Foray into Windows 7: Part 2 - Booting Up

So my new laptop finally arrived! No real new features to note over my laptop except this one has an LED screen which is significantly brighter than the normal LCD laptop screens.

My first test was to see how fast the initial Windows boot was and how long it would take to get to an interactive desktop. Seeing as this was the first boot there would be some final Windows setup to complete so that is measured separately.

The finishing setup touches went by pretty quickly for a total of 9 minutes until I was logged in for the first time. One item of note that I thought was very thoughtful on Microsoft's part was including setting up a wireless network as part of the initial setup. The integration of Wi-Fi into Vista was a vast improvement over using 3rd party wireless setup tools or the XP tool and now it's nice to see that setting up a Wi-Fi connection is a major part of the Windows 7 install. It was too easy, in fact, just clicked my network and entered my key. Another curious part of the setup (and might be true for earlier versions) was that the password hint field is required. This seems like a major security weakness by making it easier to guess a user's password. I wonder the percentage of users with their hint being their password backwards. I would feel much safer without a password hint but instead I took this opportunity to throw a would-be hacker off my trail. Use "It's a month" (but don't use a month as a password) and set the account login failure lockout to be around 5. They will start guessing months and then get locked out.

After my first login I shutdown so I could measure a clean boot-up. The shutdown itself was very fast at about 10 seconds. There is nothing more annoying than waiting for your computer to shutdown. Starting back up it took me 90 seconds to log in again. That is an alright time, but then again the Lenovo laptops come with a significant amount of software utilities that always start. I imagine if I use ReadyBoost my time would improve as well. Unfortunately my ReadyBoost card has been recommisioned as a camera card.

So far the Windows 7 experience has been clean and quick. We'll have to see if this trend continues when I load my software. Have you noticed anything working faster or slower in Windows 7? Write me a comment! More to come.

Foray into Windows 7: Part 1 - Leaving Vista Addendum

Speaking of Vista's perception, I had forgotten all about the Mojave Experiment.

In the experiment users were taken through Microsoft's "next OS" which was revealed to be Vista after everyone had given positive feedback. Now there are a number of sources pointing to the shortcomings of the experiment to measure on an absolute scale the rating of Vista. However, I believe we have forgotten the basis of scientific experimentation which it to attempt to disprove a hypothesis. In this case, Microsoft's hypothesis was that Vista's PR had no impact on user's perception. If a rebranded OS and a fresh explanation of the new features had an effect then Vista's bad press certain had a play in perception.

However, this experiment can't show us that Vista is great yet most blogs will discredit the experiment because of glossing over of drivers, software, and setup. Because these are issues also found in XP and 7, these issues being in Vista should not affect it's reception vs. the Window's baseline. If people love XP and 7 more than Vista is is not because those OSs are any better in those areas. Well, maybe 7 I'll have to see...

See Also:
NY Times - Blog Posts Poke Holes in ‘Taste Test’ by Microsoft

Foray into Windows 7: Part 1 - Leaving Vista

I'm fond of Windows Vista. In fact I'm reluctant to upgrade all of my computers to use the new operating system. The new features aren't terribly interesting or worth effort of upgrading. To top it off, the Microsoft commercials seem to only focus on the new "snap" feature. Neat but not that neat.

One of the most cited reasons for switching to 7 is that it is less "buggy". I didn't even notice that Vista was buggy. Perhaps the only bug I encountered was the slow network speed due to Remote Differential Compression (which was solved by turning it off). I'm willing to be that most "bugs" were due to user unfamiliarity, UAC, lack of driver support, and lack of early software support. In fact this list at AskVG.com tells us that 7 has a few bug fixes over Vista. Yet, 7 is heralded as much more stable. Hardly a major stability upgrade. Perhaps we have Apple fan's sensational journalism of the beta version of Vista to blame for its poor reception.

If it wasn't for the amazing accidental damage warranty from Lenovo, my replacement laptop will have Windows 7. So, I'll be jotting down some of my observations.