What, has noone tried 7 so far ?
Yeah, looks like I had to do it myself. Well, I soon quit testing the 7 Build 7201 for its floridly ugly interface: they dicided to iron out vista's by adding still more translucency to windows title bars and to the task menu. Even if you want it all straight and clear, you can't maximize a window to see its title bar solidly black as in Vista, plus you always have to see all those overlayed colors through your taskbar. Of course if you don't adjust the colors to completely dark or if you don't turn Aero off, but Aero is the essence as we know.
The first time I installed Vista, it looked like a very thoroughly made skin that curved every window right. The 7's Aero looks like a quickly made skin without an effort at all. It could be Ok if the blurred titles were more distinguishable.
The logon screen is unpleasantly bright. The animated boot screen looks nice though.
Let's take a look. The start menu changed but I personally don't find that significantly. Perhaps Vista's even looks better.
Vista:
7:
See the user picture kitten fallen asleep of waiting long for improvements. They dicided to "improve icons in 7", - not smart because don't repair if it ain't broken. They have really worsened many nice looking elements, which I do hope will be at least reworked in 7 final.
The 7's new "improved" control panel icon:
vs the Vista's:
Which one looks much better to you, and what do you think made them change it ? Right, quite weird.
When you open the start menu and type in the search box, it shows you the results over the entire area of the start menu panel. I don't know how useful that is, feels all the same to me.
As you know, Microsoft aimed at a brand new MacOS's looks and introduced a different from all its previous versions taskbar. It's got some cute things as the new system menu that pops up when an item is right-clicked. There if you choose the middle line "Pin to task tray", it gets pinned to tthe taskbar as a visibe quick-launch item. This one looks good to me. But if you simply hover your mouse over, it shows the item's preview. Quite neat.
7's task switching appears almost unchanged. Flip 3D, good or bad, has been absolutely unchanged in Windws 7. The outstanding difference I noticed is in Flip 2D (Alt-Tab), when you press Alt-Tab, see the switch dialouge and the one switcher-focused window fully visible in the bacground with the frames of the rest open windows made transparent while they are not focused. Also, Aero pick is quite an advancement, it can make all your windows transparent for a while so you can see the desktop and the gadgets. Sure a step ahead of "Minimize All" quick-launch shortcut.
Flips in 7,
Flip 3D:
Flip 2D:
>>>
They made the new productivity index up to 7,9, which was 5,9 in Vista. Many other minor adjustments are like the ability to change your desktop walpaper every 30 seconds, 7 plays you sounds when you select a new theme, 7 has gadgets but without the sidebar, different (I think worse than vista's) looks in control panel and in help dialogue, and the like, not too much different from vista's, nor more useful.
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Now about the good stuff I have found.
Firstly, looks like there's no
vista's superfetch in 7. The way it works in vista is to allocate some 1/4 of your available RAM for your needs and allocate the rest for the superfetch needs. Of my 8 Gb vista's superfetch uses 6 to cache. Of course I always disble the superfetch via Control Panel >>> Administrative >>> Services >>> Disable Superfetch service. This allows me to use all my RAM to my convinience. Looks like 7 does the same, it leaves all my RAM available to me.
What also looked great to me is need free to reboot after installing drivers, one or several. I quickly installed my ATI, Realtek, and Logitech vista drivers, the devices started right away completely functional without reboot ! Cool.
All drivers that I use in Vista appear fully compatible with 7, one problem away as Microsoft exactly promised.
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I haven't tried all 7's features, but many of them look identical, like drive encryption and DVD-maker. I don't think I'm gonna use home network group, but I will sure be happy if creating backup image works no issues.
There are also OS core
improvements.
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They could have tried to improve Flip 3D, fix some bugs, add customizations for it, and add expose-like feature. And Make a launcher like MF, as early plans were.
By the way, both MF and WF work fine in 7.
At early stages of evelopment, there was something about virtual monitor, which I don't know hat it is, but I think it would certainly be a nice UI advancement to have virtual desktops.
I'm looking forward to the final perfectness of 7, but for now I'll stay with Vista x 64, that feels far more elegant than 7 now.
Chillout Zone
