Windows 7: Impressions Several Weeks Later

Several weeks ago I installed Windows 7 on my Dell Latitude D420. My initial impressions of the newest operating system from Microsoft were good and over time, have actually improved. Maybe I was just tired of XP and its quirks, but overall, this seems like a far more polished product. Some of these improvements may have come from Vista, but I never had the opportunity to try that iteration of Windows. At the time, I didn’t want to upgrade because it wasn’t supported by my school’s IT department. When you have someone else that has to make your computer work, you’re hesitant to change things.

Five of the improvements I’ve appreciated most over the past several weeks are as follows.

1) Faster apparent performance

cc licensed flickr photo shared by nahkahousu

I don’t have benchmarks to quantify my perceptions, but Windows 7 definitely feels faster. The computer boots up Windows 7 at least as quickly as it booted up XP. Once I’m logged in, Windows 7 continues to impress. In XP, the computer would be sluggish if I tried to look at other web pages while streaming the Muppet’s rendition of the Bohemian Rhapsody. Now, I can stream that masterwork from Youtube and look at other pages without the lag. I did upgrade my Mozilla Firefox installation, so its possible that upgrade was the true cause, not Windows 7. I have also noticed faster apparent performance in Microsoft Visual C# Studio Express 2008 loading solutions and compiling small dinky programs I cook up. Finally, iTunes honestly seems to load faster. Yes, iTunes. Like I said, I don’t have benchmarks, but it just feels faster.

2) Better organization and use of system tray icons

Instead of cluttering my system tray, Windows 7 lets me always hide icons, always show icons, or notifications for that icon only. Now, I can tweak the settings so my battery status is always guaranteed visible while my Pidgin system icon remains hidden unless I have a new message. Perfect! But that’s not all. The functionality of some of these system tray icons has also been greatly improved. One great example is the wireless network icon, shown below.

Now, after just one click, I can choose which wireless network to connect to. Even Intel’s relatively excellent wireless drivers in XP didn’t offer this!

3) Start Menu Search

This may seem trivial, but Windows 7 now has the ability to search the start menu items as you type. I first got addicted to this functionality using Gnome Do and Google Desktop. Granted Do is significantly more powerful, and Google Desktop indexes more files, but the ability to search the start menu was a major reason I installed those programs.

4) Perfect and Quick Sleep

I’ve been jealous of the ability of Apple’s MacBooks to wake from their version of sleep nearly instantly. Now I can finally do the same. Resuming from sleep now only takes a second at most, whereas in XP sleep took closer to five seconds. Sure, its only a few seconds faster, but the improvement makes a huge difference in daily use. There’s no more hesitation when I want to use the computer, I simply lift the lid and am ready to go almost instantly!

5) Improved DOSBox Performance

Yes, its nerdy, but I’ve recently taken to wasting some of my free time by playing X-Com: UFO Defense and Master of Orion 2. I have  PlayStation 3 so I have my dose of latest generation games, but sometimes I reminisce for the classics. Oddly enough, both games run significantly smoother in Windows 7 versus XP.

My opinion on XP versus Windows 7?

Good riddance XP. You had your time, but now there’s something better.

There are many other improvements in Windows 7, but these are the five that came to mind for me. Its been years since I’ve said this, but I can honestly recommend this Microsoft operating system to others. Ubuntu still has its place and will continue to be used on a daily basis, but Windows has now begun to approach the polished experience of Mac OS X.