I thought. It isn’t even the fact that people still hate Vista, most without even using it themselves. The one thing that keeps coming back to me is the new task bar. Or should I say the new old task bar from KDE.

 

Windows 7 task bar source: Paul Thurrott

 

 

 

Let me just put this out there. I love the way Vista looks and feels. Everything from the start menu to the AERO interface. The window maximizing and minimizing effects. The sidebar. Even the indexed search which I couldn’t live without. All of that is included in Windows 7 but one thing that sticks out like a sore start button is the new task bar. It’s U G L Y. It works for Linux. It just doesn’t do anything for me on Windows. Not only that but it’s confusing! You have programs, and well, open programs, coexisting in one task bar. Apple’s OSX dock does this pretty well but the Windows 7 dock-like task bar is not as easy to understand. As Paul Thurrott put it so correctly, the new task bar is simple but not easy. It looks very clean, albeit ugly, but severely lacks the intuitive cues that make the task bar so easy to use. 

Users might over time get used to the new task bar. Will they like it? I’m not so sure they will. In Vista, if I want to launch an application I use the start menu. I don’t use desktop icons. In Windows 7 you can launch programs from the task bar itself, much like Quick Launch only now the icons are larger take up the space where open programs reside.

What do you think? Any Vista users out there who actually like using it? Leave a comment!