Foray into Windows 7: Part 3 - First Impressions - UI

"My new computer came with Windows 7. Windows 7 is much more user-friendly than Windows Vista. I don't like that." - Sheldon Cooper, The Big Bang Theory [video]

So far my journey into Windows 7 has a few notes. Here is my stream-of-consciousness laundry list of thoughts.

The taskbar grew since the last time we met it. A little bit taller and a little bit wiser in Windows 7. The taskbar now also has nicer icons for Wi-Fi and battery built in (oops, this is just a ThinkPad thing).The "Show Desktop" button taking permanent residence on the taskbar is a welcome change. I would have just added it as a quick launch icon (though I'm not sure how it works anymore). Our beloved programs now merge with their icons which blurs the line between desktop and application. I like how each individual tab can be accessed from the taskbar when working with IE or Chrome. Sometimes I'll hunt through each of my open programs looking for certain content and forget that it was just on another tab. Having actions as the context menu makes a lot more sense than the "Close, Max, Min, Size, Move, Restore" found in previous versions. Perhaps the only time I have ever used "Move" was when a window was off the screen and I've never used "Size".

Pinning programs to the taskbar is nice. Pinning documents you have open in the programs on the taskbar or start menu is even nicer. Pinning recent documents FTW.

My gadgets no longer have a nice "drawer" to fit in. I'm not sure how you can call it the "Sidebar" program if there is no bar anymore. It's alright, I've abandoned my gadgets anyway. I never really used them unless they were set to "always display". Going to the desktop seems like too much work just to check my CPU speed or get the calendar. Maybe it will come back. My first use for the sidebar was mainly to reduce my window real estate so I didn't have to mouse too far on my widescreen.

Windows Snap: LOL! I'll use it occasionally but it isn't spectacular. It's almost as fast as manually resizing.

Now here is an interesting find. You can now backup your credentials and encryption so you won't ruin your files if you reset your password. Or at least the option is more user friendly. I also like the more prominent credentials manager but we should probably hide that from a non-power user.

Paint has a ribbon interface!

Calculator has so many more functions! I'm a programmer but I doubt I'll ever use the "Programmers" mode. You can also now take the Xths root of a number. Nice addition. Has anyone ever noticed that the scientific mode never had a square root button? I guess if you were smart enough to use that mode you were smart enough to use x^(1/2) to get the square root.

Anyone else have any first impressions? I haven't had much time to go into depth but I'll write about it soon.

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

Windows 8...?

Well this was a welcome find today.  The Windows 8 leaked Powerpoint slides look promising.
If you haven't seen them yet, take a look!
http://msftkitchen.com/2010/06/windows-8-plans-leaked-numerous-details-revealed.html
http://www.windowsette.com/2010/06/sfuggite-slide-segretissime-sullo.html

One of the most annoying things in the current version of Windows is the poor sense of identity.  When I was a kid each member in my family had their own Windows account.  Unfortunately, it was too slow and too much of a hassle to switch users so we all used my father's account.  It makes it difficult to personalized a computer when it is public or shared.  Any personalization has to have enough value to over come the pain-in-the-neck of switching users.  This also leads to reduce security, privacy, and restrictions.  Could you imagine sharing your phone like that?

Windows 8, on the other hand, looks marvelous to this effect for a few reasons.

1. Focus on reducing user switching time.  
2. Identify users automatically - if I could just sit down and it would bring up my user in a matter of seconds that would be amazing.  Maybe load additional user settings into memory in the background after the first user is logged in. Predict when I'll be using my computer to preload before then for best memory usage and you'll get a gold star.
3. Cloud Identity - I recently switched from my MS based groundings with Outlook to a better cloud-based identity with Google.  I love the fact that I can log in anywhere with a browser and have my settings.  More importantly, my wife and I each have a laptop but we each frequently use the living room desktop.  Having my bookmarks, history and extensions (via Dev channel) in Chrome automatically sync between computers is like a dream.  Over the weekend I set up a Linux box and again, all my Chrome settings came with me!  If I can have everything but my large games and archived files (which I can 
4. sync everywhere I go and remote to or network share everything else, my computing experience becomes something totaly different.

Another plus in my book is the centralized marketplace.  Again, with my Linux box being able to install packages, applications and games from a central source means I'll spend less time installing and updating.

Windows 8 will be something I will be watching closely.