Windows 7
Posted by voice | Filed under Techie
Lately I came across a copy of a beta build of Windows 7, and seeing as I’ve missed out in the past I decided to give this beta a try. I have to say I am quite surprised that Microsoft seems to have actually realized the issues with Vista and made a actual effort to fix them. First off network performance has definantly improved, to give you an idea, viewing a video over WLAN resulted in a constantly buffering video on Vista, about 10 mins of playing actually got you 8 mins of video, this of course being done in VLC while leaving buffering at its default 300ms. Compare this to Windows 7 where the same setup I was able to get about 10 mins of video before buffering problems occured, kudos to Microsoft for fixing their network stack.
Overall system performance was also faster than Vista, quickly noting that my desktops specs are a Core 2 Duo cpu overclocked from 2.66Ghz to 2.81Ghz, 2GB DDR2 SDRAM, and a nVidia GeForce 8500GT 512MB video card. Programs opened faster on 7 than they did with my previous encounters with Vista. The only problems I really have with Windows 7 so far is the default taskbar is way too big for my tastes, however you can set it back to the original size; the ISO I got was 2.4GB which, considering how much there is in terms of graphics and programs, still is too bloated for me considering Ubuntu packs more visual gimicks and apps yet fits onto a 700MB CD-R. By the way, resource usage was down in 7 compared to Vista.
Now, this next one I’m not so angry I about, I just found amusing, for those who haven’t used Vista, Microsoft included a new feature for gamers called Game Explorer which is just a place that shows you installed games and some info about them like game ratings. Now, I decided to test Unreal Tournament 3 on Windows 7 and while the game performed well Game Explorer decided to pass off UT3 as a Early Childhood game. It may or may not be a problem in Windows, but when it gives you a list of content including “Blood and Gore” and “Partial Nudity”, early childhood? Screenshot included.
