My Impressions of Windows 7 (mini review)

I've never heard of Morro till now; Interesting. Hopefully they'll make it leaner than OneCare.

 

Morro for one, will be free. There is a topic in the Anti-virus forum.

Greg

 

You might be right. In my office, no wireless networks appear under Vista. When I boot with Windows 7, 2 secure wireless networks appear.

 

Just a little update, my ram usage is probably about 2-300mb less than Vista, not huge, but noticable. It would probably be a bigger difference with 4Gb installed, because of how agressive Vista is with RAM.

I'm also running a steady 56 processes. Now, running programs include:
- Ad-Aware (1)
- Alps Touchpad (3)
- Apple Mobile Device/iPod/Bonjour (3)
- Dell Controlpoint (4)
- MS Groove Monitor (1)
- IE8 Running (2)
- Java (1)
- Messenger/Live (2)

That is 17 processes right there that I have installed. The next step is to figure out what ones I can safely cut out. Just because 7 is fast doesn't mean it can't be faster.

So that would put 7 at about 35-38 processes on a fresh install, which is right. Much less than Vista.

IE8 has crashed a couple of times, though only on NBR. Not a huge deal. It's better than the system lockups I was getting with Vista.

Greg

 

I had IE8 crash on me as well with NBR while trying to write a post. It happens when I attempt using the buttons to insert lists and links, where a Data Execution Protection (or whatever it goes by) comes up. To get around it, I added NBR to my trusted sites list in IE8. Haven't had the error ever since. I also did submit feedback on that error. The good news is that even though IE8 crashed, it was restored right to the point before I clicked the button so no work lost for long posts.

 

Same here. Had IE8 crash three times, all when I was inserting a link on NBR. Strange.

-Update-
Contrary to what's been reported by some, I'm having the opposite experience with WiFi. There are a couple of wifi spots that are about 200 feet away from my MBP. Under OSX they both connect and consistently hold 50-100% signal. When I reboot to W7 it can hardly hold either signal for more than 30 secs. If the signal is strong (eg. inside my house) they're about the same, but with week signals I'm finding wifi is more usable under OSX than W7.

 

One feature I just noticed:

IE8 has inline search! Finally!

Greg

 

I have 29 processes running on my EEE, I turned off so many services, including stuff like Homegroups which I have no need.

 

I uninstalled Dell Controlpoint (the volume indicator didn't work, and that was the only use I had for it) and disabled some services that I don't use and I'm down to 43 processes or so (in 7, the number of processes goes up and down moreso than Vista or XP).

Still having a great experience.

Greg

 

One Question... Does it run faster on the same hardware as compared to Vista SP1?

 

Definitely! It is much more responsive and uses less resources on all fronts. Less CPU usage, less memory being used, less drain on the battery.

Greg

 

Part two of my W7 experience...


1. Creative has issues with sound playback. Apart from the fact that the sound is flat and there are no enhancements there are random cuts in playback.

2. I noticed some kinks in my Office too. Random Excel issues and Outlook crashes.

3. Nokia PC Suite did not want to install at all in the beginning. I noticed that whenever there is a write error message, a reboot does the trick. I rebooted, paired my E90 and sync seemed to work but stalled halfway. The drivers for my E90 were not properly installed. Had to remove them and let it install again. Weird.

4. Adobe Acrobat 9 Crashes on password protected documents. I have my ASUS Manager for apps like this and it usually fills in the blanks for me. 2/10 times Adobe Crashes due to the fact that my Asus app types in the password for me.

5. Huge reboot issues after driver installs. It took 10 minutes for it to reboot after I configured my PC Suite. I have in Verbose mode so I can see where it hangs. Not the first time. I did the same thing after Creative got installed.

6. Chrome, Opera, Firefox, you name it, they all crash. Chrome starts with a warning and after you bypass it and browse it crashes. Opera works until you hit a few heavy websites and it crashes. Firefox behaves the same. Even IE8 crashes .




(to be continued....)

 

Ouch. Sorry to hear you're having those problems.

Hopefully these things will be ironed out. Not only on Microsoft's end either.

Mozilla, Google, nVidia, etc... need to get their act together for this release.

 

I've had one lockup so far. Yesterday I was typing a word document and the system locked up. Hasn't happened since.

It's still better than Vista locking up at minimum once per day.

Greg

 

Ok, another lockup just 20 minutes ago. Same situation, typing a word document. This must be related the issues people have been having with Office 07 and 7.

Greg