Windows Vista taught Microsoft a lot about what not to do when launching a new operating system. Don't launch an operating system with shoddy driver support. Don't launch an operating system that's ridiculously slower than your last operating system. And finally, don't launch an operating system that requires a huge memory upgrade to run as well as the operating system it's replacing. After spending a week with Microsoft's new Windows 7 beta, we can say that the company has taken the Vista lessons to heart in its latest OS. Windows 7 boots faster, takes up fewer system resources, offers smarter navigation options, and simplifies tasks such as setting up a home network. We're still a ways off from the 2010 target release date for Windows 7, but we're already loving the OS's new features and usability.
There are a lot of features in Windows 7 that we haven't explored yet such as the new touch screen options, hand writing recognition, and DirectX 11. While touch screen computing and handwriting recognition seem pretty cool, they're not particularly relevant to PC gaming. DirectX 11 counts as a gaming-related feature--but it's also coming to Windows Vista, so it's not really a feature unique to Windows 7. (We also have to wait for the game developers to make software that uses the new GPGPU, general processing on the GPU, and tessellation support in DX11.)
That said, here are the five really cool features that we're excited about in Windows 7!
User Account Control
User account control was supposed to be Vista's ace in the hole for security. It works if you're strict about following the onscreen instructions, but when the OS keeps throwing up permission prompts every time you try to do anything, you tend to get into the habit of clicking yes all of the time. Want to click on that link? Open that file? Sneeze near the monitor? Just click "continue." Even worse, many of us disabled UAC altogether to get the OS to stop interrupting the desktop experience. Microsoft heard all the complaints and fixed UAC in Windows 7. The new user account control will have multiple warning threshold settings, and the OS will now intrude much less by default, though you can configure the feature to be the nagging nanny it was before. Windows 7 will do what it's told and, for lack of a better expression, will shut the hell up until something truly sketchy needs your attention.
Faster Boot Times
We hate waiting for our PCs to boot. Microsoft knows this and has rolled out a combination attack to reduce boot times in Windows 7. Microsoft trimmed the number of system-critical services, reduced CPU, RAM, and hard-disk overhead, and improved prefetching to speed up disk seeks in Windows 7. The developers also added parallelization in device and driver initialization. And it shows, our Windows 7 beta test system booted in 26 seconds compared to 33 seconds in Windows Vista.Performance
Windows Vista is a behemoth of an operating system. It can technically run on 512MB of RAM, but that's like saying Crysis runs on a GeForce 6800. Vista isn't usable unless you have at least 2GB of RAM with 4GB being ideal. Windows 7 should be much leaner. So far our 1GB test system is much more usable with the Windows 7 beta than with Windows Vista. The system boots in a reasonable amount of time, programs snap open, and the dreaded hard drive churns don't occur every time we look at the mouse. We ran a few 3DMark Vantage tests and found that the game performance in the Windows 7 beta is on par with Windows Vista.
Accelerators
Windows 7 improves usability in a lot of ways and you can find one of the best new features right now in the Internet Explorer 8 beta. Internet Explorer 8 features accelerators--quick built-in shortcuts--that make posting to Facebook, mapping an address, and sending a link a whole lot easier. Actions that used to require multiple steps are now streamlined with right-click menu options. Want a map of that address? Right-click the address and open the map. Done. You're not limited to Microsoft-provided accelerators either. There are already tons of accelerators from Google, Facebook, Newegg, Wikipedia, and more. Windows 7 has the same right-click on anything accelerator options set up for common applications such as Windows Media Player, Windows Live Messenger, and Internet Explorer.Have you tried the Windows 7 beta yet? Interested in the new features? What do you think of the OS?
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