I've spent far too much time over the years suffering the pain of a Microsoft operating system upgrade. Anyone who's ever attempted one knows what I mean. You just know it's not going to go smoothly. In fact, OS upgrades are so consistently inconsistent that often we don't even bother trying to upgrade, even when we know it should. Rather than dealing with spotty, inconsistent performance, we concede, wipe the machine, and completely rebuild from scratch - to the point where that approach is most often recommended as the "right" way to do an upgrade. Or we simply purchase a new computer. Of course, it really shouldn't be that way. In a perfect world, upgrades would just work. Sadly in the real-world something always fails to come back from that final reboot: sound cards go mute, wireless networking suddenly disappears, the display reverts to something drawn with a crayon - SOMETHING goes awry.
It's not like Microsoft doesn't try, believe me they do. Their test bed is massive. I've actually visited their software testing labs in Redmond and witnessed things like the "USB test cart of death" - a rolling collection of 50+ USB devices all daisy-chained together into a single plug and inserted into the computer at one time. (I think the lights dimmed when they did it.) Microsoft houses terabytes of real-world customer applications and data that are installed and regression tested programatically every time there's a new build. But the realistic possibility of making sure that hundreds of thousands of legacy drivers work cleanly with millions of lines of new code is nearly impossible. And removing support for that 8 year old ink-jet printer in your home office - while probably fair - is still more customer-unfriendly than most people would like.
Still, everything I'd been hearing and reading seemed to indicate that something was different about the newest version of Windows - cleverly called "Windows 7". First released in beta early this year, Windows 7 was downloaded immediately by millions of enthusiasts. Although it's now closed to new applicants, the test represented the largest beta Microsoft has ever conducted. Realizing that I had a relatively new Vista laptop, and given hope that the common driver model between Vista and Win7 should theoretically reduce upgrade issues, I began thinking "worst case, I restore it to the factory settings". Thus (and yes, I said "thus"), with a good backup in place, caution to the wind, and a newly-burned installation DVD, I prepared myself for the predictable disappointment of something not working for a few months, and installed the beta.
One painfully-long hour later, my new windows desktop appeared... and everything worked. Everything. "This couldn't be" I thought.. and began hunting. SOMETHING's gonna hang. Word, office, sound, wireless networking, development tools, display - everything worked, and worked the first time. I was genuinely delighted. That was over a month ago, and I'm still delighted. Better still... it actually seems faster. From many accounts, Microsoft made reviewing and tightening up bits and pieces of code all over the operating system a key focus of this release. And it pays off. The overall feeling is of an interface that's somehow cleaner and less bloated than Vista. Efforts were also placed on the importance of keeping the visual interface responsive to commands - making it snappier, and giving the appearance that the machine may actually be running faster than it is, while items continue to churn in the background. Of course, that might not be truly "better performing", but it certainly makes the experience more pleasant. If perception is reality, then Windows 7 often seems to run better than Vista. Additionally this investment in code tightening allegedly allows Windows 7 to run on even lower class hardware - and run better on it - than Vista did.
Windows 7 introduces a number of new features, including a newly redesigned task bar and some windowing options, that will be changing how you work on your next PC. For the most part, I like them, and I'll discuss them more in depth in subsequent posts.
While Microsoft still hasn't committed to a final release date, the general consensus seems to point to a date in the second half of this year to capitalize on holiday sales. Equally importantly, I'm sure they'd like to ride out the wave of early-adopter "buzz" that Microsoft has finally done it right this time: that they'd shaken off the misinformed mantle of "vista stinks", and delivered Windows 7 - out of the box - as a beta - ready for prime time. For now, though, I'm still amazed to be running a new Microsoft operating system that ... in beta at least... installed flawlessly, looks better, and seems faster than it's predecessor on the same hardware.
Maybe Bill Gates should have retired a few years ago.
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